from the how-complete-and-simple-is-your-answer? dept.
As science advances, does Ockham’s Razor still apply?:
William of Ockham is the medieval philosopher who gave us what is perhaps the world's only metaphysical knife. Raised by Franciscan friars and educated at Oxford in the late 13th century, he focused his energies on what can only be described as esoterica, topics spanning theology and politics. In service of this occupation, he clashed with Pope John XXII and was excommunicated by the Catholic Church.
Ockham's exploration of the philosophical concept of nominalism and his preference for parsimony in logical arguments gave rise to the concept of Ockham's Razor (sometimes spelled "Occam"). Stated plainly, the Razor asserts that if two models equally explain a scenario, the simpler of the two is more likely.
[...] In his book "The Demon-Haunted World," the late Carl Sagan introduces a thought experiment of a dragon in his garage. When Sagan convinces someone to come look at the dragon, the visitor opens the garage door and finds nothing there. Sagan then counters that "she's an invisible dragon," and, naturally, cannot be seen.
[...] Ironically the preservation of Ockham's Razor over the centuries may be due to its own internal simplicity. Simply by uttering the phrase "Ockham's Razor," it is possible to challenge everything from an interpretation of a new physics experiment, to the explanation of a social movement, to a possible account for a crime scene. The Razor has broad utility in pushing back against explanations that appear to be overly complicated or continue to amend their original thesis by layering secondary and contingent explanations in response to new challenges.
Yet in science, the Razor is just one concept that researchers might use in considering a theory. How predictive is the theory? Is it falsifiable? How well does it align with other explanations that we believe are correct? How internally consistent is it? These and many more questions all are part of the discourse of science. Ockham's Razor in and of itself is not the sole criterion for finding the truth — and applying the Razor outside of the narrow realm of statistical model selection is not so simple.
[...] Though Okham's Razor may not be well suited to all types of knowledge, at the boundaries of scientific knowledge it offers a rubric to test hypotheses. The Razor continues to demonstrate utility to whittle down chaff at the margins. It would be convenient if the Razor alone was sufficient to settle all scientific debate. But the world, it turns out, is not so parsimonious.
Let's revisit the dragon in the garage. Imagine you are told that this invisible dragon can induce fatal burns without the heat and smoke of fire. You investigate further and conclude that since there is no evidence of a beast, neither the dragon nor its deadly force can exist. Hours later, you succumb to radiation burns from your exposure in the garage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @06:37PM (1 child)
If you had a Holy Geiger Counter, you would have known that it was a dragon's lair and moved on to safer parts.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday June 15 2021, @06:31AM
Book of Armaments, Chapter Two, Verses Nine through Twenty-One? "Then shalt thou geiger count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt geiger count, and the number of the geiger counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not geiger count, neither geiger count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out"?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Monday June 14 2021, @06:38PM (22 children)
It's a countermeasure to going beyond the data. The data must always win.
(Score: -1, Troll) by js290 on Monday June 14 2021, @07:39PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @03:33PM (1 child)
That first quote sounds like the same old "Leadership is..." self-stroking bullshit that always involves them talking and you doing. Yeah, no thanks.
(Score: 1) by js290 on Tuesday June 15 2021, @10:09PM
"Leadership is..." funding GOF research...
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday June 15 2021, @07:43PM
Are you on the right site? This isn't Twitter...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @08:19PM (17 children)
The issue as always in fields where there is a lack of genuine and meaningful testability, or falsifiability in most cases. So all you have is conjecture alongside toy experiments which can demonstrate X just as well as they can simultaneously also demonstrate NOT X with slightly different (and no less valid) assumptions or tunings. People in these fields increasingly want "the science" to confirm their biases when there are vastly more simple explanations available.
People of Bob ancestry 20% lower, on average, on a test of mathematical acumen than people of Bill ancestry. After controlling for all environmental variables (education, income, parents' education, etc) so much as possible - the discrepancy declines but persists at about 15%. Do we believe that:
1) Green people probably are just worse at math, owing perhaps to the very different conditions of isolated evolution between Bill and Bob.
2) There's some secret variable that nobody can find, prove, or quantifiably demonstrate that somehow makes green people, and only green people, unable to perform to their real acumen which is actually identical to blue people.
The answer is obvious, but we don't like the answer. And we cannot reject social science. So we must reject Occam's Razor.
