Supplementary Material 25: Ancient Pyramids, Sesame Street Monsters, & MORE Lab Leak Discourse
We embrace our hybridity, stare down Lovecraftian Donkey-Dragon hybrids, and enter into true Dialogos.Supplementary Material 2501:06 DTG Grievance Mongering02:25 Book Club Reflections04:09 Important Health and Lifestyle Updates09:51 Andrew Huberman's Trail of Death17:14 Jeff Bezos and Media Control25:04 Another exciting round of Lab Leak Discourse!31:17 Scientific Evidence vs. Public Discourse38:28 Matt and Chris' Respectful Debate44:05 Rewriting of Covid History47:04 Conspiracies and Political Pressure50:40 Eric Weinstein is STILL Waiting for the Call59:41 Pageau considers the Lovecraftian Horrors of Sesame Street01:07:17 Sarah Haider (Re)Invents 'Pioneer Traditionalism'01:11:36 Chris Williamson's annual pilgrimage to the Khan01:12:37 Fact Checking Bullshit with Eric Weinstein01:17:16 Breathless Reactions to New Pyramid Theories01:22:59 Credulity Checking with Matt's Son01:24:40 Cruel Racist Attacks on Poor Graham Hancock from the Devil Flint Dibble01:31:44 The Insane Hypocrisy of Alternative Media: Corrupt Academics are being controlled!01:37:21 Soaring Rhetoric, Petty Tribalism, and Obvious Hypocrisy01:39:19 No Charity for evil Flint Dibble01:43:35 OutroThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1hr 46 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSourcesNew York Times- Zeynep Tufekci: We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our LivesKristian Andersen's BluSky thread about the articleKristian Andersen's article about the emails/slack messages, etc.Huberman's lamentations for his dead friendsThe Rubin Report: Analyzing Trump’s Tactics | Eric WeinsteinJoe Rogan Experience #2293 - Chris WilliamsonFlint Dibble: Megastructures under Giza Pyramids⁉️ ARCHAEOLOGY REWRITTEN or viral 💩?Daily Express- Netflix Ancient Apocalypse: Graham Hancock slams neo-nazis using work to spread race hateThe last time we said the same thing about the Lab LeakChris doing a Dyno! and a little bonus
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru's supplementary materials.
A spin-off show for the Decoding the Guru's main podcast.
With me, Chris Kavanagh.
Anthropologist of sorts.
Sometimes psychologist.
Matt, over there.
Psychologist, definitely.
Academics we are.
Gurus we decode.
And on this supplementary material, we do a lot of things.
We sometimes talk about gurus.
We sometimes discuss our exercise regimes.
It can be anything.
That's right.
And to show people didn't hear the pre-recording chat where we were airing some grievances with each other.
You're giving me grief because I'm having power naps and I'm late and weary and not able to record.
Me giving you grief because you're not doing any of the things that you really ought to be doing.
Not giving feedback on documents of which you are a co-author.
I mean, not reading my emails.
I'm reading them.
I'm reading them.
It's just the response that is lacking.
That's the thing you want.
You're a hell of a guy to collaborate with.
I am.
You just got to hit me at the right time.
You've got the aim for the sweet spot.
But you know, Matt, you shouldn't be...
Well, the other thing in our...
Off the recording record, Matt just going on about how much he loves neoliberal capitalism.
There's no problems with it.
We need these to get...
And I'm just like, Matt, come on.
There's behind sides.
And he says, is there?
Is there?
Really?
Yeah, I don't...
Is there?
I read the Stephen Pinker book.
Everything is fine, isn't it?
Isn't everything fine?
That's it.
It's all getting better.
No, no.
We're not talking about capitalism anymore.
Let that go.
Get back in your well.
Let me see you both.
Back in the well.
No, let's look.
We should start with positive things.
We had the book club.
It was fantastic.
We read and some of our patrons read a book about octopuses.
What was it called again?
Other Minds.
Other Minds, as you go, with the L, as Chris would say, Other Minds.
But Other Minds, as most of us think, you know, not a bad book.
And, you know, what was very telling.
Because usually at our live stream things, we get a pretty good crowd, right?
We get 30, 40 people now.
It's very flattering.
It's very nice.
Lots of people come.
But with the book club, you actually have to have read the book.
Actually have to have read the book and then come along and contribute.
And then attendance.
Attendance for the required reading segment did drop.
I did notice a drop-off.
