birdsite stuff:

The Randi prize was a scam by the way. They wanted evidence of "supernatural powers", but they wouldn't accept my smartphone as not being natural, despite the fact that it is clearly manmade in a factory. They only accepted supernatural powers that didn't exist.

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?

"It wAs aCtuALLy a lAB LEaK" is such a right-wing shibboleth that it's extra delicious that some wingers[1] put their money where their mouths and were comprehensively disproven. Kudos to the Lesswronger who went through all this, even though a 100K payout made it rATioNaL

[1] I don't have any evidence that Rootclaim are right-wingers but my priors tell me they are

oh hey! Remember the Initiative Q thing that spammed your social media a few years ago?

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/06/24/initiative-q-a-non-crypto-private-currency-marketed-by-pyramid-scheme/

yeah, that was Saar Wilf's too

(that article is the single most-read thing I've ever written btw, with >250k views)

Sort of an aside, but let's soap box about why the Lab Leak theory is a thing:

What I don't get about lableak enthusiasts is why they insist that it's not just a lab leak, but also a lab leak of an other than natural virus. Hell, if you wanted to try and fit the facts but still explain the spooky coincidence, envision a just-so scenario where someone caught (proto) covid while collecting samples in a cave, went back to work at the lab, infected everyone while buying groceries at the market.

Nobody makes up a story like that! It's always a credibility-straining cover-up paired with claims about an engineered virus that don't fit the facts. That makes me think they don't care about the facts at all, and instead just really want to be able to blame something-anything-besides their own countrys' ineffectual responses to the virus for the death and mayhem.

Lab leak is a slight of hand, but don't be fooled; how patient zero happened isn't relevant for the purposes of evaluating how a certain very popular right wing someone managed to fall down flat the one time he was actually called upon to act as a leader.

The video and slides can be found here, I watched a bit of it as it happened and it was pretty clear that rootclaim got destroyed.

Anyone actually trying to be "bayesian" should have updated their opinion by multiple orders of magnitude as soon as it was fully confirmed that the wet market was the first superspreader event. Like, at what point does occams razor not kick in here?

From their updated website:

In fact, this is exactly what happened in the first Rootclaim challenge, where mistakes we made in structuring the debate led the judges to vote for the less likely hypothesis.

Peak rationalism

What is this utter pile of dog excrement calling itself "rationalist org?" Of course it can be proven without difficulty that COVID was not caused by a lab leak, we know that for certain, there isn't even a reason to think otherwise. And we can prove that the 2020 was not stolen and that it, in fact, was one of the most secure and unhacked elections ever held in our country.

You'd have to a stupid asshole to think otherwise, so why even bother with this group of know-nothings? I know a pile of dogshit when I see it, and I know enough to go around and not step into it.