Lab leak theory needs to be reevaluated

[Raze]

 

this is very embarrassing for everyone who said it was a conspiracy and supported social media banning people for suggesting it

[Tanz]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

It was regarded as such because it was spouted by reactionary right-wing nuts as part of their anti-vaxism and populism. Same as the Hunter Biden story.

Do not act like these people were doing any serious truth-seeking. They were mostly making nationalist rants against China in order to backwards rationalize their not getting vaccinated. This is not honest truth-seeking, it's bad-faith partisanship.

All the government had to do from the start was say, this theory is plausible, and we are deploying X amount of people and X amount of dollars to investigate this.  Then following up by creating international laws on bioweapons and gain of function research so this kind of thing doesn't happen in the future.  

[Devin]

They did say it was possible, China kicked out the international community from the investigation because Trump was saying they created it.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Devin

[Epikur]

2 hours ago, Tanz said:

All the government had to do from the start was say, this theory is plausible, and we are deploying X amount of people and X amount of dollars to investigate this.  Then following up by creating international laws on bioweapons and gain of function research so this kind of thing doesn't happen in the future.  

Exactly

[Epikur]

3 hours ago, Raze said:

 

this is very embarrassing for everyone who said it was a conspiracy and supported social media banning people for suggesting it

Good find

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Raze said:

 

this is very embarrassing for everyone who said it was a conspiracy and supported social media banning people for suggesting it

It's not embarrassing at all. The government and media is working perfectly in this case.

Fringe theories which have the potential to be weaponized in partisan and political manner and harm millions of people with paranoia should not be mainstreamed and legitimized by government or big media. Those theories can surface on their own once they gather sufficient credibility through overwhelming accumulation of evidence.

This case is a perfect example of why it's good to be conservative with your theories and epistemology. And by "conservative" I don't mean that right-wing populist culture-war trash. I mean truly conservative. Conservative means: You don't make a claim about reality unless you got overwhelming evidence for it. There was never any overwhelming solid evidence in the early days of a lab leak. It was all just speculation.  The evidence is still weak 2 years later.

The FBI is doing an excellent job, despite all the online fools crying about bias.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Tanz said:

All the government had to do from the start was say, this theory is plausible, and we are deploying X amount of people and X amount of dollars to investigate this.

No. It's not that easy. The government should not be wasting it's time jumping on fringe and speculative online theories. That would make the government way to easy to manipulate for partisan gain. Which is exactly what this lab leak stuff is about. It has nothing to really do with public health or the like, it's about scoring political points. The FBI should be not engaged in that kind of childish crap.

You guys are not actually serious about governance, you're just looking at this whole thing from an irresponsible personal perspective where you want to see some side win and validate your worldview. That is not how governance actually works. Which is why you keep misunderstanding mainstream, moderate government bureaucrats. They have serious work to do, the kind which you cannot even fathom.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Leo Gura

[zurew]

9 hours ago, Raze said:

this is very embarrassing for everyone who said it was a conspiracy.

No, its not. Just because a theory became more plausible down the road that does not mean that it was just as plausible in the beginning as it is right now.

This is not about who is right in the end, its about what process, methods and road you used to get to your conclusion using all the known facts at that time and its about how reliable your epistemic toolkit is.

This is similar to a bunch of dumb confident crypto day/week traders who say they won one time, and then they assume it wasn't luck, but it was becuase their method is reliable and then they lose all their money in the next run.

From 100 conspiracy theory, maybe a handful will become somewhat true. If a conspiracy head believes one theory confidently to be true, then they should use facts and then connecting those facts  in a way, where they don't need to make 10x times more assumptions than the mainstream narrative. Its extremely rare to see a well built up conspiracy case that is rigorous and sited with sources and using facts not assumptions.

[Leo Gura]

57 minutes ago, zurew said:

This is not about who is right in the end, its about what process, methods and road you used to get to your conclusion using all the known facts at that time and its about how reliable your epistemic toolkit is.

This!

[Leo Gura]

This reminds me of when Joe Rogan says that Alex Jones is right about a lot of things.

Lol

[Raze]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

It's not embarrassing at all. The government and media is working perfectly in this case.

Fringe theories which have the potential to be weaponized in partisan and political manner and harm millions of people with paranoia should not be mainstreamed and legitimized by government or big media. Those theories can surface on their own once they gather sufficient credibility through overwhelming accumulation of evidence.