So I'm liking it, Chris, because it's precisely mirroring the academic experience.
It's precisely mirroring my experience in teaching people at universities.
So that's good.
Hats off to the people who read the book.
And we'll be doing it again because I think it was excellent.
Yeah, though, you know, people might say in response, but there was a short turnaround.
I think we told people the book and they had like a month.
The reader, and they may have had like one day to hear our review, but...
Let's not start pointing fingers now.
Come on.
No, that's not fair.
It was good anyway.
As you said, it reminded me as well of the academic experience of journal clubs where it's hit and miss, although the people will have read the journal article, even when that's the purpose of meeting up.
You know, people have other things to do.
So that's it.
Vicarious academic experiences for all.
You know, on the life updates, can I just say, and I just say as well, that springtime arrived all of a sudden in Tokyo.
And I'm back on my cycling to work from today, the first day.
It's a new me for 2025.
I'm doing my cycle there and back.
So that's going to be good.
And I'm back on the nuts, Matt.
I'm on nuts.
Nuts kayaking, eating the nuts, cycling the bike.
That's it.
It's all changed.
It's all different.
What is old is new again?
Or whatever way that phrase goes.
So that's my update.
That's my health update.
That's a great update.
That's really good.
You know, I myself eat nuts from time to time without feeling any compulsion at all.
It's a new thing for me.
I'm quite excited about it.
Every time I buy a packet, I'm like...
That's right, I'm buying nuts.
Look, nuts are not a substitute for personality.
You need to come to these things with better material, Chris.
Give us some juicy updates.
Oh, I got a juicy one.
I got an update about you.
What's that?
You did a dynamic.
You did a dynamic.
Hey, hey.
That's right.
Good CT up, Matt.
Yeah, I did do that.
I lift you up, Chris.
This is what I do.
I mean, not literally, but I don't need to.
You jump up yourself.
That's the whole thing with the dynamic.
You don't need lifting up.
You lift yourself up.
Well, let me just help you out, Matt.
You want to be in with the cool kids in the bouldering world.
They call it the dino.
It's short for...
It's more cool than dynamic.
But yes, that's right.
I have done routes before that have slightly dynamic movements in them.
But not a fool leaping backwards.
Catch on.
Remove all contacts from the wall and swing and then go, and I did that.
And to make it even better, was that the highest grade I can do, which is NICU in Japanese grading.
So that's success.
I did see the evidence.
I did see you do a dyno.
You sent me the video, but what I didn't see was how many times you tried and fell on your ass.
You assume there were.
There were quite a few of those.
That's right.
In fact, the only reason I was able to succeed at it was because there was hardly anyone else there that day.
There was only me and one other guy.
And the owner came over and gave us some advice about how to do it.
And his advice is how I was able to do it.
So we'll find that one-to-one advice.
And also to diminish my achievement.
The other guy that was with me.
Probably in his late 50s.
Nice guy.
You know, we're often there at the same time.
He also completed that before we left.
So, but he's Japanese, right?
So, like, I think you add 15 years or whatever the way it works to...
That's true.
That's true.
You're from Northern Ireland, so you need to...
So, your actual age is, like, 15 years older than your real...
Exactly.
That's the way it works.
So, he's actually younger than you in...
In edit terms.
Northern Ireland years are, like...
Doggies.
That's right.
That's right.
All that alcohol and cholesterol, it builds up.
So there we go.
You know as well, this might not make it into the podcast, but I just want to mention this because it's quite funny.
I got a message from my wife when I was about to start recording that said, can you guess what I found in this bag?
And there's a picture of a bag.
And that's a very...
Like, ominous message to receive.
In Australia, the answer would be Huntsman's Spider.
Yeah, it just makes me think of the, whatchamacallit, the scene from the end of Seven.
Where, you know, what's in the box?
What's in the box?
But I think it's just some missing thing that we've been looking for.
That I may have been responsible for putting away the bag somewhere.
Or something that our son has hidden.
But it's one of those messages.
It's not your list of other girlfriends.
No, no.
Yeah, I keep that elsewhere.
You're there sweating bullets.
Then you realize, hang on, I don't have any girlfriends.
I'm fine.
I'm good.
I know your guilty conscience.
I know how you operate.
You experience guilt even with nothing to be guilty about.
Again, this is part of your heritage.
That's fine.
That's normal.
Well, I think it's a lost item, actually, a lost key.
So that's good.
All good in the world.
