151–160 of 372 posts
Whenever this topic comes up, the discussion seems to consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions against the perfectly plausible hypothesis (don't forget, the evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground). My question is, why? What does it matter whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market - it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help de…
Unfortunately, I do not have the chops to debate against this, but the political ramifications would be immense. The bet ( https://www.rootclaim.com/rootclaim_challenge ) requires that (a) you have $100k (b) are able to successfully debate it. I won't put $100k against this, but I'll put $10k against it, because "the truth" is worth it. I'll pool $10k into a $100k stake behind a debate team that can debate this (and…
If someone organizes something credible I'd also be in for 10k.
However, I suspect root claim wouldn't go through with it but would just update their model to incorporate more information. They hint at that possibility on their site.
Whenever this topic comes up, the discussion seems to consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions against the perfectly plausible hypothesis (don't forget, the evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground). My question is, why? What does it matter whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market - it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help de…
Entertaining the question is dangerous (I don’t believe it, but for the sake of argument)... My next question would be “why”? What would be the CCP’s motives to study and modify the virus? Is it to test whether different changes would make the virus more/less communicable? Is it to prevent another MERS SARS? Is it to tailor disease for certain ethnicities? CCP doesn’t appear to have qualms about getting rid of troubl…
Unfortunately, I do not have the chops to debate against this, but the political ramifications would be immense. The bet ( https://www.rootclaim.com/rootclaim_challenge ) requires that (a) you have $100k (b) are able to successfully debate it. I won't put $100k against this, but I'll put $10k against it, because "the truth" is worth it. I'll pool $10k into a $100k stake behind a debate team that can debate this (and…
why that date
That's the simplest explanation at least. This rootclaim.com process is new to me, there could certainly be other explanations.
Kudos to purplecats for making that offer as well, assuming this whole thing is on the up and up.
edit: below was my post when it was first upvoted, prior to edit.
> Not gp, but to me it seems smart and common to put an expiration date on financial offers.
> Kudos to purplecats for making that offer as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t really get why even entertaining the question is dangerous, and I can imagine some reasonable justifications for why they’d be doing that kind of research (which I believe is called “Gain of Function”). Understanding what mutations could make a virus more communicable is something that I think would benefit everyone. The dangerous questions really do come in at your last hypothetical, which obviously signals…
Because I personally don’t want to lend any credence to bat-shit crazy conspiracy theories, especially in a public forum. I’m a complete nobody, but the internet has a way of amplifying things.
Likelihood of covid originating from lab has always been 50-50, due to the fact that China has not allowed any impartial outside investigation on this. They even imposed trade restrictions on countries like Australia that demanded. What's sad is we may never know.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a joke on his 'I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay!' famous sentence? Because it's true: https://www.pnas.org/content/107/10/4612
Atrazine causing feminization in frogs is an undisputed fact, but the statement as given ("they put chemicals in the water TO turn frogs gay") is absolutely not. Atrazine is used because it's a cheap and effective herbicide, frog feminization is a side effect which doesn't factor into decisions about its use.
Where'd you get your quote? or did you make it up?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looking at the report, most of the likelihood is from a single "prior". The whole likelihood basically hinges on the fact that the outbreak occurred in Wuhan and that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been working for decades on enhancing coronavirus strains. That's quite strongly circumstantial but it's not evidence. Possible chimerization and furin-cleavage insertion seem a lot more interesting imo but are weight…
And that is very solid bayesian logic. Wuhan has the only BSL-4 lab in China, and was specifically working on gain-of-function research on coronaviruses. The initial prior of zoonotic origin simply because that was usually the case in the past is just as circumstantial, but also just as solid in bayesian terms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A very calm response to this https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246 > Why do these distinctions matter? If we find more concrete evidence of a “spill-over” event with SARS-CoV-2 passing directly from bat to human, then efforts to understand and manage the bat–human interface need to be significantly strengthened. But if SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab to cause the pandemic, it will become critical to understand the…
Does it still matter that much once we have a series of effective vaccines ? It seems the crux of the argument is to better react in the short term, but it looks to my untrained eyes that we already passed that level of investigation if we have effective means to prevent infection. I also guess we’d still need to explore all other tracks anyway (we can’t just focus on lab spills for instance, if that was the root cau…
Whenever this topic comes up, the discussion seems to consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions against the perfectly plausible hypothesis (don't forget, the evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground). My question is, why? What does it matter whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market - it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help de…
Throw some confirmation bias on top of it. The easiest group to blame for bad things is the group you already disliked. Traditionally this means foreigners, other races, and heretics. Blaming China both let's people have their imagined just world and vindicates whatever pre-existing hard-line stance they had on China. It's no secret that a lot of people already had a hard-lie stance on China for unrelated reasons (Eg the trade war).
In conclusion the human logical apparatus is bugged, no one is releasing any patches, and the whole issue is emotional because who you blame is tribal signaling dressed up as rational interest.