4 ms·

Except it's not a simulation, it is causing it to "really happen". The only difference hinges on the ability of human institutions to keep it contained, which a

by dTal 4y ago

Except it's not a simulation, it is causing it to "really happen". The only difference hinges on the ability of human institutions to keep it contained, which at the very least we have reason to be concerned about.

bayesian_horse 4y ago
A pandemic virus circulating in the wild is an incredibly fine-tuned machine. Just mashing together integral parts from two quite different genomes is not going to result in a Variant that is tuned enough. In order to make a Virus virulent and transmissive, it needs to evolve through multiple, probably dozens of hosts, and only if that is on a broad scale, like thousands of such lineages, does it have a chance of success. Even one lab leak isn't enough. The Virus would most likely die out on its own, if not it would get outcompeted by naturally developing variants. The risk of a lab leaking a variant in a way that it would outcompete natural strains is so miniscule compared to natural variants arising and doing the same, it's not worth mentioning.
- d0mine 4y ago
  Do we have definite proof that the original SARS-CoV-2 hasn't escaped the lab?
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    To what standard? It's the same game with climate change. When only 1% of the scientists dissent, that gives certain people enough confidence to believe the opposite of what the 99% believe.
    - xupybd 4y ago
      I'm always skeptical when people say x% of scientists agree or disagree with a given hypothesis. Most of the time these numbers are flat out wrong or misleading. Most scientists have very complex views on their own domain. Those complexities lead to a very nuanced understanding of topics that we lay people don't fully understand. Most have subtle disagreements on most topics.
      - InitialLastName 4y ago
        You can have even substantial disagreements with other people in your field without negating the possibility that the bulk of your field is in directional alignment with respect to the core of the matter. Climate change is a perfect example: 99% of people who study climate likely agree that a) the Earth is getting warmer on average, b) the warming is substantially exacerbated by human-derived emissions, and c) the medium- and long-term destabilization due to that warming has meaningful potential to have catastrophic effects any biomes, including those inhabited by humans. They likely disagree amongst themselves on a) how much warmer and over what timeline, b) how much of the warming is caused by humans, and c) what the specifics and timeline of the catastrophic effects are likely to be. In situations like the above, attempts to paint disagreement over magnitude as disagreement over direction are misleading at best and disingenuous at worst.
        xupybd 4y ago
        You are totally correct. The problem goes both ways. One camp will say there is significant disagreement on this issue therefore we need to act in a certain way. While the other side will say the scientists all agree so we have to act another way. But you have to be very specific about the claims you're make when you say scientists agree or disagree on a matter. You also cannot extrapolate even slightly when you do. For example you have made some very specific claims about the climate change consensus. But people often simply say X% of scientists agree on climate change, without defining what they mean about climate change. All of this is also done to support a given course of action. Those courses of action only make sense with a very specific model of climate change. Often a model that is not totally accurate or agreed upon. Then they often incorrectly quote the scientist. Such as Al Gore's famous prediction “Some of the models suggest to Dr Maslowski that there is a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.” When Dr Maslawski was not predicting anything as dramatic. In the other camp you have appeals to Freeman Dyson. But he does agree that man has altered the climate. He simply doesn't think drastic action is required, and that we will be able to counter its impact. Not surprising from the guy that came up with the ideas to harvest the entire energy output of the sun. The details matter and the appeal to authority that all the scientists agree with me is not as good as an argument on the facts.