But, Matt, there are other things that are afoot in the guru sphere.
It's rotating.
There are issues happening.
I need to inform you of them.
You have been so ignorant for so long that you're living happily, not knowing what's going on.
And they're up to things.
They're always up to things.
I know.
They're incorrigible.
All right.
All right.
Hit me with it.
Hit me with it.
Okay.
I've got some gems for you.
I'm still always thinking of Mickey and Slick, you know, like, why?
The only time he's heard of any of these things is when he's listened to our show.
Oh, by the way, I'm going to see Mickey again in a couple of days.
I didn't scare him away.
We're going to go for Yaki Niku, but we'll think of you.
You know, breaking the fourth wall for a second.
It's always funny when you say, oh, Matt, I've got some things going on in the Guru's sphere.
I've got some things to tell you about.
I never know whether or not you're doing it as like a setup.
It's maybe something that I've told you.
Maybe we've talked about it, but you're doing it for the benefit of the audience.
Or it could genuinely be something I've never heard of before.
I literally don't know.
So let's find out.
Tell me.
Yes.
So first, you're familiar with a man, a myth, a legend, Andrew Huberman.
PhD, Matt.
Do you know him?
Andrew D. Huberman.
I know him.
Yep.
Excellent.
Excellent health advice.
I was just watching a video by Andre Kapathi.
About LLMs that he was talking about, that he was getting advice, not from Hooverman, but from the Infinite Life guy.
He's the guy who wants to live forever, that weirdo, the vampire.
Oh, Brian Johnson, Brian Johnson.
Yeah, he's like buying a supplement stack from Brian Johnson, and he's going, what is all this stuff for the supplement stack?
And he's using LLMs to help him figure it out.
My respect for Andre Capati is relatively high, but it did drop a few notches.
What are you doing?
Playing overpriced supplement stacks from the Vampire Man.
Anyway.
I know.
Well, I saw him doing a collaboration with Magnus Mitbo, who's a YouTube climbing guy.
And I was, again, like, why?
Why?
Oh, you know something else I saw?
I saw Nick West.
Was he collaborating with Frances as well?
He was retweeting Glenn Greenwald.
Oh, God damn.
Everyone must follow.
There are no idols, man.
There's no idols.
They're going to let you down.
That's right.
So you know how the audience feels about you and me when we talk about leftists?
That's how you and I feel when Nick West retreats.
Anyway, go on.
Well, so he was tweeting out.
I'll read this tweet.
I responded to the first one.
This is what he said.
The folks telling me...
That's a lot of exercise and pills, brackets, basic supplements.
When I was in my 20s and 30s, I'm 49 now, are all on RX meds, move like melted candles, and asking what they can take to feel better.
It's okay.
It's never too late.
Sleep, train, eat clean.
All right?
So that one I responded to, because he said the folks telling me in my 20s and 30s, That's a lot of exercise and pills.
It feels like he's completing two separate things, right?
Like, I can imagine people saying, that's a lot of supplements.
That's a lot of pills for a young guy to be taking.
But like, that's a lot of exercise.
I don't hear that so much as a complaint from people.
No, no.
We generally respect people who do exercise.
Not many people saying...
Hey, don't do exercise, you weirdo.
It's for the birds.
Forget about it.
And the description of the fact they move like melted candles, it just sounded a bit...
Harsh!
Like, you know, really wallowing in his muscular superiority.
You know, it's kind of free of dust.
I'm giving helpful advice to the people, you know, who once lurked down upon me.
You melted cancel, motherfuckers.
Disgusting pieces of shit.
Yes.
He's pretty pleased with himself.
He's pretty content with his physical situation.
That's true.
After I was kind of pointing this out that it's just a bizarre world he lives in where lots of people are telling you not to exercise and whatnot, someone else pointed out to me that he followed it up with other things.
And this was a follow-up tweet to this one.
A lot of my MD and PhD friends are dead because they thought it was silly or you had to be an athlete to exercise.
Take care and you can work longer.
Be around for family longer.
Don't let anyone shame you for being...
Healthy.
Right.
So...
Again, Chris, that reads a lot like things that didn't happen for $100, doesn't it?
Because he's saying the people who studied MD or did a PhD at the same time as him, many of them are dead.
And they just laughed and scoffed at the idea of doing exercise and eating healthily.
That doesn't sound like...
Who's against doing exercise and eating healthily?
I must be really blessed, Matt.
