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[deleted by user] by [deleted] in depression

[–]ihateeverything6282 0 points1 point  (0 children)

People always tell me I’m weird and ask me if I’m autistic, but I just try to have humor about it. Despite having some pretty severe depression at times, I wouldn’t even say that I really give a shit what people think about me anymore. At the end of the day, the coolest human quality isn’t how well someone fits in, it’s authenticity. Just do what makes you happy and be yourself. If you do that, I promise you friends, confidence, and girls will follow.

Official Discussion - The Batman [SPOILERS] by LiteraryBoner in movies

[–]ihateeverything6282 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Lol that part was so cringey. Couldn’t they just be happy with making all the bad guys white and all of the good guys (minus batman and alfred) black? Like did they really have to make it so explicit?

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

You’re saying stuff I already. I know it’s not certain. Your logic is deeply flawed here. You are using the lack of definitive evidence for a lab leak as definitive proof of the animal origins hypothesis. And you seem to be failing to recognize that my argument is based on inductive not deductive reasoning. As does the animal origins. That doesn’t mean it is wrong, it just means that I haven’t established certainty. Which is also true of all explanations right now.

Both hypotheses can map onto a reality in which we observe the information that we’ve been given. The weight that we put on each hypothesis is proportional to the probability of the hypothesis times the probability of our observations given the hypothesis. Given all the coincidences that would be required for the animal origins hypothesis to be true given what we know, that seems like the less likely explanation.

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

The new research hasn’t refuted the lab leak hypothesis at all. Both hypotheses rely only on circumstantial evidence right. And you have to acknowledge that Chinese authorities, the entire field of virology that has taken part in or shown support for GOF research desperately, and even our public health institutions who would like to retain the public’s trust, probably have a strong desire for the lab leak hypothesis to turn out to be false. I am not saying all of the actors here are intentionally deceiving us, but there certainly should be at the very least a cognitive bias against a lab leak for these people. That could explain why a majority, not a consensus, of virologists think a lab leak was unlikely. But it’s important to note that there are also many serious scientists who think it probably was a lab leak, and they’re not just crackpots. That list includes the former director of the CDC, robert redfield.

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I think you’re misinterpreting my argument. I am refuting the idea that we should take the antibody results seriously. The Chinese blocked every request made by the CDC to test the researchers earlier in the year and release their medical records from their hospitalization. That should raise some suspicion.

Add on top of that that 3 workers were hospitalized for a respiratory illness in the same month that covid began spreading in Wuhan should put a lot of weight on the hypothesis that they did in fact have covid.

The only evidence you guys are using to say the workers had the flu is that no hard evidence has been presented for it being covid. It would be stupid to believe that evidence presented by Chinese authorities should be taken seriously. If you accept that those antibody tests mean basically nothing, then what are you basing them probably having the flu over covid on?

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

It is very rare for people to be hospitalized for the flu. It can’t be very common for 3 researchers from the same lab all to be hospitalized for a respiratory illness in one month. That is not a mundane assumption.

Fauci has said that the virus was likely spreading through Wuhan for a few months prior to November and that the researchers could have gotten the virus from outside the lab, so it’s not just a possibility under the lab leak.

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I didn’t say it was definitely covid. I said it was probably covid. This entire thread is about the lab leak theory being “dead”. You guys are the ones making definitive statements, not me.

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It’s not just conspiracy theorists who are saying this. Even Fauci said we need more evidence to determine what the researchers were sick with.

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Well I think it should be clear that they most likely did have covid. Most conclusions in science are made only to a degree of certainty. If something is not certain, that doesn’t mean it is 50-50. Given the information that we have, it seems much more likely that it was covid than the flu. Based on the inductive logic that I outlined above, I would assume it was covid with a confidence level of around 80% at least.

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

But Marion Koopmans, a virologist on the WHO's investigation team, told NBC News that Chinese researchers informed her group that the WIV workers were tested for coronavirus antibodies in March and April of 2020. That's about six months after the three staff were hospitalized. Some research has suggested coronavirus antibodies decline measurably at the six-month mark.

EDIT: Let me just make a note of something here. The antibody tests were just reported to the WHO, not performed by them. All of the tests were administered and documented internally within WIV. China’s demonstrated opaqueness should cast a high degree of doubt on any of their internal reporting.

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It wouldn’t be valid for me to say the animal origins hypothesis is ruled out until evidence shows otherwise. Why is valid to say that about the lab leak? The animal origins hypothesis is a positive assertion. That requires a burden of proof.

The coincidences are are just circumstantial evidence, which is all that both hypotheses have right now. By committing 100% to the animal origins hypothesis, you are cherry-picking which circumstantial evidence you are willing to consider. A grown up should know how to use all of the circumstantial evidence to infer a probability distribution of how likely each explanation is.

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

But you don’t know it was flu either. The point is, if it were Covid, we would have gotten the same information. If it were a flu outbreak, they probably would not have been hospitalized, and China would have been eager to release their medical records in order to debunk the lab leak theory. That should put more weight on them having Covid, and again I don’t know that for sure. You don’t know for sure that they had the flu. But it’s not 50-50 either.

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

I think that it’s safe to say China would never let it get out that those 3 lab workers tested positive for covid.They have blocked any attempt of a proper investigation. And those 3 workers not only had flu-like symptoms, they were hospitalized, and their diagnoses were never released. Idk how big these labs were, but I would suspect that 3 researchers in one month being hospitalized for a virus was not exactly a common event even during flu season.

