If the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis is true, expect a political earthquake | Hacker News Reader

If the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis is true, expect a political earthquake

theguardian.com

7 pointsbelter8 comments

The opposite is also true:

If somebody wants to manufacture a political earthquake (e.g. to serve in the interests of a trade war with another nation), expect increased reporting on and various researchers "independently" "verifying" the Wuhan-lab leak hypothesis.

There are extremely powerful interests on both sides who want it to have been, or not to have been, a lab leak. It's going to be very hard to get to anything resembling the truth here, especially for the general public who doesn't have the qualifications to delve into the details.

The article has a deeper point though that is worth thinking about regardless of the lab leak hypothesis: we are creating a dichotomy between absolute trust in expertise and mindless know-nothing populism. Both of these are cults of anti-intellectualism and authoritarianism.

That's the kind of setup that could lay the ground work for a new dark age. We're creating a package deal whereby one major fuckup by our most holy experts could undo the whole of scientific and liberal thought across the entire world.

It's analogous to how the religious fundamentalists have unwittingly helped the cause of atheism by making belief in God conditional on the acceptance of things like Biblical literalism. Either the Earth was created in six literal days 6000 years ago or there is no God. Well guess what? The Earth is not 6000 years old, and that's why churches are emptying generation after generation.

This is also why we can discuss this until we are all turning blue in the head. There are too many on either extreme side to have an interesting conversation that doesn't flow over with mud flinging. This whole topic is straight up politics and HN (sadly) would be better off with any of these lab leak discussions. People get angry and it spills over into other threads.

At the same time, articles like this one are insidious because they do advance the "lab leak hypothesis" without bringing any new information to the table. It's really a case of repeating something enough times so that, true or not, it becomes mainstream and accepted, which is exactly what the powerful interests pushing for that "hypothesis" are trying to achieve.

IMHO, considering the current global situation and the ramifications, the wise thing to do would be to invest in research and investigations but to stop making headlines on this unless something significant emerges one way or the other. Unfortunately, if there is one thing that is absolutely impossible in our modern, connected Western world that runs on social media and outrage it is silence.

I will argue that like the stock market, the revelation of a lab leak has already been “priced in” to the politics for anyone who actually cares. So I would expect nothing dramatically new to happen, let alone an earthquake.

For example, if there was a Russian-sponsored hack of a big Western company in the news tomorrow, would that cause a political earthquake? How about an invasion of Ukraine. No, it probably wouldn’t. In fact, it didn’t.

I'm am in awe of your ability to know what happens tomorrow.

Thank you. It took a lot of hard work to develop my seer skills.

Nah that cant be right. I trust the experts that said the thing that I feel is right and most convenient at the time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com