About bee National ReviewJim Geraghty has a series of articles suggesting the Covid virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China. Today he has a story with the following headline:
Guess where the possibly nuclear fuel leaking sunken Chinese submarine is?
I didn’t have much trouble guessing: it was Wuhan. What did surprise me is the way he told the story:
You probably remember it because it completely disrupted your life for a year or two caused approximately 27 million “excess deaths” around the world. But I bet you don’t remember that one Researchers from Wuhan University who allowed artificial intelligence to control an Earth observation satellite, which led to the satellite beginning to look at Indian military bases and a Japanese port used by the US Navy. Lead researcher Wang Mi boasted: “This approach violates existing mission planning rules.” Yes, and we all know all the great things that happen when scientific researchers are in Wuhan violate existing rules. First the Andromeda species, then SkyNet.
What other kinds of experiments are they doing there in Wuhan these days? Summon demons? Want to say hello to a hostile alien empire in space? Do they just flip through old Marvel comics, read about the villains’ plots and think, “Hey, that would be a cool experiment”? Apparently all the problems in the world lead back to Wuhan.
That last paragraph – especially the last sentence – is something I would expect from a conspiracy theory skeptic, someone who wanted to poke fun at the idea that certain coincidences are suspect. I can imagine someone scoffing at the statement: “Wuhan only has about 1% of China’s population, so how likely is it that the submarine would sink in the same city where Covid started?” In other words, making fun of someone for not understanding Bayesian reasoning.
To understand the problem, consider how the last sentence of the first quoted paragraph could be rewritten:
Yes, and we all know all the great things happening at wildlife wholesalers in Wuhan violate existing rules. First a repeat of what happened with SARS-1, then SkyNet.
Yes, I understand that Geraghty is mainly being humorous here. But if you consider the column as humor, then yes he jokes about his own views on Covid. That makes me wonder if he’s at least a little serious. On some level, he seems to assume that digging up more dirt on Wuhan will somehow make it more likely that readers will believe (if only subconsciously) that something bad happened there in late 2019. But we already know that something bad happened in Wuhan – a man sold raccoon dogs at the food market.
What this example actually shows is that Strange coincidences happen all the timeand it would be foolish to make causal claims based on their existence.
Here’s another coincidence. For the first time in 36 meetings, the Fed lowered its fed funds rate target. What are the chances that politics had nothing to do with a rate cut at the last meeting before the November elections?
I’d say the odds are pretty good. (By the way, the previous rate cuts also took place in an election year.)
Here’s another interesting pattern: There has never been a time when the three-month average of unemployment rose more than 0.5% without a recession. What are the chances that the recent rise in unemployment above this threshold will not lead to a recession?
I’d say the odds are pretty good.
If you look for patterns, you will find them. Lots of them. But the world is full of unusual events.