My feelings still stand from that other thread.
I don't deny any of this hypothetical lab interference but this new thread hit the top 5 of HN in under 30 minutes with no comments. I don't like that.
Why is the view being pushed so hard?
I don't deny any of this hypothetical lab interference but this new thread hit the top 5 of HN in under 30 minutes with no comments. I don't like that.
Why is the view being pushed so hard?
Edit: I wrote more about this here if anyone wants more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27268101
Maybe I'm just overreacting to the reposts.
This story has other advantages (from the point of view of the story). It is intriguing in a way that's perfect for internet detectives, like a board game with a low barrier to entry: you can get up and running with a few links in a few minutes, jump in and play. It's personally relevant to everyone who was affected by the pandemic, i.e. everyone. And the stakes are high geopolitically, so it's got all the energy of that drama as well (not great for discussion quality, but fabulous if you're the story and want to spread).
I'm just describing the psychology of a story like this. I'm not putting down anyone who's interested in it or who's not interested in it, and I'm certainly not commenting on the story itself—only why it's easy to understand why people would be posting it, and why it would get both upvotes and flags—from different people, of course.
You're not the only person who is reacting to the reposts. Based on past experience, we should all brace ourselves for throngs more of them. Maybe this would be a good place to repeat the principles of MOTs and SNI:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
I didn't really think that the current story was SNI, given that we've had several other major threads recently, but it's a borderline case and the community seems to have voted otherwise.
The past few weeks, all the above parties did a complete about-face, with no apology. Vox silently edited one of its March 2020 articles "debunking" claims that Covid-19 originated in a lab leak https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1396769717805780994 . The fact that the mainstream media can so effectively censor a theory against the prescribed narrative is extremely harmful to our democracy.
It makes you question what other narratives being pushed today are similarly misguided.
The evidence is beginning to be stacked against them so they need to run with it so it looks like the broke the story.
What happened was that a conspiracy theory was generally dismissed because it was being pushed in the right wing media, with literally zero evidence to support it.
There weren’t “experts with no evidence” of the non existence of a lab leak. There were experts claiming that there is no evidence of a lab leak.
it is the opposite of accountability.
you say face before scientific truth but the people pushing this theory are not focused on scientific truth anymore than you think China is.
What we need is to prevent further such incidents in the future. So if the question of accountability is off the table, lets just think about what the consequence would be if the virus was an accidential lab escape (from any country). We should immediately take measures such that that never happens again. That means increasing the safety measures and transparency, and possibly banning gain-of-function research.
Unfortunately, the undercurrent of the whole discussion is "who is to blame", not "how to prevent this again". (Also, I think this is one of the reasons they tried to downplay the outbreak in the beginning.)
I mean we could just take it out of the debt we owe to China. China owns over $1 trillion in US debt. It wouldn't cover all the expenses the US had due to this pandemic but it would help. I would agree that almost nobody on the US would actually advocate for it.
> Unfortunately, the undercurrent of the whole discussion is "who is to blame", not "how to prevent this again".
You have to know how it started and who is to blame in order to put in safe guard against it in the future.
Nobody would have trouble entrusting bio-research to Taiwan or South Korea.
'Because justice, moral high ground and emotions are important to people, and people elect governments'
From a meta "gain of function" POV, China has gained from the pandemic. It has kick started its economy with months of head start, while all of the BRIC and western competition have suffered through the pandemic.
China hasn't lost a single opportunity to let it be known that the superiority of their governance methods and ideology has a hand in how well they've handled the pandemic. Their main competition: US (in front) and India (much behind) have particularly suffered and been the subject of ridicule among the Chinese.
The winds of change are heralded in by emotion and perception. Being able to associate the grief of millions to a single regime is the kind of weapon that itching to be wielded. (to a lesser degree the democrats already wielded it in ousting Trump)
It can permanently damage the credibility of mainstream media organizations and social media giants. It can breed nationalism and anti-PRC sentiment. It can legitimize scepticism towards empirical science and make heterodox/conspiratorial ideas harder to dismiss. It can be used to break the break the stranglehold of elite media/universities as unquestionable source of truth.
Whether the outcomes are to our liking is secondary. The answer to the question if the issue is worth pursuing is a resounding YES !
There is nothing insulating HN from being a home for some particular conspiracy theory anymore than other sites. The willingness of some comments in this thread to just absolutely push the 'lab' narrative despite admitting the lack of evidence is deeply troubling.
Probably because the very self-assure ''debunking'' of lab-origin was pushed so hard in so much of the media for the past year.
a report that is highly circumstantial but implies a certain inference
from a foreign intelligence agency that says it 'needs further investigation'
provided to a historically right wing publication
when in contrast the people who do this for a living have consistently had exactly the same line: we need to investigate the cause, the evidence we have suggests one thing, and this theory that keeps getting pushed is scientifically without evidence
Because it validates a certain worldview. "I need things to be this way, or else the universe is wrong."