Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The media's lab leak fiasco

slowboring.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 736 posts

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#661

Post by tonystubblebine »

setBoolean wrote: post #355
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.

1. Who decides what is a "fringe" theory? You? The Government? The scientific community? Facebook/Twitter etc...? 2. ..Fringe opinions should have to work harder to get to the mainstream... No they shouldn't it is you the reader of those news who should make the decision of how much "brain time" this "fringe" news get. 3. Denying airtime to certain topics doesn't make them go away or sways people that believe them ot…

Well, since you asked if I should decide what a fringe theory is, yes, sometimes I do make that decision. But when I'm wrong those things have a habit of breaking through. I remember being pretty skeptical of intermittent fasting for awhile. I'd held it out of a study we did in 2014 and then held it out of our publishing. Something about it smelled like anorexia light. So on the one hand I kept hearing people swear by it and then on the other hand I hadn't done enough research to be comfortable. I ended up having a detailed conversation with a doctor about the physiological side and then with a therapist about eating disorders (especially in men) before I was ready to allow it into our work. So for about a year I was wrongly gatekeeping on this topic. But that's what I mean about fringe ideas need to work harder. The fringes is where those ideas get stress tested and refined. And since ideas break out of the fringes all the time, I don't have any real fear that gatekeeping other places is overly oppressive.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#662

Post by [deleted] »

Moodles wrote: post #592
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might shock the shit out of you, but people are capable of addressing more than one issue in any given day.

No that does not shock me. But the point is that one strategy can be good for one goal but bad for another. Going around Chinatown and encouraging the populous to do the same "to combat racism" is obviously at odds with "be careful and social distance due to covid". Does that shock the shit out of you? I'll be honest as well, I think Pelosi's real motive there is to do the opposite of what Trump wants, rather than co…

[deleted]

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#663

Post by [deleted] »

michaelmrose wrote: post #614
onionisafruit wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you read this then casually say Tom Cotton was spreading ridiculous theories that covid was engineered? One of the main points in the article is he never said that and what he did say was pretty reasonable. It’s ok if you think the article is wrong about that, but you should at least give a source for your claim at this point.

https://twitter.com/sentomcotton/status/1229202139232292866 He speculated that it could have been a bioweapon that was accidentally or deliberately released. You and I can speculate on twitter but a US senator should keep his trap shut on social media.

[deleted]

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#664

Post by tomjen3 »

greedo wrote: post #196
tomjen3 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current the major concern is the Indian mutation. But we are not allowed to call it the Chinese or Wuhan virus.

Pretty simple to refer to it as COVID, no? West Nile Virus was named in 1937, so hard to really say it's equivalent. Ebola is named after a river, I doubt it gets offended by the association. MERS is widely acknowledged as a mistake in naming by the WHO.

Things that ryme are easier to remember, so wuhan virus would be the most accurate and easiest to remember.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#665

Post by coffeefirst »

the_optimist wrote: post #580
coffeefirst wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention many of the early proponents were notorious conspiracy theorists, racists, and nut jobs who spoke with absolute certainty, cited virtually no evidence and clearly had no idea what they were talking about. Could they, in their wild speculation, been right about a few things? Sure, that’s always possible, but they didn’t actually know that at the time. This isn’t a science or mainstream media problem; bo…

This is an interesting way to evaluate ideas. Where did you learn this technique?

Not the ideas. This entire thread is about public discourse. It's completely independent of whether the virus actually escaped from the lab.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#666

Post by monoideism »

tshaddox wrote: post #479
monoideism wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really arguing from an antitrust perspective. My argument is more focused on the central role that Twitter plays in our political process. If you have a better word to use for that concept than "monopoly", I'll edit my post. But I'm sure you disagree with my thesis either way. That said, from an antitrust perspective, there are strong arguments against some social media companies, particularly Facebook. Furth…

> My argument is more focused on the central role that Twitter plays in our political process. If you have a better word to use for that concept than "monopoly" What's the concept then, other than that Twitter is doing things that you don't like? That's obviously not a sufficient argument, and if antitrust law isn't the reason for legal action to be taken against them, what's the reason? The only other legal course I…

How do you think antitrust laws were created in the first place?

