“several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019 . . . with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.”
Well that is some earth-shattering stuff right there.
The first point is poorly reasoned. They ask if covid is an outlier. They say there’s been other pandemics in history and point to other people preparing for pandemics. That doesn’t answer their question. I can’t argue that Lebron James isn’t an outlier because other people play basketball.
Their whole argument hinges on how rare of an event covid is, and they don’t actually address that at all. It’s poorly argued. I don’t think it matters much and I don’t have a super strong opinion on it, but that paper ain’t it.
Rarity isn’t really what makes something a black swan. If it’s rare but expected, then that’s not a black swan. As someone said upthread, an earthquake in San Francisco is a good example of this. If there’s a 8.0 earthquake in Kentucky, that’s a black swan.
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I guess it depends on how much of an expert you think Nassim Nicholas Taleb is on black swan events.
Furthermore, some people claim that the pandemic is a “Black Swan”, hence something unexpected so not planning for it is excusable. The book they commonly cite is The Black Swan (by one of us). Had they read that book, they would have known that such a global pandemic is explicitly presented there as a white swan: something that would eventually take place with great certainty. Such acute pandemic is unavoidable, the result of the structure of the modern world; and its economic consequences would be compounded because of the increased connectivity and overoptimization.
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+1, Ked fucking rocks
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and Ikes can never atone no matter how many times he tells a mf to wash their hands
All I know is I’d hate to see some of you all play Clue: The Classic Mystery Game™.
ked sticking with mr yellow in the laboratory god i hate him so much
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(looks down, whistles quietly)
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.
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Don’t get me wrong I think there is a non-0 of either of the ‘Q’s’ hypothesises being correct, but that they simultaneously claim that its a small chance that either an underground bat-meat market or similarly small chance of a genetically engineered chinese super virus. Simultaneously spending literally 0 time looking for evidence of the most likely cause, shit happens and people get sick, viruses adapt. It seriously rubs me wrong. But hey, they are just triggered that people aren’t interested in learning whether the borderline racist conspiracy is true or not. Reading Keeds posts I don’t think he is really in this waffle-between-two-racist-conspiracy camps, but it’s certainly easy to mistake him it.
Strongly worded letter from racist, pointy-headed nerds:
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I found this podcast pretty interesting:
You and I should start the keed fan club. I love when he questions an obvious thing but no one can actually fully explain why it’s obvious, because if humans had to logically consistently justify all the things that are obvious they’d go insane, so they just get mad at him and keep saying it’s just obvious over and over.
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Applies to the subtext of his whole schtick as well. Everyone knows it’s “obvious” that he is a potato headed troll but no one can quite prove it.
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