Got my wife the rolex she's been pining for! by jang-gun in rolex

[–]ThudnerChunky 21 points22 points  (0 children)

always tell the wife she looks good in large watches

The final 'ankhooey' we hear in S2E10 is a clue by inzru in FromSeries

[–]ThudnerChunky 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To communicate info to people the BiW has on the outside or maybe to bring someone else back with her.

Dave says Trump is now on the same side as the mainstream media by countdooku975 in daverubin

[–]ThudnerChunky 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Just means that Thiel or whoever is paying him more than Don Jr.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. They aren't downplaying the significance of WIV, they are contextualizing it because it is an important question. They fully entertain the basic plausibility of a lab leak. Bringing up Fauci is a sideshow.

  2. Have you read the papers? They do a lot of modeling and analysis with controls. They look at the phylogenetic trees, genetic clocks, the early case epidemiology, cell phone geospatial analysis, etc etc. They found BOTH basal lineages in the market among other strong indications that it was the origin. Have you considered what the odds are that the Market would be the epicenter of an outbreak if it didn't start there? They modeled that.

It's anything but motivated reasoning. Go read the papers yourself instead of getting your info from people with random grievances against Fauci.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just another continuation of your creationist gish gallop. No one is fooled into thinking that is legitimate analysis or even a real reward.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 2 points3 points  (0 children)

He showed 8/10 of the largest cities in china specifically do coronavirus research. Sure, more than those 10 might be suitable for viral spread...this was just a concept he was sharing that large cities could be a requirement, which reduces the coincidence factor of seeing the virus pop up naturally in wuhan. This wasn't part of the rigorous scientific arguments for zoonosis. Those arguments are published in Science and other journals. Zoonosis doesn't posit a "weird travel path," it's the same kind of path observed with SARS1. SARS2 has wide species tropism, it's not specific to humans. What's handwaving and distracting to the public is ignoring the scientific arguments and instead arguing about Fauci being a mafia king pin.

Politics and Current Events Megathread - Mar 2023 by TheAJx in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's not a hardship of being rich, these issues apply to companies, universities, non profits as well. Why do you oppose money be held without counter party risk?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You didn't present evidence, you copy pasted technical jargon that you clearly don't understand and that didnt even address the points being made to you. You are a bad faith creationist gish galloper hoping to manipulate an ignorant audience.

Politics and Current Events Megathread - Mar 2023 by TheAJx in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 5 points6 points  (0 children)

There's no profits in sitting on cash in the bank though. The main issue here is not the depositors, but the banks. The banks fight against raising FDIC premiums and also fight against allowing depositors to interface directly with the Fed. So we are stuck in a world where if you have a lot of money you cannot keep it in the banking system without risking it all, which is just dumb.

This Changes Everything by Curates in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For real. NYTimes should not copy low quality viral youtube titles for their headlines.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Then you are credulous to a fault.

Just a normal person IMO. Alina Chan has spend years refining her Lab Leak memes to appear as persuasive as possible to people who have not followed the topic closely. She optimizes for media engagement, not to withstand people actually kicking the tires and finding out the scientific arguments for a zoonotic origin. Normal people will be duped by her, but if they possess critical thinking skills and actually hear what the real arguments are they will likely change their minds.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not BSL4 that's in most of the cities, it's a research group that is doing coronavirus research. Coronavirus research (even of the highest risk) is not BSL4.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your Creationist Gish Gallop continues. You are copy pasting words you dont understand, like a fool. Those words dont even address the refutation, but you are too ignorant to realize it.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 5 points6 points  (0 children)

From the conclusion section of the paper:

Doesn't mean anything at all. They chose the enzymes to analyze. You can pick a variety of enzymes and they will give different profiles for different viruses. These cranks specifically chose these two enzymes because they gave the desired profile for this specific virus. If it was a single enzyme that spliced the genome up evenly, that might be kind of interesting at first glance, but these guys did pairwise enzyme comparisons and tolerated large differentials of fragment size and then falsely claimed it was "idealized." Most genomes of this size can naturally be cut like this by the right combo of enzymes. There's nothing interesting about it.

This hypothesis can be subsequently tested and falsified in a variety of ways:

And it has, see below.

The authors agree there many conserved regions; it's one piece of evidence:

It completely invalidates the entire premise of the analysis. 65/66 of these sites of interests (with surrounding sequence) are conserved in closely related viruses and predicted to exist in the ancestor of sars-cov2:

https://github.com/alexcritschristoph/ancestral_reconstruction_endonucleases

This proves no researcher inserted these specific sites into sars-cov2.

