barnacled

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.

Hope you have a nice day.

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?

That it wasn't completely insane to write a book on the linux memory manager.

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.

No, you literally said 'all his claims are facts until proven otherwise'.

I am not being vague, I literally posted a link to a rebuttal thread.

This is why I don't post on hacker news any more.

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.

It's quite dispiriting to see.

'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.

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.