And my example chosen here was not because I like it, but quite the opposite. We instinctively do not want to believe this. And so we are less harsh on hypotheses that tell us what we want to hear, even when in reality they are really quite ridiculous - and we would never tolerate this sort of science in a field where our social bias was, instead, for the most probable answer. Our society politicized science which, has in turn, triggered its rapid departure from well... science - like all things that become political.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:08PM (3 children)
Why is it always knuckle-dragging redneck gun fanatics who bring up the superiority of their preferred color's "civilization", which they contributed --ZERO-- towards, but are somehow saving for the rest of us?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday June 15 2021, @09:49AM
I think you mean blueneck.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @01:22PM (1 child)
In many ways your comment emphasizes what you're trying to argue against. If you want to believe that the only people who believe the Earth revolves around the sun are raving lunatics then you can do that. And it will become true, from your perspective, that only people who are raving lunatics believe the Earth revolves around the sun.
The one problem you face is a common one in modern society, and one the post emphasizes. Your perspective, or idealized reality, and real reality end up having little in common.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @03:36PM
Show me 1 photo, a single one, of someone saving Western civilization who does not have at least one knuckle touching the ground. You cannot, Sir. I repeat cannot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:09PM
Why do you not just say racist "Bell Curve" theory?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday June 14 2021, @11:09PM (3 children)
The obvious answer is that the differences were not properly accounted for.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @01:05AM (2 children)
The conclusions could also be correct, but only relevant to a particular time and place. Without genetic testing on an unprecedented scale, these questions will not be answered to anyone's satisfaction. Personally, I have very little doubt that intelligence is not related to skin color. Testing for intelligence is where we have problems, because there is little agreement on what type of testing is relevant to the question., and data does not exist to control for the innumerable variables involved.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @01:42PM (1 child)
Skin color is another effect, not a cause. The cause is people being isolated for extended periods of time in dramatically different circumstances. One group of people lived in a utopia (in terms of the weather and availability of food/drink) and where the main threats were mostly relegated to other humans and the relatively rare large carnivorous predator like lions. The other group chose to move explore into largely inhospitable regions where the weather itself is a regular threat to life and if you don't prepare for the winter, you die.
That isolation and the resultant parallel evolution manifested in a vast number of physical differences, skin color being just one of them. The notion that the differences were entirely physical, with no mental evolutionary differences is not only obviously absurd (as per Occam's Razor) but also quantifiably false as can be evidenced by countless measures of various cognitive abilities.
I do agree with you, however, that any given test will of course only measure a subset of abilities. The problem is not that nuance, but people instead wanting to adopt a blank-slate hypothesis when there is not only zero evidence for such, but extensive evidence refuting such a view. We only accept it because it is, ostensibly, more comfortable than the alternative. But that doesn't even really make any sense to me. It simply implies that seeing different outcomes in different groups of people is not necessarily always driven by environmental or cultural factors.
In pursuit of a provably false hypothesis we're effectively creating a dystopia. The individual who discovered DNA was "cancelled" for publicly stating that people are not identical. It creates a dramatic chilling effect on the truth, which ultimately drives society backwards. We're gone full phrenology, just in the opposite direction - assuming a false hypothesis because it confirms our biases.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @03:43PM
TL;DR
The black man living in Africa had it too easy which is why he now strives to live on welfare in the White man's west. Because life in Africa is too hard for the lazy black man.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by r_a_trip on Tuesday June 15 2021, @08:13AM (7 children)
No, the trouble is not with the differences. If they exist, they exist. The trouble is that any label of difference can be abused by bigots to dismiss all individuals who fall under a label. Label says X so individual Y must also be X by definition. For some things that is true. People with blue eyes have blue eyes. No way around it. For other things, no, it doesn't work that way. For anything that has variances, using label X as a given is biased and wrong. Green people are prone to violence, yet Ben (who is green) is a pacifist. Fuchsia people have lower average intelligence, yet Fuchsia Ezra has an IQ of 140. Labeling Ben a berserker and Ezra of limited capability is doing injustice.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday June 15 2021, @09:52AM (5 children)
You've got it spot on. There is a lot of evidence that we (you and I) are terribly pulled by our prejudice, even when we know all about it. Labelling only strengthens that prejudice.
And, historically, that process ends up with Godwin's rule being applied...
