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Comment by Sammy Martin

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LessWrong commenter on Bayesian reasoning and COVID-19 origins
That's a good reductio for taking even fairly well justified sounding subjective bayes factors at face value.
AI Verified (Feb 19, 2024)
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Sammy Martin, comment on viking_math, "On coincidences and Bayesian reasoning, as applied to the origins of COVID-19," LessWrong, February 19, 2024.
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Policy proposals and claims
Bayesian analysis is the right framework for settling the COVID-19 origins question
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AI Verified The quote is relevant because, in context, Sammy Martin is responding to a discussion of using informal Bayesian/Bayes-factor reasoning to evaluate COVID-19 origins, and he endorses a "reductio" against taking such subjective Bayes factors at face value. That directly critiques Bayesian analysis as a way of settling this specific question, making opposition or at least skepticism toward the complete statement substantially more likely. ([lesswrong.com](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NrKQGyggC7jcersuJ/on-coincidences-and-bayesian-reasoning-as-applied-to-the)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago
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AI Verified He treats the approach as "a good reductio" of taking "subjective bayes factors at face value" and adds that hidden evidence filtering means different people can generate different coincidence findings, so he is implicitly opposing this kind of Bayesian-analysis-as-settling-framework for COVID origins. This is an inference about the whole statement, not an explicit rejection of every Bayesian use. ([lesswrong.com](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NrKQGyggC7jcersuJ/on-coincidences-and-bayesian-reasoning-as-applied-to-the)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago

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AI Verified The exact sentence appears verbatim on the LessWrong source URL as a comment attributed to Sammy Martin, and a GreaterWrong mirror of the same thread shows that comment timestamp as 19 Feb 2024 15:45 UTC, which matches the stored date at day precision. The stored author, quote text, date, and source URL are all consistent with the evidence. ([lesswrong.com](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NrKQGyggC7jcersuJ/on-coincidences-and-bayesian-reasoning-as-applied-to-the)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 1h ago
replying to Sammy Martin