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My feelings still stand from that other thread. I don't deny any of this hypothetical lab interference but this new thread hit the top 5 of HN in under 30 minu

My feelings still stand from that other thread. I don't deny any of this hypothetical lab interference but this new thread hit the top 5 of HN in under 30 minutes with no comments. I don't like that. Why is the view being pushed so hard?

wearywanderer 5y ago
> Why is the view being pushed so hard? Probably because the very self-assure ''debunking'' of lab-origin was pushed so hard in so much of the media for the past year.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
xupybd 5y ago
It's the thing that once was a conspiracy theory that was getting right wing YouTube channels in trouble, now it's an article from a legitimate news source. To me that makes it very interesting.
- lawnchair_larry 5y ago
  The more “free thinking” non-right wing people were talking about it too. And being cast out by the NPC left as believing right wing conspiracies. Most of us who paid any attention knew this a year ago. We just weren’t allowed to talk about it in polite company. Just like several other narratives as of late. Some of which have yet to break through. Just wait until the mainstream picks up on the massive ivermectin scandal. That’s going to be a way bigger deal than this “revelation”. Slowly, more and more people are starting to realize how garbage the media has become and how the vast majority of what’s reported is really just activism pushing a narrative, and often not even true. It’s been reduced to ideology and clickbait. I’m glad we can finally say it. Of course it came from the fucking lab. Anyone who believed otherwise should be ashamed of their gullibility and take steps to avoid buying obvious political propaganda in the future. It started right beside the world’s leading facility for bat coronaviruses where they do gain of function research. Where they have live bats. The species of bat it comes from lives like 1000 miles away. They go there and bring them back to the wuhan lab. The bats do not exist there otherwise. And this lab has a history of accidents. And there were no infected animals in the wet market. Yes it’s possible it could be a massive cascade of remarkable coincidences that would and have caused this, and it was a mysterious zoonotic origin that we still can’t explain (after changing explanations twice), but…come on. We ate up this obvious coverup story for over a year just because we hated Trump so much we allowed it to drop our IQ by like 30 points. At this point, it’s conspiracy theorist to claim that it didn’t come from the lab. What else did we get wrong during this hyper partisan blindness?
  - tim333 5y ago
    I posted stuff on the lab leak way back at the beginning (feb 20 or so) but I still think it's unproven. Even so I think people should have been able to discuss it in mainstream forums from the start. Also I think the Chinese owe it to the world to have some openness on the thing.
    - lawnchair_larry 5y ago
      It’s definitely unproven, yeah, but so obviously the most likely explanation and should have been explored seriously from the beginning. China’s denials should have never been taken seriously.
  - avs733 5y ago
    > cast out by the NPC left In case anyone is unfamiliar with 'NPC left' (non player character) it is a right wing slur for people they disagree with. [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/politics/npc-twitter-ban.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/politics/npc-twitter-b...
    - lawnchair_larry 5y ago
      It’s not “right wing” or pro-Trump at all, but this NYT explanation is hilarious. It’s just a joke reference to the simulation theory, and refers to someone who has their opinions “assigned” to them, left or right, and doesn’t imply disagreement. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=NPC&amp=true&defid=13042309 https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=NPC&amp=true...
      - avs733 5y ago