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Tuesday June 15 2021, @02:28PM
Not quite. The vast majority of what's been written about unconscious bias over the past years has come primarily from things like the Implicit Association Test [harvard.edu]. It flicks a bunch of images in front of you and your speed and accuracy is supposed to represent an unconscious association of e.g. white people with harmless items and blacks with weapons. The problem?
When one takes an IQ test, we can debate what the answer "truly" means. But the one thing that's for certain is that if you score high on an IQ test then you are vastly more likely to: do well in school, succeed at STEM, earn more money throughout your life, even maintain a healthier weight, etc, etc. In other words we can argue about the causation vs correlation til we're both blue in the face, but there's zero doubt that the relationship (whether causal or correlationary) not only exists but is extremely strong.
The problem the IAT test is your results don't really tell you much of anything. This [researchgate.net] study did an analysis of hundreds of over studies that observed differences in behaviors and how it correlates to the test (do bigots have a greater subconscious bias for instance?) and similarly how people's behaviors and views changed once they underwent "training" to change their subconscious bias. The outcome? Nothing. Your unconscious biases seem to have little to no effect on your conscious behavior and biases, and "training" to change the former has a negligible effect on the latter.
Here [chronicle.com] is a phenomenal and interesting article from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Disable scripts in your browser to bypass their subscribe-wall. In a nutshell, the IAT was developed as a sort of IQ test, except for bias. Except its results seem to be mostly noise. The main reason it's repeatedly referenced is because there is little to nothing in the way of publication working to dismantle it. It provides an endless source of easy publication materials in a field dominated by people who (1) want to believe what it says and (2) need to publish, or perish. Yet now even one of the creators of the IAT is emphasizing that trying to change associations is unlikely to change behavior.
Keep in mind that the entire field of bias and prejudice is primary within the domain of social psychology - a field that has a 25% [wikipedia.org] replication rate. The implication of that being that if you believed the exact opposite of what any given study in social psychology claimed, you'd tend to be vastly more informed than somebody who simply took what was published at face value.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Socrastotle on Tuesday June 15 2021, @02:55PM (3 children)
I'd also add one other thing here. When one looks back at society I think somehow we have this habit of demonizing people and actions without ever really considering what they were actually thinking. Good intentions do not preclude a horrible outcome, or horrible behaviors. One of the most important Supreme Court decisions is Buck vs Bell [cornell.edu]. It was a cornerstone of our rapidly "advancing" eugenics program.
In brief: There was a feeble-minded woman named Carrie Buck who had already had a feeble-minded child while working as a prostitute. And her mother was, also, feeble-minded. There was clearly some sort of genetic disorder she was passing along. And so during her prison detention, the state sought permission to sterilize her, citing public safety as well as her own. This was the response of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:
The state won and she was indeed sterilized. But it's so interesting reading the rhetoric and one can easily see how it was genuinely well intentioned, and those supportive of such were in no way whatsoever malicious or trying to create a super-race or whatever. In fact some of the loudest proponents for eugenics in the US included individuals such as W.E.B. Du Bois who was not only the first black graduate of Harvard, but also the co-founder of the NAACP.
When we look back at the past we often miss what really happened for the sake of narrative. As the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And so too today, do you not see what we are doing to society? We are rapidly starting to distort society, discourse, and all stability as a nation for the sake of an ideology that, while well intentioned by most, is having catastrophic and destructive effects on society.
As one final interesting aside - that ruling was never formally overturned and remains a part of American legal jurisprudence. We abandoned our eugenics efforts thanks to a certain German vegetarian artist, but it may ultimately come to be seen that we never really learned the real lesson - which was far more fundamental than 'don't support government-driven eugenics programs'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @03:52PM (2 children)
And... back the fuck up. WTF?! I presume you're talking about Trump but my subconscious tells me otherwise (I'm getting a erection at the prospect of pwing some libs).
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Socrastotle on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:01PM (1 child)
If my comments don't reflect the kosher position of one ideology or another, I'll consider that a feature - not a bug.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @06:13AM
In other words, "Me? I like me. How about me? Yes I like me too."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @01:46PM
Of course the average of a group does not define the individual and I think it would be more than appropriate to "correct" somebody who maliciously or ignorantly said as much. However, at the same time it *does* define the group.
