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The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

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Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#111

Post by akimball »

bamboozled wrote: post #33
etangent wrote: post #2

That evidence looks weak IMO, but it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it is" but rather "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right."

How many times has a single scientist been chastised by the broader scientific community at first and then their original idea finally accepted as the truth? Sometimes ideas initially can seem crazy because they're unfamiliar I guess. I suppose in this case, I oppose this idea because it sounds kind of scary.

Almost always. Have you met reviewer number 2? I suppose he's right most of the time, and feels vindicated as a result. I'm just troubled by the the modulus, the work of merit, rare and precious as it is, that suffers from the statistically justified bias for false negatives.

I can certainly understand opposing an idea for diverse reasons, valid or invalid, but I can't understand how it is that some people seem to feel that opposing ideas on the basis of the balance of their features, rather than digging into the conditional structure and examining their merits and demerits, is something to be proud of, rather than ashamed. I consider that many of that group may have been anti-maskers as well, and that eventually evolution will take care of it, but I probably won't see the benefit of that.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#112

Post by bmitc »

cryptica wrote: post #35

When Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier suggested that COVID-19 could be man-made, I started taking this view more seriously. Now seeing additional papers coming out supporting this, the case is getting stronger. I'm not a biologist but I do find it strange that COVID-19 is so infectious in humans. How can a virus which supposedly 'naturally evolved' in a totally unrelated animal species (bats) be so well adapted to sprea…

Do we actually know this virus evolved in bats? To my knowledge, bats are simply a carrier, and the viruses they carry don't necessarily evolve in bats themselves (this should be checked). It seems possible the virus came from somewhere else. Bats are definitely not the only carrier of viruses, so it's dangerous to think they're the only animals to worry about. There are millions of viruses out there carried by all sorts of animals.

http://nautil.us/issue/83/intelligence/the-man-who-saw-the-p...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01096-z

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#113

Post by akimball »

groby_b wrote: post #92
etangent wrote: post #2

That evidence looks weak IMO, but it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it is" but rather "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right."

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" If you make a claim that's wildly diverging from established consensus, yes, you're required to bring overwhelming evidence. Because the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the claim being wrong. There's no point in relitigating everything from first principles unless you can make it extremely clear it's worth the effort.

I would go a step further: The odds of any claim being wrong are overwhelming, regardless of whether it is endorsed by the consensus or not, whether it is ordinary or extraordinary. Brains are not truth-making machines.

Anyhow, I'm not sure what is extraordinary about biowarfare labs making biowarfare agents. It's actually quite ordinary.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#114

Post by bwi4 »

So what would evidence, rather than speculation, look like in this case? A SARS-CoV 2 genome sequence dated before December 2019? Somehow identifying patient zero and corresponding records of their exposure at the lab? I’m skeptical that any hard evidence will be found. It seems to me the origin is likely to remain speculative indefinitely.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#115

Post by [deleted] »

causality0 wrote: post #88

Do viruses closely related to SARS-Cov-2 do all the "unusual" things it does? Do they cause brain damage, reproductive damage, anosmia without congestion, strokes, and unusual clotting activity? If not, I would be reassured by someone explaining to me how a natural pathogen could pick up all these features at the same time.

[deleted]

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#116

Post by contravariant »

mhh__ wrote: post #52
contravariant wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the sake of argument, something like Einstein's special relativity had little to no evidence backing it up, but was still accepted simply because it provided a more elegant explanation of several concepts. Of course it also had a few weird, testable, consequences that where later confirmed experimentally. All this is just to illustrate that it's not always easy to prove something right away with large amounts of…

Einstein's special relativity had lots of evidence backing it up in that existing (Galilean) relativity was completely at odds with electromagnetism. The speed of light is constant, Newton was wrong. In this situation there is no smoking gun to prove it was made in a lab.

