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NIH restarts bat virus grant

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161–170 of 208 posts

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever happens, I don't think people will tolerate another lockdown ever again for at least two generations. I know in florida there could be literally airborn aids and people will still go out and live life, myself included. COVID lockdowns were a test of how much the government could push without backlash. I feel so badly for the kids that lost their last two years of high school for what?

Are you forgetting that the lockdowns had to happen because authorities (Trump, not CDC) pissed away a month of exponential growth doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on "ignore it and it will go away" instead of jumping on measures to reduce Rt? They only blinked when faced with the imminent prospect of having hospitals spill out into parking lots full of people slowly dying for want of a respirator. The pandem…

[flagged]

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#162
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence for the lab leak theory is weak. You're assuming facts that most experts dispute.

[flagged]

No, I mean a majority of all experts around the world.

And I don't find it particularly damning that the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was involved in the commission of one of many studies to determine the origin of an infectious disease.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#163
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this concept. I see it all over the internet. But I don't get it. At what point did we stop believing it was possible for people to conspire to commit crimes? Nobody disputes, for example, that the convictions of the Watergate conspirators - for the charge of conspiracy - was based in fact. So how is it that we can now say that fact and conspiracy can't be part of the same pattern? It's true that a…

Orthogonal doesn't mean opposites, it means they're perpendicular i.e. unrelated.

I understand.

But they're not unrelated.

Sometimes a fact pattern reveals a conspiracy.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#164
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this concept. I see it all over the internet. But I don't get it. At what point did we stop believing it was possible for people to conspire to commit crimes? Nobody disputes, for example, that the convictions of the Watergate conspirators - for the charge of conspiracy - was based in fact. So how is it that we can now say that fact and conspiracy can't be part of the same pattern? It's true that a…

That's not what orthogonal means. Your counter-examples are exactly what orthogonal means; they are independent attributes.

Consider some other class of crime.

If I said, "the matter of whether a crime is premediated, and the fact pattern of that crime, are orthogonal attributes."

You'd say: "That's not true - the fact pattern is how we determine whether there was evidence of premeditation."

It's the same for conspiracies. The fact pattern is not orthogonal; it's integral.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#165
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this concept. I see it all over the internet. But I don't get it. At what point did we stop believing it was possible for people to conspire to commit crimes? Nobody disputes, for example, that the convictions of the Watergate conspirators - for the charge of conspiracy - was based in fact. So how is it that we can now say that fact and conspiracy can't be part of the same pattern? It's true that a…

1) the rabbit jumped: (not conspiracy, fact could be true or false) 2) jfk was assassinated by the CIA: (conspiracy, fact could be true or false) What concept are you referring to when you say you don't understand it?

I took the comment to mean, "the matter of whether something is a conspiracy is unrelated to the fact pattern of the event."

I apologize, for that's obviously not what you meant now that I see this comment.

But perhaps you can acknowledge that this assertion is pervasive on the internet: that if something is a conspiracy, it is so because of the beliefs of the believers, rather than the fact pattern of the event.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#166
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this concept. I see it all over the internet. But I don't get it. At what point did we stop believing it was possible for people to conspire to commit crimes? Nobody disputes, for example, that the convictions of the Watergate conspirators - for the charge of conspiracy - was based in fact. So how is it that we can now say that fact and conspiracy can't be part of the same pattern? It's true that a…

I took the go to mean whether something is a conspiracy and whether something is a fact aren't tied. You can have any of the permutations. I think very often you get what looks like conspiracy when there is actually no communication between parties, rather it is swarm behavior, each ant acting based on its observations and motives. But sometimes the ants have to chat, then it is a conspiracy.

You're right; I misunderstood the comment to mean, "the matter of whether something is a conspiracy, and the fact pattern of that thing, are unrelated."

But it seems like what the commenter meant was, "the matter of whether a given act is properly regarded as a conspiracy, and then the evidence supporting a particular instance of that act, are unrelated."

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#168
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No, I mean a majority of all experts around the world. And I don't find it particularly damning that the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was involved in the commission of one of many studies to determine the origin of an infectious disease.

Having the primary author not attach their name to the paper that they’ve secretly been asked to write and disseminate is typical?

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#169
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) the rabbit jumped: (not conspiracy, fact could be true or false) 2) jfk was assassinated by the CIA: (conspiracy, fact could be true or false) What concept are you referring to when you say you don't understand it?

I took the comment to mean, "the matter of whether something is a conspiracy is unrelated to the fact pattern of the event." I apologize, for that's obviously not what you meant now that I see this comment. But perhaps you can acknowledge that this assertion is pervasive on the internet: that if something is a conspiracy, it is so because of the beliefs of the believers, rather than the fact pattern of the event.

If you look at the comment I originally replied to, OP says something like "when does conspiracy become fact". In having a enough conversations about the topic of conspiracy, you realize people are conflating conspiracy as laying(lying?) on the spectrum of likelihood. So when they say "when does conspiracy become fact?" it sounds like our understanding of the topic evolves from being a conspiracy to instead being a fact. Why would the conspiracy aspect vanish into thin air? If it was a conspiracy then now it is a conspiracy with some sort of proof. It appears this bizarre redefinition of the meaning of conspiracy came from its incessant association with the word theory. If OP had instead said "when does conspiracy _theory_ become fact" I would have no qualms with the usage. But its hilarious how there are people on either side of this stupidly generic debate who cannot even properly understand the usage of the word conspiracy.

Re: NIH restarts bat virus grant

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever happens, I don't think people will tolerate another lockdown ever again for at least two generations. I know in florida there could be literally airborn aids and people will still go out and live life, myself included. COVID lockdowns were a test of how much the government could push without backlash. I feel so badly for the kids that lost their last two years of high school for what?

Are you forgetting that the lockdowns had to happen because authorities (Trump, not CDC) pissed away a month of exponential growth doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on "ignore it and it will go away" instead of jumping on measures to reduce Rt? They only blinked when faced with the imminent prospect of having hospitals spill out into parking lots full of people slowly dying for want of a respirator. The pandem…

What's your explanation for all the other countries that also had lockdowns despite Trump not being president there?

This thing was impossible to contain, regardless of which talking head was in charge.

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