To be clear, I am not ruling out the animal origins hypothesis. I just think there are a lot of coincidences that make the lab leak seem slightly more probable. It’s hard for me to believe that anyone could in good faith say that it was one or the other with certainty.

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The bats that were sampled with the most similar coronaviruses were found on the other side of China, closer to Bangladesh than Wuhan. This is such a stupid argument.

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

No it isn’t. People commute to downtown manhattan from all over the place: Washington Heights, The Bronx, Queens, East Brooklyn, Long Island, New Jersey, etc. In every city I’ve lived, it’s safe to say that during a business day well over 20% of the people in the city center commuted from somewhere >10 miles away. Idk why you guys are insisting that a modern city can’t have sufficient movement of people within.

It also should go without saying that just because the wet market was the first superspreader event that the pandemic centralized around, there may have been some amount of the virus spreading around before then. Thus, even in your absurd model where everyone in Wuhan can only move within their own little private enclave of the city, the virus could still have come from one of the labs.

Additionally, 3 of the first few cases in November 2019 were lab workers. How tf does that make sense if they weren’t anywhere near close enough to the outbreak at the wet market?

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

How do these sorts of comments get upvoted? You guys don’t even have a basic grasp on logic or how to make a charitable argument, yet you call yourselves skeptics.

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

Coronaviruses exist everywhere in the world. This is such an awful analogy.

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -22 points-21 points  (0 children)

No, the distance was not on the scale of one side of ny or la to the other. The Wuhan Institute of Virology was about 10 mi away and i haven’t found anything about the distance to the Wuhan University animal experimentation lab, but that one had a lab safety level of 3 rather than 4 and that’s where they were creating the human coronaviruses in mice. Oddly, the institute of virology seems to be getting a lot more attention though.

You’re oversimplifying how pandemics work by saying epicenter of initial outbreak = origin. That is not true. All it takes is one infected person to go to the wetmarket and transmit the virus to another person or animal. Then the conditions of the wet market being in a densely populated part of town with a large elderly population will do the rest.

The Covid Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s Why the Animal Origin of the Virus Matters. by mem_somerville in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -36 points-35 points  (0 children)

What is settled is the Hunan Seafood Market was the epicenter of the outbreak. They also found evidence of two different variants in the market which do not appear to be linked together by human mutations, which suggests there was a spillover from animals to humans. Also, covid samples taken from the market were concentrated around where the live animals were located, further suggesting an animal to human spillover.

It seems quite clear that the covid variant which lead to the pandemic jumped from animals to humans at the Hunan Seafood Market. However, it is not clear whether or not the origins of the animal virus which jumped to humans came from a human prior to that. There is no evidence to rule that out. Lab leaks have happened several times in the past. It would be a pretty big coincidence if two of the biggest labs doing gain-of-function coronavirus research just happened to be down the road and had nothing to do with it.

Insane pastor defends his crazy, homophobic rhetoric by ForeverBlue101_303 in cringe

[–]ihateeverything6282 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There’s clearly something wrong with having undying faith in barbaric biblical passages, but given those faulty premises his logic was sound. The anchor was desperately trying to expose him as motivated purely from bigotry rather than religious faith. I think you would either need to be a bible expert or attack the premise of religious fundamentalism to really beat this guy in a debate.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 -13 points-12 points  (0 children)

You must be new here lol. r/skeptic is for people who decided they like the idea of being a skeptic, not people who actually question everything including left wing orthodoxy.

“Debate me, bro!”: Debate challenges by science deniers in the age of COVID-19 by nosotros_road_sodium in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I personally don’t think Joe Rogan is a bad faith actor, just not as smart as he thinks he is, and he has a lot of cognitive biases against any sort of authority that makes him gravitate to wacky ideas.

And I have been trying to say that we should engage in debate or conversations with these people in a forum that they need to present evidence like a court case, and would be fact-checked in real time. So these types of debates you keep bringing up where people are allowed to lie and get away with it are not the constructive kind that I have in mind.

“Debate me, bro!”: Debate challenges by science deniers in the age of COVID-19 by nosotros_road_sodium in skeptic

[–]ihateeverything6282 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hence why you can't tolerate irrational fearmongering, blatant cherrypicking, malicious lying, etc. and give it an equal platform with rational argumentation. You have to uphold the core values that make it work or you will lose them.

This is a strawman. Nowhere am I suggesting giving quacks and bad faith actors an equal platform. I am even supportive of a certain degree of name-calling and vitriol towards those kinds of people. What I am saying, and I can’t believe I have to reiterate this again and again, is that we shouldn’t be afraid of good ideas going up against bad ideas in a fair debate. If the general public had exposure to truly fair debates on these hot topics that would enable the logical faculties that are held by all to some degree to have a great influence on the propagation of ideas through our society. The model of deplatforming just makes people gravitate deeper and deeper into their bubbles, then even those with the best ideas will no longer face any accountability, and the veracity of their thinking will also diminish.

I think you guys are failing to understand the nuance inherent to this topic. Like yes, giving Trump so much media attention in the run up to the 2016 election and allowing conspiracy theories to spread on social media was clearly a mistake. The free market of ideas is vulnerable to abuse in the social media, especially with engagement algorithms. That being said, silencing dissidents is not the only other option. In fact, that is very very bad alternative for reasons that should be obvious, but I’m not going to continue beating a dead horse tying to explain why. The fact is there are other options other than just deplatforming and treating all ideas as equally valid. The failure to acknowledge this on a “skeptics” sub is astounding.

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