This case is a perfect example of why it's good to be conservative with your theories and epistemology. And by "conservative" I don't mean that right-wing populist culture-war trash. I mean truly conservative. Conservative means: You don't make a claim about reality unless you got overwhelming evidence for it. There was never any overwhelming solid evidence in the early days of a lab leak. It was all just speculation.  The evidence is still weak 2 years later.

The FBI is doing an excellent job, despite all the online fools crying about bias.

It wasn’t a fringe theory, it was always a possibility that was never debunked. Banning people from social media for suggesting it is ridiculous when there was no evidence it was false. 

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, Raze said:

Banning people from social media for suggesting it is ridiculous when there was no evidence it was false.

The manner in which people were spreading that particular theory, in the middle of a pandemic where millions were dying, was irresponsible, and social media companies had a responsibility to keep such ideas from poisoning the collective epistemic ecosystem.

My question to you is very simple: If you were personally responsible for ensuring the health of our epistemic ecosystem, how would you prevent bad faith actors and devils from hijacking social media platforms to spread poisonous ideas which might result in the deaths of tens of thousands of people?

See? It's easy to criticize from the sidelines when you are not actually in a position of responsibility for the well-being of millions. It's very different when you own a social platform the size of YT or are President of the US. Now actual lives are in your hands, and you cannot ignore that.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Raze]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The manner in which people were spreading that particular theory, in the middle of a pandemic where millions were dying, was irresponsible, and social media companies had a responsibility to keep such ideas from poisoning the collective epistemic ecosystem.

My question to you is very simple: If you were personally responsible for ensuring the health of our epistemic ecosystem, how would you prevent bad faith actors and devils from hijacking social media platforms to spread poisonous ideas which might result in the deaths of tens of thousands of people?

See? It's easy to criticize from the sidelines when you are not actually in a position of responsibility for the well-being of millions. It's very different when you own a social platform the size of YT or are President of the US. Now actual lives are in your hands, and you cannot ignore that.

It’s also irresponsible to declare something off limits of discussion as misinformation when it isn’t proven to be misinformation. You are misleading the public into thinking something isn’t true when it very well could be. They simply didn’t know and pretended they did.

How would allowing discussion of the lab leak put tens of thousands at risk? That idea by itself doesn’t underestimate covid.

Also, the media spectacularly failed in messaging in the opposite direction. Polling data showed that the average person, and young people especially vastly overestimated the risks of covid and it lead to undue economic stress and policies like school shutdowns which caused far more harm then benefit. They spread fear of covid, which raises stress and hurts immune systems making covid even deadlier.

[Leo Gura]

20 minutes ago, Raze said:

It’s also irresponsible to declare something off limits of discussion as misinformation when it isn’t proven to be misinformation.

That is technically true. However in practice it's hard to prove everything as misinformation given that the right's strategy is explicitly to "flood the zone with shit".

Quote

How would allowing discussion of the lab leak put tens of thousands at risk? That idea by itself doesn’t underestimate covid.

Just calling it the "China virus" lead to an increase in hate crimes against Asians, for example.

The problem is that people spreading the lab leak theory are rarely just innocent actors. Such people have an entire worldview/agenda which combines stuff like lab leak, anti-vax, MAGA, nationalism, election denial, promotion of unproven drugs like Ivermectin, climate change denial, trans denial, racist comments, etc. And when such people get banned, it's often not for one theory, but for a string of badly misinformed posts. But then they cry that they got banned for some innocent lab leak theory.

Also, there is a big difference between how you post about it. Many of these posts were not innocent like: "I speculate that the Covid virus may have been leaked from a lab." Rather it's more in the style of: "Covid was definitely a lab leak, and this lab was funded by evil Big Pharma who now wants to sell you the vax, which is killing more people than Covid itself. And you should be taking Ivermectin instead because it is safe."

The problem is people who spread these conspiracy theories have very low epistemic standards and will engage in all sorts of wild speculation but state it as fact and tie it in with their political agenda and biases. So it becomes a giant pool of shit.

Quote

Also, the media spectacularly failed in messaging in the opposite direction. Polling data showed that the average person, and young people especially vastly overestimated the risks of covid and it lead to undue economic stress and policies like school shutdowns which caused far more harm then benefit. They spread fear of covid, which raises stress and hurts immune systems making covid even deadlier.

Covid was a novel virus which was rapidly killing 1000s of people per day. So concerns about its danger and spread were very reasonable. In such a situation, being over-cautious is the responsible course of action. Imagine if schools were not closed and then it was discovered that Covid kills tens of 1000s of kids. Did you really want to media and gov to take that risk and gamble with your kids lives like that?

I think many people still have no idea how many people Covid actually kills per week. Take a guess, how many people are dying of Covid per week right now in the US?