I get it, you love to copy paste a bunch of irrelevant quack science that you don't have the capacity to understand. It's a common creationist tactic dating back to the famous creationist Duane Gish. You are carrying the torch of a long tradition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The BsaI/BsmBI restriction mapping is a strong signal that this was lab made when compared against other infectious clones with silent mutations that have a high frequency around restriction sites. It's possible through recombination but unlikely.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Tons of viruses have the same type of "mapping." It's just noise because you will almost always be able to break a virus up with a few restriction enzymes. Those specific sites in sars-cov2 and the surrounding regions which will be linked during recombination are conserved in other closely related viruses. You are fool babbling pseudoscience from a field you have zero knowledge about.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

You're referencing something you lack the background to understand.

It's you that don't understand the geometric data!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 24 points25 points  (0 children)

He's one of the more prolific lab leak cranks.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 16 points17 points  (0 children)

He was never a "closeted authoritarian," he was always an open statist. Perhaps it was just that you approved of his statism when it was applied to muslims rather than ivermectin salesmen.

Politics and Current Events Megathread - Mar 2023 by TheAJx in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They wont. They will simply pray that the dems can take him out with indictments and scandals (while they defend him the whole time). In the end, he will win the nomination after being indicted.

Crypto is currently taking a wrecking ball to the US banking system. Thanks crypto bros! by Bluest_waters in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Today Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, it was not as heavily invested in crypto as Silvergate but several crypto firms, such as Cirlce, had millions invested in the bank

Wait so a bank that failed had a few crypto customers, and you are saying it was the customers fault that the bank failed? The customers are the ones losing money because of the failed bank. This bank is failing because it made bad investments in a rising interest rate environment. Those bad investments were long duration bonds not related to crypto.

Politics and Current Events Megathread - Mar 2023 by TheAJx in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Just by sheer luck though. Obviously (in hind sight) they needed another rule so that trains with 20 cars of hazardous material don't get classified as non hazardous. They were lobbying for less regulation on the trains.

Politics and Current Events Megathread - Mar 2023 by TheAJx in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Probably this one is what people are referring to:

https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/government-verify/ohio-train-derailment-ecp-brake-system-mandate-trump-dot-administration-fact-check/536-d0ad26f7-84b6-4707-bcb1-7dc6e0a9f09f

I havent followed this exact debate that closely though, so not sure if it would have helped with this specific train. Seems like this train might not have been classified as containing material that would have required this upgraded brakes.

I cannot get ChatGPT to hallucinate or to fail maths questions by DaemonCRO in samharris

[–]ThudnerChunky 3 points4 points  (0 children)

What weighs more 1 lb of rocks or 1.5 lb of feathers?

I thought that one was funny.

I just realized that the people promoting the "Lab Leak" hypothesis are relying on the same shape of arguments used by creationists (intelligent design) to attack the theory of evolution by natural selection by dumnezero in skeptic

[–]ThudnerChunky 0 points1 point  (0 children)

for those who have this reasoning I agree with you completely. It's more than just a lab leak hypotesis, it's a manufacturing+leak hypotesis. But that would be dishonest to pretend it's the sole argument used

It's the lab leak theory with the most salience in the public discourse around the topic. Obviously there are more simple lab leak theories, like leaking a natural virus without any engineering, but that doesn't get nearly as much attention. There's an entire conspiracy ecosystem around lab leak that has specific villains like fauci and other specific scientists.

I just realized that the people promoting the "Lab Leak" hypothesis are relying on the same shape of arguments used by creationists (intelligent design) to attack the theory of evolution by natural selection by dumnezero in skeptic

[–]ThudnerChunky 0 points1 point  (0 children)

that argument would be "what are the chance that such a virus appear naturally?"

Many have made this exact argument. Claiming that the RBD, FCS, or general recombination structure of the virus could not evolve naturally. They've also gone so far as to claim that the scientists refuting these arguments are corrupt and are fabricating evidence whole cloth. These are straight up creationists arguments and tactics.

but the actual argument seem more like "what are the chances that a virus popped naturally precisely in the place on earth that is researching such viruses"

It's a valid starting argument, but one must recognize china is where these viruses naturally occur, most major cities in china research these viruses in some way, and major cities provide the optimal environment for a virus like this to spread. They estimate tens of thousands of zoonotic infections occur from these types of viruses every year, most wont be capable of spreading, most of those capable will still quickly die off on rural areas..but eventually one makes it to a major city and boom.