        NPC is a meme. Your link to urbandictionary is particularly interesting if you look at the contributors history... NPC left is a term specifically to fuzz anti-progressive animus through 'memeing' language. This type of coded language is a common tactic of white supremacists [0-4]. You may have done it intentionally or not, but it is what it is [0,1,3]. If this is unintentional, you should be aware that that language is created specifically to play with this irony and ambiguity and draw people in while taking a stance that enables everyone involved to claim [4]. [0] https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-white-supremacists-use-soft-power https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-white-supremacists-use-soft-... [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/04/26/990274685/how-extremists-weaponize-irony-to-spread-hate https://www.npr.org/2021/04/26/990274685/how-extremists-weap... [2] https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-alt-right-terminology-20161115-story.html https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-alt-right-terminolo... [3] https://mashable.com/2017/05/05/alt-right-memes-france-world/ https://mashable.com/2017/05/05/alt-right-memes-france-world... [4] https://journals.openedition.org/angles/369 https://journals.openedition.org/angles/369
PicassoCTs 5y ago
Because we need accountability. This whole disaster of denying a problem, till it was a catastrophe, talking it small, until it was a pandemic, failing institutions and failing systems (face before scientific truth) is a liability that needs to be dismantled.
- avs733 5y ago
  pushing a view point isn't accountability. it is the opposite of accountability. you say face before scientific truth but the people pushing this theory are not focused on scientific truth anymore than you think China is.
  - Florin_Andrei 5y ago
    You don't get it. They absolutely need accountability produced somehow, even out of thin air if need be.
    - avs733 5y ago
      watching these conversations, I see this as the most fundamental comment as to what is going on.
- captainmuon 5y ago
  The idea of accountability is the thing that is holding back the investigation. Because if China were found "culpable", there is no way they could pay compensation for the trillions of economic damage and all the lifes lost. Not even the geopolitical oppenents of China are willing to go there. What we need is to prevent further such incidents in the future. So if the question of accountability is off the table, lets just think about what the consequence would be if the virus was an accidential lab escape (from any country). We should immediately take measures such that that never happens again. That means increasing the safety measures and transparency, and possibly banning gain-of-function research. Unfortunately, the undercurrent of the whole discussion is "who is to blame", not "how to prevent this again". (Also, I think this is one of the reasons they tried to downplay the outbreak in the beginning.)
tick_tock_tick 5y ago
It's being pushed hard because the push back against it was so weird. Random "experts" with no evidence writing all sorts of absolutes statements that a lab leak was impossible. Then for a while the media was calling people crazy or racist for believing a very reasonable theory that China has done everything in its' power to make un-confirmable.
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  That’s not what happened. What happened was that a conspiracy theory was generally dismissed because it was being pushed in the right wing media, with literally zero evidence to support it. There weren’t “experts with no evidence” of the non existence of a lab leak. There were experts claiming that there is no evidence of a lab leak.
- Florin_Andrei 5y ago
  The "random expects", as you describe them, were saying exactly that: that there is no evidence, so stop the conspiracy theorizing until some evidence is produced.
avs733 5y ago
yeah that seems to be the thing. a report that is highly circumstantial but implies a certain inference from a foreign intelligence agency that says it 'needs further investigation' provided to a historically right wing publication when in contrast the people who do this for a living have consistently had exactly the same line: we need to investigate the cause, the evidence we have suggests one thing, and this theory that keeps getting pushed is scientifically without evidence
- lawnchair_larry 5y ago
  This is incorrect. You’re behind on this one.
tristanj 5y ago
Because during the pandemic, the major media outlets dismissed it as a conspiracy theory and completely shut down conversation on the topic. The New York Times claimed this theory was "debunked". Fact checkers claimed this was "pants on fire" lying. For months, Twitter suspended accounts sharing the lab-leak theory, because they were "spreading misinformation". The past few weeks, all the above parties did a complete about-face, with no apology. Vox silently edited one of its March 2020 articles "debunking" claims that Covid-19 originated in a lab leak https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1396769717805780994 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1396769717805780994 . The fact that the mainstream media can so effectively censor a theory against the prescribed narrative is extremely harmful to our democracy. It makes you question what other narratives being pushed today are similarly misguided.
