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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

To me, the only really horrible thing is the way that anything other than the mainstream version of events was treated. I think there are different plausible theories, and I'm not surprised they have different adherents that are mostly all motivated by something other than a pure quest for the truth. That's life. If this was e.g. a civil or criminal trial, you'd see the same thing.

The only difference is, in a trial, nobody would try and brand the other side as a conspiracy theorist, racist, denier, anti-xer, whatever the most popular inflammatory term is. Nobody would try and block dissent from all mainstream communication forums.

To me, that's the only thing that's new, is the institutional suppression of any suggestions outside of an orthodox version. And it's honestly way scarier than the idea that government labs are doing biological research, or that diseases can jump from animals to people.

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That’s another symptom of the same disease. People have an idea that “trust the experts” can replace all the messy, gross, and often wrong processes we have developed to deal with the fact nobody can be trusted. Trusting scientists involved in gain of function research will neutrally investigate the origins of the pandemic is one manifestation of that conceit. So is trusting fact checkers and review panels to decide what’s “misinformation” and what’s factual.

The marketplace of ideas is better than trusting gatekeepers of knowledge. That’s one of the huge lessons of the enlightenment that we have somehow forgot. We think “it’s different this time.”

>The marketplace of ideas is better than trusting gatekeepers of knowledge.

That's such a simplification of the real situation that it's harmful to apply as an axiom.

There are many levels of the marketplace of ideas. Ideally, the gatekeepers of knowledge also create a marketplace of ideas so that expert opinion is varied and shifts as new information come in. This is in inline with what we're seeing here.

The marketplace of ideas with no experts to guide discussion often results in crank ideas that seem plausible but heavily influenced by our biases bubbling to the top. That's how things like the Anti-vax movement gained a foothold.

No one argued that it should be applied as an axiom. You're responding to an argument that wasn't made.

Also, the "gatekeepers of knowledge" have a mostly.....negative past when you look at the sum of recorded human history. Are you arguing that humans today are just way better and far more trustworthy than the rest of history?

>Also, the "gatekeepers of knowledge" have a mostly.....negative past when you look at the sum of recorded human history.

The gatekeepers of knowledge have a past that reflects those that are in power. People that challenge them can be on the right or wrong side of history. Just because they were wrong in the middle ages doesn't mean the gatekeepers of today are wrong. If the gatekeepers can and do apply scientific principles, then logically it is a self-correcting system. This is in theory what we see more or less today (or should at least).

Furthermore, the gatekeeper system is not mutually exclusive to the marketplace of ideas model, as the latter operates on many levels. However, by bringing down the gatekeeper model, it is harder to enforce discussion based on scientific principles, merit and sound arguments. This is the exact reason why we have moderation in almost all forums, and the ones that don't end up as cesspits of people shouting crazy ideas at each other and hence counterproductive places.

Giving everyone a voice doesn't necessarily mean we are bound to give everyone a equal voice in everything. Any weighing is in essence introducing a gatekeeper.

Let's be sure to use the same definition of "gatekeepers" for the past and present knowledge. What I see is, people look at the past examples of politicians and religious leaders telling people what to believe, and try to use those to dismiss opinions of present-day domain specialists. Which is a nasty case of motte-and-bailey fallacy.

I'm saying that I think past and present day "specialists" are not as different as we are inclined to think, it's the opposite of a motte-and-bailey position.

There is a problem though. Without access to source material of any real journalist (not a reporter) you have no way of knowing whether whatever they're saying is true.

Marketplace of ideas is just measuring the average of views at best and fringe views may on occasion be valid, or not. It is also gameable by promoting "truthy" or plausible explanations with no data behind them.

In this case, it is irrelevant what the source of the pandemic was, securing the labs doing viral research to BSL-4 is prudent. The only issue faced is one of funding, which is vastly insufficient to maintain these facilities. Or at least placement in remote locations with quarantine in place to prevent leaks.

Data only weakly suggests a composite and does not categorically exclude natural origin. Leak of a natural or modified virus would be just as bad. Same if it's from consumption of rare animals sent from remote places or research on the samples from them. In either case, only different degree of luck is required for a pandemic.

This "Marketplace of ideas" is run by English speakers, in our case, and completely ignores the idea that we or our allies may have been involved in a biological attack on China. Very convenient, in my opinion, since history says NATO countries are the most likely to deploy biological weapons.

