“Considered harmful” is what Wikipedia refers to as “weasel words”. By whom? Why do we care what they think? It’s much better to make the case directly than to attempt to weasel in a (false) sense of consensus. Doing the latter damages your credibility, and you’re going to need that.
If you’re concerned about conspiracy theories “failing to be debunked”, what you need are honest and credible experts. The public can’t evaluate the claims themselves. Heck, I’m a pretty smart guy and I can’t evaluate the evidence based on looking at the genome itself or even from evaluating the object level claims of people who have. But I and many many others are smart enough to notice a big coincidence when we see one, and smart enough to know that many many people like to think it’s a good idea to censor, distort, or otherwise lie about things to paint their preferred viewpoint. Honestly and openness is critical if you want to persuade anyone of anything. If you say “The bio-weapon theory has been debunked as just a conspiracy theory”, what am I supposed to take from that? That you are very open to this theory would speak publicly about all evidence you find in its favor if only it existed? Or that you want to silence “information hazards” with weasel phrases and like to use terms like “debunked” or maybe even “conspiracy theory” to discredit ideas without even diving into whether or not they might be true? When the latter is a strong possibility, we can’t just take things like “X has been debunked” on faith.
I actually don’t think it’s a bio-weapon and I do believe it has been debunked. But the reason for this is that when I look to people who are able to evaluate the object level claims themselves, the ones who are capable of honestly considering and stating “yep, this sure looks like a bio-weapon” are actually saying “yeah, I considered that hypothesis myself because it’s a totally reasonable thing to check, but it turns out that this one looks natural (and here’s why, if you want to check my work)”. That is the only way you can debunk these things, since everyone can’t become virology experts overnight and you can’t declare yourself into credibility by fiat.
You’re right that now is not the time to be starting wars, and I think there is a very persuasive case to be made for that. Fighting and posturing are last and second to last resorts respectively, and not ones we want to hastily resort to ever, let alone in difficult times where there might be a flinch to do so. It is a bad idea to pick fights and start wars, especially when the ability to cooperate globally is most important, especially especially without thinking these things through very very carefully. However, this all holds true even if it were a bio-weapon, or escaped from a lab due to negligence, or spread worldwide due to attempted cover-ups/etc. Instead of removing your voice from the conversation that will happen anyway and has to happen anyway, use your voice to say what needs to be said. “Yes, it’s very reasonable to suspect that it might be a bio-weapon, and that’s why we checked. It doesn’t look like it is”. “Yes, it is very important for people and organizations to be held accountable for their actions. It is also very important to first make sure we know what those actions actually are and to give people the benefit of the doubt both on what they did and their willingness to take responsibility voluntarily first. Now is the time to cooperate with one another to fight this pandemic. Later is the time to sort through the mistakes we made and make sure we’re all working honestly to avoid repeating them for personal gain or otherwise”.
Wikipedia has an article for Considered Harmful. “Goto Considered Harmful” was the title an editor gave to Dijkstra’s paper originally titled “A Case Against the Goto Statement”. It’s an informal tradition in computer science to write papers with this title pattern, including “”Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful”.
It was not intended to be misleading, only a reference to a crowd that I, perhaps erroneously, assumed would be familiar with this pattern.
Now, on the core of the argument. First the epistemic status says it’s uncertain about risk values and how to reduce it. I linked to a Bulletin of Atomic Scientists article about why this debunked idea still keeps coming up and the harms associated with it. Just printing articles and pointing people to them wasn’t enough. I don’t have more to say about your specific arguments because I think they’re covered pretty well by the article I linked.
This post was to point out that this problem exists, that credible experts in extinction risk (i.e. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists) think it’s a worrying trend, that economic patterns are similar to past situations giving birth to extreme right wing governments and that current institutions seem to be unable or unwilling to curb Trump’s excesses.
He seems to respond to actual public opinion (from his electorate).
The article also ends with a non-rhetorical that seems to be misunderstood as alarmism.
I linked to a Bulletin of Atomic Scientists article about why this debunked idea still keeps coming up and the harms associated with it. Just printing articles and pointing people to them wasn’t enough. I don’t have more to say about your specific arguments because I think they’re covered pretty well by the article I linked.
That article is just a list of a bunch of opinions people have and it is nothing more than a gossip piece. Literally all it does is repeat things like:
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president who seems unable to resist a good opportunity to propagate falsehoods (even Al-Qaida once asked him to stop making things up), also got in on the coronavirus conspiracy action. In an open letter to the UN secretary-general, he wrote that it was clear that the virus was “produced in laboratories … by the warfare stock houses of biologic war belonging to world hegemonic powers.”
and
Lentzos worries that the parade of prominent figures promoting the bioweapons conspiracy theory could weaken the global taboo against possessing bioweapons—making biological weapon research appear to be widespread.
It does nothing to even begin commenting on why these ideas keep spreading, just that they are and who is spreading them. Likewise, exactly nothing in that article responds to anything I’ve said.
