The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.minervanett.no/files/2020/07/13/TheEvidenceNoNaturalEvol.pdf <comment><USER2> Here's the Cliff Notes version of the argument in this paper:

1\. SARS-CoV-2 has a number of unique and unusual genetic features, when compared to close relatives, many of which explain its high virulence and infectivity among humans.

2\. A series of research papers published by a group of virologists, dating back a little over a decade, demonstrate (1) a progressively increasing understanding of viral features which make coronaviruses more infectious and virulent in humans, and (2) laboratory capabilities for successfully creating chimeric viruses (e.g. moving one specific protein sequence from a bat SARS- like virus to human SARS virus) to test their hypotheses.

3\. Each of the unique and unusual features of SARS-CoV-2 appears somewhere in this line of research.

4\. Researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the city where the outbreak began, were intimately involved this line of research.

Taken together, the publicly-available evidence indicates that a select group of virologists had the domain knowledge and laboratory capabilities to create chimeric viruses which possess each of the unusual features of SARS-CoV-2, and that select group of virologists was concentrated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology located at ground zero for the pandemic.

The authors feel that, in light of this preponderance of circumstantial evidence, the hypothesis that the biogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 involved human intervention should be seen as the leading (i.e. most likely) explanation.

They do not make any statement about how the virus first infected a live human and spread into a pandemic, but conditioned on their biogenesis hypothesis being true, one would then assume an accidental lab release from WIV as the most likely explanation.

<comment><USER3> This isn't entirely true, though. SARS-CoV-2 is _much_ less virulent than SARS or MERS.

For a virus that recently crossed the zoonotic barrier, and even moreso for one crossing from bats, it's virulence is actually astonishingly low.

Therefore, the hypothesis of a two-stage crossing to humans, from bats to a larger land based mammal and then to humans is much much more likely, because this would explain high transmissibility due to the necessity to infect despite small lung volumes, as well as much lower virulence.

Therefore, the pre-existing hypothesis seems to match reality more closely than an accidental release. A virus being engineered to be an order of magnitude less virulent seems unlikely to say the least.

<comment><USER4> > A virus being engineered to be an order of magnitude less virulent seems > unlikely to say the least.

From what I gathered it's not suggesting specific genetic traits were engineered, but rather that they were experimenting and one of those experiments could have accidentally been released(?).

<comment><USER3> Yes, but is the theory is that one experiment, in the context of a gain analysis, was made in order to see how the virus might evolve to be much less severe?

Why would a gain analysis try to find ways in which a virus could be made weaker? I don't doubt that an accidental release is feasible, though very very unlikely, but why would an experiment make a less severe virus in the first place?

<comment><USER5> If I were to make a great bio weapon that would do the maximum damage, I will have these attributes: 1\. Spread it easily; 2\. Don't kill the ones who spread it most easily (the young); 3\. Be lethal enough to overwhelm the system. And so I have the Covid-19. Of course it is all post-fact analysis. but it also answers your question of why would an experiment make a less sever virus in the first place - to address the biggest problem of an infectious agent as a bioweapon, i.e. a virulent virus ends up killing too many too fast to be highly infective and 'effective'.

<comment><USER6> And if I were to make a bioweapon, I would think about long-term impact.

(1) Millions disabled is far worse than millions dead.

(2) Attacks can come in multiple pieces. The first virus might do damage to make people especially vulnerable to the second virus. If I can protect my population against the first one /or/ the second, my people are safe.

My opinion is it's just a matter of time before we see bioweapons, and we should be ready. If not before COVID19, then now. Our vulnerability is very obvious.

We should treat this as an emergency prep drill, and make sure businesses can operate remotely, kids can learn remotely, we have PPE, and the infrastructure is in place for essential work. That also wouldn't collapse the economy.

<comment><USER7> Infectious bioweapons are a horrible idea in a highly connected world for the reason we can all plainly see: they don't respect national borders.