> involved in a biological attack on China.

It's very unlikely anyone was doing any research on directly using SARS-CoV2 as a weapon. It kills or maims too low a percentage of people to have tactical value, and it's too difficult to contain. (The most effective weapons severely handicap their victims and allow them to live into old age, taking fighters off the field, and turning them into long-term liabilities and living reminders for anyone who might think about fighting you in the future.)

I'm not saying SARS-CoV2 leaked from a lab, but if it did, it was probably more of a basic science/weapons background research rather than an engineered weapon itself. You might want to add some SARS-CoV2 characteristics to a bioweapon, but you'd want to start out with something with greater morbidity and more easily quarantined as a starting point for a weapon.

> The most effective weapons severely handicap their victims and allow them to live into old age, taking fighters off the field, and turning them into long-term liabilities and living reminders for anyone who might think about fighting you in the future

I do not believe that covid was intentionally designed and released as a bio weapon.

That being said, have you heard of long covid?

> long covid

Why should I believe this is any more real than "chronic lyme"? There are a whole lot of hypochondriacs out there; something proponents of "long covid" and "chronic lyme" never seem willing to acknowledge.

The groups promoting both of these organize and operate the same way, and make similar claims. Huge lists of nonspecific generic symptoms and facebook groups full of uncritical believers mutually reinforcing each others' beliefs (parallel to the well understood phenomena of "support groups" which promote eating disorders and create social feedback loops for reinforcing/worsening body dismorphia.)

>I do not believe that covid was intentionally designed and released as a bio weapon.

History says you are wrong to discount NATO countries (I include Japan as an unofficial member) using bio-weapons. They have a long history of deploying and supporting deployments of these kinds of weapons against military and economic foes.

> That being said, have you heard of long covid?

The number of people with long COVID symptoms is a tiny tiny fraction of those exposed to SARS-CoV2. If it's a designed feature of SARS-CoV2, it's very poorly implemented, unless it's actually very specifically targeting some as-of-yet unidentified demographic. (This seems very unlikely.)

North Carolina lab was shipping covid around the world. Wouldn't be surprised if the lab in Fort Detrick was doing similar research.

You seem to assume a bio-weapon has to cause mass death to be effective and meet the deployer's objectives...you are wrong in the case of economic attacks.

> You seem to assume a bio-weapon has to cause mass death to be effective and meet the deployer's objectives...you are wrong in the case of economic attacks.

https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/morbidity

Nonsense. What a foolish weapon it would be. Both for its lack of virulence and imprecise targeting. This is (a rather bad) conspiracy theory

The point is to disrupt, not mass murder, and in that sense, mission accomplished.

This scenario is just as plausible as the lab leak theory, and probably has just as much evidence.

Ridiculous to think that it was deployed by NATO because NATO countries were affected by it just as much if not more. That would be the most idiotic weapon used ever. It literally makes no sense.

Sorry, but the idea of NATO deploying the most idiotic weapon imaginable on the entire world vs. the idea of an accidental escape from a lab are NOT equally plausible at all. In fact, this entire article goes thru evidence that it was not NATO because of all of the internal investigations and such.

What you are suggesting is tin foil hat conspiracy theory crazy.

I disagree, NATO countries (including Japan) have benefited from sabotaging/disrupting Chinese trade for more than a century. They know what they stand to gain by making China the "virus spreader/origin" of the world.

The Fauci emails in March 2020 that described the exact components of the virus with subject 'coronavirus bio-weapon production method' hints at the actual purpose of this release.

The idea is laughable. This sounds like something in an episode of Alex Jones and/or QAnon.

> https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/06/03/fac...

Any other crank sources you'd like to share?

>Fact check: No, email to Fauci doesn't contain origin of a 'coronavirus bioweapon'

I didn't argue that the email contained claims about the 'origin'.

Email Subject:

> "Coronavirus Bioweapon Production Method"

Dated March 11, 2020.

Screenshot of original email - https://i.imgur.com/HxUSoCv.png

So, you shared an email from a kook sent to Fauci. Is that your evidence? This is just copypasta from 2005 paper

https://www.pnas.org/content/102/33/11876

If you want to split hairs, you actually said:

> The Fauci emails in March 2020 that described the exact components of the virus ...

which is a complete lie. The email does NOT describe the components of the virus at all. You clearly are lacking in any sort of biochemical background as this is obvious. Do you actually fact check anything you are posting?

