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The media's lab leak fiasco

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Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#341

Post by jjoonathan »

beaner wrote: post #165
tonystubblebine wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all opinions deserve equal airtime. Fringe opinions should have to work harder to get to the mainstream. Isn’t that exactly what happened here? This is the fringe opinion that had the most inherent value and it’s proved that by breaking through. IMO I wish the platforms had censored more bad info than this. It’s crazy to me that there isn’t more friction for bad ideas.

On the contrary, actors who are bad at judging what qualifies as a "good" idea should be removed from the filtering process.

How is that contrary? MSM got one wrong in the same time that alternative media has gotten hundreds wrong. MSM isn't just better at rejecting misinformation, it's a lot better.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#342

Post by dougmwne »

LasEspuelas wrote: post #268
dougmwne wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's extremely important. If it was a lab leak, there are many safety process and regulation improvements we might be highly motivated to make. It's a thing we can actually have some control over. If it was a natural virus, there's good reason to collect and study more pathogens so we have a head start if one of them crosses into humans. Not that both of these things aren't good responses to the pandemic…

Is it? We can assume that both things happened and prepare better for both types of development in the future. In the case of lab release, details would have to emerge to be reactive about fixing any issues with procedures. That doesn't mean that we can't be proactive in analyzing current procedures and trying to find and correct weaknesses.

We certainly can take proactive measures, I just think it will be taken more seriously if we can point to a specific cause. It's the difference between you not receiving a package you were expecting so deciding to be more aware of the expected delivery time in the future versus seeing your neighbor run off with your package.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#343

Post by monoideism »

wpietri wrote: post #170
scottrogowski wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should be the top comment. Social media companies can either be monopolies or they can put limits on the speech of their platform... but they can't do both. While not against the law of freedom of speech, political moderation processes are certainly against the intent. Every once in a while we get a case like this where an unpopular fringe opinion becomes mainstream and underlines the point. But this isn't just…

Good thing they aren't monopolies, then. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and Reddit are are all very popular places for people to post their views. And that's not counting the myriad lesser places like the one we're using now. And of course anybody can drop a few bucks on a blog of their own. I also disagree that sites moderating is against the intent. Freedom of speech is one right, but so is freedom of…

I'm more or less in agreement with you on all of those companies except Twitter. Twitter is a notable exception and absolutely does have a monopoly on the social media sector as a "public square" - one which features almost every major politician, journalist, analyst, and activist on the platform, including at times, the US President and many other heads of state. And because of the network effect, this monopoly is unlikely to be challenged in the coming years.

Twitter sought out exactly this kind of political influence, so I'm not sympathetic to any complaints they may have now that they have that influence and are in the spotlight.

In an ideal world, Twitter would have been created as a government site and thus subject to the 1st Amendment, but given that we're not in that world, legislation is needed. I'm willing to concede the other social media companies you cited have competition and/or don't play the central role Twitter plays in the US political process.

Finally, there would be Freedom of Association on Twitter even if it were subject to 1st Amendment rights - no one is forced to follow anyone, and everyone is free to block anyone at all. It should be almost exactly analogous to real-life: you should have the right to associate with whomever you like in our country, but you should not have the right to expel them from the country.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#344

Post by jkhdigital »

dredmorbius wrote: post #315
dang wrote: post #149

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…

There were also a number of HN stories posted early in the pandemic concerning the lab-leak hypothesis. These paint a ... complicated ... picture of that theory and those who advocated for it. Few of the submissions had any significant discussion, I'm simply going off what was submitted to HN. Search, bound from 2020-1-1 to 2020-6-1: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1593475200&dateRange=custom&... 26 March 2020: Exper…

> 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

It would have mattered a lot back in early 2020, when the (circumstantial) evidence for the lab leak theory was assembled. And I’m not sure what your point is—are you implying that the world is incapable of both handling the pandemic and investigating its origins simultaneously? Like, we are going to get collectively distracted or something? No—investigate the origins now. This is not something to delay on.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#345

Post by Moodles »

Dma54rhs wrote: post #336
defaultname wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Incredible comment, is this is the level of discourse now in America?

Yeah, incredible. He knows nothing about me except what I wrote above and he's convinced I'm from the "MAGA-verse".

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#346

Post by dlp211 »

jkhdigital wrote: post #273
throw0101a wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reminder that Facebook and Twitter banned users for talking about the lab-leak theory. Can we define/refine the concept of "lab-leak theory" a bit? Because some of the stuff floating around a year ago was a bit unhinged from reality: > You’ve probably heard the rumor: The new coronavirus is a bioweapon. Some malicious country—perhaps the United States, maybe China, depending on who’s talking or tweeting—purposefull…

This is classic “nurse vs. feminist nurse” cognitive distortion. Whether the virus was developed as a bio weapon, or simply as a product of well-intentioned gain-of-function research, is irrelevant to the factual basis of whether or not it escaped from the lab. We don’t need to establish how and why it was created, only that it was, in order to assess the likelihood of lab release as a root cause of the pandemic.