The problem we have today is that we've gone so hardcore off the deep end in the other direction that we want to reject all differences, and so any difference in a group outcome is attributed to some sort of social or environmental issue. And we are turning society upside down trying to find it. When the reality is that such an issue may simply not exist.
If somebody is convinced that a giant will finally emerge from a windmill, how many will they smash before they start to believe otherwise? What if the answer is that there is no limit?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @06:46PM (77 children)
Virus of the type being manipulated in a virus research lab infects people only miles from it.
Chinese Communist Party tells you it was not a lab leak but came from peasants operating a market next door.
What would Occam say?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Tork on Monday June 14 2021, @06:51PM (32 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @06:56PM (31 children)
What is far more likely in all probability?
Never mind all the evidence that has come out since the original incident.
You have to want to believe really hard to swallow the Chinese propaganda.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Tork on Monday June 14 2021, @07:24PM
In GTAV down by Vespucci Beach there's an NPC with an identical dialog tree.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday June 14 2021, @07:30PM (29 children)
So all of the other of hundreds of outbreaks that had the same cause of "lousy sanitary conditions" were all bioweapons? Such as the cholera outbreaks in the 1800's?
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @07:46PM (28 children)
You're, intentionally or otherwise, leaving out a rather critical part of his comment. A lab was actively researching and pursuing "gain of function" research on COVID viruses and exploring what might happen if such a virus developed the ability to infect humans. And then a virus of that exact sort somehow ends sparking a mass infection starting within the immediate vicinity of the lab.
Thinking a natural release is at all probable in this scenario is illogical. It is *possible*, but it was always exceptionally unlikely. The reason our media and government just did a 180 is simply for geopolitical reasons which is, itself, rather disconcerting. We were censoring discussion because of the geopolitical implications of a topic, even what was censored was the most likely truth. We are increasingly emulating the dystopias of the past that we were all supposed to have learned from.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @07:54PM (20 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @07:58PM (19 children)
Accidental virus releases from labs ARE mundane and common.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @08:06PM (18 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @08:30PM (9 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents [wikipedia.org]
Welcome to planet Earth, the world where shit happens.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @08:36PM (8 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:05PM (7 children)
Please describe the amazing mental process that led you to declare a list of multiple cases of people outside labs getting lab-escaped infections "doesn't say shit happened".
I think with sufficient effort, you can still manage to unsee any and all similarities of this above case to you-know-what, can't you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:13PM (6 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:37PM (5 children)
What, pray tell, IS the unnameable "it" you so industriously deny? You are too careful not to state anything specific to make any sense.
And you skipped the explaining of your amazing mental process, too. That is not nice.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:47PM (4 children)
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:54PM (3 children)
You failed the Turing test, Mr.Bot.
Do answer the question, or do turn off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @10:00PM (2 children)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @01:47AM (1 child)
There have been several questions, and you've not answered any of them. You're simply playing a script like a rusty pianola.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @02:15AM
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @08:39PM (7 children)
Your own ignorance does not define reality. Corporate media is now reporting [msn.com] what "outside" sources have been reporting for months.
The 'scientist' that organized the well known paper rejecting of even the suggestion that COVID may have been a lab leak was Peter Daszak - the head of EcoHealth Alliance, an NGO that was receiving millions of dollars from the US government for research including gain-of-function (making something more lethal/virulent) research on bat derived coronaviruses. And it gets even better. Some of the funding that the Wuhan lab received from Daszak came from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases which is headed by none other than Anthony Fauci.
There's also a funny bit from this [nypost.com] article as well:
In a nutshell, the likely reason that we tried to ban discussion of the lab leak theory is because COVID was likely not only from a lab leak in China, but a lab leak as part of an experiment that was likely receiving US taxpayer dollars. Reality is far more entertaining than fiction, because watching liars operate in person is so much more entertaining and interesting than any author could ever imagine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @08:50PM (6 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @08:55PM (1 child)
There is nothing more "likely" because none of this is probabilistic. Everything stated *did* happen. And all it did is send the lab leak from a high probability outcome to something approaching certainty.
I don't think we should ever say the chance of a natural origin is 0%, but it is getting pretty close to it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:04PM
... because that's the explanation closest to what you already believe.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @01:24PM (3 children)
"likely" [twitter.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:12PM (2 children)
Yeah this is what I don't like. It was always fairly obvious that a lab leak was the most probable, but now when the government decides that pushing the lab leak hypothesis is more in their interests than censoring it, we're suddenly seeing the propaganda machine go 180 in the opposite direction.