It is an old-fashioned notion of a weapon that only made sense when there was little exchange between the citizens of states in opposition, like the U.S. and USSR.

China, for whom international trade is a crucial part of their strategy, would not work on an infectious disease weapon unless they simultaneously developed a vaccine to protect their own people. The fact they are not currently vaccinating their population, or even in the lead in developing a vaccine, is extremely strong proof that COVID-19 did not originate as a Chinese bioweapon candidate.

<comment><USER8> Not a proof at all. It just shows that it can't be a planned release.

<comment><USER7> If a lab in China had been working with this virus at all, they would have had at minimum working cultures of it, and potentially multiple strains and experience modifying them. Cultures alone would have put them ahead of western pharma companies in developing a vaccine—even in the case of an unplanned release.

The fact that they're not ahead is compelling proof that this virus was as new to Chinese medicine as it was to everyone else.

<comment><USER9> > The fact that they're not ahead is compelling proof that this virus was as > new to Chinese medicine as it was to everyone else.

I appreciate your argument, but are you sure that they are not ahead? I don't have personal knowledge, but (for example) there was a Reuters article last week with a headline that included that claim "China leads COVID-19 vaccine race": [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus- china-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china- vaccine-anal/at-war-time-speed-china-leads-covid-19-vaccine-race- idUSKBN2481NO). If somehow it was proved that they are indeed ahead, would you consider this compelling proof in the opposite direction? I think I'd consider both directions to be weak evidence, but neither to be anything near proof.

<comment><USER3> They are ahead by a few weeks, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Epidemiologist Ellie Murray said it better than I could, so I'll just quote her: "Yes, the chance of a virus like SARS-CoV-2 suddenly arising is fairly low. That's why we have so few pandemics!!

But _conditional on being in a pandemic_ the chance that the virus that arises to cause it is like SARS-CoV-2 is super high!!

There's no conspiracy, just statistics"[0]

That said, the fact that the outbreak started so close to the Wuhan Institute of Virology is certainly suggestive that it escaped from the lab, though that doesn't mean it was necessarily "man made."

[0][https://twitter.com/epiellie/status/1281960135796101120?s=21](https://twitter.com/epiellie/status/1281960135796101120?s=21)

<comment><USER11> This is the same stuff that causes conspiracy theories around airplane crashes.

The conspiracists go

"It must be a conspiracy because there are like these 6 redundant safety mechanisms and the odds of them all failing at the same time are extremely low".

But the answer is obvious. If the 6 redundant mechanisms hadn't failed, the plane wouldn't crash.

So as long as the odds of failure of each redundant system is not 0%, every plane crash that ever happens will look the same, with multiple redundant items with extremely low likelihood's of failing, failing together.

<comment><USER12> This is not the same thing IMO.

Imagine Russia announced last week they had a airplane hacking tool that could crash any 747 by using sonic waves to rattle some bolts loose making the wings fall off the plane.

If tomorrow, 3 different 747s crash all because their wings fell off, would that be suspicious?

You could say "well it was a plane crash, _something_ had to go wrong". But things went wrong in a very specific and unique way that is directly linked to another nation.

It's the same here. The researchers are showing incredibly specific modifications to protein structure and DNA. It's not just "oh wow, this virus is very virulent". It's "oh wow, this virus has a handful of never before seen mutations, all of which were being studied in Wuhan, where the virus began".

<comment><USER13> Would it be any different if FIRST the 3 planes had crashed, and then a few weeks AFTER that, the hacking tool was announced?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a really big claim, so some background checking:

The paper was published in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics[0] (this accepted version is materially different from the original link posted here).

Only thing I could find about Birger Sorensen's was his Linkedin page [1a] and the Immunor page where he's listed as the Chairman [1b].

Angus Dagleish looks legit, although it's notable that he did stand for Parliament in 2016 as a UKIP candidate, according to Wikipedia[2].

Can't find any primary sources for Andreas Susrud.

