311–320 of 736 posts
Wasn’t this all just to be contrarian to Trump? Trump says lab leak? Can’t be lab leak! Trump says travel ban? Travel bans are racist! Now that Trumps out the lab leak is something to look into and everyone has done some level of travel ban without being labeled racist.
Over the last several years, it's become clear to me what the large social media companies want to be: de facto world governments. They won't admit that, and you'll hear a lot of gab about algorithms and cooperation with various governments, but at heart it appears to me that this is cooperation with various governments as a government themselves. It's a negotiation among equals. We can provincially argue about who c…
The US federal government is basically a giant case of regulatory capture so many people understandably confuse power and influence. However the distinction remains and it is of essential importance. None of the big tech companies have any real power, all they have is influence. In countries where they don’t have politicians under their influence they are helpless.
I disagree, however. Influence at the scale these companies have is its own power. There's a reason Zuckerberg is a fan of Caesar Augustus; with the proper and delicate application of influence in the right places, you can get whatever it is you want.
The game they're playing is not direct application of political power, it's subtly using influence over a decade or two to position world governments where they want them. If I had to guess, they'll leave those governments in place as polite fictions, much as the Roman Senate continued to "defend" the Republic for a long, long time after Augustus changed all of that.
By the way, astute observers in various governments know the game being played, it's just very difficult to directly move against companies that appear to be cooperating. Folks want their Farmvilles. My money says that we'll see a lot more regulatory capture with various reforms over the next few years, the political calculus being that it's better to absorb them than fight them (at least short term, which is good enough to get elected a few more times).
I hate how it feels like there's such a "collective narrative" for everything now days with the internet. Whenever I talk to people about recent news stories in real life it feels like everyone is just repeating talking points they read online. Its like we've been absorbed into the internet consciousness and talking to a person is like talking to "the internet brain".
The collective narrative has existed in other media for as long as I've been alive. It's now invaded the internet.
People have always listened to the radio, watched cable news, read magazines to get talking points so they can repeat them and appear well informed and intelligent. To look good in front of others and convey status. People who counter the narrative are seen as low status, conspiracy theorists, cranks, disagreeable. My advice to anyone is to just repeat the narrative. I haven't and I have suffered. In the end, no one will remember that you were right. It's not worth it. Keep your contrary opinions to yourself or share them anonymous online, take positions to make money when you are proven right, but don't declare it. Unless your business is being counter narrative.
It's been a while but I think the chapter “WHAT MAKES A MESSAGE REPEATABLE? Techniques to Convince Others to Repeat Your Words” from the book “Impossible to Ignore.” by Carmen Simon discusses the science of how to make this happen.
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I'm generally in favour of the actions taken against misinformation but this situation surprises me. Lab leak always seemed plausible and non-crazy even if you think the odds are against it. I don't envy the task of making a call on any of this stuff.
>I'm generally in favour of the actions taken against misinformation... Who would be the one to determine what is misinformation and what is not?
Related threads: Wuhan lab staff sought hospital care before Covid-19 outbreak disclosed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27259953 - May 2021 (343 comments) How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27184998 - May 2021 (235 comments) More Scientists Urge Broad Inquiry into Coronavirus Origins - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27160898 - May 2021 (341…
Search, bound from 2020-1-1 to 2020-6-1: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1593475200&dateRange=custom&...
26 March 2020: Experts disagree on whether Covid-19 could have leaked from a research lab https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22695825 https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/experts-know-the-new-coronav... (Note this was from a modification of the above search)
28 March 2020: Scientific community MUST rally to expose likely leak from a Wuhan lab https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22710662 (no link)
6 April 2020: Trump says U.S. investigating whether virus came from Wuhan lab https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22886182 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trump-...
30 April 2020: Nobel Prize winner who discovered HIV says covid19 is from Wuhan lab,has HIV DNA https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23037036 https://www.cnews.fr/france/2020-04-17/le-coronavirus-est-un... (Said Nobelist is an anti-vaxxer.)
1 May 2020: No evidence that deadly bat virus escaped Wuhan lab https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23041789 https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/No-evidence-that-deadly-... Original source is a Washington Post article from 30 April (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/chinese-lab...)
4 May 2020: Australian intelligence knocks back US government's Wuhan lab virus claim https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23074121 https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australian-intellige...
10 May 2020: Germany Doubts US Claim of Wuhan Virus Lab Leak https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23130107 http://www.courthousenews.com/germany-doubts-us-claim-of-wuh...
18 May 2020: Busted: Pentagon Contractors’ Report on ‘Wuhan Lab’ Origins of Virus Is Bogus https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223986 https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-contractors-report-on...