That interaction was 100% staged and is 100% propaganda. That I happen to agree with it doesn't make it anymore repulsive. People should not make judgements off of this sort of rubbish, but instead actually engage in the revolutionary and counter-culture action of actually using your own brain. Look at the evidence yourself, and if you find the lab-leak compelling then go with that. If you don't? Then don't.
But propaganda to now softly mock people for rejecting the lab leak theory (following months of the exact opposite) is nothing short of nauseating.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @12:30AM (1 child)
Was it? Stewart was always more level headed than today's talking heads. The left are predictably going mental. [theblaze.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @05:02PM
If people were genuinely upset, there would be articles digging up some random comments Stewart made and using these to try to defame his character (which would be trivial for anybody who's been in comedy for decades), calling for his public cancellation, sending him death threats, and all the other fun stuff people do when somebody has the wrong opinion now a days.
Politicians, the media, social media, and others all suddenly and simultaneously taking a sharp 180 on the whole 'the lab leak is a far right debunked and literally impossible racist conspiracy theory' to 'yeah, the lab leak is a viable scenario' - was obviously not a coincidence. The only reason things are going slowly right now is because of how batshit insane they went pushing the exact opposite for the past year. Comedy is allowed to go the full monty because it's comedy, yet you'd have never heard this in a million years before it suddenly became uncensored again.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday June 15 2021, @03:38AM (6 children)
What gets me is - why does anyone care?
Let's say for the sake of argument that COVID-19 did originate in a lab - so what? Sure, maybe it's a good reason to sanction the Chinese government, and I'm sure they're none to happy about it themselves, but for the other 99.9999% of the world population it simply doesn't matter. The origin of the virus has zero impact on how we deal with it, blame is only useful after the crisis is past and we're trying to avoid a repeat.
Seems to me the loudest voices who took up the story were all interested in one of two things:
1) Trying to deflect blame from leaders whose handling of the crisis left much to be desired. Which is completely illogical - the source of the crisis is irrelevant to how you deal with it once it's happened.
2) Fostering anti-Chinese racism, which is even more illogical since it would be *the government* at fault. Chinese citizens have *far* less influences over their government than even the most gerrymandered of Americans.
So basically... pure politics of the lowest rabble-rousing variety.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:08AM (1 child)
Because covid is being used to justify increasing taxpayer funding to gain of function research for one thing (reported by The Hill, though I can't remember their referenced sources). If a worldwide pandemic happened via a lab escape and this is covered up, then it's more likely to happen again. For another many of the public officials who "informed" the media are standing to gain from an expansion of "gain of function" funding via the revolving door beyond their stints in public life (eg. Peter Dazak and Faucci), and will escape blame if indeed the lab leak hypothesis is true. Then there's the fact that their words were taken uncritically by left media to immediately say covid came via the Wuhan wet markets - they used to pose as an antidote to Fox, but now they're the other partisan and antiscientific bookend to Fox. Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald and others have reported extensively on this. It's not only dangerous in the case of covid, but it's corrosive to democracy more widely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @03:58PM
> stints in public life (eg. ... Faucci)
stints - you should look that up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @06:09AM (3 children)
What gets me is why you wouldn't care.
We just had what has been likely the worst crisis in many decades in developed nations. And it's triggered behaviors that may have reshaped the face of this planet permanently. And you don't care about the truth behind the event was?
This is like not caring in Iraq about the source of the lies there. 'Well we already invaded, so who really cares about the truth or not behind it all.'
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday June 15 2021, @01:45PM (2 children)
Now that the crisis is under control, and there's been time for the experts to actually evaluate the evidence, it's becoming more relevant to the internatioal stage, though still completely irrelevant to dealing with the pandemic itself. I've yet to hear much said about it in the context of trying to prevent a repeat though.
Like I said, for the last year virtually everyone bringing it up is looking to either deflect blame from themselves (or "their guy") or inflame racism for self-serving political ends. NOT propose potential solutions to prevent a repeat.
And no, it's nothing like Iraq - in Iraq the lies were the direct cause of the invasion that *was* the ongoing problem, and the only real solution was to acknowledge the lies and withdraw before finding the nonexistent WMDs. For a pandemic, the source really doesn't matter to the solution, only to reducing the risk of future pandemics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:01PM
> virtually everyone bringing it up is looking to either deflect blame from themselves (or "their guy") or inflame racism for self-serving political ends.