[0]: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge- core/c...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge- core/content/view/DBBC0FA6E3763B0067CAAD8F3363E527/S2633289220000083a.pdf/biovacc19_a_candidate_vaccine_for_covid19_sarscov2_developed_from_analysis_of_its_general_method_of_action_for_infectivity.pdf)

[1a]: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/birger- sorensen-174a20b/?origina...](https://www.linkedin.com/in/birger- sorensen-174a20b/?originalSubdomain=no) btw, if this is considered doxxing, let me know and I can remove the link.

[1b]: [https://immunor.com/about-immunor/board-of- directors/](https://immunor.com/about-immunor/board-of-directors/)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Dalgleish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Dalgleish)

<comment><USER15> Why do the background checking? Why not just consider the arguments on their merits alone? That's what science is.

<comment><USER14> I disagree. Or rather, I don't think this is about doing science.

In many aspects of our lives we rely on the advice of experts. Personally, as I am not a trained biologist, I am unable to reliably decide if the arguments here are right or wrong. I also believe the vast majoriy of people are in a similar position.

As a result, the only options are to look at:

1\. The scientific consensus.

2\. The legitimacy of the people making the claims.

It's too early for 1, so 2 is what remains.

<comment><USER16> Who says an expert is an expert?

Catholic priests are all experts in catholicism. They write papers about Catholicism, all peer reviewed by other experts in catholicism.

Most agree the Pope is infallible.

Groupthink is still Groupthink and belief is still belief. Hence why we have debacles like the lipid hypothesis.

<comment><USER17> It is very easy to find out whether someone is an expert, as long as you really want to and don't just fool around. For example, an expert on viral diseases will have a long track record of publications in highly acclaimed journals for the past 30 years or longer.

For the purpose of validation or expert testimony, there is no need to consider everyone who has a PhD and got tenure an expert. It is reasonable to set the bar very high.

The expert on catholicism example is a needless distraction. Of course, there are such experts on catholicism, and they can tell you best what catholic doctrine says. Their opinions about virology are obviously irrelevant, though.

<comment><USER18> It's not easy at all.

By your measure, Professor Ferguson at ICL is an expert in predicting diseases. He's got a big team and has been doing it for more than 20 years. Many published papers. Invited repeatedly to advise world government's due to his expert status. Widely asserted to be the best in his field.

Guess what - it appears every prediction he ever made was wildly wrong. His predictions for COVID were also wildly wrong. His code was released and it was full of severe bugs. He told the world millions would die of COVID and then when they didn't, claimed his expert recommendations had saved them, all in a fraudulent paper that assumed as a prior that the virus in Sweden mysteriously behaved totally differently to everywhere else and that only lockdowns can possibly affect the course of an epidemic (despite knowing that it isn't true).

This guy has been a failure and fraud his entire life. So has his entire field. It's not just him. _All_ the expert epidemiologists produced models that failed to track reality in any way at all.

Yet, he's an expert by any proxy metric you care to pick. His colleagues rally around, his university protects him, Nature magazine published apologetics for him. He's an expert, unless you pick the only test that matters - are his papers correct?

I know it's scary. But decades, perhaps centuries of near sheep-like behaviour towards science and academics has led to their institutions being saturated with incompetence and fraud. They have no working institutional mechanisms to detect or clear it out. That's why so many fields have "skeptic" movements that "deny" the science. Usually they aren't actually science-deniers as painted, they're people who expected the so-called science to actually care about the scientific method and do their sums right. When they discover that it isn't happening they blog about the errors they found, and the next thing they know, they're being demonised by the press and the very self-same scientists they're criticising. Not because they are wrong, but because they are dangerously right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Of the five salient points they make here, I would argue that they are a lot less strong than the authors believe them to be.

Point 1 can also likely be made for the original Sars-CoV, and probably is irrelevant. If they show CoV-2 is _more_ human like than the earlier, then they can begin to make the point.

Point 2 is a gigantic leap of faith - I don't understand how they connect amino acid inserts into the sequence to gain of function experiments. It makes no sense!

