| These are some fair points, but I have some objections: > mainstream consensus now absolutely includes the possibility... I don't think this is the case... Your belief is obviously different to Ralph Baric's which is yet different to the belief of those who worked in the Wuhan laboratory. I.e. the scientific consensus was that it was extremely unlikely, Baric now says that this is less likely than the zoonotic origin, and you say "entirely possible". You can use the catch-all "includes the possibility" to treat all of them together, but if you had to pick numbers for the probability of the lab leak, you'd likely pick different numbers than Baric or others. I.e. just because something is not impossible but merely "extremely unlikely" it's still reckless to have our media talk about it in the way it has. If anything, if the real consensus is that we don't know... The media should not carelessly talk about any hypothesis without also mentioning the others, and why they are more/less likely. This is not a topic that needs to he hashed and rehashed every few weeks: the consequence of treating this like it has been done, is that now a bunch of people think that the lab peak is what actually happened, and just today I've seen another article which defends Joe Rogan by saying that there's "consensus on the lab leak hypothesis"... I.e. if there should be censoring about this, both me and you should be censored, for not being concrete and impartial enough. > I'm pretty sure he disagrees with you on this matter I'm not sure what this appeal to authority wants to imply. Of course the decision process for how/when to censor it's a delicate one, and ideally left far away from millionaires who think that they are more competent than they actually are. To clarify, just because a private person owns a platform, it doesn't mean that they should be the only ones to make rules on what contents are allowed. They can make things stricter, but they shouldn't be able to make things laxer by allowing what's otherwise illegal (obviously, that depends on jurisdiction, which is why countries censor websites via DNS or routing) > I assume you're aware that the host and guests on TWiV have advocated for and performed exactly the kind of high-risk research The only people who describe this as "high-risk" are also the people who believe in a lab leak being actually what happened Do you think that EVERY "gain of function" experiment is high risk? |
As I said in my previous comment in exactly those words, "We don't know how the pandemic originated". So I'd certainly agree that the media should make that clear. (I mean that as my personal opinion, not a call for censors to force them to.)
Given that we don't know, regardless of whether one thinks a research accident caused the pandemic with p = 0.01 or p = 0.99, I believe that an investigation of all possible causes is required. Ralph Baric and I probably disagree on the exact probabilities, but we agree on the investigation. There are many significant unexplored paths for that, even without the PRC's cooperation, including subpoenas for the records of the WIV's American collaborators.
With millions dead, such an investigation is inevitably political. You'd probably rather the investigation were left to scientific experts, and I would too; but someone has to choose those experts. In a democracy, that job goes to elected politicians. The performance of those politicians is ultimately judged by the voters. Without open discussion, I don't see how the voters could make an informed choice. (I guess the politicians could decide what information the voters deserve to know, and the voters could judge the politicians according to that filtered information; but I assume you see the flaw in that system.)
> I'm not sure what this appeal to authority wants to imply. Of course the decision process for how/when to censor it's a delicate one, and ideally left far away from millionaires who think that they are more competent than they actually are.
I mentioned Paul Graham's beliefs not because they were specially valuable in themselves, but because under present American law, he's probably the person with authority to decide what is censored on this site. If he were inclined to censor, then I don't think he'd decide in your favor.
It seems like you believe American law should be changed, by amending the constitution to eliminate the First Amendment, and the American government should exercise strong powers of censorship over such forums directly. That seems very unlikely to happen. But even if it did, a majority of Americans (including a majority of Democrats) believe not only that an unnatural origin of COVID is possible, but that it's the most likely explanation:
https://www.newsweek.com/most-republicans-democrats-believe-...
So if the American government were censoring, then do you really think they'd be censoring in your favor? If you think stronger government censorship early in the pandemic might have changed public opinion now, then remember that Trump was president at that time. If his government had had that power, then I can't imagine you'd have been pleased with how they used it.
It seems like you're hoping for censorship in the abstract, in service of perfect truth. That can't exist. Censors are humans, and censorship is subject to the same mistakes and corruption as any other human endeavor, especially those affecting the flow of political power. All of this requires human judgment; and once the wrong humans get the job, any apparatus designed to suppress falsehood works just as well to suppress truth.
> Do you think that EVERY "gain of function" experiment is high risk?
Almost any biological experiment involving genetic engineering (or even just culture with artificial selective pressure) may be reasonably anticipated to cause some gain of function. Most such experiments present minimal risk.
The research of concern is the search for deadlier and faster-spreading human potential pandemic pathogens, whether by laboratory gain of function or by collection from nature in areas with minimal other human traffic and thus minimal risk of natural spillover. This was a concern even before this pandemic, and is absolutely a concern even to those who believe that's not the origin of this pandemic:
> “That’s screwed up,” the Columbia University virologist Ian Lipkin, who coauthored the seminal paper arguing that covid must have had a natural origin, told the journalist Donald McNeil Jr. “It shouldn’t have happened. People should not be looking at bat viruses in BSL-2 labs. My view has changed.”
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain-of-...