Comment by Gareth321 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Gareth321 | Hacker News Reader

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I am not the user you responded to, but you are making a fairly egregious logical error. China is an authoritarian, autocratic state. It will never permit any incriminating evidence to surface. Arguing that hard scientific evidence is required for us to come to any conclusions is a de facto rejection of any scenario in which China, its provinces, or any individuals are culpable of anything. Ever. This is much closer to an ideological position than a logical or evidence-based position.

In these situations we rely heavily on intelligence services. For example, the German secret service has assessed an 80-95% probability that it was leaked from a lab in Wuhan and presented a report to then Chancellor Angela Merkel. [The assessment was later leaked and was published in a German Newspaper.](https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/corona-bnd-china-li.3217...) I think the German intelligence services are far better equipped, resourced, and have far wider access to sensitive and privileged data, than either of us.

> I am not the user you responded to, but you are making a fairly egregious logical error. China is an authoritarian, autocratic state. It will never permit any incriminating evidence to surface.

you aren't saying anything here. "well the evidence could have been destroyed because China doesn't want it exposed" is not an argument for or against a lab leak. In fact, you and most people in these threads arguing for lab leak theory aren't providing evidence at all - you are just doing the classic "well isn't this weird"

You are making the same argument they are: that China cannot ever, for any reason be responsible for doing anything bad. I'm sorry, but I don't find your ideological position tenable. Destroying evidence doesn't exonerate one of culpability.

> China cannot ever, for any reason be responsible for doing anything bad

Nope didn't say anything like that. All I said was that the motivations of China does not prove or disprove either idea about the origin.

>China is an authoritarian, autocratic state.

As opposed to current America?

Scientists can still asses information and evidence with that in mind and still say which option is more likely to have happened. Or even say that China has faked evidence if they did so.

>In these situations we rely heavily on intelligence services

I don't think intelligence services are equipped to do this. But if we go by who has the better data, better equipped and resource I would assume that America wins on that, so should we believe them more?

https://archive.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Rep...

>The National Intelligence Council and four other IC agencies assess that the initial human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was caused by natural exposure to an infected animal that carried SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor, a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARSCoV-2

> Scientists can still asses information and evidence with that in mind and still say which option is more likely to have happened. Or even say that China has faked evidence if they did so.

They cannot evaluate evidence if all evidence has been destroyed.

> I don't think intelligence services are equipped to do this. But if we go by who has the better data, better equipped and resource I would assume that America wins on that, so should we believe them more?

I find it odd that you would cite an American intelligence report right after implying that America is authoritarian and autocratic. You can't have it both ways.

To point, the US intelligence report “does not address the merits of the two most likely pandemic origins hypotheses.” Its purpose was to declassify information concerning potential WIV connections and describe what US intelligence knew about WIV activities. You cited a report you didn't read or didn't understand.

I should also point out that the US agencies couldn't agree. In 2023, FBI favoured a lab incident, Department of Energy favoured a lab incident, CIA favoured lab incident, and NIC + four other (name withheld) intelligence agencies favoured natural spillover.

> I find it odd that you would cite an American intelligence report right after implying that America is authoritarian and autocratic. You can't have it both ways.

I'm not sure if you just aren't engaging with what is being said or are not reading the full post - he only shared that link IN RESPONSE TO you appealing to intelligence services. Read again:

"I don't think intelligence services are equipped to do this. >>>BUT if we go by who has the better data<<<"

He is saying "well IF we ARE going by intelligence services because YOU made that argument, then what about this?"

You missed his first two sentences:

> > China is an authoritarian, autocratic state.

> As opposed to current America?

He is implying that America is also an authoritarian, autocratic state. This was in response to my comment explaining why China will not comply with investigations. He is arguing that America cannot be trusted to provide accurate information, or comply with investigations. He argues this first, then attempts to argue that America is a more trustworthy source than Germany.

I'm just using your argument against you. Both are unreliable, China is authoritarian, America has been taken over by an authoritarian and science denying regime.

That's fine - both are unreliable. So we should lean more on the source I cited at the beginning: Germany's intelligence agency.

no, you should go off of the preponderance of evidence. Why would we choose a report from a single country?

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