[ExI] Garbage In Garbage Out

[John Clark]

On Sun, May 24, 2020 at 9:42 PM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> If the virus came about  because of random evolution in the wet market,
> then *[...]


Nobody thinks the viral mutation happened in the Wuhan market, they think a
mutation happened to a virus in a bat in the wild that produced a virus
similar to but not exactly the same as COVID-19. And they think the bat
then infected some other undetermined wild animal where a second mutation
occurred and COVID-19 was born. Then this wild animal (most likely a
pangolin but not certain) was brought to the Wuhan wet market.

*>There are 686 cities in China and therefore 686 wet markets.  That means
> that the probability that the outbreak happened in Wuhan  given that the
> coronavirus came from a wet market is 1/686.*


I hit a golf ball 450 yards and it lands on one particular tuft of grass.
There are 686,686,686 tufts of grass the ball could have landed on but it
ignored all of them except for one. Therefore I must have almost certainly
been aiming at that particular tuft of grass because the probability it was
all random is only one chance in 686,686,686. Or to put it in another
simpler way, GIGO.

I'll give you another probability and I don't even need Bayes theorem to
calculate it; the probability that any large event in modern human history
will produce a crackpot conspiracy theory is 100% .

John K Clark


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