Rationalist org bets random substack poster $100K that he can't disprove their covid lab leak hypothesis, you'll never guess what happens next
Rationalist org bets random substack poster $100K that he can't disprove their covid lab leak hypothesis, you'll never guess what happens next
rootclaim appears to be yet another group of people who, having stumbled upon the idea of the Bayes rule as a good enough alternative to critical thinking, decided to try their luck in becoming a Serious and Important Arbiter of Truth in a Post-Mainstream-Journalism World.
This includes a randiesque challenge that they'll take a $100K bet that you can't prove them wrong on a select group of topics they've done deep dives on, like if the 2020 election was stolen (91% nay) or if covid was man-made and leaked from a lab (89% yay).
Also their methodology yields results like 95% certainty on Usain Bolt never having used PEDs, so it's not entirely surprising that the first person to take their challenge appears to have wiped the floor with them.
Don't worry though, they have taken the results of the debate to heart and according to their postmortem blogpost they learned many important lessons, like how they need to (checks notes) gameplan against the rules of the debate better? What a way to spend 100K... Maybe once you've reached a conclusion using the Sacred Method changing your mind becomes difficult.
I've included the novel-length judges opinions in the links below, where a cursory look indicates they are notably less charitable towards rootclaim's views than their postmortem indicates, pointing at stuff like logical inconsistencies and the inclusion of data that on closer look appear basically irrelevant to the thing they are trying to model probabilities for.
There's also like 18 hours of video of the debate if anyone wants to really get into it, but I'll tap out here.
quantian's short writeup on the birdsite, will post screens in comments
pdf of judge's opinion that isn't quite book length, 27 pages, judge is a microbiologist and immunologist PhD
pdf of other judge's opinion that's 87 pages, judge is an applied mathematician PhD with a background in mathematical virology -- despite the length this is better organized and generally way more readable, if you can spare the time.
rootclaim's post mortem blogpost, includes more links to debate material and judge's opinions.
edit: added additional details to the pdf descriptions.
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Wait they had Peter's arguments and sources before the debate? And they're blaming the format? Having your challenger's material before the debate, while they don't have yours is basically a guaranteed win. You have his material, take it with you to the debate and just prepare answers in advance so you don't lose $100K! Who gave these idiots a $100K?
The sole funder is the founder, Saar Wilf. The whole thing seems like a vanity project for him and friends he hired to give their opinion on random controversial topics.
Under "Significant developments since publication" for their lab leak hypothesis, they don't mention this debate at all. A track record that fails to track the record, nice.
Right underneath that they mention that at least they're right about their 99.9% confident hypothesis that the MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism. I hope it's not uncharitable to say that they don't get any points for that.
God knows I'm not good at web design, but the look of that page is really really cheap.
EDIT their first claim is that Syrian opposition forces, not the Syrian government, were the perpetrators of the chemical attacks in Ghouta:
https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/Who-carried-out-the-chemical-attack-in-Ghouta-on-August-21-2013
This is a really controversial claim, heavily pushed by supporters of Assad and Putin. No-one seems to have been interested in claiming the 100K this time so they're happy to be calling this "resolved".
Rootclaim’s conclusion contradicted all Western intelligence agencies, but years later was shown to be correct. This demonstrates that superior inference methodologies are far more important than privileged access to information.
big yikes. big big yikes.
years later was shown to be correct
Take a guess at what prompted this statement.
Did one side of the conflict confess? Did major expert organization change their minds? Did new, conclusive evidence arise that was unseen for years?
Lol no. The "confirmation" is that a bunch of random people did their own analysis of existing evidence and decided that it was the rebels based on a vague estimate of rocket trajectories. I have no idea who these people are, although I think the lead author is this guy currently stanning for Russia's war on ukraine?
Wasnt this also claimed by the greyzone types before it was clear just how pro-putin the types were? I also recall a lot of weird opinions re the white hats around that time.