I bet $100,000 to try to settle the lab leak debate

Rootclaim is an organization that tries to answer controversial questions through probabilistic analysis. They offer a “Rootclaim Challenge” for anyone willing to challenge their conclusions. The challenger must make a $100,000 bet and hold a debate in front of two neutral judges. If both judges agree on the same decision, then the winner takes home $100,000.

One of Rootclaim’s opinions is that Covid was made in a lab. As I’ve written before, I disagree with the lab leak theory, so I challenged them.

I wrote about Rootclaim last year, because I was skeptical when I first heard about the Rootclaim challenge. Usually when people offer a prize like that, it’s just a rhetorical trick — Steve Kirsch is never actually going to make a million dollar bet about vaccines or pay out a million dollar prize.

But I started talking to Saar Wilf last February and quickly gathered that he was serious. Saar is an inventor, and he wants to invent a new format to settle controversial issues.

After a few months of casual discussion, we decided to get serious about the project. We looked for qualified people, held interviews, and picked two smart judges. We held 3 covid origins debates, with the judges watching and grading.

You can watch the first debate here:

This was a very long session, so I split it into 3 videos. You can find the other two on my channel. At the first debate, we tried to review the Huanan market data in Wuhan, to determine whether or not Covid started there.

We also held a second debate talking about the Wuhan lab and genetic engineering. Rootclaim sent Yuri Deigin to argue their case:

That’s also broken up into 3 videos, the other 2 are on my channel.

A 3rd debate tried to synthesize all the evidence and figure out the odds that Covid is a natural or lab created virus:

In total, it was a ridiculous 18 hours of discussion, likely the most detailed debate anyone’s ever had on this topic. We may try to produce a shorter, edited version at some point. For now, I’d recommend watching at 1.5X speed or skipping around to different video sections if you get bored of any part. Each video is divided up into chapters, you can skip ahead to topics and questions you are curious about.

It looks like most Youtube viewers don’t finish each full video. But it’s a very steep drop-off — 80% of viewers are gone within one minute, but most of the people that make it halfway finish watching. So, I think it’s going to be hard to find the right balance. Cutting it in half won’t double the audience, and cutting it down to one minute to capture the 80% with no attention span won’t preserve any of the discussion.

I figure there are some people that really want to understand all the science here, so I uploaded the full videos, and maybe we’ll strike a better balance in some future edited version.

I’d like to thank Saar Wilf for inventing the challenge, to Yuri Deigin for showing up to debate, and to Shin Jie Yong, MSc (Res) for spending a few months helping me research my case.