- kokanator 5y ago
  There will be no apology. The evidence is beginning to be stacked against them so they need to run with it so it looks like the broke the story.
Florin_Andrei 5y ago
> Why is the view being pushed so hard? Because it validates a certain worldview. "I need things to be this way, or else the universe is wrong."
dang 5y ago
It's not being "pushed" except in the sense that any sensational topic gets pushed: by the pressure of people's excitement and sensations. This is the cycle of life on the internet. Edit: I wrote more about this here if anyone wants more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27268101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27268101
- undersuit 5y ago
  While you probably have a higher level view of what "pushing" is on HN, I'm not seeing this topic being posted and quickly upvoted with minimal interaction on just HN... but I'm also just a normal user of other sites like Reddit too. Maybe I'm just overreacting to the reposts.
  - dang 5y ago
    It's just a sensational topic - maybe the most sensational MOT (major ongoing topic) of the moment, no? The same psychology must apply to that everywhere. This story has other advantages (from the point of view of the story). It is intriguing in a way that's perfect for internet detectives, sort of like a board game with a low barrier to entry: you can get up and running with a few links in a few minutes, jump in and play. It's personally relevant to everyone who was affected by the pandemic, i.e. literally everyone. And the stakes are high geopolitically, so it's got all the energy of that drama as well (not great for discussion quality, but fabulous if you're the story and want to spread). I'm just describing the psychology of a story like this. I'm not putting down anyone who's interested in it or who's not interested in it, and I'm certainly not commenting on the story itself—only why it's easy to understand why people would be posting it, upvoting it, and flagging it. Different people, of course. You're not the only person who is reacting to the reposts. Based on past experience, we should all brace ourselves for throngs more of them. Maybe this would be a good place to repeat the principles of MOTs and SNI: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20sni%20mot%20&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=follow-up%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... I didn't really think that the current story was SNI, given that we've had several other major threads recently, but it's a borderline case and the community seems to have voted otherwise.
screye 5y ago
Outside of the reasons listed: 'Because justice, moral high ground and emotions are important to people, and people elect governments' From a meta "gain of function" POV, China has gained from the pandemic. It has kick started its economy with months of head start, while all of the BRIC and western competition have suffered through the pandemic. China hasn't lost a single opportunity to let it be known that the superiority of their governance methods and ideology has a hand in how well they've handled the pandemic. Their main competition: US (in front) and India (much behind) have particularly suffered and been the subject of ridicule among the Chinese. The winds of change are heralded in by emotion and perception. Being able to associate the grief of millions to a single regime is the kind of weapon that itching to be wielded. (to a lesser degree the democrats already wielded it in ousting Trump) It can permanently damage the credibility of mainstream media organizations and social media giants. It can breed nationalism and anti-PRC sentiment. It can legitimize scepticism towards empirical science and make heterodox/conspiratorial ideas harder to dismiss. It can be used to break the break the stranglehold of elite media/universities as unquestionable source of truth. Whether the outcomes are to our liking is secondary. The answer to the question if the issue is worth pursuing is a resounding YES !
avs733 5y ago
I'll re-iterate how important this comment is, sorry dang, when I see the responses to this comment, some comments of mine, and other 'this is a suspicious pattern' comments. There is nothing insulating HN from being a home for some particular conspiracy theory anymore than other sites. The willingness of some comments in this thread to just absolutely push the 'lab' narrative despite admitting the lack of evidence is deeply troubling.