It’s no wonder that linking to trash like this doesn’t convince anyone. To even get started you need to be able to link to things like this. Then you need to have people who can understand why that is credible explain it to their social circle who respect them and wouldn’t understand it on their own. And that means you need an army of people who are capable of empathizing with the very real concerns that these “conspiracy theorists” have instead of falling into the trap of arrogance to hide from their own difficulties in being persuasive and credible.
“Considered harmful” is what Wikipedia refers to as “weasel words”. By whom? Why do we care what they think? It’s much better to make the case directly than to attempt to weasel in a (false) sense of consensus. Doing the latter damages your credibility, and you’re going to need that.
If you’re concerned about conspiracy theories “failing to be debunked”, what you need are honest and credible experts. The public can’t evaluate the claims themselves. Heck, I’m a pretty smart guy and I can’t evaluate the evidence based on looking at the genome itself or even from evaluating the object level claims of people who have. But I and many many others are smart enough to notice a big coincidence when we see one, and smart enough to know that many many people like to think it’s a good idea to censor, distort, or otherwise lie about things to paint their preferred viewpoint. Honestly and openness is critical if you want to persuade anyone of anything. If you say “The bio-weapon theory has been debunked as just a conspiracy theory”, what am I supposed to take from that? That you are very open to this theory would speak publicly about all evidence you find in its favor if only it existed? Or that you want to silence “information hazards” with weasel phrases and like to use terms like “debunked” or maybe even “conspiracy theory” to discredit ideas without even diving into whether or not they might be true? When the latter is a strong possibility, we can’t just take things like “X has been debunked” on faith.
I actually don’t think it’s a bio-weapon and I do believe it has been debunked. But the reason for this is that when I look to people who are able to evaluate the object level claims themselves, the ones who are capable of honestly considering and stating “yep, this sure looks like a bio-weapon” are actually saying “yeah, I considered that hypothesis myself because it’s a totally reasonable thing to check, but it turns out that this one looks natural (and here’s why, if you want to check my work)”. That is the only way you can debunk these things, since everyone can’t become virology experts overnight and you can’t declare yourself into credibility by fiat.
You’re right that now is not the time to be starting wars, and I think there is a very persuasive case to be made for that. Fighting and posturing are last and second to last resorts respectively, and not ones we want to hastily resort to ever, let alone in difficult times where there might be a flinch to do so. It is a bad idea to pick fights and start wars, especially when the ability to cooperate globally is most important, especially especially without thinking these things through very very carefully. However, this all holds true even if it were a bio-weapon, or escaped from a lab due to negligence, or spread worldwide due to attempted cover-ups/etc. Instead of removing your voice from the conversation that will happen anyway and has to happen anyway, use your voice to say what needs to be said. “Yes, it’s very reasonable to suspect that it might be a bio-weapon, and that’s why we checked. It doesn’t look like it is”. “Yes, it is very important for people and organizations to be held accountable for their actions. It is also very important to first make sure we know what those actions actually are and to give people the benefit of the doubt both on what they did and their willingness to take responsibility voluntarily first. Now is the time to cooperate with one another to fight this pandemic. Later is the time to sort through the mistakes we made and make sure we’re all working honestly to avoid repeating them for personal gain or otherwise”.
Wikipedia has an article for Considered Harmful. “Goto Considered Harmful” was the title an editor gave to Dijkstra’s paper originally titled “A Case Against the Goto Statement”. It’s an informal tradition in computer science to write papers with this title pattern, including “”Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful”.
It was not intended to be misleading, only a reference to a crowd that I, perhaps erroneously, assumed would be familiar with this pattern.
Now, on the core of the argument. First the epistemic status says it’s uncertain about risk values and how to reduce it. I linked to a Bulletin of Atomic Scientists article about why this debunked idea still keeps coming up and the harms associated with it. Just printing articles and pointing people to them wasn’t enough. I don’t have more to say about your specific arguments because I think they’re covered pretty well by the article I linked.
This post was to point out that this problem exists, that credible experts in extinction risk (i.e. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists) think it’s a worrying trend, that economic patterns are similar to past situations giving birth to extreme right wing governments and that current institutions seem to be unable or unwilling to curb Trump’s excesses.
He seems to respond to actual public opinion (from his electorate).
The article also ends with a non-rhetorical that seems to be misunderstood as alarmism.
That article is just a list of a bunch of opinions people have and it is nothing more than a gossip piece. Literally all it does is repeat things like:
and
It does nothing to even begin commenting on why these ideas keep spreading, just that they are and who is spreading them. Likewise, exactly nothing in that article responds to anything I’ve said.
It’s no wonder that linking to trash like this doesn’t convince anyone. To even get started you need to be able to link to things like this. Then you need to have people who can understand why that is credible explain it to their social circle who respect them and wouldn’t understand it on their own. And that means you need an army of people who are capable of empathizing with the very real concerns that these “conspiracy theorists” have instead of falling into the trap of arrogance to hide from their own difficulties in being persuasive and credible.
Yes, it’s hard. Let’s get to work.