In comments, I find it funny how people disagree on the meaning of “evidence”.
Scott: “All the so-called ‘evidence’ [for covid lab leak] has been refuted.”
...received a link to ACX article, with quoted “the short version is that they were doing lots of gain of function research [...] The market is unlikely to be the origin of the pandemic, because the original Lineage A strain wasn’t found there [...] The most likely explanation for all these facts is that WIV went ahead and did the gain-of-function research they said they were going to do”
Scott: “I don’t think you know the meaning of the term “evidence”. It’s doesn’t mean “speculation based on no facts.”″
links 9/2/25: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/srcpublic/page/09-02-2025
stuff I looked up while reading about Chinese prehistory:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daxi_culture south-central, on the Yangtze, rice-farming, ancestral to the Hmong
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majiabang_culture southeast, on the Yangtze, rice-farming
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liangzhu_culture southeast, on the Yangtze, rice-farming, built cities and altars, stratified society
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongshan_culture northern, related to modern Mongolians and northern Chinese, millet farming, funky creature jades
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangshao_culture northern, on the Yellow River, related to modern northern Chinese, millet farming, swirly pottery
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1817972116 looks like they spoke a Sino-Tibetan language
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40597195/ looks like their descendants are Chinese
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peiligang_culture
more northern millet farmers
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoabinhian Southeast Asian palaeolithic hunter-gatherers
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_Cave_(Thailand) maybe early plant domestication
https://www.mpg.de/6842535/dna-tianyuan-cave early modern human 40-50 kya shows DNA evidence of relatedness to modern Asians
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0702169104
https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/2024-02-meeting-dawn-human/ he ate a lot of fish, lived into his 40s/50s, and may have worn shoes
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dali_Man archaic homo sapiens
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhoukoudian_Peking_Man_Site homo erectus-like guys lived near Beijing. caves continuously occupied for 200,000 years
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantian_Man moar homo erectus in China
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalicotherium extinct giant beast, overlapped with hominids in China
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ji_(archaeologist) founder of modern Chinese archaeology
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwang-chih_Chang Taiwanese-American archaeologist (& author of my book)
https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/shuten-townlikealice/shuten-townlikealice-01-h.html recommended by a friend
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfriede_Jelinek Nobel-prize-winning author was apparently one of Hans Asperger’s patients
https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/the-myths-of-chinese-exceptionalism Scott Sumner says maybe stop using anti-China saber-rattling as an excuse to tell lies in the service of whatever your agenda happens to be?
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0905370 this is the paper where some fraction of people “in comas” actually have locked-in syndrome and can communicate via thinking in an fMRI
https://www.corememory.com/p/the-history-and-future-of-brain-implants-ultrasound-sumner-norman Sumner Norman gives interview on neurotech
https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/for-all-issues-so-triable thoughts by Dean Ball on that suicide-by-ChatGPT tort law case. to his credit he doesn’t minimize the tragedy.
https://www.mantic.com/launch these guys might be the biggest effort towards AI-based superforecasting
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/08/the-history-of-american-corporate-nationalization.html of course Tyler Cowen doesn’t like nationalizing corporations but he seems to be gesturing at something more complex here and not willing to say it outright. much to think about.
https://genesynthesisscreening.centerforhealthsecurity.org/for-providers-benchtop-manufacturers/list-of-companies-and-available-tools-to-assist-in-screening-orders there’s a short but growing list of companies & tools that will screen DNA synthesis orders to see if they’re pathogenic or otherwise dangerous
In comments, I find it funny how people disagree on the meaning of “evidence”.
Scott: “All the so-called ‘evidence’ [for covid lab leak] has been refuted.”
...received a link to ACX article, with quoted “the short version is that they were doing lots of gain of function research [...] The market is unlikely to be the origin of the pandemic, because the original Lineage A strain wasn’t found there [...] The most likely explanation for all these facts is that WIV went ahead and did the gain-of-function research they said they were going to do”
Scott: “I don’t think you know the meaning of the term “evidence”. It’s doesn’t mean “speculation based on no facts.”″
As usual, Eliezer wrote something relevant a decade ago: “Scientific Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence”.