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There are extremely powerful interests on both sides who want it to have been, or not to have been, a lab leak. It's going to be very hard to get to anything re
by api 5y ago
There are extremely powerful interests on both sides who want it to have been, or not to have been, a lab leak. It's going to be very hard to get to anything resembling the truth here, especially for the general public who doesn't have the qualifications to delve into the details.
The article has a deeper point though that is worth thinking about regardless of the lab leak hypothesis: we are creating a dichotomy between absolute trust in expertise and mindless know-nothing populism. Both of these are cults of anti-intellectualism and authoritarianism.
That's the kind of setup that could lay the ground work for a new dark age. We're creating a package deal whereby one major fuckup by our most holy experts could undo the whole of scientific and liberal thought across the entire world.
It's analogous to how the religious fundamentalists have unwittingly helped the cause of atheism by making belief in God conditional on the acceptance of things like Biblical literalism. Either the Earth was created in six literal days 6000 years ago or there is no God. Well guess what? The Earth is not 6000 years old, and that's why churches are emptying generation after generation.
- Dah00n 5y agoThis is also why we can discuss this until we are all turning blue in the head. There are too many on either extreme side to have an interesting conversation that doesn't flow over with mud flinging. This whole topic is straight up politics and HN (sadly) would be better off with any of these lab leak discussions. People get angry and it spills over into other threads.
- mytailorisrich 5y agoAt the same time, articles like this one are insidious because they do advance the "lab leak hypothesis" without bringing any new information to the table. It's really a case of repeating something enough times so that, true or not, it becomes mainstream and accepted, which is exactly what the powerful interests pushing for that "hypothesis" are trying to achieve. IMHO, considering the current global situation and the ramifications, the wise thing to do would be to invest in research and investigations but to stop making headlines on this unless something significant emerges one way or the other. Unfortunately, if there is one thing that is absolutely impossible in our modern, connected Western world that runs on social media and outrage it is silence.