Well, I guess that’s the problem with choosing to use words like “never” and “always” in your argument, and trying to overgeneralize, no? It makes you easily susceptible to proof by contradiction.

Why do you think hand-washing or the shape of the earth are “extreme” examples of scientific consensus? I think they’re both great here because they both had huge political debates, and scientific consensus eventually prevailed. There are many many more examples of basic scientific consensus that nobody argues and that demonstrate the claims of comment I replied to are false. Are you asking for more examples? BTW hand-washing was the opening example in the article. Doesn’t that make it absolutely fair game in this context?

If you want a hard-and-fast definition of "consensus" you won't find one. There are still people who'll argue against evolution, but that pretty much IS a consensus.

On the other hand, lab-leak was NOT a consensus. It was a Party line. A real consensus doesn't emerge in just a few months. There isn't time for contrary evidence and arguments to emerge.

Exactly, I agree with that. We have scientific and apolitical consensus on lots of things, and it very much is consensus for all practical purposes, regardless of whether there is a strict definition or a few loud contrarians. The Covid lab leak idea/debate was always a political and obviously nationalistic argument, not really a scientific one. And I agree there hasn’t been enough time or evidence for it to settle into a scientific consensus yet. There might be scientists who participate in the politics (or there might only be politicians pretending to be scientists and/or putting words in the mouths of scientists), but I’m not arguing whether there’s consensus about the lab leak. I only interjected to counter @Blackstrat’s over-generalizing claims that consensus always means politics, which is untrue, and that all science is corrupt and there’s “always” the possibility of a different answer. The whole notion that science is corrupt and untrustworthy is a talking point of the culture-war political party line of the far right, and the agenda is to distract from discussing real policy. Unfortunately, it’s actually working on the lay-public, and too many people now think ‘science’ is a bad thing even though there is no alternative that can get us to truth faster than science. It scares me that so many people choose to believe in conspiracy everywhere and don’t seem to understand what science is.

There IS no alternative, and the scientists have the responsibility to keep the public's trust. Which they failed.

All scientists failed?

I really question the utility engaging in debate with people who have absolutely no knowledge of virology, Chinese (or other) bioweapon research, lab safety protocols, or even China. forget politics for a moment, its just a waste of time if you are just defending something you heard on the internet because you think its likely true.

Unfortunately, once scientists become politicians, they open themselves up to that.

its true. I don't have a good answer. but trying to create policy based on which uniformed faction shouts the loudest is clearly a crap strategy.

It's a staple part of these sorts of conversations, we've had these arguments so many times you can pretty much script out in advance the various talking points one can expect to see per topic.

I believe this is #3 in the phases of Denial:

1. It's not true

2. It's true, but it's not important

3. It's true, and it's important, but I already knew it.

(A variant of #3 is "it's old news")

Agreed....I'm more so suggesting something along the lines of having an AI ingest HN comments, and then using that to construct virtualizations of the participants here....with that, you could then theoretically generate a system that can predict the responses (in general, or individual members) of people in this (or other) forums for any topic of discussion.

Even without a technical solution like this, it is not terribly difficult to draw lines around 75%++ of comments and produce decent theories about what motivates each individual to say the (particularly incorrect) things they say...and it is even easier to predict what their responses will be if their claims are challenged (the algorithm/workflow seems amazingly simple, there are perhaps ~20 distinct categories of responses that cover ~90% of scenarios).

Interestingly: humans are able to easily see this phenomenon clearly when they are dealing with children, but if the same suggestion is made regarding adults, opinions tend to change, and amplify in strength of belief (particularly among relatively intelligent people in my experience).

Note: I am pulling these numbers out of my ass, as humans do! But the underlying idea is fascinating to me, and I will make a bold prediction: humanity will be grappling with these ideas within 20 years, likely less.....I think it is unavoidable now that AI is in the wild.