this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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TechTakes

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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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.’

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

this thread appears to have attracted keyword-seeking bad posters. these fine posters have been escorted to the egress and may continue to enjoy their subthreads on other fediverse servers and not this one.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

to clear up any confusion: if you’re a drive-by poster we’ve never seen before and you’re posting bullshit covid theories instead of anything related to what we discuss on this instance (Sam Altman being a fucker, for example), we can’t tell you apart from someone keyword searching threads to spread conspiracy bullshit en masse and the very funny part is, we don’t actually care how you got here

garbage is garbage, don’t post your trash here

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

we should post keyword honey pots every few months for culling

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I have been meaning to make a vegan pitbull thread for just such an occasion

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Everyone who is saying virus spread from bats to humans - you do realize there were people researching on bats in Wuhan, right? If it's from a bat, that doesn't automatically mean from a bat in nature.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

your stupid ass found this old thread by searching for covid (no this shit isn’t in all anymore) and this is the best you can do? fuck off.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

holy fuck. for anyone still reading this thread, check that post history

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Holy shit, that shitshow in the Elon thread.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Randomly capitalizing "FIAT", the mark of a true Coiner.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think it's a fairly credible claim, that the coronavirus originated in a lab. There's been leaks in the past, of similar pathogens - once in the USA and once in Taiwan, I think. Not a very interesting conspiracy theory. Equally, animal agriculture is ripe for the development of zoonoses, regardless of the country. I don't think it's especially important, ultimately, unless it informs better practices in both areas.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Who gives a fuck. Let's not turn this guy into a new Elon Musk.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I believe the scientific consensus is that it originated in a wet market in Wuhan.

The "lab leak theory", while not impossible, is also shorthand for a morass of conspiracy theories grounded in racist attitudes towards China. It somehow conflates that the pandemic is China's fault, if not an outright attack from China, while simultaneously downplaying any efforts to mitigate such an attack.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

grounded in racist attitudes towards China

I don't understand why that's considered racist? Why is a conspiracy theory that China has a world class biolab capable of a global pandemic racist?

A crazy conspiracy that a foreign power has biotech superiority isn't racism.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I guess most people aren't up to date with this subject. There has been plenty of discussion with experts that point to the possibility of a lab leak. The wet market hypothesis has so many holes in it that it's impossible to take seriously.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Now that he needs to be cancelled such things are popping up like crazy!