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Originally Posted by PepsiFree
You can be terrified by anything you imagine, that doesn't make it any more real.
This is the problem with a lot of this stuff. Take gain-of-function research, this was the posed theory:
"China may not have been playing with the same rules and may not have disclosed this research method"
It's a hypothetical. Here's your response:
"That's why it's so critical to get as close to a conclusive answer on this as possible, because this is a world wide problem that needs to be addressed ASAP. There was already great hesitation and ethical concerns about this research before, and now we can see that this is no longer a theoretical drawback, it's a real concern and the world is exceedingly likely that this was overall a pretty mild pathogen."
In one response, we've gone from "maybe this could have happened, maybe" to "now we know this is a real concern."
I think it's crucial to get to the bottom of the origin as conclusively as possible. But what I'm seeing is a lot of guessing, a lot of near-conspiracy theory level reasoning, and a lot of jumping to conclusions.
The likelihood that this virus was naturally occurring is overwhelmingly high. Depending which scientists (not journalists) directly involved and experienced in labs like this you follow, the chances of it being lab-created are extremely low, and the chances of it being a lab leak are even slightly lower than that. Yet armchair scientists who spend an hour on google seem to have some wildly different theories because yes, I get it, you read something here or there and are connecting eight different dots that fit the narrative most compelling in your mind.
The best thing one can do is let people do the work. You're not going to solve it.
One of the many bad things that has occurred over the last year is the rise in scientific commentary by decidedly unqualified people. This line of reasoning is no different than people who are afraid of vaccines or believe the earth is flat. The circumstantial facts that drive this are little different than the WMD threat, which the US went to war over, and we know how that turned out. The theory may have a higher degree of plausibility than these other things, but until you know, you don't. And unless you're actually qualified to find out, you're mostly playing a fool's game devoid of fact-based reasoning and fully reliant on inference and leaping.
And ask yourself this question, honestly: would you accept no conclusion, or a conclusion that suggests the first theory is the most likely, and to be taken as correct in absence of hard evidence to the contrary? Because if you wouldn't, then you're not being reasonable. And if you would, your language around this doesn't reflect that kind of openness.
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I'm open to the possibility that it was a natural origin. I'll just use strong language talking about the lab leak because right now, in my mind, the balance of evidence is weighing heavily in favor of the lab leak and it's not particularly close. But it's certainly not 100%. And I wouldn't call anyone who believes in a natural origin an idiot, or a science denier, or a conspiracy theorist, or state that there's categorically no chance it could be natural in origin like we saw play out in the other direction basically up until now.
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The best thing one can do is let people do the work. You're not going to solve it.
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Did I say I was gonna solve it? No. I'm calling for people to do the work. That's literally my argument.
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One of the many bad things that has occurred over the last year is the rise in scientific commentary by decidedly unqualified people. This line of reasoning is no different than people who are afraid of vaccines or believe the earth is flat. The circumstantial facts that drive this are little different than the WMD threat, which the US went to war over, and we know how that turned out. The theory may have a higher degree of plausibility than these other things, but until you know, you don't. And unless you're actually qualified to find out, you're mostly playing a fool's game devoid of fact-based reasoning and fully reliant on inference and leaping.
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I'd say a worse outcome that has happened this year is the complete politicization of real science by people who would rather make lazy appeal to authority arguments with the bonus of castigating those they disagree with. This thread is a perfect example of that, just look at the first few pages. Everyone who said there was 100% no chance this was possibleclaimed they were following the science and listening to experts, when actually they were just listening to a handpicked few that corroborated what they wanted the truth to be based on illogical reasoning that I've pointed out already. You would have to be a technical molecular biologist to say that the spike protein doesn't bind with 100% affinity, but you don't have to be a molecular biologist to say that that is not proof positive of a natural emergence. Everyone who claimed they were "following the science" by saying you'd have to be an idiot to think this was a lab leak are the ones looking stupid today. Because they weren't following science, they were politicizing it. A trademark of a truly intelligent person is the ability to ask smart penetrating questions about a subject they don't have expertise in, and if those answers don't make sense or don't follow logically they have the right to be skeptical and it's up to the experts to answer good questions fully. Can people ask dumb questions, take illogical stances, and have an ignorant view of science no matter what? Yeah, of course. But that doesn't mean you can throw out the ability to question things all together. This would be like me saying, "oh no one's allowed to question the Government of Alberta's stance on pipelines or energy cuz Sonya Savage has a masters degree in environmental law. Where's your masters degree? Then shut up". Is that a reasonable standard to you? You'd cave and say oh i guess you're right I cant have a reasoned opinion on any of this, guess the government knows best? I doubt it, there's always reasonable intelligent questions any lay person can ask about any field. It's disingenuous lazy way of making arguments and I'm done with it.
I don't think I'm guessing, or jumping to conclusions, or not using fact base reasoning like you accuse me of doing. If so I challenge you to point out where I have instead of just lobbing that out there. I'd also ask you what you think the strongest evidence of natural emergence is, because right now all you have is a seafood market were some but not all of the early cases are. That's it, unless you have something better? Or do we both need to get PHD's in virology before we're allowed to debate stuff like this.