3 ms·

It's still conjecture. I'm well aware of confirmation bias (that we're all susceptible to), but a recent query of the Goog says it's unclear and leans towards a

by pstuart 2mo ago

It's still conjecture. I'm well aware of confirmation bias (that we're all susceptible to), but a recent query of the Goog says it's unclear and leans towards a natural mutation. This does a good job of painting that picture: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/933 https://skeptoid.com/episodes/933 But this also returns to the "so what" path. The conspiracy paints GOF as "evil government doing bad things" (which is not unreasonable conjecture in many contexts), but the work is primarily intended for defensive measures: https://asm.org/getmedia/ef3e09db-a3c3-4eff-8e73-5d7edbcabb47/asm-gain-of-function-factsheet-2025.pdf https://asm.org/getmedia/ef3e09db-a3c3-4eff-8e73-5d7edbcabb4... Search Google for this: "did the us outsource GOF research into sars to wuhan labs in china" I found the answer to be reasonable and credible. Again, governments lie but so do conspiracy theories. To make this more HN aligned I'll share a story: I was introduced to Chuck Peddle at a wedding not long after the turn of the century. I first learned assembly language on the 6502 so I knew who he was and was thrilled to meet him and hear his stories. At that point in time he was working on some hardware startup in Malaysia (IIRC), and was a seasoned world traveller. The last part of our conversation was his observation through his travels that due to the nature of overcrowded cities in third world countries and the advent of air travel where people could disperse rapidly to anywhere else in the world, he shared a fear that a deadly outbreak would eventually happen and would travel the world in days, with horrifying consequences. That came to mind when Covid happened. Lastly, I'm not at all fond of these types of conspiracies because they spread like a virus and their value is primarily in giving people the feeling that they know what's going on and they know better than everyone else -- and it becomes such a part of their identity that trying to debunk that conspiracy is only perceived as a personal attack -- there's no room for reason. All of this "the truth is out there" while we have real conspiracies happening in broad daylight and people just shrug like "oh, that just happens, whatever". I'm referring to the current US presidential administration.

noduerme 2mo ago
Once again, I'm not an identitarian, nor was I trying to personally attack anyone, nor is my take on what happened an attempt to gain a sense of control over my environment (anymore than anyone's attempt to understand anything is an attempt to prepare oneself for future events). I find that your need to skew the conversation toward my personal psychology actually is a form of ad hominem, and your own anectdotes or what you found on Google have no relevance other than speciously attempting to increase your credibility in this conversation. I think my point stands that once a gain of function-mediated virus escaped a lab, the incentives aligned in such a way that the people and the government responsible for that fuckup took steps to cover it up, and that is a perfectly logical and reasonable conclusion.
- pstuart 2mo ago
  I'm sorry if it came across that way, I was addressing the issue and my frustrations with the community that pursue it -- I did not have you in mind personally at all, just the topic. I absolutely agree that government coverups are absolutely unacceptable. I state my conclusion as "it seems to be this way" whereas I read you as saying "no, it was this, case closed". Intent matters. In the courtroom and out of it. My frustration is that (from my perspective) the intent behind the lab leak theory is to turn it into a government plot against the people (and yes, those can happen), and that the whole affair of dealing with Covid was a nefarious plot to harm the population and importantly to force vaccines upon the masses. As the purported incident happened in China, there will likely never be any admission or redress. And the torches and pitchforks will continue coming for vaccine research. And I have every right to be less than happy about that.
  - noduerme 2mo ago
    The backlash against vaccines was/is idiotic, and tying vaccine fast tracking and (some) forced vaccination to some grand conspiracy notion of a virus being released in order to force nefarious vaccines on people, is completly unserious and falls into loony-bin conspiracy territory. I wouldn't even engage with anyone holding that theory. I actually think that, short-term pitchfork weilding reactionaries aside, covid was the best thing t happen since the mid-20th Century to advance both vaccine science and general uptake in the long run. In any case, I get my covid shot every year, and I own a lot of Moderna stock and feel fairly good about their platform curing other diseases. I would say this about the purported incident happening in China: From the perspective of the Chinese government, it really didn't matter whether it was a lab leak or not, as their concealment of the problem for 2-3 critical months would likely have happened even if saving face was not an issue. It was a simple projection to say that an authoritarian regime with a top-down economy and an unlimited ability to lock down outbreaks would gain an edge in relative GDP growth over a disorganized, democratic adversary, which would compound for every day they withheld information even though they were attempting to contain the spread within their own borders. That's the economic calculation I called an act of war.
    - 2mo ago

by pstuart 2mo ago

noduerme 2mo ago

Once again, I'm not an identitarian, nor was I trying to personally attack anyone, nor is my take on what happened an attempt to gain a sense of control over my environment (anymore than anyone's attempt to understand anything is an attempt to prepare oneself for future events). I find that your need to skew the conversation toward my personal psychology actually is a form of ad hominem, and your own anectdotes or what you found on Google have no relevance other than speciously attempting to increase your credibility in this conversation. I think my point stands that once a gain of function-mediated virus escaped a lab, the incentives aligned in such a way that the people and the government responsible for that fuckup took steps to cover it up, and that is a perfectly logical and reasonable conclusion.

pstuart 2mo ago
I'm sorry if it came across that way, I was addressing the issue and my frustrations with the community that pursue it -- I did not have you in mind personally at all, just the topic. I absolutely agree that government coverups are absolutely unacceptable. I state my conclusion as "it seems to be this way" whereas I read you as saying "no, it was this, case closed". Intent matters. In the courtroom and out of it. My frustration is that (from my perspective) the intent behind the lab leak theory is to turn it into a government plot against the people (and yes, those can happen), and that the whole affair of dealing with Covid was a nefarious plot to harm the population and importantly to force vaccines upon the masses. As the purported incident happened in China, there will likely never be any admission or redress. And the torches and pitchforks will continue coming for vaccine research. And I have every right to be less than happy about that.
- noduerme 2mo ago
  The backlash against vaccines was/is idiotic, and tying vaccine fast tracking and (some) forced vaccination to some grand conspiracy notion of a virus being released in order to force nefarious vaccines on people, is completly unserious and falls into loony-bin conspiracy territory. I wouldn't even engage with anyone holding that theory. I actually think that, short-term pitchfork weilding reactionaries aside, covid was the best thing t happen since the mid-20th Century to advance both vaccine science and general uptake in the long run. In any case, I get my covid shot every year, and I own a lot of Moderna stock and feel fairly good about their platform curing other diseases. I would say this about the purported incident happening in China: From the perspective of the Chinese government, it really didn't matter whether it was a lab leak or not, as their concealment of the problem for 2-3 critical months would likely have happened even if saving face was not an issue. It was a simple projection to say that an authoritarian regime with a top-down economy and an unlimited ability to lock down outbreaks would gain an edge in relative GDP growth over a disorganized, democratic adversary, which would compound for every day they withheld information even though they were attempting to contain the spread within their own borders. That's the economic calculation I called an act of war.
  - 2mo ago