wearywanderer 5y ago

> Why is the view being pushed so hard? Probably because the very self-assure ''debunking'' of lab-origin was pushed so hard in so much of the media for the past year.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

xupybd 5y ago

It's the thing that once was a conspiracy theory that was getting right wing YouTube channels in trouble, now it's an article from a legitimate news source. To me that makes it very interesting.

lawnchair_larry 5y ago
The more “free thinking” non-right wing people were talking about it too. And being cast out by the NPC left as believing right wing conspiracies. Most of us who paid any attention knew this a year ago. We just weren’t allowed to talk about it in polite company. Just like several other narratives as of late. Some of which have yet to break through. Just wait until the mainstream picks up on the massive ivermectin scandal. That’s going to be a way bigger deal than this “revelation”. Slowly, more and more people are starting to realize how garbage the media has become and how the vast majority of what’s reported is really just activism pushing a narrative, and often not even true. It’s been reduced to ideology and clickbait. I’m glad we can finally say it. Of course it came from the fucking lab. Anyone who believed otherwise should be ashamed of their gullibility and take steps to avoid buying obvious political propaganda in the future. It started right beside the world’s leading facility for bat coronaviruses where they do gain of function research. Where they have live bats. The species of bat it comes from lives like 1000 miles away. They go there and bring them back to the wuhan lab. The bats do not exist there otherwise. And this lab has a history of accidents. And there were no infected animals in the wet market. Yes it’s possible it could be a massive cascade of remarkable coincidences that would and have caused this, and it was a mysterious zoonotic origin that we still can’t explain (after changing explanations twice), but…come on. We ate up this obvious coverup story for over a year just because we hated Trump so much we allowed it to drop our IQ by like 30 points. At this point, it’s conspiracy theorist to claim that it didn’t come from the lab. What else did we get wrong during this hyper partisan blindness?
- tim333 5y ago
  I posted stuff on the lab leak way back at the beginning (feb 20 or so) but I still think it's unproven. Even so I think people should have been able to discuss it in mainstream forums from the start. Also I think the Chinese owe it to the world to have some openness on the thing.
  - lawnchair_larry 5y ago
    It’s definitely unproven, yeah, but so obviously the most likely explanation and should have been explored seriously from the beginning. China’s denials should have never been taken seriously.
- avs733 5y ago
  > cast out by the NPC left In case anyone is unfamiliar with 'NPC left' (non player character) it is a right wing slur for people they disagree with. [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/politics/npc-twitter-ban.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/politics/npc-twitter-b...
  - lawnchair_larry 5y ago
    It’s not “right wing” or pro-Trump at all, but this NYT explanation is hilarious. It’s just a joke reference to the simulation theory, and refers to someone who has their opinions “assigned” to them, left or right, and doesn’t imply disagreement. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=NPC&amp=true&defid=13042309 https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=NPC&amp=true...
    - avs733 5y ago
      NPC is a meme. Your link to urbandictionary is particularly interesting if you look at the contributors history... NPC left is a term specifically to fuzz anti-progressive animus through 'memeing' language. This type of coded language is a common tactic of white supremacists [0-4]. You may have done it intentionally or not, but it is what it is [0,1,3]. If this is unintentional, you should be aware that that language is created specifically to play with this irony and ambiguity and draw people in while taking a stance that enables everyone involved to claim [4]. [0] https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-white-supremacists-use-soft-power https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-white-supremacists-use-soft-... [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/04/26/990274685/how-extremists-weaponize-irony-to-spread-hate https://www.npr.org/2021/04/26/990274685/how-extremists-weap... [2] https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-alt-right-terminology-20161115-story.html https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-alt-right-terminolo... [3] https://mashable.com/2017/05/05/alt-right-memes-france-world/ https://mashable.com/2017/05/05/alt-right-memes-france-world... [4] https://journals.openedition.org/angles/369 https://journals.openedition.org/angles/369

PicassoCTs 5y ago

Because we need accountability. This whole disaster of denying a problem, till it was a catastrophe, talking it small, until it was a pandemic, failing institutions and failing systems (face before scientific truth) is a liability that needs to be dismantled.

avs733 5y ago
pushing a view point isn't accountability. it is the opposite of accountability. you say face before scientific truth but the people pushing this theory are not focused on scientific truth anymore than you think China is.
- Florin_Andrei 5y ago
  You don't get it. They absolutely need accountability produced somehow, even out of thin air if need be.
  - avs733 5y ago
    watching these conversations, I see this as the most fundamental comment as to what is going on.
captainmuon 5y ago
The idea of accountability is the thing that is holding back the investigation. Because if China were found "culpable", there is no way they could pay compensation for the trillions of economic damage and all the lifes lost. Not even the geopolitical oppenents of China are willing to go there. What we need is to prevent further such incidents in the future. So if the question of accountability is off the table, lets just think about what the consequence would be if the virus was an accidential lab escape (from any country). We should immediately take measures such that that never happens again. That means increasing the safety measures and transparency, and possibly banning gain-of-function research. Unfortunately, the undercurrent of the whole discussion is "who is to blame", not "how to prevent this again". (Also, I think this is one of the reasons they tried to downplay the outbreak in the beginning.)

tick_tock_tick 5y ago

It's being pushed hard because the push back against it was so weird. Random "experts" with no evidence writing all sorts of absolutes statements that a lab leak was impossible. Then for a while the media was calling people crazy or racist for believing a very reasonable theory that China has done everything in its' power to make un-confirmable.

manuelabeledo 5y ago
That’s not what happened. What happened was that a conspiracy theory was generally dismissed because it was being pushed in the right wing media, with literally zero evidence to support it. There weren’t “experts with no evidence” of the non existence of a lab leak. There were experts claiming that there is no evidence of a lab leak.
Florin_Andrei 5y ago
The "random expects", as you describe them, were saying exactly that: that there is no evidence, so stop the conspiracy theorizing until some evidence is produced.

avs733 5y ago

yeah that seems to be the thing. a report that is highly circumstantial but implies a certain inference from a foreign intelligence agency that says it 'needs further investigation' provided to a historically right wing publication when in contrast the people who do this for a living have consistently had exactly the same line: we need to investigate the cause, the evidence we have suggests one thing, and this theory that keeps getting pushed is scientifically without evidence

lawnchair_larry 5y ago
This is incorrect. You’re behind on this one.

