zlacker

I was called a conspiracy theorist on Reddit last year for saying that this likely came from the lab in Wuhan. Now it's a possibility? It's getting incredibly frustrating to go online and be constantly attacked for having common sense views.

>>dimgl+(OP)
Did you have any evidence to back up your theory at the time? A broken clock is right twice a day after all.

Are you saying we should now listen to every conspiracy theory on the internet on the off chance it might be right?

>>dimgl+(OP)
It might be because you were saying it was "likely" despite any evidence? Ending up being right isn't a to anybody's credit if the original assumption was groundless.

(I'm not attacking you, I don't know what was your exact argument)

>>dimgl+(OP)
"possible" does not imply "likely". It was always a possibility, the only thing we know with relative certainty is that it originated from near Wuhan and that the virus is not engineered. But it could have been lab grown. The problem is the lack of concrete evidence for this thesis.

I'd say that it's very likely that you did not present any concrete evidence for the lab theory last year, neither do you have any now. So as far as I'm concerned you're still in conspiracy theory territory.

Here is the real problem, though: It's not really a common sense view. The only reasonable common sense view is to remain agnostic in such matters until enough evidence is discovered. If you have thousands of conspiracy theorists throwing around thousands of different claims around about something, then surely one or two may in hindsight turn out to be right. That doesn't mean they presented a reasonable view or aren't conspiracy theorists.

Just to make this clear, I'm not talking about you personally, of course. Maybe you argued very well and convincingly and presented some great evidence a year ago. But the fallacious thought pattern is a huge problem in online discussions. Sometimes you don't even need to consider thousands of conspiracy theorists, some people are so prolific online that they make a lot of different claims about a lot of of different topics, and then, when they happen to be right in hindsight once, feel confirmed.

On a side note (not related to the above post at all), another issue in online debates I've grown to really hate is that many people online have become extremely dismissive towards experts and come up with extremely obvious counter-arguments as if the experts hadn't considered them. In every single case they have, of course. It's crazy how much stupidity some people tend to attribute to experts but not to themselves.

>>willia+12
The initial outbreak was literally covered up. Conditioning on that fact, common sense would place more belief on “lab leak” and less on “natural origin.” Thus, in the Bayesian sense, one might describe a lab leak as “likely” relatively speaking despite lacking direct evidence such as lab notebooks for or against that hypothesis.

>>peytn+h9
Partly agree, but also keep in mind that the CCP is by nature secretive and authoritarian. IMO the cover-up still shifts the probability, but less than it might in another country where cover-ups are less "business as usual".

>>gred+3b
Note that the initial outbreak in USA was also covered up.

>>dboreh+ki
Source?

>>13415+96
If this person really said "it likely came from a lab", then i would agree with him being labeled as a conspiracy theorist. Because stating it like this also implies that you dismiss any other possible theory. There's quite a few possibilities, so saying it coming from a lab is a "common sense view" just comes across as dismissive. Especially since there's no real evidence yet.

>>gred+3b
Devil’s advocate: the CCP seems quite proud of its pandemic response and appears to have had procedures in place to deal with SARS-like disease outbreaks. Their tone is triumphant. Given its past history with SARS and the fact that the WIV was specifically tasked with research on mitigation strategies for SARS-like illnesses, the CCP must have developed a playbook for outbreaks of natural SARS-like illnesses. Given their current tone, it’s very unlikely that playbook started with “first, cover up.” To me, it’s much more likely an accident happened given their behavior.