I don't disagree but as this article shows you can probably find a few smoking guns if you look hard enough. However this would be evidence to support a theory that on the face of it doesn't seem to be give that good an explanation. Certainly not as good as the natural outbreak of a coronavirus pandemic, which was considered likely enough to fund the lab involved with the supposed creation of the virus. Asking for more smoking guns is not really all that helpful, in my opinion, when the theory itself is still rather shaky.

I guess this still boils down to 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence', but interpreted differently from the way the comment I replied to was using it (which implied that it meant you'd need more proof if you went against the current consensus).

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#117

Post by nodamage »

jmcgough wrote: post #77
theknocker wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consensus should be determined by science, not the other way around. Otherwise, what is the point of science? edit: "Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills." t. redditadmin.txt

This isn't just about science. Conspiracy theorists and unethical people with agendas use documents like this to support their beliefs, and it becomes impossible to refute them. In the age of social media, misinformation and conspiracy theories can cause real damage.

As a recent and somewhat topical example of this, there is an article circling around the internet right now that cites about a dozen studies proving that "masks don't work". If you actually read through the quoted studies you quickly realize that they don't actually support the author's conclusion at all.

But that didn't stop the author from taking a bunch of out of context quotes to make an argument that sounded vaguely scientific - scientific enough for people with a particular agenda to parade it around as if the science was on their side.

I started writing a rebuttal to this article, but as I was carefully reading through the details of the nth study to see if it actually matched what the author claimed, I realized I was just massively wasting my own time. The people spreading the article around don't actually care, they never read those studies and they never will. They just wanted something scientific-looking to cite that backs up their pre-existing opinions.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#118

Post by etangent »

belltaco wrote: post #5
etangent wrote: post #2

That evidence looks weak IMO, but it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it is" but rather "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right."

It's because normal people are not equipped to deal with the cherrypicking and manipulative narrative that these kinds of "evidence" papers show. Take the 5G conspiracy for example, 100+ cell phone towers attacked, and workers setting up attacked as well. Lots of testable assertions made, none backed up with any kind of evidence.

I believe this is "bbut what if baad people cite my article?" defense for what is essentially a form of authoritarian groupthink.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#119

Post by akimball »

jmcgough wrote: post #72

The argument is identical to arguments supporting intelligent design, that because it evolved in an unlikely or complex way, it must have been intentionally created. There's a reason we haven't seen a virus like this in a century - because it's so unlikely that a new virus will appear in any given year with both a high rate of transmission and a high fatality rate.

Interestingly, the often repeated "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" comment is also a relative likelihood argument "like those supporting intelligent design". I'm pretty sure the proportion of people making such arguments who grasp both ergodicity and measure theory is small, since experts on those subjects are typically much more cautious about wielding such brushes. See: I just made a relative likelihood argument. May I have a Dunning-Krugerrand?

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#120

Post by thinker912345 »

robbiep wrote: post #47
cryptica wrote: post #35

When Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier suggested that COVID-19 could be man-made, I started taking this view more seriously. Now seeing additional papers coming out supporting this, the case is getting stronger. I'm not a biologist but I do find it strange that COVID-19 is so infectious in humans. How can a virus which supposedly 'naturally evolved' in a totally unrelated animal species (bats) be so well adapted to sprea…

By the same logic, was the H1N1 spanish flu designed to perfectly flourish and kill possibly 10% of hosts? You say it in your second paragraph. You're no biologist. But you find it strange. Very few biologists find it strange. They have in fact been warning of a ticking time bomb [0 for brevity, 1 for article]. May I respectfully suggest that you stick to your lane regarding the science? WHO ups and downs and politic…

The H1N1 flu spread during the first world war that humanity has ever had. It came in waves and each wave was evolved. Talk about extremely unique circumstances to brew the perfect storm.

When COVID-19 spread, there was literally nothing different occuring at the time that could have provoked any evolutionary changes in any virus to be more evolved in infecting humans outside of normal human density levels.

Flu viruses have been evolving in humans for millenia. This has not.

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