    - d0mine 4y ago
      An Analysis of the Origins of the Covid-19 Pandemic: Interim Report [pdf] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33360216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33360216
- reuben_scratton 4y ago
  You must know that virologists routinely "serial passage" viruses through animal hosts? Evolving a candidate virus "through multiple, probably dozens of hosts" is what virology labs do. And lab leaks happen All The Time. SARS-1 escaped labs on six separate occasions.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    Serial passage actually weakens a Virus because this kind of evolution selects for properties that aren't useful for transmission outside the lab. And virulence usually decreases as well. Animal studies of this nature just don't have the numerical power to modify such properties intentionally.
- junofan 4y ago
  We have one other piece of evidence: Ecohealth Alliance will not share lab notebooks from Wuhan. As a Bayesian horse, you’ll know this “explains away” the natural origin hypothesis. The belief in a natural origin actually goes down.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    Bullshit. Absence of information means the uncertainty is not reduced...
TechBro8615 4y ago
In fact it seems like a reasonable assumption that on many days at a BSL-3+ lab, we're trusting at least one hungover graduate student who is operating on two hours of sleep at 9 in the morning, not to commit human error while implementing biosafety protocols to protect against the accidental release of a synthetic pathogen to the local urban population. Another comment in this thread suggested building these labs in a desert or some other extreme environment where scientists can be isolated for months at a time. This seems like an obviously necessary mitigation against the unknown risk of introducing synthetic pathogens that haven't been created in billions of years of evolution. And yet, the secretive groups funding and regulating this research instead choose to build their labs in urban centers. Why?
- inkcapmushroom 4y ago
  An obvious answer is it's expensive to build and hard to staff and maintain labs in extreme environments.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  Bioweapon labs have a history of being built on small islands for this reason. > This seems like an obviously necessary mitigation against the unknown risk of introducing synthetic pathogens that haven't been created in billions of years of evolution. I'd wager that it's likely that the COVID variant that was made in a lab was also created through evolution at some point. Every infected person with the virus has billions of viral replications taking place in their body, and each virus itself will have its own mutations. There's a high chance such mutations already took place, somewhere and in someone/something, but those mutants never created their own worldwide outbreaks. I think it's worthwhile to understand how mutations can affect a virus at the heart of a pandemic. Finding such mutations in the wild is a roll of the dice, and the chances of encountering something like it rise the longer and more widespread the epidemic is.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  None of that is practical. In reality, biosafety procedures in those labs are extremely good at preventing any incidents. If you think it's easy to infect yourself as a BSL-3 researcher, you probably have that impression from watching a movie or TV show. That's why isolating the researchers is not necessary. Also you underestimate the number of such labs and the amount and variety of work that such labs are doing. "Synthetic Pathogens" are not a thing. Synthetic viruses are hardly pathogenic at all.

