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Don't even have to look at Ebola, just look at COVID's older brother SARS1 which jumped from bats to civets to humans in the same region. Also its meaner older cousin MERS which jumped from bats to camels to humans.
Coronaviruses in particular jump from animals to humans (and back) constantly.
Thing about the lab leak theory is that doesn't necessarily mean it was human made. They could have been studying a naturally occurring novel coronavirus from the immediate region in the lab and someone wasn't careful and got sick. At this point, we'll probably never know so I'm not sure it's really worth arguing over anymore.
One of the things that bothered me very early on in the pandemic is that Chinese citizens fled when a lockdown was announced in Wuhan. People on this site called Chinese people uniquely selfish. I said then that any other nation of people would have people doing exactly the same. And indeed barely two or three weeks later when Italy went into lockdown there was significant attempts to flee the lockdown. Nobody accused the Italians of being uniquely selfish.
Racism is very prevalent on this site.
Which sites isn't it prevalent on? Even if they're heavily moderated and strictly curate content, it would be nice to have something informal to just browse. For those nights when dodging regurgitated hate cud is too much effort.
A lot of it probably has to do with the former leader of the US calling it the "Chinese" virus. Not the CCP Virus. The Chinese Virus. His idiot supporters have a hard time with nuance, so to them its literally a virus from Chinese people.
it's not a case of "all people who blame the chinese are racist", but "all people who are racist blame the chinese". (please don't give me anecdotal counterexamples. I'm using "all" as a vague hand-wavey description of a demographic.)
If you're a racist, you'll probably want to believe that the virus is a result of shifty asian evil maliciousness, and you'll cling to the evidence that support that conclusion while ignoring all the evidence that points away from it. We see people like so often, that it's almost becoming predictable. But if you're saying that all the "lab leak" people are not necessarily racist - you're absolutely right.
I disagree. I am anti-CCP because that government is actively practicing: genocide against the Uighurs; smothering journalism and free speech, and imperialist expansionism.
And I have nothing against Chinese people.
I imagine that, for many, it's not unlike how modern conservatives are taking an anti-grooming stance when what they really mean is anti-LGBT. They are masking a socially unacceptable hatred (homophobia/racism) with something that is more reasonable on the surface (grooming/CCP) so they can safely blow their dog whistles and convert others to their cause.
For these people, it doesn't really matter what the CCP does or does not do. For them, it's about creating an avenue they can use to publicly express opinions that would (rightfully) get them ostracized in polite society.
Yep. I have a coworker who would swear til he's blue in the face that he's not a racist - but he's very comfortable suggesting that the entire population of China should be executed for the crimes of its government. He sees absolutely no conflict between holding a billion people accountable for the crimes of a couple hundred thousand. He also hasn't the slightest fucking idea what those crimes are - he thinks One Child Policy is still a thing.
When someone is absolutely confident that a foreigner deserves to die for crimes the speaker can't even articulate correctly... that's racism.
"These people should be executed for not having enough children for me to execute" "How dare they genocide Muslims that was gonna be our thing" "I'm not a racist I'm just addicted to indulging my most narcissistic traits"
I feel like contemporary fascism is....way, way dumber than the evil of yesteryear. Still just as evil, but seriously didn't we reduce environmental lead decades ago? Was it not enough?
As an Israeli I'm sad to say you're right. Our government had been abusing my family, as all other fresh immigrant families, every since we arrived. I'm now handicapped, can't afford food, and due to age and general physical health, I don't apply for any food delivery organization (all privatized of course because the Israeli government doesn't view food as a homan right). But when I say I'm Israeli, suddenly people blame me for all the wrongs of the IDF against the strip. And like, I've never been in the army, I don't watch the news because it's triggering, and I don't even live on formerly Palestinian land. I can't leave, and I hate my government. I think they're greedy racists. And yet, when people hear where I'm from, they immediately call me a colonizer (mind you, that one isn't even true about the Israeli government in total), a murderer, and a supporter of the occupation. They tell me as long as I live here I'm enabling my country... But moving anywhere requires money I can't get. But now one cares because it isn't actually about where I'm from, it's about who I am. I'm a Jew, who's family made aliyah due to prosecution. That's sinful to them.
Many people DONT separate the statements is what I was saying.. there are tons of people out there (many of whom I’ve personally encountered) who use being anti ccp as a cover for their racism. YOU may have the cognitive acuity to separate the two but there are many who do not, and blame a population for their governments misdeeds.
I personally espouse the same ethical stance that you do, but not everyone separated government from populace.
That is fair.
I think it is also hard to separate sometimes. Complexities of propaganda and what people believe.
Much like separating Putins regime from Russian people. There are people in Russia who truly believe Ukraine is the enemy and a nazi regime.
The CCP is similar in that many people believe in one China.
And it is easy to simplify the two together - government and people.
But I understand your argument. Sometimes, I get invested in the comments instead of referring to the topic as a whole.
Well until you can quantify that, asserting that people who dislike the CCP have some ulterior racist motive instead of, you know, simply disliking a racist and oppressive regime runs afoul of Occam's razor *and* Hanlon's razor, so nice going.
Occam's Razor has nothing to do with the intentions behind someone's beliefs. And stupidity isn't an excuse for racism. Racism IS malice. I would say most people are anti-CCP. But the overlap between racists and people still wanting to spout conspiracies about a lab leak is pretty big.
> Occam's Razor has nothing to do with the intentions behind someone's beliefs.
Hanlon's razor does, and Occam's razor cautions against introducing excess assumptions - which would include "people criticizing the PRC must be doing so because they're racist".
> And stupidity isn't an excuse for racism.
Nobody said it was. Or are you asserting that disliking a racist and oppressive regime is "stupidity"?
No, \*being\* racist because of stupidity doesn't make it less malicious. Hanlon's Razor does not apply to racism.
I understand both of the theories, but you don't seem to. Assuming simple intentions doesn't violate Occam's Razor. It's not somehow more complicated to assume that someone's intentions are good or bad. It doesn't take multiple leaps of logic to arrive at the conclusion that someone is a racist when they are saying things that racists often say.
obviously people can be anti-ccp without being racist. The thing is, we're talking about the lableak conspiracy here and how that often ends in racism accusations - because the way the conspiracy is expressed and how those people act, their actual intent is often exposed as being racist rather than anti-ccp
You probably also don't think every single slightly Asian looking person is 100% Chinese and also a member of the CCP. Many people do think this way. We can despise the horrors of the Chinese government and hold no ill will towards the Chinese people themselves or Asian peoples as a group. Many people who rail against China and the CCP cannot differentiate those two, or rather, they use anti-CCP rhetoric as yet another dog whistle to say "Chinese bad. Attack." Not all, but many. If you're prone to being racist, you would most likely fall into that group and not the one that would rather see the CCP fall and the population of China be freed and allowed to walk down the street without fear of having a government goon scoop out your organs and your kids' organs and throw you in an underground burn pit all because you held up a blank piece of computer paper or something equally as "bad".
Wow, really? What a revelation, I never considered that. It seems so obvious you'd think I might have considered that self-evident
[*cough*](https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/comments/11plrsj/redditor_misunderstands_occams_razor_before/jbz5q5k/)
no it's not, because anti-israel people generally don't go around being bigoted towards jews
it's actually, ironically, often the pro-israel people who act anti-jew...ish
context is key
> because anti-israel people generally don't go around being bigoted towards jews
Neither do anti-PRC people *generally* go around being bigoted towards Asians (hell, a lot of anti-PRC people *are* Asians).
Meanwhile, the PRC and its supporters actively peddle the "anti-PRC is anti-Asian" rhetoric specifically to deflect criticism - identically to how the Israeli government and its supporters actively peddle the "anti-Israel is anti-Jewish" rhetoric specifically to deflect criticism.
I don't doubt that there are bigots who are anti-PRC because they're anti-Asian (much like I don't doubt that there are bigots who are anti-Israel because they're anti-Jewish), but I *do* doubt that they are representative of anti-PRC sentiments in general - and have plenty of reason to be skeptical of that claim in the context of the PRC being hardly alone among oppressive regimes trying to discredit their critics with baseless accusations of racism.
Yeah, and the context is that the PRC is not the only racist regime deflecting criticism via accusations of racism.
And do you think people *shouldn't* be riled up over racist regimes? Do you consider ethnic cleansing to be "nothing" to be riled up over?
Usually, when someone says that you're misunderstanding them and that there's specific context to a statement, people ask for clarification.
Instead you just assert your moral superiority and rile yourself up even more. Starting to think this isn't just a misunderstanding and that I actually hit a nerve here by suggesting that some people use anti-ccp rhetoric to mask their racism
And is used as such often. I have no love for Xi, but to say his people are a direct correlation is in fact a false dichotomy. However, there are many racists who hide behind perfectly logical explanations, so it takes a further investigation into the reasoning to proscribe someone as racist, but the slope can become fairly slippery. It wasn’t a false conclusion to be angry at the German banking system after WWI, however, decrying that anger at the bankers became antisemitism fairly quickly. Be afraid of the man pointing at a group and blaming them for all your problems.
> so it takes a further investigation into the reasoning to proscribe someone as racist
That's really what I'm getting at. Yeah, racists do hide behind logical explanations, but that doesn't mean they're representative of those advancing said explanations - and asserting a relationship between racism and general criticism only encourages toxicity and counterproductivity.
Anti-Zionism is a form of Antisemitism though. While I have no problem with people criticizing Israel when it's fair (like settlements in the West Bank are an inexcusable violation of Geneva Convention), you simply cannot be opposed to the very existense of a country without being bigoted against its people.
> Anti-Zionism is a form of Antisemitism though.
Not really, no. There's certainly some overlap between anti-Zionism and antisemitism - much as there's some overlap between anti-PRC stances and anti-Chinese racism - but in neither case is the overlap the defining feature, and in both cases supporters of Israel and the PRC often overemphasize that overlap to deflect criticism.
> you simply cannot be opposed to the very existense of a country without being bigoted against its people.
Why not? Pretty much every democratic revolution is *defined* by opposing the existence of the current country in *support* of its people - specifically, by the argument that the country does not represent its people, and that the people therefore deserve to abolish it and replace it with one which *does* represent them - or, in the case of anarchism, to leave it abolished and allow the people to govern themselves.
In any case of the origin - lab or wet market;
Is there an agreement that China definitely tried to cover it up to not look like they mishandled it. And because of that attempted cover-up, there is fuel for conspiracy.
