It is both a racist rightie conspiracy theory and a plausible possibility worthy of serious consideration. Any reasonable person needs to recognize it as both simultaneously and will have no trouble fitting in among anyone outside the fringe at either end of the political spectrum.
"conspiracy theory" specifically means choosing the crazy explanation while more reasonable explanations exist. If you say the explanation is NOT crazy because it deserves investigation then it's automatically not a conspiracy theory.
"choosing" is the keyword here. You have to reason probabilistically. There was a point at which lot of people would have put 100% or 99% confidence that covid came from a lab leak. That's the conspiracy theory side.
A lot of more reasonable people would have put 1% or 5% confidence on covid coming from a lab leak, saying roughly "It's unlikely, but hard to rule out because China isn't being transparent". And then ask for more investigation, which is exactly what happened.
So at no point was it rationally worth a 99% probability estimate, but it was worth investigation.
What validity do you put on earth being flat? So that's the validity some people put on covid lab leak theory. You may be surprised.
Calling something a conspiracy theory means rejecting its validity for investigation out of hand. Maybe you don't use it like that but that's how most people apparently use it.
> There was a point at which lot of people would have put 100% or 99% confidence that covid came from a lab leak
Why was? Now it is a point at which a lot of people put 100% confidence that covid came from a lab leak. And a lot of other people put 100% confidence that it was Wuhan market bat. And that's the problem I tried to express.
This reminds me of a series of recurring stories from the 2000s. These were decently mainstream stories in the media about the untimely demise of prominent microbiologists hinting at conspiracies involving deep knowledge they held in common that few others shared. I don't know if those stories faded or if I just stopped paying attention.
Can't wait to try some of the readers in this thread. I landed on inoreader not long after the Google reader died. The old reader wasn't doing what I needed back then. I've probably been using this a little too long without checking for what else is out there.
Same can be said of search engines, encyclopedias, or wikis compared to seeking out books, journals, and other source material. If you don't sit there for 8 hours in a library to find the same information on your own, you've missed out on the experience. It's a standard Luddite's argument. Tools of any kind that enhance efficiency have always actualized lazy outcomes. It has always been the human responsibility to, not only rely on their best effort, but to figure out what actually encompasses their best possible effort.
but that is being addressed. there is a difference between looking at 10 search results vs clicking "i am feeling lucky". asking an LLM always just gives you one answer without an opportunity to research and compare multiple possible answers.
a search engine always gives multiple results and it is on me to read and compare. i usually look at the first half a dozen or so results.
a well written wikipedia article will represent multiple views and critical opinions if there are any. but if there aren't then you may want to expand your search. same goes for other encyclopedias or articles you are reading.
the problem, again, is that an LLM answer does not have the quality of a well written article you may find elsewhere. that may change in the future, but until then i find LLMs are a waste of time for me.
i don't trust the search engine. i open the first half dozen links to check them, and if they are not good i try a different search engine.
if an LLM actually returns multiple links, than that's better, i haven't actually used LLMs that much. but then i would just open all those links and check them, ignoring whatever the LLM writes about those links. at which point the question is, for this particular usage is there even any difference between an LLM and a search engine?
I have a relative who claims, because hen is dyslexic, that hen thinks better and deeper than any normal person due to the inability to learn by reading since that is so, to the point where hen claims not to be subject to any of the well-known cognitive biases.
Meta surveillance isn’t anywhere near as understood by the masses as you think. Most people who call flock bad will continuing to use Facebook and wouldn’t think twice about it.
The behavior of "most people" or "other companies" doesn't change the fact that Meta's business model is and has always been built around invading, compromising and monetizing user privacy.
If it has a Meta label on it, your privacy is being compromised.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11675324/