Before COVID, I doubt anyone was even thinking about the probabilities of a lab leak leading to a worldwide pandemic.

This makes me wonder, we know the Rationalists did worry about a global pandemic before COVID19, we checked the waste water and the smug particles increased exponentially for a short time in feb 2020. But did they also worry about a normal lab leak like which might have happened here? Or was it all either nature/terrorism/AGI stuff?

Also, if you think either of these are true:

Lab Leaks Common: There is a 33% chance of a lab-leak-caused pandemic per decade. Lab Leaks Rare: There is a 10% chance of a lab-leak-caused pandemic per decade.

You should probably be campaigning to increase safety or shut down the labs you think would be responsible. 10% risk of pandemic per decade due to lab leaks (so in addition to viruses mutating on their own) isn’t rare or an acceptable risk.

So far, there has been zero or one[1] lab leak that led to a world-wide pandemic. Before COVID, I doubt anyone was even thinking about the probabilities of a lab leak leading to a worldwide pandemic.

So, actually, many people were thinking about lab leaks, and the potential of a worldwide pandemic, despite Scott’s suggestion that stupid people weren’t. For years now, bioengineering has been concerned with accidental lab leaks because the understanding that risk existed was widespread.

But the reality is that guessing at probabilities of this sort of thing still doesn’t change anything. It’s up to labs to pursue safety protocols, which happens at the economic edge of of the opportunity vs the material and mental cost of being diligent. Reality is that lab leaks may not change probabilities, but yes the events of them occurring does cause trauma which acts, not as some bayesian correction, but an emotional correction so that people’s motivations for atleast paying more attention increases for a short while.

Other than that, the greatest rationalist on earth can’t do anything with their statistics about label leaks.

This is the best paradox. Not only is Scott wrong to suggest people shouldn’t be concerned about major events (the traumatic update to individual’s memory IS valuable), but he’s wrong to suggest that anything he or anyone does after updating their probabilities could possibly help them prepare meaningfully.

He’s the most hilarious kind of wrong.

Complete sidenote, but I hate how effective altruism has gone from “charities should spend more money on their charity and not on executive bonusses, here are the ones that don’t actually help anyone” to “I believe I will save infinity humans by colonizing mars, so you can just starve to death today”.

ahh, I fucking haaaate this line of reasoning. Basically saying “If we’re no worse than average, therefore there’s no problem”, followed by some discussion of “base rates” of harrassment or whatever.

Except that the average rate of harrassment and abuse, in pretty much every large group, is unacceptably high unless you take active steps to prevent it. You know what’s not a good way to prevent it? Downplaying reports of harrassment and calling the people bringing attention to it biased liars, and explicitly trying to avoid kicking out harmful characters.

Nothing like a so-called “effective altruist” crowing about having a C- passing grade on the sexual harrassment test.

Scott: “Hmm, the reputation of the EA community that I am part of and love for some reason is tanking, due to the bad actions of its luminaries. What can I do to help? I know, I’ll bring up 9/11”

Empty room: “…”

“And I’ll throw out some made up statistics about terrorist attacks and how statistically we were due for a 9/11 and we overreacted by having any response whatsoever. And then I’ll show how that’s the same as when someone big in EA does something bad.”

“…”

“Especially since it’s common for people to, after a big scandal, try and push their agenda to improve things. We definitely don’t want that.”

“…”

“Also, on average there’s less SA in STEM, and even though there is still plenty of SA, we don’t need to change anything, because averages.”

“…”

“Anyway, time for dexy no. 5”

and often the fact that you hear about it at all means the movement is fumbling it less than other movements that would keep it quiet

I just can’t get over how far this is from reality. like fuck, for a lot of these things the controversy is the community covering for the abuser, or evidence coming out that sexual harassment was covered up in the past. depressingly often in tech, the community doesn’t even try to keep it quiet; instead they just loudly endorse the abuser or talk about how there’s nothing they can do.

Hey guys look it’s the Scott whisperer, Mr. Beandog. Let’s see what he’s got for us today:

I’m not a fanboy

sure

or necessarrily agree with his argument

surely then, you wouldn’t feel the need to 'splain it

but you’re seriously missing the point of what he’s trying to say.

oh ok

He’s just talking about how big, mediapathic events can unduly influence people’s perception of probability and risk

No, that isn’t what he is saying, actually.

He doesn’t need actual real world numbers to show how this works, he’s just demonstrating how the math works and how the numbers change

He does, actually. You can’t make fake mathematical statements about the real world and expect me to just buy your argument. He is demonstrating how the math hypothetically works in a scenario where he cooks the numbers. There is no reason why one should extrapolate that to the real world.

He isn’t trying to convince stupid people of anything, they aren’t his target audience and they will never think this way.

Oh ok. prior updated. Coulda sworn his target audience was morons.

you’re seriously missing the point of what he’s trying to say. He’s just talking about [extremely mundane and self evident motte argument]

Nah, we’re just not giving him the benefit of a doubt and also have a lot of context to work with.

Consider the fact that he explicitly writes that you are allowed to reconsider your assumptions on domestic terrorism if a second trans mass shooter incident “happens in a row” but a few paragraphs later Effective Altruists blowing up both FTX and OpenAI in the space of a year the second incident is immediately laundered away as the unfortunate result of them overcorrecting in good faith against unchecked CEO power.

This should stick out even to one approaching this with a blank slate perspective in my opinion.

He isn’t trying to convince stupid people of anything, they aren’t his target audience and they will never think this way.

you think “stupid people” is a meaningful social category, opinion dismissed.

oh yeah, scott would never use bad math to force a monstrous point

Take sexual harassment. Surveys suggest that about 5% of people admit to having sexually harassed someone at some point in their lives; given that it’s the kind of thing people have every reason to lie about, the real number is probably higher. Let’s say 10%.

So if there’s a community of 10,000 people, probably 1,000 of them have sexually harassed someone. So when you hear on the news that someone in that community sexually harassed someone, it shouldn’t change your opinion of that community at all. You started off pretty sure there were about 1,000, and now you know that there is at least one. How is that an update?!

Still, every few weeks there’s a story about someone committing sexual harassment in (let’s say) the model airplane building community, and then everyone spends a few days talking about how airplanes are sexist and they always knew the model builders were up to no good.

I mean this is just how people work! they hear about one case of sexual harassment, incorrectly update the probabilities in their heads, and then The Left convinces them that airplanes are sexist. these people are too stupid to have thoughts like “sexual harassment is happening way too often given the small size of the model airplane building community, and listening to the victims allowed me to figure out some of the systemic factors for why that’s the case for that community” and that’s why they fall into real, definitely not made up by scott to make the people he doesn’t like seem ridiculous, beliefs like airplanes being sexist. how dare these stupid people exist outside of Scott’s extremely mid imagination.

come the fuck on. this isn’t our first scott alexander post.