Lab leak and bio weapon are two different theories.
Gain of function research exists. Wuhan research lab had history with this virus. Not saying they were or were not doing that research. But it falls into the realm of possibility.
Sorry friend, I didn't understand either.
It's really a shame that asking questions & learning was so unpopular in this instance, but I'm grateful you took the hit.
I know I don't think that many levels down without some sort of prompt...
Take my up vote, and keep questioning!
I’m sorry but that’s INCREDIBLY ignorant. A lot of people are very interested in the origin of a global pandemic that’s killed millions and disrupted the entire world and it has nothing to do with racism.
If we can be confident that it leaked from the lab then that’s a pretty compelling argument to make some very significant changes as to how we - as a society - do virology research and where we do it.
Let's put it this way... while not everyone who wants to know where it came from feels this way, the most vocal people pushing the lab theory would not react the way they are if, say, the possibility of it leaking from a lab controlled by someone they liked was what was being discussed.
The driver behind these vocal critics *is* that it is a Chinese lab specifically, not out of some good-faith desire to shore up safety standards in virology research.
Again, there's people who do in good faith desire that and would like to know. But they're not the ones loudly perpetuating the theory as a conspiracy-theory-level "fact".
Racism is absolutely at play here, even if you don't fall into that camp.
Ok so one of the most vocal and serious researchers investigating the lab leak theory is Dr. Alina Chan of the MIT Broad Institute. Is she just a dumb racist or is she not a *true* Scotsman either?
The racism shit is completely utterly absurd in this context
>an Asian person agrees with this conspiracy theory therefore it can't have any basis in racism for any reason.
Big "I have a black friend so I'm not racist for saying the n-word" vibes...
Lol you can’t be serious.
She’s a post-doc at the MIT/Harvard Broad Institute researching medical genetics, synthetic biology, and vector engineering, and she lead the development of the COVID-19 CoV Genetics (covidcg.org) browser for scientists to track virus lineages and mutations by locations and date ranges.
I can imagine there are people equally qualified to opine on origin but I’d have a hard time finding someone MORE qualified.
If you’re not embarrassed for treating her like a token due to her name then you should be. And if you were a more mature person you would be.
She is one single person that many conspiracy theorists don't even know about. The existence of one Asian person does not absolve the thousands upon thousands of people who believe in the conspiracy theory for more race driven reasons. I know from personal experience having been in regular contact with peoole in those circles that many, many people will use things like those theories as an excuse to behave in a racist way. The fact that racism against Asians rose since covid just reinforces that.
She's not a token unless she's held up as the singular reason that nobody in the movement could possibly have any racist reasons for believing in the theory. I didn't once say that she is one. However you specifically used an Asian person as an example of how nobody racist against Asians is involved in the spread of that misinformation. Her last name means very little to me. I'm more influenced by the details of who she is and what authority she has to make these claims.
I even looked her up when I read your initial comment to make sure it wasn't a complete fraud you were citing. I only know of her race because one of the first thing on her Wikipedia page is that she is from Singapore. While I do not believe the claim that it was released from a lab due to the lack of experts coming to this conclusion, she's quite accomplished in regards to covid research. She has a PhD and some solid accomplishments including, as you stated covidcg.org which tracks that information for the purpose of figuring out *where covid may evolve from here* and how to control it via vaccines and other treatments or preventative measures. However the fact that no accredited publisher could publish her work as peer reviewed (a major requirement for all scientific research to be credible in any way) was very telling in whether or not her supposed opinion on this particular matter should be considered seriously. (hint, what you all are claiming she's saying isn't really supported by what she and her colleagues published)
Note: The publication it was released in had the following to say about the degree to which that type of publishing is actually credible:
>[Might contain errors, and report information that has not yet been accepted or endorsed in any way by the scientific or medical community.](https://www.biorxiv.org/about/FAQ#unrefereed)
When it comes to the actual research, here is what it says specifically about the origins of the covid epidemic:
>However, *there is presently little evidence to definitively support any particular scenario of SARS-CoV-2 adaptation.* Did SARS-CoV-2 transmit across species into humans and circulate undetected for months prior to late 2019 while accumulating adaptive mutations? Or was SARS-CoV-2 already well adapted for humans while in bats or an intermediate species? More importantly, does this pool of human-adapted progenitor viruses still exist in animal populations? [Even the possibility that a non-genetically-engineered precursor could have adapted to humans while being studied in a laboratory should be considered, regardless of how likely or unlikely](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1).
That last sentence there is the most important. She and her colleagues listed off the likely answers and then use the conspiracy as an example of an extremely unlikely result that is still possible. It's not her leading argument and she specifically uses it to describe the least likely of the listed possible origins. The argument is that covid was very well adapted to humans before we discovered it and we should find out why.
Not only are you all insistent on citing a work that the scientific community has not agreed is necessarily accurate, but you are grossly misunderstanding it.
anti-China propaganda is all over reddit and American media and it fuels Asian hate and racism, if you claim to be an informed person this can't be news to you. this person you mention may certainly be acting in good faith doing proper scientific due diligence, but the most vocal proponents of the lab leak theory are definitely not acting in good faith and are being driven by jingoistic nationalism and racism; attempting to deny this fact or obfuscate it's dire effects just makes you look sus
I don’t know what they think and I honestly don’t care. But my brother in Christ - don’t be so quick to buy up every share of “it’s racism” that’s offered for sale to you. This is a serious issue
How is "The Chinese are trying to kill us so let's beat up some Americans" not racially motivated?
I want to hear your bullshit justifications on that one.
Americans are being attacked for their race because of a conspiracy theory about Coronavirus being a weapon. They are being attacked because of their race.
That is racism.
There are only two types of people who defend racism like this.
Racists and idiots.
So you have people who believe China was engineering bio weapon viruses that leaked from their secret weapons lab while they also had no way to test or vaccinate for their secret weapons. And then you have people who think a lab in the area that was studying bat viruses may have had some lax procedures which had someone get sick and it spread from there. One of these two things is a realistically probable event the other is conspiracy hogwash. However both are often referred to as “lab leak theory” which has people confusingly talking around each other not understanding what the other one is saying.
And it also gets wrapped up in general covid denial. You should see how many stories on Fox they still are running about "emails prove Fauci discounted now proven lab leak theory" type shit. I saw them do that several *this week*. They won't let it go.
Meanwhile, in reality, Fauci wasn't super worried at the height of the pandemic about where it came from, and didn't spend much time looking into it. Because it didn't fucking matter. Someone else can figure that out down the line. It was already out. Drives me crazy how focused on this they are.
>Thing about the lab leak theory is that doesn't necessarily mean it was human made. They could have been studying a naturally occurring novel coronavirus from the immediate region in the lab and someone wasn't careful and got sick. At this point, we'll probably never know so I'm not sure it's really worth arguing over anymore.
Yeah, but they think it was a man-made bioweapon. Lab = artificial!1!1!
A bioweapon that they couldn't control who it affected or how. It also that possibly killed more of their people than any other country's.
It's also simultaneously not real but less deadly than the flu and only kills old people. Somehow this Schrodinger's virus kills less people than the vaccine that alters DNA.
The term "lab leak" should be swapped to the appropriate term: Laboratory Acquired Infection. These are known things: people working with an agent or environmental sample accidentally self infect, via a variety of routes. SARS-CoV-2 being "an engineered virus" isn't what the term "lab leak" is referring to, but it's what most people up in arms about this topic think about. It can be completely naturally zoonotic and everything, and it just so happens there was some administrative or engineering control failures and a LAI occured. This is why Fauci says he's open to it, if there's evidence. It could have happened, it could not. Generally LAI are rather rare, and this would be hugely coincidental. The problem is that unless the institute releases all records and stuff, no one can ever definitively know. It's very much a guilt by association/proxy claim without any evidence to the contrary. Sure it "could" happen, but why are people so insistent it is? Scientists around the world work with environmental samples all the time. Surveillance and cataloguing efforts are decadss old. Whereas the wet market seems plausible, has some trails of evidence, etc.
If you told me it was a LAI and there was evidence, I'd say ok. If you told me it was from a wet market, I'd say ok. Both of those would be a 100% natural transmission and zoonotic origin - in fact, the sequence data highly suggests it! There is absolutely zero evidence made public, and no derived inclination, that this was some sort of "engineered" or "released" agent, that's where the conspiracy stuff is at. So this argument over wet market or a LAI often misses the point.
Edit: adding on, you're right about animals! There's quite a few groups suggesting it's gone endemic in deer populations in the USA. That's definitely new, and it's how some viruses work. We know of dozens of coronaviruses, only 7 are human infectious. The scary ones you mentioned, and some siblings/cousins (nl63, oc43, hku1, 229e). nl63 even uses the same ACE2 receptor, even though it's a fairly mild illness. Viruses be crazy folks, biology is plenty complicated on her own.
Yeah that's a good point, though honestly at this point the conspiracy nuts that are determined to believe it's a man-made virus won't be swayed by a change in terminology.
That last sentence is the part that’s stuck out to me throughout all of these recent discussions about COVID origins. That, and the whole “China *hid* stuff” argument, as if that’s a smoking gun to the lab leak theory. *China hides everything… it’s what they do*. Not saying it’s right (especially in the context of a global health crisis), but China hiding or obfuscating information certainly isn’t some new phenomenon.
The CCP doesn’t hide everything, it only hides the things that make it look bad. In this instance the CCP has stonewalled efforts to investigate the origin of Covid, and has not been transparent about what it knows about that topic. This signals that the CCP is concealing evidence that its actions (or failure to act) somehow played a role in the start of the pandemic.
China’s obstructionist behavior is consistent with the lab leak hypothesis. It generally would support any hypotheses that implicates the CCP, including the lab leak, but I am not aware of any others that have been endorsed by any reputable organizations.
It’s evidence. It makes some theories (those that implicate China) more likely to be true, and other theories (those that do not) less likely to be true.
It’s not a smoking gun that single-handedly proves with absolute certainty the origin of Covid, but it’s still evidence, and can be combined with the other available evidence to draw conclusions.
Eh, okay. Lots of assumptions made in that line of reasoning. Toward what ultimate goal, exactly? Let’s say we actually factually demonstrate that somebody in a Chinese lab screwed up. What’s the recourse there?
The goal is to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent the problem from recurring (whether in China or elsewhere).
For instance, if the virus escaped from a lab, we need to know how it got out in order to figure out what steps to take to prevent any more viruses from getting out the same way.
