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>Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence Say mr X was seen at the crime scene at 10 am, he als
by chaosbolt 4y ago
>Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence
Say mr X was seen at the crime scene at 10 am, he also knew the victim and lots of people have seen them fight a week ago, the victim had just came out of the bank with 20k$ in cash in a bag, mr X who's broke have been seen driving a car a month after the crime worth 18k$.
There is no evidence mr X killed the victim, but he probably did it.
Your argument removes probability, we have many coincidences linked to the lab leak theory, we don't have a 100% evidence that supports it, so we can assume it probably leaked from the lab, maybe it didn't, and since we can't quantify it with precision and a certain negligible error margin, we can use a language where probably happened means >50% and maybe happened means <50%.
A woman can safely assume her husband is cheating if she catches him flirting with girls online, find a different long hair on his coat everytime he travels for work, etc.
- rasz 4y agoYou forget the part where mr X went to a bar and asked patrons if anyone wants to rob and kill the victim (darpa grant proposal), but was told to get lost.
- mortehu 4y agoI think you are using a definition of evidence normally associated with criminal trials here, and not scientific evidence.
- chaosbolt 4y agoYeah sure I need to bring you mathematical irrefutable proof that some event happened, but you can just call me a conspiracy theorist or whatever new words go with it today: racist, sexist, religious, bigot, homophobe, transphobe, etc. with 0 evidence.
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y agoTouché - and that m'lud is why even the best barristers seldom get awarded the Nobel prize in any of the sciences.
- hcrean 4y agoAre you saying that our justice system is un-scientific? lol
- hackerNoose 4y agoThis is more akin to a criminal case where science can be used as evidence.
- Beltiras 4y agoMost journals require more evidence than what passes as such in a court of law. On the say-so of a dog can amount to evidence in some courts. Specifically talking about K9s granting reasonable cause to search a vehicle or premises, even if the science behind it is not supportive.
- scotchmi_st 4y agoI don't know how the law works where you live, but in my country, 'probably did it' isn't enough for a conviction. Even then, this isn't some spurious made up court trial, and the probabilities you're working with are easily inflated to suit the narrative you want. Conspiracy theorists will always say they have enough evidence for their theory, of course.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoThere's a difference between "not enough for conviction" (meaning, more investigation needed) and the whole system (from authorities, mainsteam media to social network bans) turning against anyone who even dares mention the lab leak hypothesis.
- zibby8 4y agoConcepts like “innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” are more about protecting people’s individual liberties than establishing a baseline about whether or not to believe something.
- jolux 4y agoThat’s not quite right — they’re establishing a baseline to believe something worthy of depriving someone’s liberties over.
- Fnoord 4y agoIndividual liberty equalling counting for criminal law, not civil law nor morals in effect in a society or community. E.g. in a club in San Francisco you might be checked before entry to prove you do not possess a knife or gun. Whereas in a club on the beach near Rotterdam anything goes. In the case someone gets stabbed or shot in the club in San Francisco its unlikely they passed security. Whereas in the Rotterdam example such boundary does not exist.
- Method-X 4y agoAh yes, the weaponization of stigma. Want to shut down critical thinking? Use words like kook, nut, conspiracy theorist, racist, etc. You're basically gaslighting people.
- ajross 4y ago> Say mr X was The problem is that none of the circumstantial evidence for a lab leak is remotely as convincing as your hypothetical. And most of it tends to be spun. Read the linked thread and note how many times the author throws out terms like "much more likely to be lab-generated" without evidence. We don't know any of that. We have very limited understanding of wild pathogen evolution in general. Likewise the "1000 miles from bat viruses" thing is spun. We don't know that either! We just know what we measured, not what we didn't. And you can spin it the other way, anyway: we know that the presumptive covid ancestor was at least as close as 1000 miles, on the same continent and within easy travel distance of a migratory flying species. It's true, that if the closest relative was in Argentina, that getting it to Wuhan would require a lot of weird argument. But from Yunnan? Seems not unreasonable. People continue to bang this hypothesis, and... it's not a bad hypothesis really. But the reason consensus among experts is behind natural evolution is that natural evolution remains a clearly better hypothesis. I know that's upsetting to people who want to believe the lab theory for whatever reason, but it is and remains the truth. Until someone finds better evidence, the lab leak is going to remain a popular conspiracy theory only.
- igouy 4y ago> Likewise the "1000 miles from bat viruses" thing is spun. 1000 miles just doesn't take long by truck. "… Mengla county, Yunnan province…" "… identification of four SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses in bats…" https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00709-1.pdf https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00709-1.pdf Google says that 1400 miles to Wuhan is just 24 hours driving.
- lock-the-spock 4y agoYou are confusing or conflating the lab-leak and lab-made theories.
- ajross 4y agoThen you'll need to educate me on the what you think distinction is. The linked tweet thread asserts both: that the virus was manufactured in the WIV and that it leaked by accident. There are stronger (and even less well grounded) ideas in the broader conspiracist community asserting that it was the result of bioweapons research, and sometimes even that it was deliberately released. Ebright himself doesn't truck with any of that nonsense.
- CPLX 4y agoThe things you describe are literally evidence.
- cycomanic 4y agoBut in science at least you always should test against the null hypothesis, and that is purposefully not done here like in many other "conspiracy theories". Note I'm not saying that the lab leak is necessarily a conspiracy theory or that it can not be true, I'm simply talking about the way of arguing. The way a lot of conspiracy arguments are being constructed is that they take a number of events which seem relatively improbable if regarded from general experience and then use that as proof because "it's impossible for these events to happen at the same time". However, looking in detail at the number of events occurring events actually become very probable (I mean there have been several instances of people winning the lottery twice).
- cycomanic 4y agoReplying to myself, seems like I went to the 1password.community page, which somehow is the 1st search result for me.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]