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Comment by steveBK123 | Hacker News Reader

It was never an implausible theory so the censorship over it was foolish.

Of course the immediate jump to conclusion in the first few months by some who found it politically expedient was no better either.

People need to be more comfortable saying I don’t know but we are looking into it.

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Back then anyone who suggested the lab leak theory was immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist by main stream media.

Yes and I’m saying that was bad.

Hopefully this helps people realize how meaningless it is to be labeled a conspiracy theorist.

I think the conspiracy theorist label is associated with common patterns (believing in a cover up in cases where there's no incentive / the cover up would be more expensive than the crime / the evidence would be impossible to cover up, etc) but in this case these patterns don't apply.

The lab leak theory was extremely plausible even assuming no secret conspiracy at all. Lab leaks do happen, that lab did do gain of function research, the State did shut down investigations, etc.

You might be surprised how many things labeled conspiracy theories have strong evidence, incentives, etc. but get scoffed at as kooky impossibilities nonetheless - like the lab leak theory.

Out how many conspiracy theories end up being right.

I think when it comes to conspiracy theories the two heuristics to use are:

1.) Do they have an incentive to conspire?

2.) Do they have the ability to conspire?

Where both are true I think conspiracies exist every where, often to such an extent it just gets labelled as corruption rather than conspiracy.

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Were they? Or were those who claimed it was the only possible answer, without the evidence to back that up?

That's not a good enough reason to censor.

99% of the time there isn't a good reason to censor things, that doesn't stop it from happening constantly though. Especially in China where censorship of anything with bad publicity for the country or government or people is the default stance.

The major reason for that is that many were doing this in language that was generally considered racist and/or mixed in some other weird stuff like how COVID lockdowns were like the Jewish persecution, rants about masking, or that type of stuff. I'm not saying everyone did that, but there was a huge overlap.

> there was a huge overlap.

There was a huge overlap because within a month it became completely taboo for anyone who cared about not being seen as an alt-right activist to say anything about it. Even freaking Jon Stewart got caught in the instant-cancellation blast [0].

A major problem with our world today is that anything that the alt right supports instantly becomes taboo for the rest of us. People are more concerned with distancing themselves from the alt right than they are with finding and supporting the truth—and that goes for just about anything, not just COVID.

[0] https://nypost.com/2023/02/28/jon-stewart-recalls-outrage-af...

Have you considered the possibility that you infer racism more often than people imply it?

It only went the way it did because people were making "lab leak" synonymous with "genetically engineered."

I think you're confusing genetic engineering with the bioweapons research. The WIV did collect natural coronaviruses and genetically engineer them.

It was never implausible, it has always been the most likely the most straightforward theory. A lab that worked on gain of function of coronaviruses.

All other theories sound as made up bs.

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