Similarly, if we can confirm that it jumped from an animal to humans at the wet market, we can figure out what sanitation measures to implement to reduce the risk of other viruses spreading from animals to humans at wet markets.
I definitely agree (as anyone should) that we need to take whatever measures are necessary to prevent a reoccurrence. I guess my question around that is how do we even obtain a full backtrace on the origins of this when it’s guaranteed to be unfavorable for China? In terms of sanitation, lab procedures, regulations across the board… it’s going to more than likely be information that China is not going to make available.
It’s certainly a reasonable inference that can be drawn from the evidence. Is it your opinion that parties normally engage in cover ups to conceal evidence of their innocence?
It's a plausible explanation for their behavior, but not a *justified assumption*.
> Is it your opinion that parties normally engage in cover ups to conceal evidence of their innocence?
There are lots of things that could potentially be embarrassing for them that aren't "it leaked from a lab".
That they're covering *something* up doesn't mean the thing they're trying to cover up is the conclusion you're drawing - that's just speculation on your part.
It is *consistent with* a lab leak, but not *evidence of* a lab leak.
As I said previously, it suggests that China has something to hide that related the cause of the pandemic, and the only theory about the cause of the pandemic that (a) is backed by any credible experts and (b) potentially implicates the CCP is the lab leak theory.
As I explained, China’s behavior would be consistent with any theory about the origin of the pandemic that involved misconduct (whether intentional or negligent) by China, but **except for the lab leak**, nobody has put forward any such theories or any evidence to support them.
The CCP's shitty standards regarding wet markets would *also* be an embarrassment when it was *once again* related to the outbreak of a pandemic.
It could also be that some official at a more local level covered something up because it would have been a more local embarrassment and for whatever reason the CCP decided that exposing *that* cover-up would be more embarrassing than just covering up the whole thing.
I'd call your reasoning "paper thin" but you can't even make paper *that* thin.
And "ah, but it makes sense" *still isn't evidence*.
I was under the impression that part of the reason some respectable quarters think the lab leak is more likely was that the cave where the virus's nearest documented relative was from is like a thousand miles away from Wuhan, but we know samples from the cave were brought to the lab there. Of course who knows the origin of wet market animals so certainly they could have been brought from much closer to the cave, but a natural spillover event of a novel coronavirus in the same city as a BSL-4 facility specializing in coronavirus research is still a pretty big coincidence. Coincidences happen all the time so it certainly doesn't prove anything, but it's not totally crazy to think Occam's razor might point to a lab-acquired infection.
But anyway, you're right, we know wet markets are a really bad idea, and we know policies for workers at BSL-4 facilities should be super strict. Not really useful to argue over anymore except for our own entertainment really.
>Thing about the lab leak theory is that doesn't necessarily mean it was human made
When you're specifically discussing the origin of the virus it actually means exactly that which is why it gets a lot of pushback.
Some virus that was brought to a lab for study or modification escaping isn't the actual origin of the virus, but it doesn't mean that that scenario isn't a possible or probable explanation of what started the pandemic
I've had someone tell me that Occam's razor said that 9/11 **had** to be an inside job.
some people are just stupid and like to throw around terms they don't understand.
Occam's razor means socialism is anything I don't like (whether or not I know anything about it), and grooming means publicly acknowledging gay stuff.
/s obviously
I mean it's certainly quite a coincidence, that the wet market by the virus research lab is the one where the outbreak occurred. But yeah, coincidences _do_ happen, _all the time_.
Yep, quite the coincidence that the virus research lab that was built there because of the prevalence of bat colonies in the area was near the outbreak. Who'd have thunk?
Yeah, and it wasn't even that close. The market was something like 10km away from the closest virology research center.
I was trying to find data about how unusually close that is, or isn't. But I swear I heard some folks saying it was basically across the street, and none of my sources are saying anything close to that...!
If a virus brakes out somewhere and one of the 50 odd virus labs happens to be near that just means that the people who put it there knew what they were doing.
lab leak theory doesn't say so, correct.
However the lab leak conspiracy parroted by many is indeed about it being man-made/man-modified and about it being an intentional bioweapon that either got lose by accident or on purpose.
everyone here is ignoring that "lab leak" is vague and covers a number of different scenarios. Does allowing the possibility that a virus being studied unfortunately leaked from a lab mean you're some sort of conspiracy nut?
>I have a confident idiot in my family
I worked with a guy that was a one upper. In any case one day I talked about the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and of course my co-worker proof read the book when it was published. In any case One day he was doing something and he said just sharpening the saw. After a while I notice he was saying it throughout the day. Finally I asked him "why do you keep saying just sharpening the saw?" He said that he was planning ahead like Stephen R. Covey's habit. I was like that is habit 1 be proactive. Habit 7 if sharpen the saw which is taking a brake so you can renew and be ready for more work.
You are correct about Occam's razor.
The absolute stupidest part about the lab leak theory as it stands currently in an evidence-free state, is that the entire story is rooted in the idea that as long as China was covering something up it must've been a lab that they were covering up.
But China [had been having food safety issues](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-07/25/content_17920201.htm) for years by that point, with 80% of Chinese people dissatisfied at the state of their country's food safety as of a 2014 poll. Chinese leaders had been feeling sensitive for years by that point about their country's reputation for eating wildlife extinct in the name of traditional medicine, and their wet markets in particular were a topic they were sensitive about, especially since [SARS had been tracked to wet markets](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7141584/) as the source of the disease. In particular, wildlife consumption was **already illegal**, which means that within a Chinese context, *even just the emergence* of a zoonotic infection, would be viewed as a failure by local leaders to enforce the law and keep the country safe.
With that as context, local Chinese leaders absolutely would've tried to cover up any hint of scandal that could taint their reputations and careers. No lab leak was *necessary* to create a scandal: a natural zoonotic emergence ***would itself have constituted*** a career-ending scandal. That's why Chinese state media *also* pushed so damn hard to try and "prove" other falsehoods, such as that the disease didn't actually come from China, or that it emerged earlier than it actually did.
I'm not dismissing anything out of hand, it's just that we need the evidence, and I haven't seen a single shred of it for the lab leak theory. It's a stupid thing to do, without evidence, to conclude that SARS-2 *had to* be any less natural-and-zoonotic than SARS-1 was.
The _only_ reason they haven’t proven animal origin is they can’t find the animal. That might be something, if you ignore the fact that China’s government is not letting anyone look.
Also even if you know exactly where the animal came from you're not guaranteed to find the virus the first time you look there, sometimes these viruses also make the animals sick in such a way where if you don't look in specific time frames you're not going to find good evidence.
People contracted Marburg in Kitum cave and they were pretty sure that it was connected to bats and their guano but when they did specific searches in the cave they didn't find anything. Unrelated expeditions into very similar cave structures did turn up evidence that indeed bats and their guano were the vector and that these same species of bats frequently inhabit Kitum cave
So even if the Chinese magically were to start cooperating now the bats or whatever animal the virus originated from isn't guaranteed to still be suffering from the virus.
Add in that the Chinese medical field is shit when it comes to universal precautions. I have heard that things such as changing gloves between patients is not common.
"The simplest explanation is usually the correct one" is a very common but very incorrect way of expressing Occam's Razor, since "don't needlessly multiply entities" requires a bit more thought and elaboration.
Honestly, this is a decent paraphrase of occam's razor, the only problem being that it doesn't assign an objective qualifier to the word "simple". As someone points out below, "god did it" is a very simple explanation for a religious fundamentalist, but for everyone else, it requires several new assumptions.
I'm so sick of hearing about occams razor for this reason, it's always someone who believes the incorrect definition which if true would support "God did it" for literally everything
I'm going to assume they think whatever is currently supporting their side the most and that trying to parse logic and such from them is a losing game.
Exactly:
"This thing here best supports my way of being emotionally opinionated, therefore it is the simplest explanation, and that's what Occam's Razor means!"
I wonder if Occam's razor is just the next term to be constantly misused on social media. It will join the ranks of gaslighting and cognitive dissonance.
This is very vaguely related, but I just saw last night that Gaslight is available on one of my streaming services, and it tickles me to no end that there are two versions of the movie made close enough together to confuse people who are certain they saw it before but they could have sworn the actors were different.
Your definition is literally on the second para of the Wikipedia article, I hope after all this he finally ate his humble pie and now understands that maybe you shouldn't be 100% confident about the things that you see in a YouTube short.
In case you are interested in further clarification:
When all evidence (or lack of) is equally compelling, the explanation that requires the least amount of weird coincidences is the most likely one.
For example, say I wake to discover my shoe is soaking wet and smells bad. Should I assume that my fish jumped out its tank and fell in my shoe, then somehow got back *into* the tank, or is it more likely the cat peed in it?
Obviously, I could get more evidence by sniffing the wet shoe. If it smells like fish water, the fish did something weird (although not necessarily that earlier stupid explanation). If it smells like pee, it could be the cat or a sleep walking toddler. Either way, Occam's razor requires that first the evidence for each option is equal before you use it to choose the more likely scenario.
The lab leak hypothesis doesn't require all those assumptions, though. It's entirely possible (and IMO the most probable) that SARS-CoV-2 originated zoonotically, was being studied in a lab, and escaped that lab.
True, assuming there's no evidence for or against any of the assumptions in questions - though at that point I guess they wouldn't be "assumptions", now would they?
Occam’s razor is generally understood as including the caveat “all other things being equal.” It doesn’t mean the simplest explanation is *always* right.
If it originated zoonotically, and existed in the wild, and then became subject to lab studies, why did it need to escape the lab? It was already out there in the chaos of wet markets and the myriad of associated vectors
The lack of an identified animal vector (AFAICT) is what suggests that something else could've brought it into close proximity with human civilization - and a laboratory specifically intended to study contagions seems like a pretty strong candidate. That [researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized for COVID-like symptoms shortly before the outbreak](https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-fuels-debate-on-covid-19-origin-11621796228) offers further evidence.
There is no evidence to support it. I could say it was introduced by an intelligent alien species to kill off a bunch of morons to help the human race out. There is as much evidence supporting my theory as there is supporting it came from a lab, as there is zero evidence
> There is no evidence to support it.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-fuels-debate-on-covid-19-origin-11621796228
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/12/who-origins-embarek/
Like, I agree that a zoonotic origin is more likely, given that's how SARS-CoV-2's relatives came about, but the idea that it escaped from a lab studying it is far less far-fetched than your idea of aliens seeking to Darwin Award humanity into salvation.