We all know that Northern Ireland is a very big health mecca for the modern world.
And as that, I've never had anybody in Belfast tell me, exercise is only for athletes.
Has anybody said that?
In the past 50 or 60 years.
I think he's thinking of the 1950s or something.
I think that could be...
I've genuinely been lucky enough to never meet anyone in my entire life who said that exercise is like something you don't need to do or it's only for athletes.
And then the fact that they all...
Are dying.
They're dropping around.
And specifically, it's not just like Huberman has met people.
He specifies MDs and PhDs.
They're dying, Matt.
If I were the police, I'd be looking into Huberman if a lot of his friend grew up.
He might be grinding him up for supplements.
There's a cluster around Huberman who's apparently dying.
Yeah, I'd like to get some names.
I'd like to get some names.
Like, I can count on my hand, probably, the amount of people that I've met on my academic journey, you know, that were in my cohort, who are dead.
Including people that, you know, and lots of people that are relatively unhealthy, overweight.
They're still around.
So Huberman, who's always been a little bit towards this health-conscious optimizer, maybe they're dying because they're taking...
Like his thesis is they're not exercising and taking enough supplements.
But maybe it's more like his cohort, you know, where the optimized grind mindset guys who have been injecting themselves from experimental treatments and they're just dropping them off likewise.
I like the combination of self-aggrandizement about what good shape he's in and grievance-mongering.
The people that tried to tell me to stop exercising.
But for him, he's trying to help people and give them advice.
Combined with the fact that it doesn't smell true.
Come on.
Yes, if you don't eat well and you don't exercise enough, statistically, your chances are...
Dying, increased by some number of percentages.
But really, it kicks in like 60 plus, right?
That's where it really starts to kick in if you live a debauched lifestyle.
He's not that old.
His cohort wouldn't be that old.
The idea that there's a cluster of dead people around him who were scoffing at healthy eating and exercising are now dead, it's almost certainly not true.
So, yeah.
Anyway.
I know, so that's...
Strong feelings of doubt there, Chris.
That's it.
That's...
If, like, Matt in his cohort of drug-popping party maniacs...
Whiskey-swilling maniacs.
We're okay.
We're doing fine.
And my cohort of Dwarven Irish people.
Full stop.
Like, we don't have that many dead people, I feel like.
Huberman, yes, might be telling Porky's.
That's the case.
That's what people do on Twitter.
He's on the right platform.
That's right.
Now, the other thing, Matt, I promised you that we would get to this, and I feel we should.
It's a little bit out of the news cycle, but it's evergreen, I feel, because Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post as well, recently took to Twitter to make an announcement.
About a new editorial line that he would be instigating at the Washington Post.
I'll read you some of it.
I'm writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets.
We'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to a reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that starts to cover all views.
Today, the internet does that job.
I am off America and for America.
I'm proud to be so.
Our country did not get here by being typical.
And a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else.
Freedom is ethical.
It minimizes coercion and practical.
It drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admired, the opportunity to lead this new chapter.
I suggested to him that if the answer wasn't hell yes, then it had to be no.
After careful consideration, David decided to step away.
This is a significant shift.
It won't be easy and will require 100% commitment.
I respect his decision.
We'll be searching for a new opinion editor to own this new direction.
I'm confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America.
I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion.
I'm excited for all of us together to fill that void.
Jeff.
Thanks, Jeff.
Good stuff, Jeff.
You had some issues with this, Matt.
I did.
I did.
Freedom and liberty for all.
Free speech for the win.
Unless...
You're a newspaper editor.
In which case, you better tell my line.
I mean, this really did bother me because it seemed like either he was totally oblivious to the blatant contradiction in what he was trumpeting, or he just didn't care because that's the world now, right, where ultra-rich people like Elon Musk and Bezos just do what they want,
and this is actually designed for the idiots of the White House.
And the rest of the plebs, what we think about things, really doesn't matter.
So, yeah, I mean, just the blatant contradiction.
It's saying that what really matters in America, the things that we stand for, what we value, right, is freedom.
Freedom of expression.
Freedom that minimizes coercion.
No coercion.
That's why we hate coercion.
And you will toe that line.
Exactly.
Or you will be fired.
I mean, it's so funny.
It's like a Russia Today or an old-fashioned communist lampoon of America.
You know, in America, you must love freedom and democracy while you're in the gutter and stomped on by the fat cat capitalists.
I mean, he is that.