That's nice in theory, but a couple of things. First of all, there was a complete lack of actual evidence that there was a lab leak (this is also true of the Wuhan market hypothesis, it was all quite circumstantial) but we have seen similar viruses arise naturally in the past so our priors would favor the market hypothesis over the lab leak. Second, the lab leak hypothesis and the intent of the virus were tightly entangled in the original reports, especially from the US Administration, that is that China created the virus to harm the US. Third, intent absolutely matters. If this is a bio-weapon that was designed to be used in an attack, then the consequences of such actions are vastly different then if this was a naturally occurring virus that was collected in bats that happened jump to a human host and escaped the lab.

While I increasingly believe that the lab leak hypothesis may be the true origin, my priors still favor a natural jump at this point.

These are also not the only two possible scenarios, just demonstrating that there are different consequences for different intentions, it is literally why the US Penal code has Murder (1,2,...) and Manslaughter (...) as well as Self-Defense protections built into it.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#347

Post by croes »

roca wrote: post #254
svara wrote: post #209

This story is a real clusterfuck and really hammers home the point that humans are bad at dealing with probabilities and uncertainty. You mix some nationalism in and it becomes completely impossible to have a reasonable discussion. This article already starts with a false dichotomy: "I missed the furious initial skirmish in what’s become the Long Discourse Wars over the idea that the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from the Wu…

We haven't found an animal host for SARS-CoV-2 yet, after more than 12 months. It took six months to find an animal host for SARS and less than a year for MERS. The incentive for the Chinese government to find a SARS-CoV-2 animal host is much much higher than for either of those viruses. Failure to find the host is not proof of lab origin, but the longer the search goes on unsuccessfully, the more the probabilities s…

We've already found animal hosts for SARS-COV2, be haven't found the origin animal. It took two years to find the bats as likely source and another twelve to find the specific species and location, the horseshoe bat. For MERS we only know that dromedary camels are a major reservoir host for MERS-CoV and an animal source of MERS infection in humans. The exact role of dromedaries in transmission of the virus and the exact route of transmission is unknown.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#348

Post by corndoge »

caeril wrote: post #136
generalizations wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we accept that taking action against misinformation is good, then this sort of mistake will inevitably happen. If you're in favor of taking action against misinformation, then you should be willing to accept this situation as an acceptable failure. I'm not willing to accept that.

Except it was never misinformation. It's always been not only plausible, but the null hypothesis given the location of the lab, the nature of research there, and the early cases along the train line. When Jack banned zerohedge for their article, there were other reasons than "misinformation". Only he and his masters know those reasons.

> Except it was never misinformation

This sort of illustrates the problem here. It was plausible to you but what you think doesn't matter if the powers that be decide it's misinformation. You can't just come by after the fact and say "it was always obviously not misinformation" to dismiss the fact that anti-misinformation controls failed here, in a way that ultimately suppressed reasonable speech.

My opinion: in the grand scheme of things this comes down to just letting people express things online, even if they are outlandish or ridiculous or whatever. Letting people speak their mind without being censored even when I don't agree with them ensures that I get to speak my mind without getting censored when I'm in the minority, which is a right I value.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#349

Post by slg »

enaaem wrote: post #195
generalizations wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we accept that taking action against misinformation is good, then this sort of mistake will inevitably happen. If you're in favor of taking action against misinformation, then you should be willing to accept this situation as an acceptable failure. I'm not willing to accept that.

I believe that censorship is more harmful than misinformation. Censorship is a bottom down initiative. It requires a few bad actors or 'mistakes' to completely change the information landscape. Misinformation is bottom up. It still needs to compete with a whole bunch of other ideas and it requires far more effort to spread. You also don't create a pretence that all available information is correct. Censorship carries…

Except this in an example of the exact opposite of what you describe. As the misinformation was coming from the top and the censorship requests were coming from the bottom.

The reason this question became politicized and labelled as misinformation is that politicians started spreading this rumor for purely political purposes rather than based on scientific evidence. It is hard to imagine misinformation being more top down than senators, cabinet members, and even the President spreading it. The fact they may end up being right in the end doesn't mean they were acting in good faith at the time.

The reason this was censored was because there was bottom up support for it to be censored. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have repeatedly shown that their preference is for less moderation rather than more. Moderation costs them money and they don't want to spend money. The reason they increase moderation is because their users demand it.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#350

Post by wearywanderer »

Lazare wrote: post #303
wearywanderer wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I generally agree with you, my guess is the virus was messed with and accidentally got out. However I don't feel comfortable ruling out alternative scenarios, such as:

1) The sample the lab received was from the 'third host' and not from a bat; e.g. a field researcher mailed the lab a slice of pangolin.

2) A guano miner or lab researcher received a massive viral dose and inadvertently became a one-man walking "GoF lab"

> Assuming RaTG13 was indeed the source of COVID-19, the question of "how it got to Wuhan" is, I think, much less interesting than "how did it mutate into COVID-19" (and "why can't we find evidence of that process?").

'Interesting' is subjective, but I think both questions are important. Particularly, the wisdom of locating a lab like this inside a city should probably be called into question. Whether the lab was doing GoF research on this virus prior to outbreak is certainly an important question; arguably the more important of the two. But unless we are dealing with 'zero-sum importance', that does not diminish the importance of figuring out why and how the virus was transported into a city.

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