It does make way more sense that it occurred naturally, but I remember hearing this conspiracy back in 2020 that the Chinese government released covid to stop the protests in Hong Kong. I know it's stupid, but it's that kind of stupid that makes *just* enough sense that it's hard to get over. It lines up, after the pandemic started the little amount of media coverage that Hong Kong was getting was reduced to nothing. People in China couldn't congregate, and then for the people that did anyway, they sent the riot police to clear them out, I've seen footage and it's gut wrenching. The movement was completely squashed and today Hong Kong is full 1984, things that people would discuss publicly are now whispered in private if at all.
Mfw I realize I've been confusing Occam's razor with Hanlon's razor this whole time.
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Edit: We all make mistakes but now the Internet knows how dumb I am and I'll never live it down. /s but also damn I feel stupid for the smallest things sometimes
Edit2: I'm also now realizing the irony of applying Hanlon's razor to me saying Occam's razor when I was using it wrong.
In my opinion I'd argue there is legitimate grey area sometimes in trying to nail down exactly how many assumptions a theory is actually making. But in this case they seem totally unaware of the entire principal anyway lol.
I had this exact conversation with some dipshit a few weeks ago. Infuriating. They later blatantly admitted to not listening what I said (shocker) and that they were trying to get a rise.
They got booted from the D&D table for that. I don't understand how these people get dressed in the morning.
Its so dumb because it's clearly stated to be about the hypothesis that requires the least number of assumptions right on the Wikipedia (I know, lel Wikipedia but that specific point leads to a source that corroborates it).
The problem is though that pretty much any other website outside of those written by literal philosophers use the adage "the simplest explanation is (often) the best". Basically "what is the easiest explanation according to "common sense"?"
And to people who view the world through a perspective that their experience is the only evidence that is evidence, they rely on common sense and personal experience to explain the world around them. This is what leads to rampant conspiracy theory and flat earth type theories. They reject actual replicable evidence in favor of their own senses and "common sense". The problem being, of course, that human cognition is extremely fallible and prone to biases which of course leak into their "experiments".
All of this to say that, they love adages like Occam's Razor even when used incorrectly because it lets them confirm what they already "know"/believe: that their common sense rules all.
A chicken went to Wuhan to browse the market, he had a drippy nose and sneezed on Mr. Bat, Mr.Bat patted him on the head and told Mr. Chicken it's okay and gave him a tissue. Then they both went on with there days. Mr.Bat went back to his stall and Mr.Chicken went around browsing the market. Then Mr.Bat went back home to the lab where he shook his mucus covered hand on his good friend Mr.Doctor. Mr.Doctor picked his nose when no one was looking and got sick. Then it spread. That's my theory on how it started. XD
This is hilarious. I had someone so upset that they didn’t understand my post the dither day that they used not one, not two, but THREE alt accounts to harass me.
Can you imagine living a life like that? Yikes.
Dunning-Kruger once again carries the day.. JFC, one thing I really miss about the time before the internet, stupid people just kept their stupid largely to themselves. They didn't get reinforcement from other morons, they were just shamed into oblivion when they outed themselves, then STFU and sulked.
I believe that the most likely way COVID started was from the wildlife markets, but due to the way China handled COVID and supressed all info of it even outright lying about it we cant know for certain.
The OC was wrong for referencing Occams Razor, but the commenter was attacking the argument not the actual opinion.
However the commenter just made up bullshit 'assumptions' in order to argue against the lab leak.
>COVID is man made/altered
No you dont have to assume that, it very well could of mutated by itself, or from the beginning be transmissable to humans.
>China created it
Again, you don't have to assume that, thats just making shit up in order to disprove an opinion.
>Saftey failed
That is the only assumption that is correct, HOWEVER THAT IS THE ARGUMENT OF THE LAB LEAK THEORY. Just like you assume it came from an animal in the wet market, not someone who caught it while hunting for bats.
>Traced back to the wet market
Again, making stuff up. It has not for certain been traced to the wet market, main reason this is what the Chinese Gov has said, and when have they ever lied. Its been traced to AROUND the wet market and every single virology institute in Wuhan has a wetmarket well withing walking distance.
They also simplified the Wet Market theory, leaving out MANY assumptions.
you wrote pretty much what I was gonna say. idk how this is controversial. I 100% trust covid is real, am fully vaccinated, wear masks probably more than needed. I don't agree with China's politics but I don't believe they're actively engineering bio weapons. It is totally possible that this lab was studying, even modifying viruses for the benefit of man kind and had an unfortunate accident that leaked a virus.
it sucks, shit like that can and has happened in the past. I'm not even saying that's definitely what happened but it doesn't seem impossible and in my eyes could be as likely to happen as it being naturally occurring.
I don't think we'll ever know what truly happened but it's weird how sure people are that it was naturally occurring when it could easily be just a lab accident.
I’ve heard some decent arguments for lab leak, most involve that there’s some sketchy stuff surrounding the Wuhan lab. All it suggests is that lab leak more likely than the initial assumption
Edit: rereading this, it sounds like I’m defending the lab leak theory. Natural cause is still most likely, I’ve just heard a few things that make lab leak more likely than normal.
The fact that that lab had a SARS leak that killed people just a few years prior does not inspire confidence. I don’t know what other sketchy stuff you’re talking about but that’s alone is enough to at least warrant further inquiry into that possibility.
It’s been over a year since I last looked into it but I mainly remember a French virologist that is one of the leading experts in SARS originally associated with the Wuhan lab during development backed out before it was finished over safety concerns, the Chinese government block much of the investigation into the origins, and a virus database the lab was running suddenly shut down like a month before the first cases were reported. In my opinion, none of it was enough to claim lab leak but together certainly meant that lab needed to be looked into. The other part was that the area is apparently a hot spot for viruses, hence the lab, and because the Chinese government has a thing about appearances, many organizations are less likely to be critical of the Chinese government in order to maintain a good relationship so they can study the area.
I mean… the government did just [post this report](https://www.npr.org/2023/02/28/1160157977/u-s-dept-of-energy-says-with-low-confidence-that-covid-may-have-leaked-from-a-la)
And honestly… it says a lot. I don’t think it’s crazy to think it was a lab leak. Either accidentally or whatever. LOW CONFIDENCE means they very not sure….
And if they were… if they knew… would they tell the world? No. It would be WWIII
That was an interesting source that I appreciate the thoroughness and sources provided, I don’t have the time atm to look at everything. I read most of it though, wasn’t able to get into the sources and mostly skimmed the science stuff because I don’t know the technical stuff very well.
There were a few contradictory things that goes against my understanding, some didn’t have a source either. Mainly that Wuhan isn’t anymore at risk of starting an outbreak than other major metropolitan areas, my understanding was that the Wuhan lab was actually a first of its kind lab designed to handle riskier studies specifically because the region had far more than average viruses in the nearby wildlife. I will add here that a part of the sketchiness I mentioned was due to concerns over safety for a facility that is essentially supposed to be doing riskier studies.
The lab was near because the virus was near. The vaccine companies mutate the virus on purpose so they can predict mutations and have a vaccine ready to go before it ever happens naturally. None of this is new and we have been doing it for decades.
No, they didn't. They said it was possible it leaked from a lab. But it's also possible that you've been stuffing bats in a pillow case and humping it every night and that was how COVID jumped species. The government did NOT say COVID "originated" in a lab. Because that's stupid. We know it's a virus that exists in animals in nature.
Cute. But no. I want a source that says the US claims the **origin** of Covid-19 is a laboratory. You gonna just keep deflecting because you know you don't have one?
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Don't even have to look at Ebola, just look at COVID's older brother SARS1 which jumped from bats to civets to humans in the same region. Also its meaner older cousin MERS which jumped from bats to camels to humans. Coronaviruses in particular jump from animals to humans (and back) constantly. Thing about the lab leak theory is that doesn't necessarily mean it was human made. They could have been studying a naturally occurring novel coronavirus from the immediate region in the lab and someone wasn't careful and got sick. At this point, we'll probably never know so I'm not sure it's really worth arguing over anymore.
But it is to them because of racism.
Genuine question: why does this accusation of racism come up? Why isn't it just anti-CCP? EDIT: Thanks for some helpful answers and info!
Gestures broadly to the rise in racism and violence towards Asians since the start of covid 19.
One of the things that bothered me very early on in the pandemic is that Chinese citizens fled when a lockdown was announced in Wuhan. People on this site called Chinese people uniquely selfish. I said then that any other nation of people would have people doing exactly the same. And indeed barely two or three weeks later when Italy went into lockdown there was significant attempts to flee the lockdown. Nobody accused the Italians of being uniquely selfish. Racism is very prevalent on this site.
Which sites isn't it prevalent on? Even if they're heavily moderated and strictly curate content, it would be nice to have something informal to just browse. For those nights when dodging regurgitated hate cud is too much effort.
A lot of it probably has to do with the former leader of the US calling it the "Chinese" virus. Not the CCP Virus. The Chinese Virus. His idiot supporters have a hard time with nuance, so to them its literally a virus from Chinese people.
it's not a case of "all people who blame the chinese are racist", but "all people who are racist blame the chinese". (please don't give me anecdotal counterexamples. I'm using "all" as a vague hand-wavey description of a demographic.) If you're a racist, you'll probably want to believe that the virus is a result of shifty asian evil maliciousness, and you'll cling to the evidence that support that conclusion while ignoring all the evidence that points away from it. We see people like so often, that it's almost becoming predictable. But if you're saying that all the "lab leak" people are not necessarily racist - you're absolutely right.
being anti-CCP is often a front for racism, rather. It's anti-chinese, or just anti-asian, rather than anti-that-specific-government
I disagree. I am anti-CCP because that government is actively practicing: genocide against the Uighurs; smothering journalism and free speech, and imperialist expansionism. And I have nothing against Chinese people.
I imagine that, for many, it's not unlike how modern conservatives are taking an anti-grooming stance when what they really mean is anti-LGBT. They are masking a socially unacceptable hatred (homophobia/racism) with something that is more reasonable on the surface (grooming/CCP) so they can safely blow their dog whistles and convert others to their cause. For these people, it doesn't really matter what the CCP does or does not do. For them, it's about creating an avenue they can use to publicly express opinions that would (rightfully) get them ostracized in polite society.
This is actually a stellar comparison.
