> It could also be studied and altered in a lab, and then escape.
Of course. But saying "It was studied in a lab, therefore it must be synthetic" is just idiotic and pretty much derails the entire conversation.
It derails the conversation because it conflates a number of issues that have to be assessed seperately: lab safety, mucking about with deadly deseases, and the intent to set deadly deseases free.
If you start conflating any one of these, it becomes more easy to deride the entire conversation as tinfoil hattery. If just one of those components is an easy target for derision or is seen as unlikely, everyone who dares to pick up any of the other points gets painted in the same colour in the public eye. There doesn't even need to be any evil intent behind it. It's just how people are.
And this is precisely what happened when people started pointing out the existence of a lab next to ground zero. A lot of scientists retracted their speculation on this because they were immediately put into the same category as the crowd shouting "tHe cHiNeSe made iT!!".
Exactly. And so the crowd shouting "tHe cHiNeSe dIdN't mAkE iT" has been dominating the conversation by disingenuously pretending that the bar to be met is 100% total from-scratch lab synthesis or nothing.
Of course. But saying "It was studied in a lab, therefore it must be synthetic" is just idiotic and pretty much derails the entire conversation.
It derails the conversation because it conflates a number of issues that have to be assessed seperately: lab safety, mucking about with deadly deseases, and the intent to set deadly deseases free.
If you start conflating any one of these, it becomes more easy to deride the entire conversation as tinfoil hattery. If just one of those components is an easy target for derision or is seen as unlikely, everyone who dares to pick up any of the other points gets painted in the same colour in the public eye. There doesn't even need to be any evil intent behind it. It's just how people are.
And this is precisely what happened when people started pointing out the existence of a lab next to ground zero. A lot of scientists retracted their speculation on this because they were immediately put into the same category as the crowd shouting "tHe cHiNeSe made iT!!".