4 ms·

This line of thought supports my connection to postmodernism. Or at least, to today's culture of... I don't even know what to call it. You're suggesting we put

This line of thought supports my connection to postmodernism. Or at least, to today's culture of... I don't even know what to call it. You're suggesting we put barriers in our minds as to what questions should be asked. No more open ended inquiry, no more search for truth. Truth should be a tool in the service of a goal, nothing more. Searching for it without a good reason is to be discouraged as a waste of effort. This is not harmless. Beside being wrong, this kind of logic is one step away from the problem of who's deciding what are the worthy questions. Next step you have maufacturing consen... hey, wasn't a book with this name? Yeah.

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
I'm not saying we never answer the question, I'm saying there's more important things to focus on right now. Many people are more concerned with the specific question of "where did it come from", I'm more concerned with the specific question "how do we prevent or mitigate this in the future." People are using the former question to reenforce biases against other countries or place blame where, to be frank, is a complete waste of time in my opinion. Specifically, because this will happen again and next time (regardless of origin), it might not be this (relatively) easy (compared to things like Ebola).
- radu_floricica 5y ago
  That's verbal sophistry. People shouldn't have a fixed set of priorities and take them in order, aka the "but there are starving people in Africa argument". You can wonder how the pandemic started without taking anything from the importance of fighting it. You might, in a different universe, argue that there are too many resources spent on investigating the origin on the pandemic. This is definitely not the case in our universe, where the investigation is laughably small. There are murder or missing person cases where there is more information available to the public than what we have now, and they affected 1 (one) victim. As for China's cooperation... I understand they have a different way of doing things, but it's kinda a global problem, so maybe we shouldn't be ok with doing the investigation their way, aka without any public involvement at all.

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago

I'm not saying we never answer the question, I'm saying there's more important things to focus on right now. Many people are more concerned with the specific question of "where did it come from", I'm more concerned with the specific question "how do we prevent or mitigate this in the future." People are using the former question to reenforce biases against other countries or place blame where, to be frank, is a complete waste of time in my opinion. Specifically, because this will happen again and next time (regardless of origin), it might not be this (relatively) easy (compared to things like Ebola).

radu_floricica 5y ago
That's verbal sophistry. People shouldn't have a fixed set of priorities and take them in order, aka the "but there are starving people in Africa argument". You can wonder how the pandemic started without taking anything from the importance of fighting it. You might, in a different universe, argue that there are too many resources spent on investigating the origin on the pandemic. This is definitely not the case in our universe, where the investigation is laughably small. There are murder or missing person cases where there is more information available to the public than what we have now, and they affected 1 (one) victim. As for China's cooperation... I understand they have a different way of doing things, but it's kinda a global problem, so maybe we shouldn't be ok with doing the investigation their way, aka without any public involvement at all.