The media's lab leak fiasco • Hacker News Board

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#561

Post by pessimizer » Fri, May 28, 2021, 6:05 AM UTC

iammisc wrote: post #503

CiceroCiceronis wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recently released meta—analysis from the British Medical Journal suggests that the evidence base for ivermectin’s efficacy in treating COVID-19 is low. https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111...

You have to be careful though because we've seen medical journals engage in deceptive practices recently around drugs that could potentially treat COVID. For example, the data showing hydroxychloroquine to be harmful to COVID patients was completely made up or non-existent. Unfortunately, medical academia, in some failed attempt to 'stick to the facts', have led themselves to have a lower a priori assumption of corre…

Yes. Hydroxychloroquine ultimately turned out to be nothing, but the media and journals did a shameful job covering it. The media made it the latest episode of the Trump show with all that entails, and journals published garbage quickly to back them up. The result is that Trumpers would never believe it didn't work, and the #resistance would never believe it did, no matter what the science would ever say.

It's fine to point at the journals as the definers of what smart people should believe, but can't we say that the Lancet sucks for starting the anti-vax movement by publishing a shit paper by Wakefield, and damaged the integrity of science in general during an epidemic by publishing the hydroxychloroquine trash? Can we point out that they started some of our scariest antiscience trends?

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#562

Post by iammisc » Fri, May 28, 2021, 6:06 AM UTC

throwawayboise wrote: post #461

bialpio wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge difference! For one, suggesting it was man-made lends credibility to the conspiracy theory crowd ("plandemic", "they manufactured it to enslave you", etc), which is probably why the press over-indexed on debunking it. Also, it could imply that there was some intent behind it appearing when and where it did, when there may have been none (Hanlon's razor applies until a proof to the contrary appears). M…

If the virus was man-made, then its release was either accidental or deliberate. Both of these possibilites need to be allowed until disproven. If it was deliberate, then why?

This seems obvious. I don't think it was deliberate. But whether deliberate or not, the virus achieved many policy goals for the ccp.

Firstly it got rid of Trump who was before covid in charge of one of the best economies in the USA and would have had an easy path to reelection. The virus was a black swan event that caused that to go away and trump.to make several mistakes. It also got joe biden elected which we know the CCP preferred.

Secondly, it embarrassed america on the world stage while china came away initially looking very good. China's centralized government came out looking better than the chaotic american way. This helps China's foreign investment image. Wouldn't you rather do business with stable countries?

Finally, of all countries, china had the best economic outcome. It's economy was never totally shut. They continued to profit from masks and other PPE.

Basically, the virus was a clear win for the ccp.

Personally my belief is that whether the virus is natural, a leak, or a man made weapon, once it was out, the ccp clearly weaponized the pandemic to effectively achieve several policy goals.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#563

Post by the_optimist » Fri, May 28, 2021, 6:08 AM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #515

beaner wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. The things it does get wrong have more impact. Russiagate is just one prior example. It was patently false from the outset, but led to mass delusions, promotions of fake news propagandists to the point that they are now embedded within and celebrated by the MSM, the discrediting of the media and the intelligence community, breakdown of trust of those institutions by those who had been clear-headed, and fever-d…

> Russiagate is just one prior example. It was patently false from the outset What is "Russiagate"? What about it was "patently false"? The Mueller investigation got multiple indictments against Russian nationals. They also obtained convictions of people working in the Trump campaign or administration for election-related offenses. They found evidence of Russian attempts to influence voters in swing states by illegal…

This is a very interesting comment for future historians, as it shows how people convince themselves that they have absorbed substance when in fact there is no such substance.

Virtually no aspect of your statement extends beyond press headlines, where the content and follow-on of each of these stories entirely defused the substance of the respective headline. That is why the whole thing that you believe is very important amounted to a pile of dust.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#564

Post by iammisc » Fri, May 28, 2021, 6:09 AM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #399

pedalpete wrote: post #222

Am I the only one who feels like this is mostly a non-issue. I feel like the case of if this came from a lab for from a market is mostly taking a political side against China - if it came from a lab, or for China - if it was naturally developed. If it came from a Chinese lab as part of a conscious effort of weaponizing a virus, sure, that's important, but I don't think anyone is saying that. If it came from a lab acc…

You're not the only one. A possible lab leak has seemed reasonable, given the circumstances, since early on. If it weren't for all the politics around it, I think it should have gotten a more careful treatment. Unfortunately, it also became a political football. US-China trade wars were still in full swing at the time and both countries were jockeying for advantages in negotiations. There were lots of political peopl…

Us china trade wars are still in full swing. Biden has largely kept trump policy toward china.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#565

Post by pessimizer » Fri, May 28, 2021, 6:09 AM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #169

arduinomancer wrote: post #137

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".

