Original post here. Table of contents below. I want to especially highlight three things.

First, Saar wrote a response to my post (and to zoonosis arguments in general). I’ve put a summary and some my responses at 1.11, but you can read the full post on the Rootclaim blog.

Second, I kind of made fun of Peter for giving some very extreme odds, and I mentioned they were sort of trolling, but he’s convinced me they were 100% trolling. Many people held these poorly-done calculations against Peter, so I want to make it clear that’s my fault for mis-presenting it. See 3.1 for more details.

Third, in my original post, I failed to mention that Peter also has a blog, including a post summing up his COVID origins argument.

Thanks to some people who want to remain anonymous for helping me with this post. Any remaining errors are my own.

1: Comments Arguing Against Zoonosis
— 1.1: Is COVID different from other zoonoses?
— 1.2: Were the raccoon-dogs wild-caught?
— 1.3: 92 early cases
— 1.4: COVID in Brazilian wastewater
— 1.5 Biorealism’s 16 arguments
— 1.6: DrJayChou’s 7 arguments
— 1.7: How much should coverup worry us?
— 1.8: Have Worobey and Pekar been debunked?
— 1.9: Was there ascertainment bias in early cases
— 1.10: Connor Reed / Gwern on cats
— 1.11: Rootclaim’s response to my post

2: Comments Arguing Against Lab Leak
— 2.1: Is the pandemic starting near WIV reverse correlation?

3: Other Points That Came Up
— 3.1: Apology to Peter re: extreme odds
— 3.2: Tobias Schneider on Rootclaim’s Syria Analysis
— 3.3: Closing thoughts on Rootclaim

4: Summary And Updates

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-the-5d7

[I haven’t independently verified each link. On average, commenters will end up spotting evidence that around two or three of the links in each links post are wrong or misleading. I correct these as I see them, and will highlight important corrections later, but I can’t guarantee I will have caught them all by the time you read this.]

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/links-for-april-2024

Many cities have regular Astral Codex Ten meetup groups. Twice a year, I try to advertise their upcoming meetups and make a bigger deal of it than usual so that irregular attendees can attend. This is one of those times.

This year we have spring meetups planned in over eighty cities, from Tokyo, Japan to Seminyak, Indonesia. Thanks to all the organizers who responded to my request for details, and to Meetups Czar Skyler and the Less Wrong team for making this happen.

You can find the list below, in the following order:

1. Africa & Middle East

2. Asia-Pacific (including Australia)

3. Europe (including UK)

4. North America & Central America

5. South America

There should very shortly be a map of these meetups on the LessWrong community page.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/spring-meetups-everywhere-2024