No, I wouldn't say everyone. I'd say about 73,000,000.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:46PM
With whatever due respect, this reads very much like extreme cognitive dissonance, because you sound rational - but you're stating extremely illogical things. If you want to know how to prevent a pandemic, understanding exactly how this one started is obviously one of the most important pieces of information there is. But of course it also goes far deeper than that.
Over the past year we created a dystopia over this issue, among others. We engaged in an unprecedented scale of censorship and aggressive propaganda not only rejecting even the mere possibility of a lab leak, but actively attacking anybody and everybody who ever suggested as such. To say we should just ignore all of this now is simply irrational. Because there are countless lessons to be learned, and many individuals and groups who should face consequences for their misdeeds.
And the "experts evaluating evidence" you'd like to appeal were lying and are part of this dystopia. Do you remember this letter [thelancet.com] published in the Lancent by a number of 'independent scientists' who declared no conflicts of interests? A quick search for Peter Daszak [duckduckgo.com] would be informative, if you don't already know what's happening.
The man who organized that letter, Peter Daszak, is also the head of an NGO (EcoHealth Alliance) that was funding gain of function research on bat-derived coronaviruses in the Wuhan virus lab. And EcoHealth alliance was, in turn, being richly funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. I'll let you find out who its head is on your own, because as always - reality is so much stranger than fiction could ever be.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by KilroySmith on Monday June 14 2021, @07:05PM (5 children)
>>> Virus of the type being manipulated in a virus research lab infects people only miles from it.
Well, replace "manipulated" with "studied", and you're probably spot-on.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @08:50PM (4 children)
No, it was literally being manipulated. This is one of the big issues. The Wuhan lab was, undoubtedly, engaged in Gain of Function [wikipedia.org] research on bat derived coronaviruses. That funding for that research is where things get fun, but that's another [even more sordid] story.
The nominal purpose of GoF research is to see what might happen if a virus, through natural evolutionary mutation, was made more contagious or more deadly, and how we might contain such a threat. Basically trying to stay one step ahead of threats. The obvious problems are that this is extremely dangerous stuff where something far worse than COVID could have been unleashed. For instance, while smallpox has been eliminated - multiple countries still have live samples of it. And smallpox is something we can't even imagine now a days - it had a mortality rate of around 30% - killing the young and healthy just as easily as the elderly and infirm. I'm not implying there is GoF being carried out on smallpox - only that COVID is relatively mild compared to what GoF research could potentially yield.
And of course there's always the issue that every country studying these viruses is also considering the possibility of weaponization. It's just not a great field.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:10PM (3 children)
> Wuhan lab was, undoubtedly
BZZZT. Try again.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:54PM
Pffft! [archive.is]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @02:00AM (1 child)
It's trivial to find
- grant applications for doing GoF there.
- the awarded grants for doing GoF there
- Scientists talking about the GoF being done there
- Scientists publishing papers on the GoF being done there
Quite why you see layer upon layer of fossils and conclude some absurd spontanious creation is alas no longer an interesting pathology, as we're quite familiar with it from related examples.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:03PM
Teach the controversy. Why do you hate America?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @07:28PM
Occam would probably say, huh coronaviruses that cross species boundaries. JJJJJJIINNNNA HOOOOOAX!!!!!!!!!!!11111111
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday June 14 2021, @07:32PM (21 children)
Getting immunity from Covid-19 infection.
You could (1) take one of several carefully studied vaccines approve for general use, or (2) become infected with COVID-19. Either would give you some immunity from further infection.
(1) is very safe with an extremely low (single digits in a million) incidences of bad outcomes. (2) is very unsafe, requiring hospitalization, significantly higher outcomes of death than the vaccinations, and if you survive, you likely have (a) life long health problems from your infection and (b) a lower level of immunity from reinfection than if you had gotten vaccinated.
Vaccines have been around for many decades and have proven generally safe and effective. A net benefit to all of humanity even if there are low incidences of adverse results. Getting infected doesn't help anyone (except those making money from your hospitalization and/or enbalming, funeral, burial/cremation, etc).
Gee, which one should I pick from (1) or (2)?
