Reasonably politely pushing back on these has got my post not only downvoted to oblivion (after upvotes) but then flagged (!!) while of course the guy who was abusive in return, no problems.
I know you have written eloquently about HN in the past, but I think that site is gone. And I remember because I've been on it for over a decade. I joined an early stage start up on it.
Sadly, they give no means for deleting your account. But thought I'd flag to you anyway.
Anyway, I will be abandoning this account, but it's maybe something for other HN old timers to think about.
I had similar experiences suggesting covid had natural origins. I'm not sure the culture that HN possesses is the same as the one it alleges it desires.
Anyway, last post from this account. I am sure this one will equally be nuked... :)
Each of these points are false in my opinion but I genuinely do not understand why you think I'd continue to engage with you after you condescend with that ludicrious 'garbage in garbage out' comment?
The fact this was upvoted despite that makes me feel like returning to commenting very infrequently is the right choice.
I am writing a book I intend to release commercially, and a good sized one at that (likely 1,500 pages+). I am absolutely stubbornly determined to release it as both print and DRM-free PDF.
It'll get pirated anyway (if anybody cares enough to do so), so why bother punishing paying customers?
Incredible work! I'm writing my own book (obligatory mailing list link [0] and description [1]) and I wondered how you tackled the mental side? It is a bit of a rollercoaster I am finding. That constant fear gnawing in the back of your head 'is this really any good at all?' :) I suppose it is the price of caring.
This really chimes with me, I'm writing a book about the Linux memory management subsystem [0] and my primary motivation is to learn the subject more deeply and what Paul says here really aligns with my experience.
The effort to explain its machinery demands that I look very deeply - trying to answer questions like 'how does a page of memory get reclaimed?', or 'how does a userspace allocation propagate through the kernel?' - and following the white rabbit all the way down the burrow, forces a far deeper level of understanding than simply figuring something out for a patch.
You do realise there are countless people who have 'read the papers and thought about the conflicting evidence' about climate change right?
The reality is unfortunately that these people ARE nutty conspiracy theorists. They are not 'thinking about the papers' and providing a reasonable push back, they're reiterating long debunked points (did you read the thread I posted?).
Ebright already claimed the papers were scientific fraud until he thought better and deleted the tweet. This is the kind of person you're dealing with.
I'm not going to both-sides something which now has very clear evidence in one direction and not a shred of evidence in the other, I'm sorry I'm just not.
Hacker news of old would be more open to that. Again,this is why I no longer post here.
The 'counter' is incredibly weak sauce and she's been rebutted several times. Again, as I said, if you just ignore rebuttals you can keep acting like you have a point.
The second post is a scurrilous and nasty smear job from a thoroughly unpleasant individual and I'm quite appalled you posted it. Shameful.
Ah I expected to get downvoted into oblivion, I know it's a cliche to say it but HN isn't what it once was.
A key point to take away is that the fact there are 2 lineages means that lab leak is super unlikely. It would require somebody from the lab to come to the same relatively small market to give lineage A, then somebody else who got infected through a totally different evolutionary route at the lab to happen to come to the market just after and both to not spread it anywhere else.
Of course lab leakers are working hard to try to deny this or claim the data is wrong or yada yada. It's an ongoing battle and they have several highly dedicated 'independent scientists' (lol) working on it seemingly 24/7.
'Claims are facts until proven otherwise' is quite the take, I think Karl Popper would take issue with that.
I linked a thorough thread from a domain expert explaining in detail why the claims are false. These things have been addressed/debunked many, many times but still get repeated because the untruths get amplified and the rebuttals not.
I feel like this isn't publicised enough. The lab leakers are louder and people definitely seem to want it to be true more than natural origins and they are not being honest in their attempts to dismiss these papers.
This is not evidence. It's hand waving 'how do you explain' stuff that has been addressed many times by experts in the field. No credible evidence whatsoever has been presented. If you ignore experts and just keep repeating the same old nonsense of course you claim to have evidence in the same way 9/11 truthers do.
The problem with this is it is full of utterly debunked nonsense that Ebright knows full well has been addressed.
It's Brandolini's law [0] in action, and no matter how many times virologists rebut these positions the same old tripe gets wheeled out again, and again, and again. If you ignore rebuttals and just repeat yourself + get 20k likes on twitter how many people are going to see a rebuttal like the excellent one from Dr Rasmussen here - https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/15669764417361715...
The recent science papers which have been closely peer reviewed and none of these guys have been able to rebut (but oh have they tried, since they are VERY inconvenient for lab leak), instead it's the same tired nit-picking and misunderstanding.
It's sad to me that somebody with a name and position and blue tick abuses that position to spread what amounts to misinformation, but that's where we are in society I guess.
If you want a test, see how these lab leak advocates have reacted to any paper or data that pushes back against their claim. It has been a mad scramble to attack, nit-pick, dismiss and smear (Ebright especially likes confict-of-interest implications). These are not honest people.
Interesting this came out just as I rejigged and updated a visualisation tool I made a decade ago (!) which shows sorting algorithms in a really pretty rainbow colour form. I think it gives a good insight into how these work.
This reminds me somewhat of golang - ostensibly open source project but in reality all meaningful decisions are made by those at the company (including shameful throwing away of community work). Perhaps we need a different term to differentiate between open source projects that truly have open governance vs. ones that are essentially bolting on some open source shaped stuff.
As somebody who has started collecting ultima box sets recently (pure nostalgia loved them as a kid) it's been mad to see how ultima 5 has gone from £50 when I bought it a few years ago to maybe even £250+ now. I was hoping I could got all of the ultimas but this makes me realise that 1 - 3 are probably out of reach (let alone akalabeth!)
I am at the start of writing a book and had some major freeze at the start before, much like the author here, realised that all that matters is that I write the damn thing.
I love how LaTeX lays things out, so I'm using LaTeX. I'd like to have a web version possibly but I can think about that later.
I know you have written eloquently about HN in the past, but I think that site is gone. And I remember because I've been on it for over a decade. I joined an early stage start up on it.
Sadly, they give no means for deleting your account. But thought I'd flag to you anyway.
Anyway, I will be abandoning this account, but it's maybe something for other HN old timers to think about.
I had similar experiences suggesting covid had natural origins. I'm not sure the culture that HN possesses is the same as the one it alleges it desires.
Anyway, last post from this account. I am sure this one will equally be nuked... :)