(Note that there may well have been other submissions which were flagged and killed, or which don't match my search terms --- I included one such addition based on a variant of terms.)
In general the early claims of a lab leak:
- Lacked any specific proof.
- Came from sources with questionable credibility.
- Were rejected by others with no specific allignment to those claiming the leak, and with general credibility.
I'll note that the leak hypothesis remains unproven, though the evidence supporting a serious, independent, and pointedly, non-Chinese-led investigation is mounting. I found the Bulletin of Concerned Scientists article a week or so back persuasive.
But the point remains that attributing an original cause to some event is complex, and requires a reality-based investigation grounded in facts rather than ideology or motivated reasoning. Much (though not all) of the lab-leak advocacy has been lacking in this objectivity, and even the most persuasive arguments to date make a case for the possible origin, not a certainty.
I'd argue that for the current outbreak the origin all but certainly does not matter in terms of steps taken to contain and end the outbreak. Preventive measures (themselves reflecting an evolution of understanding over time) and vaccines (rejected by a disappointing fraction of lab-leak enthusiasts) remain the most potent tools we have.
Consideration for costs, and prevention (or early alerting) of future outbreaks do depend in part on determining ultimate origin. That's something to keep an eye on, but not the principle concern of the moment.
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This argument seems to assume that Internet hosting is like air — a natural resource which by default is available for everyone to use, but social media companies restrict unfairly. As everyone here should know, it’s not like that: hosting can be awfully expensive, especially for media content. Social media companies receive money from advertisers, and use that money to host content from users and partners that hopef…
It’s not about hosting. It’s about distribution and eyeball minutes. As long as social media sites deliver content through an algorithmic feed, there are a limited number of slots available for the “next page.” The user will stop scrolling eventually. Their limited attention is valuable real estate. It’s also why social media has an incentive to maximize the time on feed. The best regulatory approach to social media…
The media is so disappointing these days. A lot of people don't remember this, but the mainstream media outlets were actually playing down the coronavirus pandemic at the start. Then they attacked the travel ban to China. Then did a complete U-turn. Pelosi was dancing in the streets of Chinatown San Francisco to prove how safe and not racist she is. It seemed like they hated Trump and would fight anything he did. htt…
None of the articles you cite demonstrate what you seem to think they do. When the number of cases was minuscule, the threat to Americans was low and those articles were spot on: Keep vigilant, get your flu shot, but don't stress too much yet. Citing Pelosi visiting San Francisco (at a time when there were zero cases in the region, but a growing number of anti-Asian hate crimes) again doesn't make a point to any reas…
I thought the federal government does not even have the legal power to do so. Personally, though, I think giving local government more power is a genius design by the founding fathers.
> was the single action taken after the virus was already spreading uncontrolled in NY, Washington State, and Europe.
I'm not sure if this claim is true, either. Trump did at least two things: 1. Signed a deal with pharma companies to promise that the federal government would buy their vaccines to every American so the companieswould be all in to develop vaccines. 2. Promised to give resources to state governments. Both Cuomo of NY and Newsom of CA thanked government for keeping its promises.
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> More critically, you have a higher standard of every random article in every newspaper than you do of agencies actually responsible. Which is truly dystopian. > But you find issue with the media. > Incredible. The HN topic is about the media, so I'm talking about the media. > Speaking of which, Trump's "travel ban" (that wasn't a travel ban) was the single action taken after the virus was already spreading uncontro…
There is zero disguising the intent of your comment. The bit about Pelosi "dancing" was particularly telling. There are a number of other replies that come straight from MAGA-verse, full of outrageous lies but that is where US politics are right now. The US had a catastrophically poor response under the prior administration. That wasn't because of the media. It wasn't because of Nancy Pelosi. It wasn't because people…
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> Specifically, the lab leak theory more or less assumes that the virus was collected from the mine, taken to Wuhan, and some research and experiments were done on it, resulting it some changes. I disagree, the lab leak hypothesis is independent from the lab [inadvertently or deliberately] mutating the virus. The lab may have merely possessed the virus, having made only the mistake of transporting the virus from a re…
That would help explain how the virus got from the mine to Wuhan; it does not help explain how the virus mutated from a bat virus unable to infect humans to a virus that was extremely good at infecting humans with, so far, no intermediate stages identified. Much of the problem with the zoonotic explanation is that no evidence of the process has been found. Was a third virus involved? We haven't identified it. Was a t…
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What sources would you recommend instead?
All of them. Even the ones of your enemies. Sometimes you need to know the other side’s angle to understand if you’re unknowingly biased.