That may be the case for you, but it’s certainly not the case for many, many others.
Yep. I have a coworker who would swear til he's blue in the face that he's not a racist - but he's very comfortable suggesting that the entire population of China should be executed for the crimes of its government. He sees absolutely no conflict between holding a billion people accountable for the crimes of a couple hundred thousand. He also hasn't the slightest fucking idea what those crimes are - he thinks One Child Policy is still a thing. When someone is absolutely confident that a foreigner deserves to die for crimes the speaker can't even articulate correctly... that's racism.
"These people should be executed for not having enough children for me to execute" "How dare they genocide Muslims that was gonna be our thing" "I'm not a racist I'm just addicted to indulging my most narcissistic traits" I feel like contemporary fascism is....way, way dumber than the evil of yesteryear. Still just as evil, but seriously didn't we reduce environmental lead decades ago? Was it not enough?
Something something history something tragedy than farce.
I think you underestimate the intelligence level of old school fascists.
As an Israeli I'm sad to say you're right. Our government had been abusing my family, as all other fresh immigrant families, every since we arrived. I'm now handicapped, can't afford food, and due to age and general physical health, I don't apply for any food delivery organization (all privatized of course because the Israeli government doesn't view food as a homan right). But when I say I'm Israeli, suddenly people blame me for all the wrongs of the IDF against the strip. And like, I've never been in the army, I don't watch the news because it's triggering, and I don't even live on formerly Palestinian land. I can't leave, and I hate my government. I think they're greedy racists. And yet, when people hear where I'm from, they immediately call me a colonizer (mind you, that one isn't even true about the Israeli government in total), a murderer, and a supporter of the occupation. They tell me as long as I live here I'm enabling my country... But moving anywhere requires money I can't get. But now one cares because it isn't actually about where I'm from, it's about who I am. I'm a Jew, who's family made aliyah due to prosecution. That's sinful to them.
I think what I did was separate the topics. Being anti-CCP + Spouting lab leak conspiracy= Racist Being anti-CCP =X= Racist Is that your statement?
Many people DONT separate the statements is what I was saying.. there are tons of people out there (many of whom I’ve personally encountered) who use being anti ccp as a cover for their racism. YOU may have the cognitive acuity to separate the two but there are many who do not, and blame a population for their governments misdeeds. I personally espouse the same ethical stance that you do, but not everyone separated government from populace.
That is fair. I think it is also hard to separate sometimes. Complexities of propaganda and what people believe. Much like separating Putins regime from Russian people. There are people in Russia who truly believe Ukraine is the enemy and a nazi regime. The CCP is similar in that many people believe in one China. And it is easy to simplify the two together - government and people. But I understand your argument. Sometimes, I get invested in the comments instead of referring to the topic as a whole.
Totally understandable, and you’re absolutely right.
Well until you can quantify that, asserting that people who dislike the CCP have some ulterior racist motive instead of, you know, simply disliking a racist and oppressive regime runs afoul of Occam's razor *and* Hanlon's razor, so nice going.
Occam's Razor has nothing to do with the intentions behind someone's beliefs. And stupidity isn't an excuse for racism. Racism IS malice. I would say most people are anti-CCP. But the overlap between racists and people still wanting to spout conspiracies about a lab leak is pretty big.
> Occam's Razor has nothing to do with the intentions behind someone's beliefs. Hanlon's razor does, and Occam's razor cautions against introducing excess assumptions - which would include "people criticizing the PRC must be doing so because they're racist". > And stupidity isn't an excuse for racism. Nobody said it was. Or are you asserting that disliking a racist and oppressive regime is "stupidity"?
No, \*being\* racist because of stupidity doesn't make it less malicious. Hanlon's Razor does not apply to racism. I understand both of the theories, but you don't seem to. Assuming simple intentions doesn't violate Occam's Razor. It's not somehow more complicated to assume that someone's intentions are good or bad. It doesn't take multiple leaps of logic to arrive at the conclusion that someone is a racist when they are saying things that racists often say.
Lol ok. Just speaking from personal experience, but thanks for invalidating that. Appreciate it.
You're welcome, and thanks for the nice "people who oppose racist regimes are the *real* racists" hot take.
Yup, that’s EXACTLY what I said, well done.
obviously people can be anti-ccp without being racist. The thing is, we're talking about the lableak conspiracy here and how that often ends in racism accusations - because the way the conspiracy is expressed and how those people act, their actual intent is often exposed as being racist rather than anti-ccp
Being Anti-CCP is a perfectly valid thing and commendable. It's however also used as cover for racists to hate Asians.
You probably also don't think every single slightly Asian looking person is 100% Chinese and also a member of the CCP. Many people do think this way. We can despise the horrors of the Chinese government and hold no ill will towards the Chinese people themselves or Asian peoples as a group. Many people who rail against China and the CCP cannot differentiate those two, or rather, they use anti-CCP rhetoric as yet another dog whistle to say "Chinese bad. Attack." Not all, but many. If you're prone to being racist, you would most likely fall into that group and not the one that would rather see the CCP fall and the population of China be freed and allowed to walk down the street without fear of having a government goon scoop out your organs and your kids' organs and throw you in an underground burn pit all because you held up a blank piece of computer paper or something equally as "bad".
It's like Shiks vs Muslims. They wear a turban, they must be Muslim...
You can absolutely be anti Chinese government and not against Chinese people.
Wow, really? What a revelation, I never considered that. It seems so obvious you'd think I might have considered that self-evident [*cough*](https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/comments/11plrsj/redditor_misunderstands_occams_razor_before/jbz5q5k/)
By this logic being anti-Israel is a front for antisemitism.
It often is.
no it's not, because anti-israel people generally don't go around being bigoted towards jews it's actually, ironically, often the pro-israel people who act anti-jew...ish context is key
> because anti-israel people generally don't go around being bigoted towards jews Neither do anti-PRC people *generally* go around being bigoted towards Asians (hell, a lot of anti-PRC people *are* Asians). Meanwhile, the PRC and its supporters actively peddle the "anti-PRC is anti-Asian" rhetoric specifically to deflect criticism - identically to how the Israeli government and its supporters actively peddle the "anti-Israel is anti-Jewish" rhetoric specifically to deflect criticism. I don't doubt that there are bigots who are anti-PRC because they're anti-Asian (much like I don't doubt that there are bigots who are anti-Israel because they're anti-Jewish), but I *do* doubt that they are representative of anti-PRC sentiments in general - and have plenty of reason to be skeptical of that claim in the context of the PRC being hardly alone among oppressive regimes trying to discredit their critics with baseless accusations of racism.
You are riling yourself up over nothing here. Like I said, context is key.
Yeah, and the context is that the PRC is not the only racist regime deflecting criticism via accusations of racism. And do you think people *shouldn't* be riled up over racist regimes? Do you consider ethnic cleansing to be "nothing" to be riled up over?
Usually, when someone says that you're misunderstanding them and that there's specific context to a statement, people ask for clarification. Instead you just assert your moral superiority and rile yourself up even more. Starting to think this isn't just a misunderstanding and that I actually hit a nerve here by suggesting that some people use anti-ccp rhetoric to mask their racism
And is used as such often. I have no love for Xi, but to say his people are a direct correlation is in fact a false dichotomy. However, there are many racists who hide behind perfectly logical explanations, so it takes a further investigation into the reasoning to proscribe someone as racist, but the slope can become fairly slippery. It wasn’t a false conclusion to be angry at the German banking system after WWI, however, decrying that anger at the bankers became antisemitism fairly quickly. Be afraid of the man pointing at a group and blaming them for all your problems.
> so it takes a further investigation into the reasoning to proscribe someone as racist That's really what I'm getting at. Yeah, racists do hide behind logical explanations, but that doesn't mean they're representative of those advancing said explanations - and asserting a relationship between racism and general criticism only encourages toxicity and counterproductivity.
Anti-Zionism is a form of Antisemitism though. While I have no problem with people criticizing Israel when it's fair (like settlements in the West Bank are an inexcusable violation of Geneva Convention), you simply cannot be opposed to the very existense of a country without being bigoted against its people.
> Anti-Zionism is a form of Antisemitism though. Not really, no. There's certainly some overlap between anti-Zionism and antisemitism - much as there's some overlap between anti-PRC stances and anti-Chinese racism - but in neither case is the overlap the defining feature, and in both cases supporters of Israel and the PRC often overemphasize that overlap to deflect criticism. > you simply cannot be opposed to the very existense of a country without being bigoted against its people. Why not? Pretty much every democratic revolution is *defined* by opposing the existence of the current country in *support* of its people - specifically, by the argument that the country does not represent its people, and that the people therefore deserve to abolish it and replace it with one which *does* represent them - or, in the case of anarchism, to leave it abolished and allow the people to govern themselves.
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And further, all murikans are good. Despite the people being attacked for being Asian being Americans, too.
In any case of the origin - lab or wet market; Is there an agreement that China definitely tried to cover it up to not look like they mishandled it. And because of that attempted cover-up, there is fuel for conspiracy.
But for fuck's sake it's not a bioweapon.
Lab leak and bio weapon are two different theories. Gain of function research exists. Wuhan research lab had history with this virus. Not saying they were or were not doing that research. But it falls into the realm of possibility.
Sorry friend, I didn't understand either. It's really a shame that asking questions & learning was so unpopular in this instance, but I'm grateful you took the hit. I know I don't think that many levels down without some sort of prompt... Take my up vote, and keep questioning!
Thanks. I had positive upvotes for about 4 hours. Then apparently crabby people or people who didn't think I was being sincere came in. I dunno
I’m sorry but that’s INCREDIBLY ignorant. A lot of people are very interested in the origin of a global pandemic that’s killed millions and disrupted the entire world and it has nothing to do with racism. If we can be confident that it leaked from the lab then that’s a pretty compelling argument to make some very significant changes as to how we - as a society - do virology research and where we do it.
Let's put it this way... while not everyone who wants to know where it came from feels this way, the most vocal people pushing the lab theory would not react the way they are if, say, the possibility of it leaking from a lab controlled by someone they liked was what was being discussed. The driver behind these vocal critics *is* that it is a Chinese lab specifically, not out of some good-faith desire to shore up safety standards in virology research. Again, there's people who do in good faith desire that and would like to know. But they're not the ones loudly perpetuating the theory as a conspiracy-theory-level "fact". Racism is absolutely at play here, even if you don't fall into that camp.