tristanj 5y ago

Because during the pandemic, the major media outlets dismissed it as a conspiracy theory and completely shut down conversation on the topic. The New York Times claimed this theory was "debunked". Fact checkers claimed this was "pants on fire" lying. For months, Twitter suspended accounts sharing the lab-leak theory, because they were "spreading misinformation". The past few weeks, all the above parties did a complete about-face, with no apology. Vox silently edited one of its March 2020 articles "debunking" claims that Covid-19 originated in a lab leak https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1396769717805780994 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1396769717805780994 . The fact that the mainstream media can so effectively censor a theory against the prescribed narrative is extremely harmful to our democracy. It makes you question what other narratives being pushed today are similarly misguided.

kokanator 5y ago
There will be no apology. The evidence is beginning to be stacked against them so they need to run with it so it looks like the broke the story.

Florin_Andrei 5y ago

> Why is the view being pushed so hard? Because it validates a certain worldview. "I need things to be this way, or else the universe is wrong."

dang 5y ago

It's not being "pushed" except in the sense that any sensational topic gets pushed: by the pressure of people's excitement and sensations. This is the cycle of life on the internet. Edit: I wrote more about this here if anyone wants more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27268101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27268101

undersuit 5y ago
While you probably have a higher level view of what "pushing" is on HN, I'm not seeing this topic being posted and quickly upvoted with minimal interaction on just HN... but I'm also just a normal user of other sites like Reddit too. Maybe I'm just overreacting to the reposts.
- dang 5y ago
  It's just a sensational topic - maybe the most sensational MOT (major ongoing topic) of the moment, no? The same psychology must apply to that everywhere. This story has other advantages (from the point of view of the story). It is intriguing in a way that's perfect for internet detectives, sort of like a board game with a low barrier to entry: you can get up and running with a few links in a few minutes, jump in and play. It's personally relevant to everyone who was affected by the pandemic, i.e. literally everyone. And the stakes are high geopolitically, so it's got all the energy of that drama as well (not great for discussion quality, but fabulous if you're the story and want to spread). I'm just describing the psychology of a story like this. I'm not putting down anyone who's interested in it or who's not interested in it, and I'm certainly not commenting on the story itself—only why it's easy to understand why people would be posting it, upvoting it, and flagging it. Different people, of course. You're not the only person who is reacting to the reposts. Based on past experience, we should all brace ourselves for throngs more of them. Maybe this would be a good place to repeat the principles of MOTs and SNI: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20sni%20mot%20&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=follow-up%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... I didn't really think that the current story was SNI, given that we've had several other major threads recently, but it's a borderline case and the community seems to have voted otherwise.

screye 5y ago

Outside of the reasons listed: 'Because justice, moral high ground and emotions are important to people, and people elect governments' From a meta "gain of function" POV, China has gained from the pandemic. It has kick started its economy with months of head start, while all of the BRIC and western competition have suffered through the pandemic. China hasn't lost a single opportunity to let it be known that the superiority of their governance methods and ideology has a hand in how well they've handled the pandemic. Their main competition: US (in front) and India (much behind) have particularly suffered and been the subject of ridicule among the Chinese. The winds of change are heralded in by emotion and perception. Being able to associate the grief of millions to a single regime is the kind of weapon that itching to be wielded. (to a lesser degree the democrats already wielded it in ousting Trump) It can permanently damage the credibility of mainstream media organizations and social media giants. It can breed nationalism and anti-PRC sentiment. It can legitimize scepticism towards empirical science and make heterodox/conspiratorial ideas harder to dismiss. It can be used to break the break the stranglehold of elite media/universities as unquestionable source of truth. Whether the outcomes are to our liking is secondary. The answer to the question if the issue is worth pursuing is a resounding YES !

avs733 5y ago

I'll re-iterate how important this comment is, sorry dang, when I see the responses to this comment, some comments of mine, and other 'this is a suspicious pattern' comments. There is nothing insulating HN from being a home for some particular conspiracy theory anymore than other sites. The willingness of some comments in this thread to just absolutely push the 'lab' narrative despite admitting the lack of evidence is deeply troubling.