by dTal 4y ago

bayesian_horse 4y ago

A pandemic virus circulating in the wild is an incredibly fine-tuned machine. Just mashing together integral parts from two quite different genomes is not going to result in a Variant that is tuned enough. In order to make a Virus virulent and transmissive, it needs to evolve through multiple, probably dozens of hosts, and only if that is on a broad scale, like thousands of such lineages, does it have a chance of success. Even one lab leak isn't enough. The Virus would most likely die out on its own, if not it would get outcompeted by naturally developing variants. The risk of a lab leaking a variant in a way that it would outcompete natural strains is so miniscule compared to natural variants arising and doing the same, it's not worth mentioning.

d0mine 4y ago
Do we have definite proof that the original SARS-CoV-2 hasn't escaped the lab?
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  To what standard? It's the same game with climate change. When only 1% of the scientists dissent, that gives certain people enough confidence to believe the opposite of what the 99% believe.
  - xupybd 4y ago
    I'm always skeptical when people say x% of scientists agree or disagree with a given hypothesis. Most of the time these numbers are flat out wrong or misleading. Most scientists have very complex views on their own domain. Those complexities lead to a very nuanced understanding of topics that we lay people don't fully understand. Most have subtle disagreements on most topics.
    - InitialLastName 4y ago
      You can have even substantial disagreements with other people in your field without negating the possibility that the bulk of your field is in directional alignment with respect to the core of the matter. Climate change is a perfect example: 99% of people who study climate likely agree that a) the Earth is getting warmer on average, b) the warming is substantially exacerbated by human-derived emissions, and c) the medium- and long-term destabilization due to that warming has meaningful potential to have catastrophic effects any biomes, including those inhabited by humans. They likely disagree amongst themselves on a) how much warmer and over what timeline, b) how much of the warming is caused by humans, and c) what the specifics and timeline of the catastrophic effects are likely to be. In situations like the above, attempts to paint disagreement over magnitude as disagreement over direction are misleading at best and disingenuous at worst.
      - xupybd 4y ago
        You are totally correct. The problem goes both ways. One camp will say there is significant disagreement on this issue therefore we need to act in a certain way. While the other side will say the scientists all agree so we have to act another way. But you have to be very specific about the claims you're make when you say scientists agree or disagree on a matter. You also cannot extrapolate even slightly when you do. For example you have made some very specific claims about the climate change consensus. But people often simply say X% of scientists agree on climate change, without defining what they mean about climate change. All of this is also done to support a given course of action. Those courses of action only make sense with a very specific model of climate change. Often a model that is not totally accurate or agreed upon. Then they often incorrectly quote the scientist. Such as Al Gore's famous prediction “Some of the models suggest to Dr Maslowski that there is a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.” When Dr Maslawski was not predicting anything as dramatic. In the other camp you have appeals to Freeman Dyson. But he does agree that man has altered the climate. He simply doesn't think drastic action is required, and that we will be able to counter its impact. Not surprising from the guy that came up with the ideas to harvest the entire energy output of the sun. The details matter and the appeal to authority that all the scientists agree with me is not as good as an argument on the facts.
  - d0mine 4y ago
    An Analysis of the Origins of the Covid-19 Pandemic: Interim Report [pdf] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33360216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33360216
reuben_scratton 4y ago
You must know that virologists routinely "serial passage" viruses through animal hosts? Evolving a candidate virus "through multiple, probably dozens of hosts" is what virology labs do. And lab leaks happen All The Time. SARS-1 escaped labs on six separate occasions.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  Serial passage actually weakens a Virus because this kind of evolution selects for properties that aren't useful for transmission outside the lab. And virulence usually decreases as well. Animal studies of this nature just don't have the numerical power to modify such properties intentionally.
junofan 4y ago
We have one other piece of evidence: Ecohealth Alliance will not share lab notebooks from Wuhan. As a Bayesian horse, you’ll know this “explains away” the natural origin hypothesis. The belief in a natural origin actually goes down.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  Bullshit. Absence of information means the uncertainty is not reduced...

TechBro8615 4y ago

In fact it seems like a reasonable assumption that on many days at a BSL-3+ lab, we're trusting at least one hungover graduate student who is operating on two hours of sleep at 9 in the morning, not to commit human error while implementing biosafety protocols to protect against the accidental release of a synthetic pathogen to the local urban population. Another comment in this thread suggested building these labs in a desert or some other extreme environment where scientists can be isolated for months at a time. This seems like an obviously necessary mitigation against the unknown risk of introducing synthetic pathogens that haven't been created in billions of years of evolution. And yet, the secretive groups funding and regulating this research instead choose to build their labs in urban centers. Why?

inkcapmushroom 4y ago
An obvious answer is it's expensive to build and hard to staff and maintain labs in extreme environments.
heavyset_go 4y ago
Bioweapon labs have a history of being built on small islands for this reason. > This seems like an obviously necessary mitigation against the unknown risk of introducing synthetic pathogens that haven't been created in billions of years of evolution. I'd wager that it's likely that the COVID variant that was made in a lab was also created through evolution at some point. Every infected person with the virus has billions of viral replications taking place in their body, and each virus itself will have its own mutations. There's a high chance such mutations already took place, somewhere and in someone/something, but those mutants never created their own worldwide outbreaks. I think it's worthwhile to understand how mutations can affect a virus at the heart of a pandemic. Finding such mutations in the wild is a roll of the dice, and the chances of encountering something like it rise the longer and more widespread the epidemic is.
bayesian_horse 4y ago
None of that is practical. In reality, biosafety procedures in those labs are extremely good at preventing any incidents. If you think it's easy to infect yourself as a BSL-3 researcher, you probably have that impression from watching a movie or TV show. That's why isolating the researchers is not necessary. Also you underestimate the number of such labs and the amount and variety of work that such labs are doing. "Synthetic Pathogens" are not a thing. Synthetic viruses are hardly pathogenic at all.