It is that level.
And that's reality.
So, actually, I'm going to circle back to this.
This is where I'm totally on board with.
Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and everyone else, which is absolutely, there is something rotten, especially in America, but I think throughout the West, where these very rich people using their money to control media apparatuses and social media platforms like X,
and using that in ways that are actually not for business interests, but rather covering favor with kleptocrats and plutocrats.
It's starting to smell like late-stage capitalism.
Yeah, well, the thing is, there's a clip of Jeff Bezos from back when he bought the Washington Post and they're talking to him about would he be putting his thumb on the scale?
Would he be influencing the editorial line?
And he gave answers that are very clear that he would not do that.
He simply values free expression and whatnot far too much to ever And frankly, if he did do that, it would be against all his values.
But it seems like his values have changed.
His values have changed.
I wonder why.
Was there any political change that might have made this expedient?
And there, Matt, as well, his commitment to free markets, admirable.
So I imagine he must be reeling hard against the Trump administration.
And the tariffs and all these kind of things.
I guess that means that he really would be going after this administration and instructing, you know, his opinion writers and whatnot to go for Heller and Leller.
That's what that would mean, right?
If this wasn't consistent policy.
Yeah, that's the ironic thing, which is this kind of paleoconservatism that NAGA represents is actually not the neoliberal bugbear.
They're doing everything against it.
It's a weird kind of corrupt mercantilism.
It's actually against all of the stuff like free movement of people, free trade, all of that stuff.
It's the government using a heavy hand to enforce their batshit agenda.
So yeah, it's a sad state of affairs.
Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, and now Jeff Bezos.
They're all towing the line.
But like even, right, one, these particular editorial topics, right, that he wants to emphasize, like his argument, just it's so crap, Matt.
I just want to point this out because he says you can get opinions from all across the spectrum on the Internet, so we don't need to provide them anymore.
But what about free market advocacy and free speech advocacy?
That's very easy to come across.
But we need to serve that underserved market when the Wall Street Journal The Economist, the Financial Times already exist.
Where is the gap in the market?
And even if you left aside that editorial line, he's also saying that of the internet, social media does a fine job of reporting the facts and letting people know the news.
So we're just going to use this publication for editorials, pushing my particular line.
Whatever the line was.
I would say that's not great.
That's not great.
Admittedly, he is talking about, you know, the opinion section, but it's a constrained opinion.
So like the news section, there should be a firewall, right?
But let's see how long such firewalls hold and whatnot.
But yeah, and like, again, I'll get tired of pointing out democracy, but the free speech and opposition to coercion.
So again...
I guess Jeff Bezos will be really pushing his journalists to cover the Trump administration and its deportations or arresting people for protesting against the Palestinian conflict or that kind of thing, right?
Or going after judges or anyone else that contradicts them in public and disagrees with them.
I wonder if that's what he means.
That's probably what he means.
Yeah.
So this is part of the reason people don't like billionaires.
This is why we wear Eat the Rich t-shirts.
They suck.
That's right.
Now, the next thing, Matt, on the menu for today is that whenever this happens, we are always inundated with tags on Twitter, occasionally messages or emails.
But did you notice there was another round of lab leak?
Discourse.
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes, yes.
I've been tagged into.
And yes, so what's the revelation?
What's happened?
Has everything changed?
Yes, startling new evidence has obviously come in.
The scientists have been doing their analyses.
They've been digging up new information.
They've documented it all in a very detailed report.
So this new information has come to hand, which is going to cause us to...
Totally revise our opinion about this.
We're ready to admit that we're wrong.
I think that's fine.
We can't always be right.
Oh, no.
Hold your horses, Matt.
Not so fast.
Not so fast.
We did and have repeatedly warned people about reacting to media headlines around this topic and pretty much any technical topic where the media...
Is attempting to cover science, right?
So we refer to this as discourse surfing, where you are reacting to headlines in media, especially ones that present, you know, stunning smoking gun revelation or whatnot.
And that when you say that, you should perhaps do things like check the background of the author, making that claim.
Have they said this before?
What specific?
New evidence are they citing as this thing which has revolutionized our understanding?
And as it happens, the first round of this was a report from one of the German intelligence agencies being slightly declassified or referenced, but as far as I saw, not publicly available.
Maybe the summary of the report was made available or whatever.
Where back in 2020...
They said they have a low confidence belief that a lab leak is likely.
That's it.
That's what the German intelligence agency reported back in 2020.