Points 3 & 4 are related: The extra charge on the RBD. If you look at the previous virus, it has a much smaller positively charged patch, and this expands in CoV-2, which makes an evolutionary drift in this direction entirely reasonable. It's not a wholesale integration of a brand new feature. This charged patch is actually important for binding to heparan sulfate, which gets involved with a bunch of viral entry events (eg AAV, Chinkunguya virus, some other coronaviruses I think). There's a few recent preprints that discuss the HS relationship with Cov-2, and can go a long way to explain the tropism of the virus. The HS can overcome lower expression of ACE2, by possibly supporting the attachment.

Finally, point 5 is where they throw out DC-SIGN as a receptor. While there are high mannose glycans on the virus particle, I don't know of anyone proposing this as a receptor for the virus. There is no biochemical/experimental evidence that they show to support this idea.

<comment><USER20> I will add a few points which I read on a github page and I am unable to verify, so I would be keen to have others review and sanity check:

1) The likely genetic source of SARS cov1 and cov2 is a species of bat in Yunnan province, thousands of miles away, two provinces away from Hubei (Wuhan).

Ref: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5708621/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5708621/)

2) The outbreak allegedly started in December in Hubei province when the local bat population (which does not carry this SARS virus?) would be hibernating (?)

3) Only 66% of the initial 41 COVID patients had exposure to Huanan _seafood_ market.

Ref: [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(20\)30183-5/fulltext)

4) A seafood market where you would have to have non-hibernating bats from Yunnan thousands of miles away from Wuhan(?)

5) The seafood market is 13Km away from Wuhan Institute of Virology where Yunnan bats were studied. And 1.4km away from Wuhan's Centre for Disease Prevention & Control (?)

Are these points real or misinformation? If real, why is there no pressure for an independent investigation?

<comment><USER21> 5) We're talking about a dense urban area ~ 1580 km^2. A _lot_ of businesses and institutions are within 13 km radius from each other. And there are 19 million people in this metro area. So a lot of things should e hapenning in the same city and only few km away, but most of them are not related to each other.

1, 2, 4) are probably irrelevant, because the researchers mostly agree that there was an intermediate host (which one remains to be determined, might be pangolin). So it doesn't matter if the bats were far away or hibernating. Consider also that people often travel, and trade is not limited to one town.

3) It only confirms that we still don't know who was patient zero, and when and where he or she was infected.

<comment><USER20> I suppose my issue here is that, all the point I mentioned appear to be inconsistencies with the current official statements and all the counter arguments deconstructed them are probability based and arguably as speculative as the authors claims on biogenisis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > A Norwegian virologist has made claims about the non-natural origins of the > new coronavirus. These claims were, reportedly, in an earlier draft of the > paper, and Dr Sørensen has since repeated them to Norwegian press.

> The final version of the research paper, which has undergone peer review and > been accepted for publication in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics > Discovery, doesn't actually make any claims about whether the virus was > natural or man-made in its current form.

> The scientific community widely agrees that the virus was not artificially > engineered.

[https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus- cla...](https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-claims/)

<comment><USER23> > The scientific community widely agrees that the virus was not artificially > engineered.

Artificially engineered isn't really the question; the questions are 'is this a lab escape?' and 'if this is a lab escape, did the virus work so well on mammals pre-experiment?'.

The scientists have a massive incentive not to believe that the virus is a lab escape until the evidence is overwhelming. This is a global disaster, if it was a lab escape there will be dire consequences for the funding and regulation of level 4 biosecurity centres and potentially global trade & travel for countries that have them.

<comment><USER24> Everyone has a massive incentive to look for actual, concrete evidence for a lab escape before they draw any such conclusions. Leaving aside the uncomfortable geopolitical angle (US policy is to respond to deliberate biowarfare with nuclear weaponry), extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

<comment><USER23> 1) This clearly wasn't biowarfare. The coronavirus is so useless when viewed as a bioweapon that there is no way it is even vaguely possible that it was developed as one. The idea is laughable.