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#667

Post by Lazare »

XorNot wrote: post #579
Lazare wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are good questions, but I think the link I provided gives some decent potential answers. I don't know, and I'm not asserting, that any of this is true. But given what is known about the types of research being done, this doesn't seem like something we can rule out either. For one example, the article quotes Shi Zhengli, a lab director at the Wuhan Virology Institute, who had been doing research on RaTG13, and w…

> I find it surprising that you are so much more convinced than a lab director of the lab in question that no such leak was possible. > when she could prove that the outbreak in Wuhan was not any strain that the lab had a record of storing. You answered your own question. That's the point here: the evidence does not point to a lab leak.

So the director of one lab, hearing about COVID-19, apparently went "oh shit, that could have come from MY lab!" Later, she publicly announced that it's fine, it didn't come from her lab after all, then the lab was shut down, all records suppressed, and China has prevented any independent investigation.

Even if we take this at face value, and the denials were fully truthful, this tells us that:

1) it didn't leak in that form from that specific lab (of the several operating at the Virology Institute), assuming they had good record keeping. But it might have leaked from a different lab, or it might have leaked from her lab and then mutated prior to being discovered. (And, while it might seem unlikely that it mutated without any trace of intermediate forms being found, that's the exact assumption the zoonotic theory already requires...)

2) Someone in a position to know believed that a leak was plausible based on her knowledge of the types of research being performed, the quantities of material they had on hand, the safety protocols they were following, etc.

I suppose I just find that less reassuring than you do. :)

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#668

Post by JPKab »

tootie wrote: post #659
fjh wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grandparent didn't say nothing bad happened at the protest, they said that Trump's comments were taken out of context, which is completely true. Read the thing in context (here: https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trump... ) and it's clear that he's not defending white supremacists or anything of that sort.

The context was reported at the time and it still means exactly what people think it means. Here's his attempt to clarify "I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee, a great general. " Trump knows full well that this is a lie. No one was there because Lee was so great of a general and they love military tactics. They were there because he fought to protec…

I'm sorry but you personify the issue stated in this article.

The guys holding tiki torches were definitely white supremacists.

Most protesters who are in favor of preserving Confederate monuments aren't doing so because of slavery. I don't agree with them but I grew up around them in Virginia and it's much more complicated than "derp they love slavery derp".

The confidence you possess in your ability to read people's minds is likely unfounded since I've never met any human being who can successfully read others minds.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#669

Post by ttt0 »

caddemon wrote: post #401
briefcomment wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insane How can you be so gung-ho with relatively new vaccines, but bury relatively benign and longer standing interventions?

I mean if a benign intervention doesn't actually work and it causes people to avoid a real intervention that is problematic. There's definitely plenty of alternative medicine misinformation out there that makes similar arguments about safety and history. That said, it is wrong for YouTube to be removing these videos IMO. First of all, who at YouTube reviewed the material? Do they actually have the expertise necessary…

> why is YouTube so fixated on removing COVID-related videos?

It's probably ideological, they literally called themselves "The Good Censor". They think is a right thing to do.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#670

Post by tootie »

spfzero wrote: post #544
tootie wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lab leak theory is not Occam's razor. We've had many, many pandemics and epidemics and none have been associated with research labs. We've had SARS outbreaks in China that are not associated with a lab. There is also no proof beyond circumstance to associate it with the lab. And it's not wrong because Trump said it. He may end up being partly correct. The fact remains he had no reason to be as confident in his pr…

Its only recently that research labs could engineer these viruses. Only recently have you been able to engineer mice with human ACE2 receptors, and breed viruses in them. History is not what you base your conclusions on in 2020’s biochemistry.

It has been strongly asserted by the scientific community that Covid-19 bears no hallmarks of an engineered virus. In fact, no one in this thread is even suggested it was engineered. That's the whole point of the article. The "accidental leak" theory is being conflated with "engineered weapon theory". The only options on the table are "animal -> human" or "animal -> lab -> human". Both are plausible and we have no conclusive evidence one way or the other.
Post reply on HN