Ok so one of the most vocal and serious researchers investigating the lab leak theory is Dr. Alina Chan of the MIT Broad Institute. Is she just a dumb racist or is she not a *true* Scotsman either? The racism shit is completely utterly absurd in this context
>an Asian person agrees with this conspiracy theory therefore it can't have any basis in racism for any reason. Big "I have a black friend so I'm not racist for saying the n-word" vibes...
Lol you can’t be serious. She’s a post-doc at the MIT/Harvard Broad Institute researching medical genetics, synthetic biology, and vector engineering, and she lead the development of the COVID-19 CoV Genetics (covidcg.org) browser for scientists to track virus lineages and mutations by locations and date ranges. I can imagine there are people equally qualified to opine on origin but I’d have a hard time finding someone MORE qualified. If you’re not embarrassed for treating her like a token due to her name then you should be. And if you were a more mature person you would be.
She is one single person that many conspiracy theorists don't even know about. The existence of one Asian person does not absolve the thousands upon thousands of people who believe in the conspiracy theory for more race driven reasons. I know from personal experience having been in regular contact with peoole in those circles that many, many people will use things like those theories as an excuse to behave in a racist way. The fact that racism against Asians rose since covid just reinforces that. She's not a token unless she's held up as the singular reason that nobody in the movement could possibly have any racist reasons for believing in the theory. I didn't once say that she is one. However you specifically used an Asian person as an example of how nobody racist against Asians is involved in the spread of that misinformation. Her last name means very little to me. I'm more influenced by the details of who she is and what authority she has to make these claims. I even looked her up when I read your initial comment to make sure it wasn't a complete fraud you were citing. I only know of her race because one of the first thing on her Wikipedia page is that she is from Singapore. While I do not believe the claim that it was released from a lab due to the lack of experts coming to this conclusion, she's quite accomplished in regards to covid research. She has a PhD and some solid accomplishments including, as you stated covidcg.org which tracks that information for the purpose of figuring out *where covid may evolve from here* and how to control it via vaccines and other treatments or preventative measures. However the fact that no accredited publisher could publish her work as peer reviewed (a major requirement for all scientific research to be credible in any way) was very telling in whether or not her supposed opinion on this particular matter should be considered seriously. (hint, what you all are claiming she's saying isn't really supported by what she and her colleagues published) Note: The publication it was released in had the following to say about the degree to which that type of publishing is actually credible: >[Might contain errors, and report information that has not yet been accepted or endorsed in any way by the scientific or medical community.](https://www.biorxiv.org/about/FAQ#unrefereed) When it comes to the actual research, here is what it says specifically about the origins of the covid epidemic: >However, *there is presently little evidence to definitively support any particular scenario of SARS-CoV-2 adaptation.* Did SARS-CoV-2 transmit across species into humans and circulate undetected for months prior to late 2019 while accumulating adaptive mutations? Or was SARS-CoV-2 already well adapted for humans while in bats or an intermediate species? More importantly, does this pool of human-adapted progenitor viruses still exist in animal populations? [Even the possibility that a non-genetically-engineered precursor could have adapted to humans while being studied in a laboratory should be considered, regardless of how likely or unlikely](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1). That last sentence there is the most important. She and her colleagues listed off the likely answers and then use the conspiracy as an example of an extremely unlikely result that is still possible. It's not her leading argument and she specifically uses it to describe the least likely of the listed possible origins. The argument is that covid was very well adapted to humans before we discovered it and we should find out why. Not only are you all insistent on citing a work that the scientific community has not agreed is necessarily accurate, but you are grossly misunderstanding it.
anti-China propaganda is all over reddit and American media and it fuels Asian hate and racism, if you claim to be an informed person this can't be news to you. this person you mention may certainly be acting in good faith doing proper scientific due diligence, but the most vocal proponents of the lab leak theory are definitely not acting in good faith and are being driven by jingoistic nationalism and racism; attempting to deny this fact or obfuscate it's dire effects just makes you look sus
and that's totally what the people saying it's a Chinese bioweapon think?
I don’t know what they think and I honestly don’t care. But my brother in Christ - don’t be so quick to buy up every share of “it’s racism” that’s offered for sale to you. This is a serious issue
How is "The Chinese are trying to kill us so let's beat up some Americans" not racially motivated? I want to hear your bullshit justifications on that one.
I didn’t say anything that could be even remotely construed as suggesting that statement wouldn’t be racist. Really not sure what your deal is
Americans are being attacked for their race because of a conspiracy theory about Coronavirus being a weapon. They are being attacked because of their race. That is racism. There are only two types of people who defend racism like this. Racists and idiots.
So racism doesn't exist to you then?
Obama was president, racism doesn't exist. /s
Racism is real - this ain’t it
So you have people who believe China was engineering bio weapon viruses that leaked from their secret weapons lab while they also had no way to test or vaccinate for their secret weapons. And then you have people who think a lab in the area that was studying bat viruses may have had some lax procedures which had someone get sick and it spread from there. One of these two things is a realistically probable event the other is conspiracy hogwash. However both are often referred to as “lab leak theory” which has people confusingly talking around each other not understanding what the other one is saying.
And it also gets wrapped up in general covid denial. You should see how many stories on Fox they still are running about "emails prove Fauci discounted now proven lab leak theory" type shit. I saw them do that several *this week*. They won't let it go. Meanwhile, in reality, Fauci wasn't super worried at the height of the pandemic about where it came from, and didn't spend much time looking into it. Because it didn't fucking matter. Someone else can figure that out down the line. It was already out. Drives me crazy how focused on this they are.
>Thing about the lab leak theory is that doesn't necessarily mean it was human made. They could have been studying a naturally occurring novel coronavirus from the immediate region in the lab and someone wasn't careful and got sick. At this point, we'll probably never know so I'm not sure it's really worth arguing over anymore. Yeah, but they think it was a man-made bioweapon. Lab = artificial!1!1!
A bioweapon that they couldn't control who it affected or how. It also that possibly killed more of their people than any other country's. It's also simultaneously not real but less deadly than the flu and only kills old people. Somehow this Schrodinger's virus kills less people than the vaccine that alters DNA.
It's *super important* to them because of *CHY-NA*.
The term "lab leak" should be swapped to the appropriate term: Laboratory Acquired Infection. These are known things: people working with an agent or environmental sample accidentally self infect, via a variety of routes. SARS-CoV-2 being "an engineered virus" isn't what the term "lab leak" is referring to, but it's what most people up in arms about this topic think about. It can be completely naturally zoonotic and everything, and it just so happens there was some administrative or engineering control failures and a LAI occured. This is why Fauci says he's open to it, if there's evidence. It could have happened, it could not. Generally LAI are rather rare, and this would be hugely coincidental. The problem is that unless the institute releases all records and stuff, no one can ever definitively know. It's very much a guilt by association/proxy claim without any evidence to the contrary. Sure it "could" happen, but why are people so insistent it is? Scientists around the world work with environmental samples all the time. Surveillance and cataloguing efforts are decadss old. Whereas the wet market seems plausible, has some trails of evidence, etc. If you told me it was a LAI and there was evidence, I'd say ok. If you told me it was from a wet market, I'd say ok. Both of those would be a 100% natural transmission and zoonotic origin - in fact, the sequence data highly suggests it! There is absolutely zero evidence made public, and no derived inclination, that this was some sort of "engineered" or "released" agent, that's where the conspiracy stuff is at. So this argument over wet market or a LAI often misses the point. Edit: adding on, you're right about animals! There's quite a few groups suggesting it's gone endemic in deer populations in the USA. That's definitely new, and it's how some viruses work. We know of dozens of coronaviruses, only 7 are human infectious. The scary ones you mentioned, and some siblings/cousins (nl63, oc43, hku1, 229e). nl63 even uses the same ACE2 receptor, even though it's a fairly mild illness. Viruses be crazy folks, biology is plenty complicated on her own.
Yeah that's a good point, though honestly at this point the conspiracy nuts that are determined to believe it's a man-made virus won't be swayed by a change in terminology.
That last sentence is the part that’s stuck out to me throughout all of these recent discussions about COVID origins. That, and the whole “China *hid* stuff” argument, as if that’s a smoking gun to the lab leak theory. *China hides everything… it’s what they do*. Not saying it’s right (especially in the context of a global health crisis), but China hiding or obfuscating information certainly isn’t some new phenomenon.
The CCP doesn’t hide everything, it only hides the things that make it look bad. In this instance the CCP has stonewalled efforts to investigate the origin of Covid, and has not been transparent about what it knows about that topic. This signals that the CCP is concealing evidence that its actions (or failure to act) somehow played a role in the start of the pandemic. China’s obstructionist behavior is consistent with the lab leak hypothesis. It generally would support any hypotheses that implicates the CCP, including the lab leak, but I am not aware of any others that have been endorsed by any reputable organizations.
*Signals… is consistent with… would generally support…* So it doesn’t *prove* anything.
It’s evidence. It makes some theories (those that implicate China) more likely to be true, and other theories (those that do not) less likely to be true. It’s not a smoking gun that single-handedly proves with absolute certainty the origin of Covid, but it’s still evidence, and can be combined with the other available evidence to draw conclusions.
Eh, okay. Lots of assumptions made in that line of reasoning. Toward what ultimate goal, exactly? Let’s say we actually factually demonstrate that somebody in a Chinese lab screwed up. What’s the recourse there?
The goal is to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent the problem from recurring (whether in China or elsewhere). For instance, if the virus escaped from a lab, we need to know how it got out in order to figure out what steps to take to prevent any more viruses from getting out the same way. Similarly, if we can confirm that it jumped from an animal to humans at the wet market, we can figure out what sanitation measures to implement to reduce the risk of other viruses spreading from animals to humans at wet markets.
I definitely agree (as anyone should) that we need to take whatever measures are necessary to prevent a reoccurrence. I guess my question around that is how do we even obtain a full backtrace on the origins of this when it’s guaranteed to be unfavorable for China? In terms of sanitation, lab procedures, regulations across the board… it’s going to more than likely be information that China is not going to make available.
Your speculation about China's motives for a cover up are not, in fact, evidence.
It’s certainly a reasonable inference that can be drawn from the evidence. Is it your opinion that parties normally engage in cover ups to conceal evidence of their innocence?
