That’s all national reviewJim Geraghty has published a series of articles suggesting that the new coronavirus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Today he published an article with the headline:
Guess where the sunken Chinese submarine that may have leaked nuclear fuel is.
It wasn’t too hard to guess. It was Wuhan. What surprised me was the way he told the story.
You probably remember that. That’s because of the fact that it completely disrupted your life for a year or two. Caused approximately 27 million “excess deaths” worldwide. But you probably don’t remember Researchers at Wuhan University have given permission for artificial intelligence To control Earth observation satellites, the satellites began observing Indian military bases and Japanese ports used by the US Navy. Lead researcher Wang Mi boasted that “this approach breaks the existing rules of mission planning.” Yes, and we all know that great things happen when scientific researchers are in Wuhan. break existing rules. First was Andromeda stock, then Skynet.
What other types of experiments are they doing in Wuhan these days? Summoning demons? Are you reaching out to say “hello” to a hostile alien empire in space? Do they just flip through old Marvel comics, read about villain plots, and think, “That would be a cool experiment?” All the world’s problems seem to end up in Wuhan.
That last paragraph, and especially the last sentence, is the kind of thing you’d expect from a conspiracy theory skeptic, someone who wants to poke fun at the idea that certain coincidences are suspect. Someone scoffs at the claim, “Wuhan only has about 1% of China’s population, so what are the chances that a submarine accidentally sank in the same city where the coronavirus outbreak started?” I can imagine it being there. In other words, making fun of people who don’t understand Bayesian inference.
To see the problem, think about how you would rewrite the last sentence of the first quoted paragraph.
Yes, and we all know all the great things that happen when Wuhan wildlife wholesalers do. break existing rules. First, a repeat of what happened with SARS-1, and then SkyNet.
Yes, I understand that Geraghty is mostly just being humorous here. However, if you treat the column as humorous, He pokes fun at his views on coronavirus. So I think he might be at least a little serious. On some level he seems to assume that digging deeper into Wuhan will somehow increase the likelihood that readers will believe (if only subconsciously) that something bad happened there in late 2019. But we already know something bad happened in Wuhan – a man was selling raccoon dogs at a food market.
What this example actually shows is that strange coincidences always happenand it would be foolish to claim causation based on their existence.
There is another coincidence here. The Fed lowered its target for the federal funds rate for the first time in 36 meetings. What are the chances that politics had nothing to do with the rate cut happening in the last meeting before the November election?
I think the possibility is quite high. (By the way, the last rate cut was also an election year.)
There is another interesting pattern. Absent a recession, the three-month average of the unemployment rate has never increased by more than 0.5%. What are the chances that the recent rise in the unemployment rate above a threshold will not lead to a recession?
I think the possibility is quite high.
Look for patterns and you’ll find them. There are many. However, the world is full of unusual events.
