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We can and should do that anyway, why do we need a smoking gun, I mean, beyond the pandemic we had.

by th0ma5 3y ago

khazhoux 3y ago
I'd avoid loaded terms like "smoking gun" in this discussion. My point is that if the pandemic was caused by a leak, then that would be a prior that could aid in future decision-making. I don't understand your position that we should not seek the truth. Somehow knowing the truth about a past event can have no bearing on the future?
- th0ma5 3y ago
  I don't think it is ultimately knowable in a way that is helpful. We need to act as if any of the possibilities happened because any of them could. I guess I also don't see why articles like this are needed to work on pandemic prevention. I can totally see why people need them for at the very least getting clicks and attention.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    It’s possible aliens came from space and dropped the virus off to see how we would handle it. How much effort should we put into preventing that pandemic path? Nearly every airline regulation that results in air travel being so safe today is because we spend such an enormous amount of resources investigating the root causes of accidents with the NTSB. Try suggesting to them “it doesn’t matter why the plane crashed, let’s just push for generic improvements to planes”. You’ll get (rightfully so) laughed out of the room.
    - th0ma5 3y ago
      The limit is five why's and often you can't even get that. Planes still crash. Perhaps we've pulled on this thread as much as we can. Especially with long ass articles like this that say nothing new. Seriously, what are we expecting to learn. This is like a plane at the bottom of the ocean never to be found. We'll never know what happened to this plane, and we don't have to. We know that situation was probably poor pilot mental health but pilots still have to lie about antidepressants. We don't need to find that plane to fix that.
      - khazhoux 3y ago
        > We'll never know what happened to this plane, You've decided the truth is unknowable, no good would come from knowing the truth, and searching for the truth is itself causing harm.
        th0ma5 3y ago
        Well we stopped looking for it though
        kortilla 3y ago
        Only after it became effectively impossible to find it or recover anything useful. That’s not anything like the Wuhan lab, which still exists and has many survivors and still has tons of evidence that hasn’t been corroded away by years of seawater. You edited in your quip about antidepressants and it just made your point even worse. There was still a significant amount to learn about what he did to the copilot and what the actual flight route was. There were multiple parties outside of the plane that had to be incompetent in many of the possible flight paths for MH370. Your solution of “stuff more antidepressants down everyone’s throats” will not work for the coverage gaps in ATC monitoring and handoffs between boundaries. Your lackadaisical approach to “well we spent a few days looking into this and can’t see anything obvious or think there is anything to gain by knowing the truth” is far from acceptable in any root cause analysis related to loss of life. How do you unequivocally know that this can’t be traced back to a manufacturing or design flaw in a piece of containment equipment used by many BSL labs around the world? The answer is that you can’t because there is no investigation right now. Burying your head in the sand is never good enough, not even if it’s politically convenient.
      - kortilla 3y ago
        > The limit is five why's and often you can't even get that. Planes still crash. This is a shockingly ignorant statement or willfully misleading. Air safety has improved by at least an order of magnitude[1] because of the culture of seeking out the truth, regardless of how disruptive or inconvenient. It is very rare to have a commercial airline crash now and significantly rarer to not understand exactly why (MH370 being a notable exception). Wherever you got that “often you can’t even got that” is complete and utter bullshit. 1. https://news.mit.edu/2020/study-commercial-flights-safer-ever-0124 https://news.mit.edu/2020/study-commercial-flights-safer-eve...

We can and should do that anyway, why do we need a smoking gun, I mean, beyond the pandemic we had.

by th0ma5 3y ago

We can and should do that anyway, why do we need a smoking gun, I mean, beyond the pandemic we had.

I'd avoid loaded terms like "smoking gun" in this discussion. My point is that if the pandemic was caused by a leak, then that would be a prior that could aid in future decision-making. I don't understand your position that we should not seek the truth. Somehow knowing the truth about a past event can have no bearing on the future?

th0ma5 3y ago
I don't think it is ultimately knowable in a way that is helpful. We need to act as if any of the possibilities happened because any of them could. I guess I also don't see why articles like this are needed to work on pandemic prevention. I can totally see why people need them for at the very least getting clicks and attention.
- kortilla 3y ago
  It’s possible aliens came from space and dropped the virus off to see how we would handle it. How much effort should we put into preventing that pandemic path? Nearly every airline regulation that results in air travel being so safe today is because we spend such an enormous amount of resources investigating the root causes of accidents with the NTSB. Try suggesting to them “it doesn’t matter why the plane crashed, let’s just push for generic improvements to planes”. You’ll get (rightfully so) laughed out of the room.
  - th0ma5 3y ago
    The limit is five why's and often you can't even get that. Planes still crash. Perhaps we've pulled on this thread as much as we can. Especially with long ass articles like this that say nothing new. Seriously, what are we expecting to learn. This is like a plane at the bottom of the ocean never to be found. We'll never know what happened to this plane, and we don't have to. We know that situation was probably poor pilot mental health but pilots still have to lie about antidepressants. We don't need to find that plane to fix that.
    - khazhoux 3y ago
      > We'll never know what happened to this plane, You've decided the truth is unknowable, no good would come from knowing the truth, and searching for the truth is itself causing harm.
      - th0ma5 3y ago
        Well we stopped looking for it though
        kortilla 3y ago
        Only after it became effectively impossible to find it or recover anything useful. That’s not anything like the Wuhan lab, which still exists and has many survivors and still has tons of evidence that hasn’t been corroded away by years of seawater. You edited in your quip about antidepressants and it just made your point even worse. There was still a significant amount to learn about what he did to the copilot and what the actual flight route was. There were multiple parties outside of the plane that had to be incompetent in many of the possible flight paths for MH370. Your solution of “stuff more antidepressants down everyone’s throats” will not work for the coverage gaps in ATC monitoring and handoffs between boundaries. Your lackadaisical approach to “well we spent a few days looking into this and can’t see anything obvious or think there is anything to gain by knowing the truth” is far from acceptable in any root cause analysis related to loss of life. How do you unequivocally know that this can’t be traced back to a manufacturing or design flaw in a piece of containment equipment used by many BSL labs around the world? The answer is that you can’t because there is no investigation right now. Burying your head in the sand is never good enough, not even if it’s politically convenient.
    - kortilla 3y ago
      > The limit is five why's and often you can't even get that. Planes still crash. This is a shockingly ignorant statement or willfully misleading. Air safety has improved by at least an order of magnitude[1] because of the culture of seeking out the truth, regardless of how disruptive or inconvenient. It is very rare to have a commercial airline crash now and significantly rarer to not understand exactly why (MH370 being a notable exception). Wherever you got that “often you can’t even got that” is complete and utter bullshit. 1. https://news.mit.edu/2020/study-commercial-flights-safer-ever-0124 https://news.mit.edu/2020/study-commercial-flights-safer-eve...