"In this case, it is irrelevant what the source of the pandemic was ..."

...

"Leak of a natural or modified virus would be just as bad. Same if it's from consumption of rare animals sent from remote places or research on the samples from them."

I disagree.

I actually think "lab leak" is better and more optimistic news than a natural outgrowth or animal consumption, etc.

Lab leaks are a problem we can fix - probably without too much trouble. They don't represent a fundamental problem with accelerating globalization, urbanization and travel.

On the other hand, a natural origin or a human-animal crossing due to animal husbandry in or near urban areas ... or "bush meat" consumption ... those vectors could indicate that globalization, urbanization and travel have crossed a threshold where events such as this become likely and will recur regularly.

Given the relatively recent emergence of SARS and MERS, I have been fearful that our very connected, urbanized and globalized world (which I enjoy greatly) is at risk.

The world of easy travel may be doomed either way.

If it's a lab leak? The rhetoric may shift to blaming China and trying to punish them (especially in more conservative circles). New Cold War, more Iron Curtains, less freedom of travel.

If it's just globalization making things risky? Then maybe we can't let people fly from Wuhan to Bergamo for public health reasons. Less freedom of travel, for an entirely different reason.

'geofft upthread has a good point about assigning blame: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27389537.

Perhaps it would've been easier for the scientists involved in gain of function research to remain unbiased, if they weren't fully aware that anything but total denial will make the world think they're responsible - as a profession and individuals - without as much as shred of evidence to support it.

> People have an idea that “trust the experts” can replace all the messy, gross, and often wrong processes we have developed to deal with the fact nobody can be trusted.

I observe the opposite. People seem to have the idea that experts are always in on it, or out to get something out of a crisis, and thus should be ignored. The alternative is, of course, to listen to whatever uninformed opinion piece confirms one's worldview the most. I think we'd all do better with trusting the experts more - they may be wrong, but they're also in the best position to discover and correct that. They may be also right. Most people - including journalists, pundits and bloggers - are not capable of telling whether experts are right or wrong. So trusting them seems like a better bet than trusting random opinions (unless yourself you have enough familiarity with the field, at which point your own interpretation may be valid too).

C.f. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learn...

Tbf independent researchers got us to the point we are having this discussion. We just took a detour because the institutions failed us.

> To me, that's the only thing that's new, is the institutional suppression of any suggestions outside of an orthodox version.

This isn't new at all. It's been a staple of many human cultures throughout history, including US culture for much of the 20th century (and, I would say, all of the 21st century). I think what's probably a new experience for most of us is just how all-encompassing the pandemic has been as an issue of discussion.

The problem with this is that the American public discourse is broken.

The Republicans (I can't tapdance around the direct call out with weasel words) and the right-wing media have lost all credibility because they often DO behave as racist, selfish, inconsistent conspiracy theorists. On those rare occasions when they are right or properly play the role of opposition rather than pushing an absurd agenda alongside their media manipulation, their prior behavior causes an automatic immune-like response. You can't trust anything they say or their intentions, and they are experts at the Gish Gallop (constantly coming up with new bs you have to respond to, when response takes far more effort) - why would this particular action be any different? Also, this seems more of a case of "a broken clock is right twice a day" than an indication that the right should be taken seriously as a general rule.

Non-credible actors that are known to be untrustworthy should never be the people who put forth any hypotheses if you want them to be taken seriously. The American far-right politicians/media and 4chan are not credible actors, and any idea associated with them will face an uphill battle.

Unfortunate, the "left media" also faces massive credibility problems due to their willingness to uncritically publish anything they could spin as negative for Trump, regardless of veracity or verifiability.

Partisanship is a disease that is destroying our democracy.

The silly thing to me is that there were plenty of factual things to criticize, they just weren't as sensational and headline grabbing.

Part of it was also probably that Trump was known for bucking expectations when those expectations where based on "surely this is ludicrous to consider true", to the point that lots of things that would have previously been held back for more verification were allowed forward because things that used to stretch credulity no longer did.

That's not an excuse, just what I think is a partial explanation.

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