Thanks for speaking this out loud. I've been feeling the same thing. What's weird is I've been having identical conversations with people from multiple US states and several European countries. There used to be an enormous gap between people from different areas and countries, each existing in their own cultural bubble. Now that's changed, and I'm not talking about "closer" I'm talking "the exact same." Our opinions…

There used to be a lot of media, with a lot of different motivations. Now there are only a couple of major companies running most of it, and a small number of sources that everyone else rewrites.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#566

Post by vineyardmike » Fri, May 28, 2021, 6:10 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #517

monoideism wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

If Twitter's so incredibly powerful and important, why is it worth 5% of Facebook or 2% or Amazon (which owns Twitch) or Google (which owns YouTube)? That doesn't sound like a dominant market position to me. A large proportion of the people you mention are active on multiple platforms. Some of them aren't active on Twitter at all. Twitter does have a particular market niche, but it's only the 16th most popular platfo…

So, I’m not going to claim if it’s a monopoly or not directly, but just provide new angles on this debate…

Twitter may have an x% of market valuations of other companies… but that doesn’t have to be the only metric we base decisions off of. Amazon is more than twitch, so has a bigger evaluation. But obviously that other business doesn’t compete with Twitter.

Twitter might account for (eg) 25% of phone use time (and say fb accounts for another x%). So maybe we define the market as user attention. That might make more sense than a strictly financial approach.

Or maybe, like the OP said, Twitter has 90% of all political actors on it, when the next platform has only 25%. Or maybe it has 75% of all public political discourse. Maybe defining the market as saturation of politicians. After all, it’s way harder to compete if you have to convince all existing politicians to move.

These metrics are harder to gather, but might be more useful to gauge how dominant Twitter is in the political sphere. When people discuss monopoly, they often don’t care about the (vague and interpreted) laws per se, they actually care about how a company has somehow come to be dominant and influential in a negative way.

Throughout American history, antitrust rules has been used against mostly large businesses that were unpopular (politically and colloquially). Business and society had changed a lot, especially with the internet, so if there is a political push, defining monopoly policies against another target and definition is inevitable.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#567

Post by throwawaysea » Fri, May 28, 2021, 6:11 AM UTC

undersuit wrote: post #198

speeder wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Infamous case was Twitter baning Zerohedge because of it. And all that Zerohedge did was point out a lot of public documents, nothing private, and no bioweapon theory. (Twitter claimed Zerohedge had doxxed the scientist, but Zerohedge only had shown the official lab website and documents from it). https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-bans-zero-hedge-coronav...

Good revisionism there. The very first sentence they push the bioweapon theory. https://www.zerohedge.com/health/man-behind-global-coronavir...

That too was and still is legitimate speculation. Josh Rogin of the Washington Post has written about this previously (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin...):

> A little-noticed study was released in early July 2020 by a group of Chinese researchers in Beijing, including several affiliated with the Academy of Military Medical Science. These scientists said they had created a new model for studying SARS-CoV-2 by creating mice with human-like lung characteristics by using the CRISPR gene-editing technology to give the mice lung cells with the human ACE2 receptor — the cell receptor that allowed coronaviruses to so easily infect human lungs.

The fact remains that this type of speculation about bioweapons should never have been banned. Doing so granted the CCP a huge relief from accountability and transparency, one we may never be able to correct for with all the time that has passed.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#568

Post by iammisc » Fri, May 28, 2021, 6:12 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #452

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the opposite lesson you should be taking away from this.

Why? I think that politicians have a responsibility to not tell obvious lies. If they do, then I'm going to stop paying attention to the things they say, and I'll tell everyone else to do the same. If they eventually say something insightful, well, that's a shame, but they no longer have my attention.

All politicians tell obvious lies. It's part of their career. Biden tells obvious lies. Trump told obvious lies. So did Obama. So did bush. Part of critical thinking is determining which statements are lies and which are not.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#569

Post by vineyardmike » Fri, May 28, 2021, 6:12 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #352

monoideism wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

Except there's no barrier of entry to Twitter's marketplace. Twitter doesn't somehow prevent users installing other apps. They aren't a natural monopoly, seeing as how Facebook has been taking shots at that space for years. This bizarre HN notion that every big company is a "monopoly" needs to die. Being popular doesn't make you a monopoly.

Monopoly is mostly a political definition throughout American history. The policies and laws have been shaped to target businesses not always strictly based on actual market definition in a textbook sense.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#570

Post by lmm » Fri, May 28, 2021, 6:15 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #524

neither_color wrote: post #34

There’s a question as to why that fake consensus emerged. But I think the more troubling question is: How did people let the original story of what Tom Cotton even said go so badly awry? Essentially Cotton said something that was then transformed into a fake claim of a Chinese bio-attack, then the fake claim was debunked, and then the debunking was applied to the real claim with little attention paid to ongoing disag…

> I don't want my app reminding me to vote/get vaccinated(I did both btw) every time I open it I basically agree with the sentiment, but some of this stuff is tricky. We really do need everyone to get vaccinated, in the same way we need everyone to not dump their sewage in the middle of the street, in order to protect the health of the public at large. Imagine we were living during WWII and having this discussion. Wo…

Which "we" are you speaking for here - since you're saying you won the war I guess you must be Soviet? You were having major debates about who the good guys were at the time - you had a non-aggression pact with Japan right up until the final weeks, and that very much affected the course of the war.

The same goes for everyone else. France had major internal debates about who the good guys were. So did the UK. So did the USA. So did Ireland. Everyone took took particular actions on particular timelines, made particular compromises, and they were right to do so.