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Originally Posted by PepsiFree
...it's kind of ironic. You're railing against exactly what you're doing, not living up to what you claimed was the "trademark" of a truly intelligent person... at all... and dabbling in conspiratorial reasoning. You're the embodiment of everything you're claiming to be against, but you're doing it for the narrative you've already decided is true, so that makes it... better?
What do you want me to call it if not conspiratorial? What would make you feel better about it?
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"Dabbling in conspiratorial reasoning?" Seriously? I mean you can make up that label and toss it out there, doesn't make it true. At least there was somewhat of an excuse for people using this line last year that doesn't make them look completely ridiculous today, less so for you now though.
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Intelligent people ask questions. Ask away. What intelligent people don't do, is make conclusions based on circumstantial evidence that they've overimagined the importance of because it fits a narrative.
I'm fine with a conclusion that this is man made, a lab leak, or naturally occurring. Whatever the actual evidence is, when enough of it is collected and a determination is made, is fine with me. I'll ask again, more specifically. With everything you claim to know to be true and the mountain of evidence that you claim there is, would you accept if they came out in a week or a month or whatever and said "we looked at the evidence and we think it was naturally occurring, no further investigation warranted."
You've already made your determination, and you don't know anything by any relevant standard. As someone who knows about as much as you, that seems incredibly silly.
Again, to be very specific, I'm not throwing any labels around because you're asking questions or considering a possibility, I'm throwing them around because of the reasoning you're using, and the types of conclusions you're making. This is not the mark of an intelligent person, if that's something you care to define.
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For another time, I'm not saying this was CONCLUSIVELY a lab leak. Ok? I've made posts in here talking about what it would mean in that case, given the interesting questions and long range ramifications involved. If that bugs you, just keep this disclaimer in your head so I don't have to type it out in fine print at the end of every post. I believe things should get investigated, and there's enough evidence at this point to have a serious international conversation about this research. Hopefully I won't have to tell you this for an additional time.
Now with the lawyer talk out of the way can we start having a discussion about merits and evidence of this? To answer your question yeah, if scientists came out tomorrow and said they had found the links between a bat virus in southern china and human virus in central china then I would drop this as a possibility instantly. They have that evidence for MERS, they have it for SARS, they don't have it for this. Is it possible that it hasn't been found yet? Sure. It might also not exist though. It's a tough hill to climb for natural proponents to put this virus in Wuhan, much less so for lab leak proponents. All we have is circumstantial evidence on either side, but nearly all of it favors a lab leak. I'm sorry you think that's conspiratorial but it's the truth right now, unless you wanna weigh in on this debate in a substantive way? I seriously don't get your points here besides trying to take potshots at me. You claim to be agnostic and waiting for all the evidence to come in and whatever scientists tell you is what you'll believe, but then you also accuse me of making faulty reasoning and bad conclusions without any substantiating points behind that. Either you're agnostic or you're not dude, if you wanna weigh in on the debate like Fuzz and others that's cool but if you're gonna pull this routine of pretending nothing's for certain beyond me being wrong and a hypocrite then I guess we're done here. It's boring.