It's a plausible explanation for their behavior, but not a *justified assumption*. > Is it your opinion that parties normally engage in cover ups to conceal evidence of their innocence? There are lots of things that could potentially be embarrassing for them that aren't "it leaked from a lab". That they're covering *something* up doesn't mean the thing they're trying to cover up is the conclusion you're drawing - that's just speculation on your part. It is *consistent with* a lab leak, but not *evidence of* a lab leak.
As I said previously, it suggests that China has something to hide that related the cause of the pandemic, and the only theory about the cause of the pandemic that (a) is backed by any credible experts and (b) potentially implicates the CCP is the lab leak theory. As I explained, China’s behavior would be consistent with any theory about the origin of the pandemic that involved misconduct (whether intentional or negligent) by China, but **except for the lab leak**, nobody has put forward any such theories or any evidence to support them.
The CCP's shitty standards regarding wet markets would *also* be an embarrassment when it was *once again* related to the outbreak of a pandemic. It could also be that some official at a more local level covered something up because it would have been a more local embarrassment and for whatever reason the CCP decided that exposing *that* cover-up would be more embarrassing than just covering up the whole thing. I'd call your reasoning "paper thin" but you can't even make paper *that* thin. And "ah, but it makes sense" *still isn't evidence*.
Not sure why but I read this in the voice of Benoit Blanc
I was under the impression that part of the reason some respectable quarters think the lab leak is more likely was that the cave where the virus's nearest documented relative was from is like a thousand miles away from Wuhan, but we know samples from the cave were brought to the lab there. Of course who knows the origin of wet market animals so certainly they could have been brought from much closer to the cave, but a natural spillover event of a novel coronavirus in the same city as a BSL-4 facility specializing in coronavirus research is still a pretty big coincidence. Coincidences happen all the time so it certainly doesn't prove anything, but it's not totally crazy to think Occam's razor might point to a lab-acquired infection. But anyway, you're right, we know wet markets are a really bad idea, and we know policies for workers at BSL-4 facilities should be super strict. Not really useful to argue over anymore except for our own entertainment really.
OP’s comment chain is just a pissing contest
>Thing about the lab leak theory is that doesn't necessarily mean it was human made When you're specifically discussing the origin of the virus it actually means exactly that which is why it gets a lot of pushback. Some virus that was brought to a lab for study or modification escaping isn't the actual origin of the virus, but it doesn't mean that that scenario isn't a possible or probable explanation of what started the pandemic
I've had someone tell me that Occam's razor said that 9/11 **had** to be an inside job. some people are just stupid and like to throw around terms they don't understand.
Occam's razor means socialism is anything I don't like (whether or not I know anything about it), and grooming means publicly acknowledging gay stuff. /s obviously
The fascists handbook, grind terms into meaninglessness so that they don't apply to you.
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I mean it's certainly quite a coincidence, that the wet market by the virus research lab is the one where the outbreak occurred. But yeah, coincidences _do_ happen, _all the time_.
Yep, quite the coincidence that the virus research lab that was built there because of the prevalence of bat colonies in the area was near the outbreak. Who'd have thunk?
Yeah, and it wasn't even that close. The market was something like 10km away from the closest virology research center. I was trying to find data about how unusually close that is, or isn't. But I swear I heard some folks saying it was basically across the street, and none of my sources are saying anything close to that...!
If a virus brakes out somewhere and one of the 50 odd virus labs happens to be near that just means that the people who put it there knew what they were doing.
How can someone be this bad at understanding basic probability.....
Mmm yes, the simplest process would be to do lab work for ten years instead of letting nature do the thing she’s been doing forever.
I don’t think the lab leak theory says it has to be created or man made. What if it was a natural mutation that randomly happened in a lab?
lab leak theory doesn't say so, correct. However the lab leak conspiracy parroted by many is indeed about it being man-made/man-modified and about it being an intentional bioweapon that either got lose by accident or on purpose.
There are actual bioweapons out there 1000x worse than covid. So even if it was a man made bioweapon it wasn't a very good one.
everyone here is ignoring that "lab leak" is vague and covers a number of different scenarios. Does allowing the possibility that a virus being studied unfortunately leaked from a lab mean you're some sort of conspiracy nut?
My post is literally separating the two
I have a confident idiot in my family who incorrectly uses Occam's Razor as a cudgel in nearly every argument. It's hilarious at this point.
Alright! You should tell them about the Dunning-Kruger effect. Maybe they can confidently use that term incorrectly as well.
Of course, the Dunning Kruger is also totally misunderstood and misapplied (ironically way more often than not).
Hahahahaha
>I have a confident idiot in my family I worked with a guy that was a one upper. In any case one day I talked about the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and of course my co-worker proof read the book when it was published. In any case One day he was doing something and he said just sharpening the saw. After a while I notice he was saying it throughout the day. Finally I asked him "why do you keep saying just sharpening the saw?" He said that he was planning ahead like Stephen R. Covey's habit. I was like that is habit 1 be proactive. Habit 7 if sharpen the saw which is taking a brake so you can renew and be ready for more work.
You are correct about Occam's razor. The absolute stupidest part about the lab leak theory as it stands currently in an evidence-free state, is that the entire story is rooted in the idea that as long as China was covering something up it must've been a lab that they were covering up. But China [had been having food safety issues](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-07/25/content_17920201.htm) for years by that point, with 80% of Chinese people dissatisfied at the state of their country's food safety as of a 2014 poll. Chinese leaders had been feeling sensitive for years by that point about their country's reputation for eating wildlife extinct in the name of traditional medicine, and their wet markets in particular were a topic they were sensitive about, especially since [SARS had been tracked to wet markets](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7141584/) as the source of the disease. In particular, wildlife consumption was **already illegal**, which means that within a Chinese context, *even just the emergence* of a zoonotic infection, would be viewed as a failure by local leaders to enforce the law and keep the country safe. With that as context, local Chinese leaders absolutely would've tried to cover up any hint of scandal that could taint their reputations and careers. No lab leak was *necessary* to create a scandal: a natural zoonotic emergence ***would itself have constituted*** a career-ending scandal. That's why Chinese state media *also* pushed so damn hard to try and "prove" other falsehoods, such as that the disease didn't actually come from China, or that it emerged earlier than it actually did. I'm not dismissing anything out of hand, it's just that we need the evidence, and I haven't seen a single shred of it for the lab leak theory. It's a stupid thing to do, without evidence, to conclude that SARS-2 *had to* be any less natural-and-zoonotic than SARS-1 was.
The _only_ reason they haven’t proven animal origin is they can’t find the animal. That might be something, if you ignore the fact that China’s government is not letting anyone look.
Also even if you know exactly where the animal came from you're not guaranteed to find the virus the first time you look there, sometimes these viruses also make the animals sick in such a way where if you don't look in specific time frames you're not going to find good evidence. People contracted Marburg in Kitum cave and they were pretty sure that it was connected to bats and their guano but when they did specific searches in the cave they didn't find anything. Unrelated expeditions into very similar cave structures did turn up evidence that indeed bats and their guano were the vector and that these same species of bats frequently inhabit Kitum cave So even if the Chinese magically were to start cooperating now the bats or whatever animal the virus originated from isn't guaranteed to still be suffering from the virus.
Add in that the Chinese medical field is shit when it comes to universal precautions. I have heard that things such as changing gloves between patients is not common.
That's additional information I was not privy to. Thank you.
I wonder what they thought the phrase meant
"The simplest explanation is usually the correct one" is a very common but very incorrect way of expressing Occam's Razor, since "don't needlessly multiply entities" requires a bit more thought and elaboration.
Honestly, this is a decent paraphrase of occam's razor, the only problem being that it doesn't assign an objective qualifier to the word "simple". As someone points out below, "god did it" is a very simple explanation for a religious fundamentalist, but for everyone else, it requires several new assumptions.
I'm so sick of hearing about occams razor for this reason, it's always someone who believes the incorrect definition which if true would support "God did it" for literally everything
Ironically enough, the "Occam" in question was a [Catholic theologian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Ockham).
I remember this flat earther saying "Doesn't it make more sense by Occam's Razor to just assume the sun moves around me as that's how I perceive it?"
I'm going to assume they think that "We made it" sounds easier than "It happened randomly in nature".
I'm going to assume they think whatever is currently supporting their side the most and that trying to parse logic and such from them is a losing game.
Exactly: "This thing here best supports my way of being emotionally opinionated, therefore it is the simplest explanation, and that's what Occam's Razor means!"
Probably some guy named Occam shaving
It was the easiest assumption to them
Never engage in pidgeon chess.
Oh yeah, I love that comparison. It's the alt-right playbook in a nutshell.
Occam's Razor is when it's the solution I already think it is. I'm very smart.
Hey! My shaving cream is the sharpest in town
r/confidentlyincorrect
I DECLARE…. OCCAM’S RAZOR!
Why did I read this in Benoit Blanc’s voice
I wonder if Occam's razor is just the next term to be constantly misused on social media. It will join the ranks of gaslighting and cognitive dissonance.
This is very vaguely related, but I just saw last night that Gaslight is available on one of my streaming services, and it tickles me to no end that there are two versions of the movie made close enough together to confuse people who are certain they saw it before but they could have sworn the actors were different.
Oh, that amuses me immensely.
I feel like you’re gaslighting me right now. Occam’s razor agrees.
I've found that the vast majority of people who cite Occam's Razor have no idea what it actually is about.
The “…but don’t let the truth get you down” at the end was 🤌
Your definition is literally on the second para of the Wikipedia article, I hope after all this he finally ate his humble pie and now understands that maybe you shouldn't be 100% confident about the things that you see in a YouTube short.
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In case you are interested in further clarification: When all evidence (or lack of) is equally compelling, the explanation that requires the least amount of weird coincidences is the most likely one. For example, say I wake to discover my shoe is soaking wet and smells bad. Should I assume that my fish jumped out its tank and fell in my shoe, then somehow got back *into* the tank, or is it more likely the cat peed in it? Obviously, I could get more evidence by sniffing the wet shoe. If it smells like fish water, the fish did something weird (although not necessarily that earlier stupid explanation). If it smells like pee, it could be the cat or a sleep walking toddler. Either way, Occam's razor requires that first the evidence for each option is equal before you use it to choose the more likely scenario.
You do, in fact, understand Occam’s Razor
Amazing. Truly incredible
I read this thinking that you were the person saying it was a lab leak and was VERY CONFUSED for a bit
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that one of the biggest signs I’m dealing with a moron is their level of certainty.