The Chinese military would have to be beyond stupid to go into a bioweapons program and develop a virus that mainly only targets old people, usually doesn't cause symptoms, spreads like wildfire and is therefore a huge risk to countries with large, densely packed populations. If it was a lab escape it would probably have been just part of studying SARS-like viruses for public health reasons.

2) And there is nothing extraordinary about claiming "Standards in practice were lower than the standards on paper". That is a pretty mild claim. Lab escapes of viruses are a thing.

<comment><USER25> > The coronavirus is so useless when viewed as a bioweapon

Considering the how it's playing out in the US, it looks like a great bioweapon for an civilian attack. A big chunk of the population is old enough to be at risk of death. Another non-negligable portion of young people develops long-term disabilities (which is even more crippling to the economy than short-term deaths). And as a nice side-effect of how bad job security is, millions are now unemployed.

If you were to construct a civilian bioweapon you want to target against the US, it almost looks like you would have new playbook now. I very much agree though, that it's extremely unlikely that it was developed and planned in that way.

<comment><USER26> The variety of weird symptoms ("covid toes" and loss of sense of smell, for example) also adds a lot of uncertainty and distrust on top of the actual problems the virus causes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is the immunology equivalent of "jet fuel can't melt steel beams". It's embarrassing to see it here, especially in a community with pretensions of bringing "disruption" to biotech. It would take a long time to catalog all the nonsense here but I'll just say that short subsequence (6aa) BLAST is meaningless and this subsequent claim is just word salad: "Such high human similarity also implies a high risk for the development of severe adverse events/toxicity and even Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE)"

(there's no relationship between the capacity for ADE and self-similarity of amino acid content)

<comment><USER28> Would you please explain more clearly?

<comment><USER27> Sure, what's your degree of bio background?

<comment><USER29> What do you think about this? [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr- Iug](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SRrsr-Iug)

Are these people also conspiracy theorists?

<comment><USER27> I didn't watch more than a few minutes, too much real research going on to keep up with the more fringe stuff.

But tl;dr it could be a lab escape but most virologists think it's more likely to be spontaneous zoonosis. In either case, the evidence for genetic modification or "serial passage" is very weak and the virus's distinguishing traits all fit in well with the background distribution of coronaviruses we know about. So the fixation on lab escape seems like a distraction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This paper is not evidence, it is speculation based on an inability to see a path other than gain-of-function lab work. These coronaviruses are slow to evolve due to their proofreading capabilities but they recombine readily. The natural path, therefore, is a wild animal (likely pangolin, civet, raccoon dog, or even human) that is simultaneously co-infected by two viruses that recombine.

The problem with genome data centric analysis is that no distinction is made between RNA samples and virus isolates. Key evidence for the gain-of-function hypothesis, is one or more lab isolates that match long segments of the SARS- CoV-2 genome, including non-coding segments.

</comment><comment><USER31> Better link with context [https://www.minervanett.no/angus-dalgleish-birger- sorensen-c...](https://www.minervanett.no/angus-dalgleish-birger-sorensen- coronavirus/the-fight-for-a-controversial-article/362519)

</comment><comment><USER32> When Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier suggested that COVID-19 could be man-made, I started taking this view more seriously. Now seeing additional papers coming out supporting this, the case is getting stronger.

I'm not a biologist but I do find it strange that COVID-19 is so infectious in humans. How can a virus which supposedly 'naturally evolved' in a totally unrelated animal species (bats) be so well adapted to spreading between humans? Intuitively, that doesn't make sense.

Also the fact that the WHO has kept changing its story about this virus from the beginning is not reassuring at all. At this stage, as crazy as it is, I'm inclined to believe the conspiracy theorists because the official version comes across as even crazier.

<comment><USER33> By the same logic, was the H1N1 spanish flu designed to perfectly flourish and kill possibly 10% of hosts?