As for occam's razin: I should throw in that some crazy people believe: vaccines have magnetic crystals that make you magnetic so that a key will stick to your neck, and also have an invisible tracking device embedded in the vaccine so that the government can track your location. (Prediction: trumpers next will attribute the vaccine as having a way to track your masturbation habits and track your thoughts about various local restaurants.)
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(Score: -1, Troll) by js290 on Monday June 14 2021, @07:45PM (7 children)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 14 2021, @07:57PM (1 child)
I didn't mention the word science.
I even went out of my way to give fair consideration to right wing ideas like vaccines having magnetic crystals and tracking devices.
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(Score: 1) by js290 on Monday June 14 2021, @09:40PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @02:03AM (4 children)
That would explain why there isn't a family of journals titled "Science".
Oh....
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by js290 on Tuesday June 15 2021, @02:27PM (3 children)
Nature don't give AF about "journals..."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:06PM
It truly takes a scientific American to... no. I can't do it, I give up.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday June 15 2021, @06:47PM (1 child)
Nature is a journal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @06:19AM
Give that man a banana.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @08:21PM (4 children)
You could (1) observe what happened to yourself and real live people around you in the preceding year, or (2) continue to believe scary pictures broadcast at you and new promises from people who to date hadn't kept any.
Have I to remind you that so did coronaviruses themselves, until very recently? Proven generally safe to humans, that is?
And are you really uninformed that NO vaccine against any coronavirus had ever been safe OR effective until, presumably, this recent crop?
What history does teach us, is that "crazy" is a label that had been used to silence inconvenient opinions long before the advent of Internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_reaction_to_Ignaz_Semmelweis [wikipedia.org]
Unless you yourself have done some little experiment with a vial of vaccine and a magnet, you cannot really know who in fact is crazy on this crazy planet; that person somewhere telling of implausible things, or you choosing to disbelieve those things sight unseen in a leap of faith.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 14 2021, @10:04PM (3 children)
This crazy talk says it all....
And secret Jewish space lasers could be responsible for the California wild fires. You yourself personally do not know otherwise.
And the Earth could be flat! There are lot of people who are convinced that it is!
Go ahead and try to defend crazy all you want.
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @10:34PM (1 child)
Indeed. I am beginning to notice that merely disagreeing and walking away from drooling ranting about the latest conspiracy theory du jour is now labelled as silencing "inconvenient opinions". It makes it sound all so very oppressive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:07PM
That's urr FIRST Amendment right, boy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @01:37AM
Indeed you are an expert on producing crazy talk. Had it magically made you an expert on recognizing it, given all the crazy things people, and nature, do?
And indeed if I, personally, had not checked that something is not true, I do not run around telling everyone it isn't so. It's called "honesty"; try that sometime.
And do you believe those supposed people are really real? On what evidence? Do you personally know one, or are you told those exist, by some nice convincing TV person?
For that, I would have to care enough to personally check if it is true, first. ;) Yes it is that alien concept of honesty again; do google it or whatever.
But I am not so much a long-eared ungulate to assume that everything is as it is shown on the TV.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Monday June 14 2021, @09:47PM (7 children)
I generally agree with you regarding vaccination; people should get vaccinated. We have a small window to drive this particular bug extinct and now is the time to do it.
That said, the safety and efficacy of previous vaccines do not necessarily carry over to a new vaccine. Live, inactivated, and subunit/conjugate vaccines have a over a century, almost a century, and almost two decades of safety and efficacy data respectively. mRNA vaccines have less than 18 months. They will probably be fine, but we don't have in vivo data yet.
People should still get vaccinated though; there are non-mRNA vaccines available if the above is a sticking point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:51PM (1 child)
The only bug being driven extinct is the western civilization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:09PM
Which brave men will stand up... oh, you? Nvm.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday June 14 2021, @10:02PM (2 children)
Many tens of millions of people, if not more, are vaccinated at this point. And have been for months.
So I'm not sure why you would still think there is any major safety concern.
All vaccines have some risk. But the alternative of not taking it is worse.
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(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday June 15 2021, @12:32PM
To be clear, I don't think there is a major concern. I grok that an mRNA vaccine has a half-life in a critter that's measured in hours. I am saying that a very small portion of my belief that there is no major concern is based on faith, not data. The data, specifically that for long term effects (>2 years) for Covid vaccines does not exist. That isn't anti-science or political, it is simply an artifact of they didn't exist two years ago. Being honest about the limitations of our knowledge is important.
