Comment by Exmoor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Exmoor | Hacker News Reader

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> 1) there's literally no evidence that it happened that way

There's no smoking gun evidence that is accessible, and there likely never will be. There is some circumstantial evidence that seems compelling. We know that scientists in Wuhan were working on this exact type of virus and were also working to make it transmissible in humans. We also know that there were issues reported in safety protocols at this/these labs. Finally, we know that the virus outbreak happened in the same city (and possibly within a very short distance) of these labs.

Presumably (I have no data on this and would love some from anyone who knows more), there are not many labs doing this sort of research, so the fact that the virus appeared in the immediate vicinity of one of the few labs where they were doing this research seems like a heck of a coincidence. It's not a smoking gun, but I'm a little concerned to see people in the scientific community writing it off as a near-impossibility. What's wrong with saying, "We think that this is unlikely given xyz, but the circumstantial evidence is concerning and we should reevaluate all research of this type."

What's wrong with saying that is that the research itself is probably less dangerous than the alternative, which would be to stop trying to understand the nature of the evolution of these diseases. The point of the research is to be better informed about such infectious diseases so we can formulate an effective response, or maybe even come up with a permanent solution to neutralize the threat. The perceived short term dangers do not outweigh the long term benefits. I feel like a compelling parallel to nuclear power could be drawn here.

What if the most effective response is 'pray it never happens'?

Pandemics are similar to nukes: both have damage capacity and exponential growth regimen. The one major difference is that nukes have limited fissile material, whereas a pandemics's mass is the entire humanity, or, in the worst case, biosphere.

Engineering viruses for human reproduction to 'learn how to contain' pandemics is about as useful as detonating nukes to 'learn how to contain' nuclear detonations. The downside is that you may end up blowing up significant chunks of the world, whereas the purported benefit may never pan out. It may well be that a pandemic or nuclear detonation is uncontrollable and unstoppable once it gets started.

> detonating nukes to 'learn how to contain' nuclear detonations.

That’s exactly how the development of nuclear power stations happened historically, and I expect most other viable power sources. We start with something that releases a lot of uncontrolled energy, and then figure out how to make it do something useful— Wildfires begat combustion engines, waterfalls begat hydroelectric dams, and volcanoes begat geothermal power.

With nuclear, the natural state of fissile material is inert, under critical density. It's too spread out to lead to a spontaneous planet scale detonation. You have the work hard to amass even tiny amounts of fissile material for experimentation. You can't blow up Earth even if you want it, there isn't enough fissile material on Earth to do so.

With bio, the fissile material is humanity itself and is above critical density. Once the virus escapes your lab, you have a planet scale pandemic detonation on your hands. Afterwards, all you can do is to try to spread out the fissile material [aka humanity] to keep it under critical density. See 'social distancing' and 'stay at home orders'. Which doesn't work long term, note the economic crisis that's just starting, arguably worse than the Great Depression. What positive rewards are you expecting from this? A new source of energy ain't it.

Imagine a Manhattan project where, if a handful of stray neutrons escape Oak Ridge, the entire Eastern US goes up in flames.

Edit: How about: 'learn how to contain' nuclear detonations by partially detonating planet-scale doomsday devices?

I don't know how widely aware of it people are these days, but there was a much repeated bit of folklore about how the people setting off the first atomic test weren't 100% sure it wouldn't ignite the atmosphere in a global chain reaction.

It always struck me as possibly a glib anti-nuclear slant on a joke or offhand comment some scientist made that wasn't really serious, but nevertheless it's part of the lore of the beginning of the atomic age.

True! They did had that concern. They considered both shutting down the whole enterprise over it and did the math to assess the risk and found it unfounded.

Our friends in Wuhan? Crickets. And puff pieces in the US media attempting to politicize the issue and keep the gravy train going.

> When Teller informed some of his colleagues of this possibility, he was greeted with both skepticism and fear. Hans Bethe immediately dismissed the idea, but according to author Pearl Buck, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Arthur Compton was so concerned that he told Robert Oppenheimer that if there were even the slightest chance of this "ultimate catastrophe" playing out, all work on the bomb should stop.

> So a study was commissioned to explore the matter in detail, and six months before the Trinity test, the very first detonation of nuclear device, Edward Teller and Emil Konopinski announced their findings in a report with the ominous title "Ignition of the Atmosphere With Nuclear Bombs."

> "It is shown that, whatever the temperature to which a section of the atmosphere may be heated, no self-propagating chain of nuclear reactions is likely to be started. The energy losses to radiation always overcompensate the gains due to the reactions."

[0] https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/09/12/the_fear_th...

And to add to your points, we also know if the hypothesis is true, it would be a type of blow to China’s image that the CCP just can’t have.

We’ll never know because no one will be allowed to investigate it:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1197516

The WHO is probably on the same list as organizations waiting to get a chance to investigate the Uyghur camps.

Wild stuff.

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