You say it in your second paragraph. You're no biologist. But you find it strange. Very few biologists find it strange. They have in fact been warning of a ticking time bomb [0 for brevity, 1 for article].

May I respectfully suggest that you stick to your lane regarding the science? WHO ups and downs and political bickering to one side, science is a messy process of honing in on the right answer and lay-people have a hard time wrapping their heads around that when other answers fitting in more closely with their world view abound. It would be nice if scientists could come out on day 1 and tell everyone exactly what to expect but that isn't how science works.

[0] [https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-warned-that-china- was-a-...](https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-warned-that-china-was-a-time- bomb-for-novel-coronavirus-outbreak-in-2007/) [1] [https://cmr.asm.org/content/cmr/20/4/660.full.pdf](https://cmr.asm.org/content/cmr/20/4/660.full.pdf)

<comment><USER34> I understand your impetus to tell others to 'stick to your lane' but I respectfully disagree and cite their post and your response as why. OP had what you deem a misapprehension and they deem a valid point. By voicing their point as they believes it, you were able to retort with evidence you feel should convincingly disprove it. To me, this is reasoned, diverse discourse correcting for unintuitive misapprehensions, at the very least. Is this not a medium like HackerNews is for?

<comment><USER33> It's taken me a little while to parse this one.

HN has always felt like a good/safe place (to me) to talk about interesting things with a mix of experts and lay people.

When it gets down to science though, agree or disagree need to be left to the experts. I can't be the expert/final arbiter because my knowledge isn't good enough (although I have some capacity), and so I am encouraging OP to go with the experts on this one. It's too complex a field for people to have their own opinions based on hearsays - science should not be politics and we're seeing that in the world now. It doesn't matter what you believe coming in with science, you have to be guided by (a best approximation of the evolving) facts.

I'm not totally sure what you disagree on, is it the rudeness of 'stay in your lane' or my argument?

<comment><USER35> Ben Franklin once said that the best argument against democracy was a discussion with the average voter. But I think there is an equal risk there of members of a society being unwilling to read what experts put out, and evaluate it themselves as well. Once people start saying I don't know anything about this and I can't make any determinations, democracy starts to make a lot less sense. At the end of the day science is basically critical reasoning backed by fact collection. If you can go read up on the facts, you can reason based on them. If someone can explain to you why you are wrong that may be one thing, but simply assuming you can never reason anything out is very dangerous.

<comment><USER36> I won't comment on the rest of your post, but I'd like to point out that there's no evidence Ben Franklin said that. That quote is commonly misattributed to Churchill, but that seems to also be a misattribution [1].

[1] [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Has this paper either been peer-reviewed or submitted for peer-review as a preprint?

I have a PhD in chemistry and I certainly don't feel like I'm qualified to judge the quality of the work or the track record of the authors, scientifically.

I think this paper's deserves a thorough airing and evaluation, but I don't think Hacker news is a forum well equipped to produce a high signal to noise evaluation on such a highly charged claim, to say the least.

<comment><USER38> Most of HN is not qualified either to judge the quality of AI, ML, opsec, renewables or any of a whole host of topics that are actually deeply complex.

But that does not mean it does not classify as potentially substantial news, that at least should be visible.

Nobody is arguing that it shouldn't be more properly vetted when published via normal scientific channels, as these things usually are.

<comment><USER37> I'm not saying anyone's arguing that. But I'm just trying to establish if it is being properly vetted anywhere. If so, it would be nice to amplify the vetting as much as the claim itself, given its seriousness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So what would evidence, rather than speculation, look like in this case? A SARS-CoV 2 genome sequence dated before December 2019? Somehow identifying patient zero and corresponding records of their exposure at the lab? I'm skeptical that any hard evidence will be found. It seems to me the origin is likely to remain speculative indefinitely.

<comment><USER40> NSA/CIA intelligence catching them red handed discussing how it happened. Of course, with the Iraq fiasco still in our collective memory, who knows if the public would believe it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This article is poorly argued.