And it got a round of coverage in the media.
And people didn't really pay attention to the specifics about the date that the report is made or whatever.
They just took it as like another intelligence agency has vindicated.
The report.
Not based on any new science or anything like that.
And the intelligence report itself, you would imagine, not primarily focused on scientific evidence back in 2020.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like we said, I mean, it's the same thing with the other, you know, intelligence agencies report who also, you know, say with low confidence.
Some of them.
Some of them, say with low confidence.
I suspect it might have come from a lab.
Yeah, I mean, that's understandable, right?
These people are spies, right?
Their job is to look for nefarious things being done by foreign powers.
But they don't show they're working.
They don't show their evidence.
That's the nature of spy agencies.
So look, it's possible.
It's possible that they've got wiretaps or something.
They've got an informant somewhere.
They've got this very special information.
But if they did, they probably would say it with high confidence.
We have...
Yes.
Super secret information where, you know, our sources have told us and we've got SIG intent or whatever, SIG intel.
But no, it's not like that at all.
It's very uncertain.
It's very umming and ahhing.
And it's not surprising that they would have a bit of a skew in that direction.
It's not really comparable to the body of scientific investigations, which are based on pretty strong empirical...
And multiple lines of evidence.
Multiple lines of evidence, that's right.
And what you get with these opinion articles is they are invariably written by someone in a tangential field.
That they're in health promotion or they've got some background in statistical epidemiology or something like that.
And to an average reader, that's like, oh well, they're an expert.
And I think what people often don't appreciate is just how...
How specialized?
When we talk about expertise, there is many shades of grey.
And I'm much more interested in the people that have actually specialized in this extremely technical field.
So, anyway, it's...
Yeah, and there are, you know, the other thing is, Matt, that there are a handful of experts with relevant expertise who lean towards lab leak, right?
But you cannot...
I could almost name them all.
Because in the same way, there are experts on almost every divisive topic where a small proportion of them will hold different views than the majority.
You can find anti-vax people like Robert Malone, for instance.
So they exist, right?
But they are in the minority.
If you look at the weight of expert opinion, the people who actually are either doing the research themselves or really know how to read.
Yes.
The weight of opinion is on one side.
And you just have to emphasize, in making a judgment like that, you have to be in a position where you can integrate multiple sources of information, like a priori likelihood of lab leaks and protocols and things like that,
how to evaluate the genetic evidence, how to evaluate the spatial distribution of this, that, and the other, coming at a judgment.
Requires very specialized expertise.
And it's not something that someone who's developed an interest in it, shall we say, has some experience in a related field.
I don't weigh that very highly in terms of my credibility.
Yes.
So there's a sociologist called Zeynep Terfecki, I think is her surname, Zeynep.
And do you know of her, Matt?
Have you come across her or heard?
I have.
Because she wrote some articles about COVID.
She was also originally emphasizing about it being like aerosol transmitted an airborne virus.
And she was arguing that like the definitions being used and were outdated and people weren't taking this seriously enough.
And she received some recognition for like arguing this early in the pandemic.
Although personally...
I think a lot of it just based on, like, how people were defining the different types of transmission, right?
Because, like, obviously it was being transmitted, but there are different definitions about, like, how to consider things airborne, right?
Like, is it floating around in the atmosphere, traveling, you know, miles?
Is it like souring gas, where you drop it?
On a tree in aerosol form and that's going to kill a whole bunch of people.
Yeah.
Or is it somebody coughing in your face?
Yeah.
In an elevator where, you know, like that whole debate and topic around it.
Anyway, she was celebrated for pointing this out.
And she also discussed lab link.
Sometimes people presented it that she was taking a balanced perspective and neutral perspective.
She was not.
Okay.
Like, and I...
Read her article and listened to her in Sam Harris.
And back in June 2021, I was saying that it's very clear which group she aligns with, and it's the Alina Chan side of things, right?
And I had a little back and forth with Zeynep about this and whether she was a persecuted, renegade intellectual or not, right?
So Zeynep has been kind of an advocate that Lablik was being...
Unfairly dismissed.
Suppressed.
And you weren't allowed to talk about it.
Yeah.
For a long time, she wrote an article either in the New York or New York Times about it.
And she just recently wrote another article for the New York Times that is titled, We were badly misled about the event that changed our lives.
And this is arguing that, although it doesn't say definitely.
It was a lab leak.