Edited March 1, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Raze]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That is technically true. However in practice it's hard to prove everything as misinformation given that the right's strategy is explicitly to "flood the zone with shit".

Which is why social media should err on the side of free speech rather than curated speech. The more curation they make standard, the more responsible they are for what views are spread. While misinformation can be harmful, it can always be countered with more speech, there isn’t even good evidence social media censorship works as intended, plenty of viral memes about covid they banned still had attained huge audiences. 
 

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Just calling it the "China virus" lead to an increase in hate crimes against Asians, for example.

The problem is that people spreading the lab leak theory are rarely just innocent actors. Such people have an entire worldview/agenda which combines stuff like lab leak, anti-vax, MAGA, nationalism, election denial, promotion of unproven drugs like Ivermectin, climate change denial, trans denial, racist comments, etc. And when such people get banned, it's often not for one theory, but for a string of badly misinformed posts. But then they cry that they got banned for some innocent lab leak theory.

It was specific Facebook policy to take down posts suggesting covid was man made, they have just recently announced a change to allowing it. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/26/facebook-ban-covid-man-made-491053

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Covid was a novel virus which was rapidly killing 1000s of people per day. So concerns about its danger and spread were very reasonable. In such a situation, being over-cautious is the responsible course of action. Imagine if schools were not closed and then it was discovered that tends of 1000s of kids were dying. Did you really want to media and gov to take take risk and gamble with your kids lives like that?

I think many people still have no idea how many people Covid actually kills per week. Take a guess, how many people are dying of Covid per week right now in the US?

I don’t know how many, but I’m certain almost all of them have a prior serious health condition, are obese, elderly, or all three. Maybe you can make the argument the obese and elderly weren’t and still aren’t cautious enough. But the panic among younger people was real and had serious downstream effects. We knew pretty early on what the hospitalization rate was, that younger people were at significantly lower risk, and even that outdoor transmission was low, yet blue states especially had policies that did not take these into account and caused damage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp3gy_CLXho

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/10/pandemic-school-closures-americas-learning-loss/671868/

Edited March 1, 2023 by Raze

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, Raze said:

It was specific Facebook policy to take down posts suggesting covid was man made

Yes, individual posts. I think that was a responsible policy by Facebook to prevent the spread of potential poison. I have no problem with Facebook disallowing certain dangerous posts for public safety until more information becomes available. Certain hot viral topics can be moderated in such ways.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Leo Gura]

13 minutes ago, Raze said:

I don’t know how many, but I’m certain almost all of them have a prior serious health condition, are obese, elderly, or all three. Maybe you can make the argument the obese and elderly weren’t and still aren’t cautious enough. But the panic among younger people was real and had serious downstream effects. We knew pretty early on what the hospitalization rate was, that younger people were at significantly lower risk, and even that outdoor transmission was low, yet blue states especially had policies that did not take these into account and caused damage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp3gy_CLXho

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/10/pandemic-school-closures-americas-learning-loss/671868/

Teachers are old and obese in many cases. Many of them could have died. You are not thinking systemically enough about how this virus works. Teachers are not gonna want to teach if you treat them like slaves.

Hospitals were overflowing with patients, beyond capacity. That was one of the top reasons for lockdowns -- to limit virus spread to the point of overflowing hospitals and burning out doctors. The education and healthcare system can easily be overwhelmed if you don't manage it properly.

And the simple fact is that something like 33% of Americans are obese. So that's just the nature of the beast. It does no good to say, "Well, that teacher or doctor only died because she was obese, so that doesn't count", when nearly half your population is like that. If Americans were healthy then we would have more wiggle room to operate. But that ain't the case.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Raze]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, individual posts. I think that was a responsible policy by Facebook to prevent the spread of potential poison. I have no problem with Facebook disallowing certain dangerous posts for public safety until more information becomes available. Certain hot viral topics can be moderated in such ways.

No one will trust social media regulations or fact checks if they can’t even meet the minimum standard of not labeling something misinformation until it’s confirmed misinformation.

[Danioover9000]

@Raze

6 minutes ago, Raze said:

No one will trust social media regulations or fact checks if they can’t even meet the minimum standard of not labeling something misinformation until it’s confirmed misinformation.

   How do they know it's misinformation in the first place?

[Epikur]

29 minutes ago, Raze said:

No one will trust social media regulations or fact checks if they can’t even meet the minimum standard of not labeling something misinformation until it’s confirmed misinformation.

That is the reason guys like Jimmy Dore get followers. People do not like being lied and called conspiracy theorist when they are right.