For example, in their point 1 they feel that since an aspect of the virus is well-adapted for humans it was not the result of evolution. However, viruses jumping between species happens naturally... _because_ an aspect of the virus happens to be well-adapted for the new host species.

In fact, in this argument they seem to misunderstand the fundamental mechanism of evolution: a random aspect of a replicating organism provides an advantage in an environment, allowing the organism to thrive. For any random aspect that provides an advantage there might be thousands, millions, or more that do not. The existence of a particular unlikely successful aspect is not an argument against natural evolution. We expect many successful aspects to be highly unlikely.

Another example is in the conclusion:

> Henceforth, those who would maintain that the Covid-19 pandemic arose from > zoonotic transfer need to explain precisely why this more parsimonious > account is wrong

I think they rather significantly overstate how "parsimonious" their explanation is, but setting that aside, they scarcely address the alternative. In this article they address ways in which the virus might have been created by scientists, but do not address the ways in which the virus could have evolved naturally. You can't conclude X is more likely than Y if you only consider the likelihood of X but not Y. So, e.g., they would need to survey the science around how viruses evolve and jump species naturally and show how it does not explain this virus.

There are plenty of more flaws in this article. But I'll stop here. It's probably pointless to argue with reason anyway, since the people putting forward this kind of nonsense already don't care about reason.

Anyway, if this is the best case that the virus was artificially created, we can probably all rest assured it was not.

</comment><comment><USER42> Lets throw them a bone and say they're right, what do we do next? What actions do or can we take? Secure the labs? Shouldn't that be done regardless?

<comment><USER43> At least if it was someone's "fault" we could push for reparations

<comment><USER44> At this point, who could actually pay reparations on a scale that would be even within an order of magnitude of the damage done?

<comment><USER45> For certain definitions of "pay", any nation with a fiat currency could certainly place a number into a spreadsheet.

Making that number mean anything might take a while.But we could certainly write a permanent bond and put it onto the books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/)

Just look at the prior chinese coronavirus-related studies, they did antibody tests in villages near bat caves for SARS-like coronaviruses, some of villagers had antibodies in 2015 despite no reported SARS infections ever near the area.

Simplest conclusion: Zoonotic diseases sometimes jump from bats to humans in Chinese rural areas. The case clusters stay inside the isolated communities and stop naturally due to low population and lack of super-spreader events that can kickstart an epidemic.

In 2019 it happened again, but this time a villager who was infected visited Wuhan => pandemic

</comment><comment><USER47> It is interesting to think about the origins of Covid-19 with Bayesian statistics in mind. We believe that the virus originated in Wuhan, and the two competing "mainstream" theories are whether the virus came from a wet market or a bio lab.

I don't know exactly how many wet markets exist in China, but I would guess that there are thousands spread across China. A wet market is simply a place where fresh produce/meat is sold (think farmer's market). "In Hong Kong, for example, there is a widespread network of wet markets where thousands of locals shop everyday for their meat and vegetables. There is one in almost every district and none of them trade in exotic or wild animals." [1] Of these $\Theta(1000)$ wet markets, probably a few are located in Wuhan.

Notably, there is only one level 4 bio lab in China, and it happens to be located in Wuhan. [2]

You can't conclude anything with absolute certainty doing this kind of probabilistic analysis, but this line of argument swayed me to seriously consider the possibility that the virus originated in the lab.

And, of course, note that we do not have to assume any malicious intentions. It's easy to imagine a virus accidentally escaping the lab, regardless of whether it evolved naturally or with some human intervention to facilitate research. A State Department cable from 2018 wrote that the lab "has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory." [3]

[1] [https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/asia/china-wet-market- coronav...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/asia/china-wet-market-coronavirus- intl-hnk/index.html)

[2] [https://www.livescience.com/china-lab-meets-biosafety- levels...](https://www.livescience.com/china-lab-meets-biosafety-levels-new- coronavirus.html)

[3] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/state- depar...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/state-department- releases-cable-that-launched-claims-that-coronavirus-escaped-from-chinese- lab/2020/07/17/63deae58-c861-11ea-a9d3-74640f25b953_story.html)

Footnote: Yes, I know that $\Theta(1000)$ just means "some constant" from a mathematical perspective. But I think the idea is clear, even if the mathematical statement taken at face value conveys no information.