It just basically does all the usual things, over-interpreting, you know, the Slack messages between Christian Anderson and all this kind of stuff.
But that, Matt, is presented as if it's, oh, breaking news, the New York Times has covered the lab leak.
But they actually had Zainab, you know, many years ago.
They've had many articles.
They had Alina Chan a couple of months ago.
And it's, it just, it shouldn't be news to anyone if you see Alina Chan.
Matt Ridley, Zeynep Terfeke, any other host of people that are broadly aligned with promoting the lab leak as the most likely explanation, and that the scientists were lying and whatnot.
They thought that a couple of years ago.
They think it now.
They're going to think it in five years' time, regardless of what the scientific evidence shows.
Okay?
The thing which gets to me is...
Nothing has changed in the scientific evidence.
It's not a new paper or something that has come out.
The scientific evidence remains largely on, you know, there's no new revelations in the past couple of months.
But the discourse continues to swing from side to side.
And then all the discourse surfers, including liberal journalists and whatnot, act like there's been big movement.
So I would expect...
That you would hear someone like Sam Harris or Ezra Klein talk about how, you know, Lavlich has now been vindicated because it's mentioned in the New York Times article or the BBC has an article about the, you know, the German intelligence report.
But none of that impacts the scientific evidence.
And that's the reason that, like, Matt and me lean towards the natural origin being more...
Because the weight of scientific evidence currently leans that way, and the majority of experts therefore lean that way.
If the evidence shifts, if there's some brand new piece of scientific stuff that comes out that invalidates the existing lines of evidence, or is a really strong piece of evidence in support of the lab, and it builds up over time,
and you see a consistent story emerge, then it would be perfectly reasonable to shift.
To say, well, the evidence leaned that way, but now this new better quality evidence has, you know, undercut the existing evidence lines.
But that's not what's happening.
And so we just get people who constantly are like, what about this new round of discourse?
And our answer is the same as it always is, which is don't just surf the discourse, okay?
If you're interested in this topic, maybe...
You can, you know, you can value intelligence reports from 2020 higher.
You can think that Zeynep's arguments are more convincing, but it's not based on a new assessment of scientific evidence, right?
It's based on a journalist or a sociologist or a postdoc or whoever, like somebody making an article that you find convincing.
That's what it's about.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, so I think the call is just to understand what counts as evidence and what doesn't.
And it's perfectly fine for someone who's got tangential expertise in the area to write an opinion article somewhere.
Yes.
And you'll find the whole spectrum of opinions represented.
But if you just sort of count those as evidence, then what you're doing is you're taking a vote or you're taking an opinion poll of people that don't necessarily...
Have the credibility to really give you accurate information on it.
I mean, it's fine.
It's not nothing.
It's fine to do a public opinion poll, but it's not new evidence when someone who hasn't actually done serious empirical work on this specific question has experience in sort of related things and has an opinion.
It's not surprising they have an opinion, and that's fine.
But that article that they write...
Is not actually adding any new evidence or analysis.
It's just saying, oh, look, here are the things that is all public knowledge and I think it came from the lab.
I mean, that's fine, but just take it for what it is.
It's a little bit different from the stuff that I think if you go to the actual studies that actually report some new type of evidence, it's just not the same thing.
So, you know, that's the only frustrating thing.
I mean, it's one of these things, it's such a...
It's such a low-stage thing.
Yes, it matters technically.
If you're a professional in the area, it matters, right?
But for normal people, right?
No, Matt.
Every time you say this, people respond.
And I think there's a valid response to it, which is it does matter for normal people if the virus that flooded the entire world was created by a government program in a secret lab.
Chris, the truth matters, right?
What really happened matters.
But I don't think there's an ideological kind of affiliation to one view or the other.
It shouldn't matter to your worldview, I think.
It shouldn't, but it absolutely does for people on this issue.
But I think that sometimes when people say, like, it doesn't change anything.
If the virus was, you know, man-made or natural.
It does.
I think that argument is wrong because it does change things.
It would change the nature of, in this case, yes, we should still be concerned about natural sources for viruses, but we might be more concerned about, like, China's clandestine virus programs and whatnot.
So, like, there is...
Well, I respectfully disagree because I think...
We should be concerned about the potential of lab leak anyway, regardless of whether COVID escaped from a lab or not.
That's just one incident.
It's a genuine concern.
All of the experts that we spoke to, even the ones who think it didn't come from the lab, all agree.
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, I agree.
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