[monday_]

The trouble here is that a lot of institutions and public persons have more or less staked their credibility on dismissing the lab origin hypothesis. They had their reasons - if anything, over the last years their standing and the value of expert opinion was under constant pressure (notice I'm talking about a reason, not a justification).

But this makes any admission of an error and, by extension, any useful reflection on it very, very improbable. I think if the lab origin is true and at some point becomes common knowledge, it will be treated like the Iraq war. The people responsible for botching the response and the message will fail up and treat the pandemic as if it were a tsunami, rather then human error.

[bonzini]

Lab manufacturing is one thing and has been widely debunked, lab leak is another. I don't think the lab leak has been dismissed as much.

[throwaway316943]

They’ve been repeatedly conflated, either purposefully or carelessly. Almost no one was actually pursuing the engineered bioweapon angle but anyone who even suggested that it may have leaked from a lab that studies bat coronaviruses was treated like a tinfoil hat conspiracy nut. It’s pretty dismal that no one is going to be accountable for their behaviour through this whole mess, nothing will be learned and we’ll probably be worse off the next time something like this happens.

[jl2718]

The behaviorist interpretation of belief is that beliefs expressed will be based on whatever is the most socially acceptable, and that that internal beliefs are formed to be consistent with outward expression of belief.

Nobody will be able to look at this rationally until nobody cares either way. That’s what makes history interesting. It always changes.

[throwaway316943]

I think prohibition is a good illustration of why that interpretation is inaccurate. When one group’s beliefs become dominant in society it doesn’t result in everyone’s opinions changing. People will pay lip service to the commonly held belief but will act otherwise behind closed doors. The people that carry the internalized belief are often entirely oblivious to how much of a lie it actually is since they never get invited to the speak easy.