People should still get vaccinated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @05:13PM
And we're still finding out new *short-term* side effects. Long-term side effects will only be determined in the long-term. Have a billion people smoke cigarettes for several months and you'd conclude that you're cigarette lighter is more likely to harm you than that cigarette. And the vast number of adverse effects [openvaers.com] reported means that digging through the data to further nail down which are causal and which are causally connected is going to take time.
Even in more contemporary times things like glyphosate were supposed to be completely safe and harmless with extremely aggressive propaganda against any suggestion to the contrary. Today it's banned [baumhedlundlaw.com] throughout much of the world. Our totally-not-corrupt regulatory authorities still insist [fda.gov] it's perfectly safe though. Take you jab and get a free bottle of Roundup, if the weed, donuts, and lotteries didn't already convince you of how you're seen by the "powers that be".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @12:10AM
I'm with a certain benevolent dictator on this one. [lkml.org]
Anti-vaxxer "concerns" about the pathogenic spike protein are dismissed here. [sciencebasedmedicine.org]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday June 15 2021, @12:46AM
We are almost certainly well past the window to drive COVID-19 extinct. We may well have been past it before it was given a name. There's evidence that it was circulating world-wide before it was identified. (I wouldn't call it proof, but it's valid evidence. Including a study of probably-virus genomes from an Italian sewer around 6 months before COVID was named. Unfortunately, the genomes degrade in sewage, so it's not real proof, only evidence.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @07:46PM
Whatever keeps him not fired [at].
(Score: 5, Insightful) by helel on Monday June 14 2021, @08:25PM (11 children)
Scenario A) The virus was created in a lab and breeched containment and first showed up in a nearby market where respiratory viruses routinely make the jump form animals into humans and the people who lost control of it didn't recognize it for a month or two.
Scenario B) The virus was a natural mutation the likes of which have happened repeatedly [nih.gov] in wet markets over the last two decades.
What would Ockham say?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 14 2021, @09:11PM
JJJJJIIIIIIIIIIIINAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday June 14 2021, @11:13PM (5 children)
The truest interpretation of the razor is that your mind is the only thing that exists, and you merely dream your observations. Anything else is more complicated.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday June 15 2021, @05:19AM (4 children)
Not really. You have to explain why reality is so consistent, unlike all your other dreams. This follows naturally from the reality being actually real, while you have to add complexity to explain it under the assumption that reality is just a dream.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday June 15 2021, @06:00AM (3 children)
In dreams, things tend to appear to be consistent, even when they aren't.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday June 15 2021, @10:54AM (2 children)
Do they? I often notice inconsistencies while dreaming (without figuring out that it is a dream until I wake up). Indeed, a recurrent cause of me waking up from a dream is me noticing an inconsistency while dreaming and thinking about how that can be. That thinking process seems to trigger waking up (and as soon as I do wake up, I immediately recognize the cause of the inconsistency as it being just a dream, but before, I only notice that something doesn't really fit together).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday June 15 2021, @03:47PM
Interesting. For me, my dream's continuity seems to be largely self healing. If I notice something that's wrong, it's immediately retconned.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:22PM
I have this weird inconsistent dream where I'm amazing but everyone else thinks I'm a dumbass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @02:01AM (3 children)
The virus contains a CGG-CGG Furin cleavage site that is not found in any wild viruses, but is what the Wuhan lab was inserting during their gain of function research.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7744920/ [nih.gov]
Just a bit of Bayesian evidence for Scenario A.
(Score: 3, Informative) by helel on Tuesday June 15 2021, @02:54AM (2 children)
The entire point of the paper you linked is that COVID19 could be natural or could be artificial and the evidence in the genome cannot tell us which. That's not a point towards either theory. It's merely an argument that neither theory should be ruled out at this time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:30AM (1 child)
Selective quoting on behalf of China much?
Try it without the strategic omissions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:45AM
Yeah, that "might" really seals the deal for me.
And monkeys might fly out of my ass too.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday June 15 2021, @12:41AM (1 child)
That there's not enough evidence to reach a decision.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15 2021, @04:24PM
That's why we need bold Leadership unlike pussywhipped creepy Joe "bow down to CHINA" Biden.