Premises

Here I tackle some bold claims made by Roko in three separate posts about SARS-CoV-2 being an engineered virus (Brute Force Manufactured Consensus is Hiding the Crime of the Century, The Math of Suspicious Coincidences, and A Back-Of-The-Envelope Calculation On How Unlikely The Circumstantial Evidence Around Covid-19 Is).
A first rebuttal to Roko's post is already out, and since I have been preparing this post for some time, certain arguments are going to be similar.

The purpose of this post is not to incontrovertibly demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 was of zoonotic origin, as I myself believe a laboratory leak to be somewhat plausible, but rather that the degree of Roko's confidence in the engineered-pandemic belief is terribly overstated in light of the presented evidence.

I believe that the RootClaim debate is a great way to familiarise oneself with core arguments from all sides, it is exceedingly [...]

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Outline:

(00:04) Premises

(01:16) A Set of Explainable Coincidences

(01:51) One-in-a-century pandemic

(06:13) The bat coronavirus

(07:29) The BSL-4 lab

(08:20) From Yunnan to Wuhan

(10:12) Probabilities and Confounding Factors

(15:06) Questionable Use of Sources

(15:10) Misrepresentation of evidence

(27:47) DaszakandFriends outsized influence

(31:03) Conclusion

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
February 22nd, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bAEPBD7JBsf9XKCuT/everything-wrong-with-roko-s-claims-about-an-engineered

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Everything Wrong with Roko’s Claims about an Engineered Pandemic” by EZ97

LessWrong (30+ Karma)