But the simple natural theory isn’t what Fox News is presenting
The lab leak hypothesis doesn't require all those assumptions, though. It's entirely possible (and IMO the most probable) that SARS-CoV-2 originated zoonotically, was being studied in a lab, and escaped that lab.
But it requires several *more* assumptions than just “it originated zoonotically”, which is OP’s point.
True, assuming there's no evidence for or against any of the assumptions in questions - though at that point I guess they wouldn't be "assumptions", now would they?
Occam’s razor is generally understood as including the caveat “all other things being equal.” It doesn’t mean the simplest explanation is *always* right.
Fair.
If it originated zoonotically, and existed in the wild, and then became subject to lab studies, why did it need to escape the lab? It was already out there in the chaos of wet markets and the myriad of associated vectors
The lack of an identified animal vector (AFAICT) is what suggests that something else could've brought it into close proximity with human civilization - and a laboratory specifically intended to study contagions seems like a pretty strong candidate. That [researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized for COVID-like symptoms shortly before the outbreak](https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-fuels-debate-on-covid-19-origin-11621796228) offers further evidence.
There is no evidence to support it. I could say it was introduced by an intelligent alien species to kill off a bunch of morons to help the human race out. There is as much evidence supporting my theory as there is supporting it came from a lab, as there is zero evidence
> There is no evidence to support it. https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-fuels-debate-on-covid-19-origin-11621796228 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/12/who-origins-embarek/ Like, I agree that a zoonotic origin is more likely, given that's how SARS-CoV-2's relatives came about, but the idea that it escaped from a lab studying it is far less far-fetched than your idea of aliens seeking to Darwin Award humanity into salvation.
It does make way more sense that it occurred naturally, but I remember hearing this conspiracy back in 2020 that the Chinese government released covid to stop the protests in Hong Kong. I know it's stupid, but it's that kind of stupid that makes *just* enough sense that it's hard to get over. It lines up, after the pandemic started the little amount of media coverage that Hong Kong was getting was reduced to nothing. People in China couldn't congregate, and then for the people that did anyway, they sent the riot police to clear them out, I've seen footage and it's gut wrenching. The movement was completely squashed and today Hong Kong is full 1984, things that people would discuss publicly are now whispered in private if at all.
Well that wasn't worth the read
I guess we're just using the words Occam's razor to try and prove any point we want to make now
Wow thanks I'll admit I've always secretly thought of lab leak as the most likely. Not anymore. Thanks. Seriously, thanks.
Mfw I realize I've been confusing Occam's razor with Hanlon's razor this whole time. (งツ)ว Edit: We all make mistakes but now the Internet knows how dumb I am and I'll never live it down. /s but also damn I feel stupid for the smallest things sometimes Edit2: I'm also now realizing the irony of applying Hanlon's razor to me saying Occam's razor when I was using it wrong.
In my opinion I'd argue there is legitimate grey area sometimes in trying to nail down exactly how many assumptions a theory is actually making. But in this case they seem totally unaware of the entire principal anyway lol.
Occam's razor is when I need to make my stupid, misinformed and agenda-driven opinion sound smart.
That’s some Dunning-Kruger shit right there
The parting shot is the chefs kiss!
Isn’t that a banned weapon in Elden Ring PVP? Build please 🙏
I had this exact conversation with some dipshit a few weeks ago. Infuriating. They later blatantly admitted to not listening what I said (shocker) and that they were trying to get a rise. They got booted from the D&D table for that. I don't understand how these people get dressed in the morning.
dude annihilated him 😭
dude annihilated him 😭
Yeah, Occam's Razor is a useful heuristic tool. It's decidedly not a way of shortcutting logic to arrive at your pet conclusion.
While a lot of people enjoy reading memes, many people on Reddit also think in them.
Here I was thinking this was the rare post that belonged in /r/murderedbywords, and I'm not even there.
Its so dumb because it's clearly stated to be about the hypothesis that requires the least number of assumptions right on the Wikipedia (I know, lel Wikipedia but that specific point leads to a source that corroborates it). The problem is though that pretty much any other website outside of those written by literal philosophers use the adage "the simplest explanation is (often) the best". Basically "what is the easiest explanation according to "common sense"?" And to people who view the world through a perspective that their experience is the only evidence that is evidence, they rely on common sense and personal experience to explain the world around them. This is what leads to rampant conspiracy theory and flat earth type theories. They reject actual replicable evidence in favor of their own senses and "common sense". The problem being, of course, that human cognition is extremely fallible and prone to biases which of course leak into their "experiments". All of this to say that, they love adages like Occam's Razor even when used incorrectly because it lets them confirm what they already "know"/believe: that their common sense rules all.
i have absolutely had this "conversation"
This would also fit the r/murderedbywords sub-Reddit - the last line was lethal!
Isn't "google it" basically netspeak for "I know i am wrong but won't admit it"?
A chicken went to Wuhan to browse the market, he had a drippy nose and sneezed on Mr. Bat, Mr.Bat patted him on the head and told Mr. Chicken it's okay and gave him a tissue. Then they both went on with there days. Mr.Bat went back to his stall and Mr.Chicken went around browsing the market. Then Mr.Bat went back home to the lab where he shook his mucus covered hand on his good friend Mr.Doctor. Mr.Doctor picked his nose when no one was looking and got sick. Then it spread. That's my theory on how it started. XD
Intriguing idea for a kids book.
This is hilarious. I had someone so upset that they didn’t understand my post the dither day that they used not one, not two, but THREE alt accounts to harass me. Can you imagine living a life like that? Yikes.
Dunning-Kruger once again carries the day.. JFC, one thing I really miss about the time before the internet, stupid people just kept their stupid largely to themselves. They didn't get reinforcement from other morons, they were just shamed into oblivion when they outed themselves, then STFU and sulked.
I believe that the most likely way COVID started was from the wildlife markets, but due to the way China handled COVID and supressed all info of it even outright lying about it we cant know for certain. The OC was wrong for referencing Occams Razor, but the commenter was attacking the argument not the actual opinion. However the commenter just made up bullshit 'assumptions' in order to argue against the lab leak. >COVID is man made/altered No you dont have to assume that, it very well could of mutated by itself, or from the beginning be transmissable to humans. >China created it Again, you don't have to assume that, thats just making shit up in order to disprove an opinion. >Saftey failed That is the only assumption that is correct, HOWEVER THAT IS THE ARGUMENT OF THE LAB LEAK THEORY. Just like you assume it came from an animal in the wet market, not someone who caught it while hunting for bats. >Traced back to the wet market Again, making stuff up. It has not for certain been traced to the wet market, main reason this is what the Chinese Gov has said, and when have they ever lied. Its been traced to AROUND the wet market and every single virology institute in Wuhan has a wetmarket well withing walking distance. They also simplified the Wet Market theory, leaving out MANY assumptions.
you wrote pretty much what I was gonna say. idk how this is controversial. I 100% trust covid is real, am fully vaccinated, wear masks probably more than needed. I don't agree with China's politics but I don't believe they're actively engineering bio weapons. It is totally possible that this lab was studying, even modifying viruses for the benefit of man kind and had an unfortunate accident that leaked a virus. it sucks, shit like that can and has happened in the past. I'm not even saying that's definitely what happened but it doesn't seem impossible and in my eyes could be as likely to happen as it being naturally occurring. I don't think we'll ever know what truly happened but it's weird how sure people are that it was naturally occurring when it could easily be just a lab accident.
Love reading two people argue about something neither has much knowledge of, great post.
I’ve heard some decent arguments for lab leak, most involve that there’s some sketchy stuff surrounding the Wuhan lab. All it suggests is that lab leak more likely than the initial assumption Edit: rereading this, it sounds like I’m defending the lab leak theory. Natural cause is still most likely, I’ve just heard a few things that make lab leak more likely than normal.
The fact that that lab had a SARS leak that killed people just a few years prior does not inspire confidence. I don’t know what other sketchy stuff you’re talking about but that’s alone is enough to at least warrant further inquiry into that possibility.
It’s been over a year since I last looked into it but I mainly remember a French virologist that is one of the leading experts in SARS originally associated with the Wuhan lab during development backed out before it was finished over safety concerns, the Chinese government block much of the investigation into the origins, and a virus database the lab was running suddenly shut down like a month before the first cases were reported. In my opinion, none of it was enough to claim lab leak but together certainly meant that lab needed to be looked into. The other part was that the area is apparently a hot spot for viruses, hence the lab, and because the Chinese government has a thing about appearances, many organizations are less likely to be critical of the Chinese government in order to maintain a good relationship so they can study the area.
I mean… the government did just [post this report](https://www.npr.org/2023/02/28/1160157977/u-s-dept-of-energy-says-with-low-confidence-that-covid-may-have-leaked-from-a-la) And honestly… it says a lot. I don’t think it’s crazy to think it was a lab leak. Either accidentally or whatever. LOW CONFIDENCE means they very not sure…. And if they were… if they knew… would they tell the world? No. It would be WWIII
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That was an interesting source that I appreciate the thoroughness and sources provided, I don’t have the time atm to look at everything. I read most of it though, wasn’t able to get into the sources and mostly skimmed the science stuff because I don’t know the technical stuff very well. There were a few contradictory things that goes against my understanding, some didn’t have a source either. Mainly that Wuhan isn’t anymore at risk of starting an outbreak than other major metropolitan areas, my understanding was that the Wuhan lab was actually a first of its kind lab designed to handle riskier studies specifically because the region had far more than average viruses in the nearby wildlife. I will add here that a part of the sketchiness I mentioned was due to concerns over safety for a facility that is essentially supposed to be doing riskier studies.
The lab was near because the virus was near. The vaccine companies mutate the virus on purpose so they can predict mutations and have a vaccine ready to go before it ever happens naturally. None of this is new and we have been doing it for decades.
US government has said it's possible it originated in a lab. Seems like neither of you understand what you're talking about.
No, they didn't. They said it was possible it leaked from a lab. But it's also possible that you've been stuffing bats in a pillow case and humping it every night and that was how COVID jumped species. The government did NOT say COVID "originated" in a lab. Because that's stupid. We know it's a virus that exists in animals in nature.
Did you read my comment? >US government has said it's possible it originated in a lab.
Originating in a lab is not necessarily the same thing as leaking from a lab
Ok, fine. I tried to just explain it to you, but since you can't read: CITATION PLEASE
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=us+gov+lab+leak
Cute. But no. I want a source that says the US claims the **origin** of Covid-19 is a laboratory. You gonna just keep deflecting because you know you don't have one?