ArchiteuthisNov 24, 2023

Turns out Altman is a lab-leak covid truther, calls virus 'synthetic' according to Spectator piece on AI risk.

https://awful.systems/post/573833

Turns out Altman is a lab-leak covid truther, calls virus 'synthetic' according to Spectator piece on AI risk. - awful.systems

> Sam Altman, the recently fired (and rehired) chief executive of Open AI, was asked earlier this year by his fellow tech billionaire Patrick Collison what he thought of the risks of synthetic biology. ‘I would like to not have another synthetic pathogen cause a global pandemic. I think we can all agree that wasn’t a great experience,’ he replied. ‘Wasn’t that bad compared to what it could have been, but I’m surprised there has not been more global coordination and I think we should have more of that.’

Show threadtetris11Nov 24, 2023

Wait, I’ve been out for a bit - what was the actual consensus on Covid? I genuinely thought there was a Wuhan Lab that this all originated from?

I’m not a nut job, I can be reasoned with, i just need to update my beliefs with new info

Show threademergencyfood

There is an institute of virology in Wuhan, but it is most likely that Covid-19 spread naturally from bats to humans.

  • Bat coronaviruses are common in the South China - Thailand - Myanmar region, and viruses jump host species all the time.

  • Labs that handle human pathogens are maintained under very high security. The one in Wuhan is BSL4, the highest security rating, and had prior experience handling coronaviruses. Also, the viruses themselves would be marked with radioactive isotopes. Even if they somehow got out of the building, it would be possible to find and quarantine all those exposed to it.

  • If it was released on purpose, then we can narrow the list of suspects down to the countries that can reliably make bioweapons and antidotes with close to 100% certainty. That’s the US, China and maybe Russia. The US and Russia were among the worst affected, and China wouldn’t have released the virus in China.

So the most likely explanation is that it is a bat virus that jumped hosts.

Wuhan Institute of Virology - Wikipedia

Nov 24, 2023 at 3:59pmWeb
Show threadIbex0Nov 25, 2023

the viruses themselves would be marked with radioactive isotopes. Even if they somehow got out of the building, it would be possible to find and quarantine all those exposed to it.

China wouldn’t have released the virus in China

You don’t know that. Nobody knows that, because China destroyed all the evidence. If this was true, they could have proved it, they could have shown the world! Behold our innocence!! Why didn’t that happen?

Show threadPoliticalAgitatorNov 25, 2023
The communities pushing “COVID was a lab leak” the hardest are demonstrably not cured by evidence.
Show threadzogwargNov 25, 2023

One (simpler) explanation is that proving an absence of something is almost impossible, and that attempting too hard would make them look a heck of a lot guilty.

There is a good reason why the burden of evidence is “innocent until proven guilty”, and yes this extends to the (in your eyes) untrustworthy.

Prove to me you never stole candy from a store as a child (or if you did, replace that accusation with any item of higher value until you hit something you did steal)

Show threadSoyweiserNov 25, 2023
There is also the whole ‘why would we have to prove anything? We are fucking China!’ stance all big hegemonic countries have.
Show threadShitgenstein1Nov 25, 2023
It’s not just big hegemonic countries in general but specifically the particularly image-obsessed character of geopolitics in East Asia. Mianzi is a real concern in Chinese diplomacy.
Show threadselfNov 25, 2023
nope fuck off
Show threademergencyfoodNov 25, 2023

You don’t know that.

Yes, but we can reason based on what we know.

If this was true, they could have proved it, they could have shown the world! “Behold our innocence!!” Why didn’t that happen?

Most likely the municipality were trying to cover up corruption in the regulation of the wet markets. Maybe they ignored health and safety laws in return for bribes, and didn’t want that to come out.

Show threadShitgenstein1Nov 25, 2023

because China destroyed all the evidence.

lmao, if you don’t have evidence for X, you don’t have evidence that X is being suppressed. You just lack evidence.

Show threadEvinceoNov 25, 2023

the viruses themselves would be marked with radioactive isotopes.

Is that true? Once the virus replicated in a cell, the new copies wouldn’t be tagged, right?

Show threademergencyfoodNov 26, 2023
The new ones wouldn’t. But the original radioactive atoms would still be in your body, and they can be detected (within a reasonable amount of time).
Show threadEvinceoNov 26, 2023
For the lab leak theory to work you have to assume not only that some workers at the lab got infected, but also that they spread it all over the city before anybody noticed, such that by the time anyone did notice, they were several degrees of contact from the lab workers.
Show threadAndrew WadeNov 27, 2023
@emergencyfood @Evinceo Naw. People have some radioactive atoms in their bodies all the time. But the viruses are marked in another way: they have particular genetic sequences. And with the march of technology the Wuhan Institute of Virology would have sequenced the viruses they were studying and been able to compare the sequences on file with the Covid-19 pathogen.