<comment><USER48> That's an interesting argument. I guess one critical piece of data would be - is the probability of Covid-19 originating from wet markets the same across all of China?

If every wet market had the same probability, then yeah, it's odd that the alleged wet market is one of thousands, but just happened to be next to the bio lab in Wuhan.

But if the probability was unevenly distributed and such a virus originating was highly likely in only a few dozen wet markets, Wuhan included, then the probability of it being a coincidence is much higher.

<comment><USER38> Interesting. But also to GP's point, I never thought of that perspective.

It is quite unsettling to realise the strangeness of odds that it occurred right next to the Wuhan lab...

<comment><USER49> "Right next to" being 14 km away, on the other side of a major metropolis.

Nobody knows where the outbreak actually began, though. Wuhan was just the first place it was detected. It could easily have begun somewhere in the countryside, only taking off when an infected person went to a major city. Just look how long it circulated undetected in the US - for more than a month - before anyone noticed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Has it been peer reviewed? Otherwise not being an epidemiologist it is hard for me to judge weather the scientific argument presented by this paper is sound.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, peer review is roughly as good as a die roll these days. I've submitted many scientific publications. I think only one was seriously read by reviewers. Others -- both accepted and rejected -- had comments which demonstrated the reviewers hadn't read it. One paper -- accepted -- it was clear reviewers didn't even give a cursory skim (ACM venue too).

NIPS found peer review to be no better than chance, and my experience is the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Impossible for non experts to interpret, but deserving of an equally careful and thorough response in any rebuttal claims.

> Conclusion

> We have deduced the internal logic of published research which resulted in > the exact functionalities of SARS-CoV-2,

> including the convergence of agreement from difference classes of source,

> the timings of the stages of the research,

> and the development of documented capabilities by named institutions and > individuals.

> _These meet the criteria of means, timing, agent and place_ in this > reconstructed historical aetiology to produce sufficient confidence in the > account to reverse the burden of proof.

> Henceforth, those who would maintain that the Covid-19 pandemic arose from > zoonotic transfer need to explain precisely why this more parsimonious > account is wrong before asserting that their evidence is persuasive, most > especially when, as we have indicated, we note puzzling errors in their use > of evidence.

> In our companion article, in a similar forensic manner we will explore the > primary evidence used to sustain the hypothesis of zoonotic transfer.

> In neither this article nor the next do we speculate about motive.

<comment><USER52> Just a side note, but this is uncharacteristically overwrought and overconfident language for scientific discourse.

EDIT: It sounds less like a scientific/academic argument and more like the caricature of a legal argument.

<comment><USER53> Not sure he has any options there. The normal approach would need to be overwhelming to be taken seriously without the protection of some political language. You'll need to defend your reasoning just for people to hear you out once there are political implications. And that's on top of the normal work. I can't interpret this though so I cannot say myself.

<comment><USER52> I don't agree. Political, overconfident language is not scientifically appropriate, especially for a paper purporting to overturn the scientific consensus.

Sounds like this is language that was in there before peer review but that was removed before publication. Makes sense that part didn't pass peer review as it's improper to make such overconfident conclusions and claims in a scientific paper.

<comment><USER53> You've won me over. This type of language belongs in accompanying text not directly in a scientific paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Evidence is a very bad word to use here. It's a hypothesis from (mis) interpretation of data. Virologists say it's not unnaturally evolved

[https://virological.org/t/tackling-rumors-of-a-suspicious- or...](https://virological.org/t/tackling-rumors-of-a-suspicious-origin-of- ncov2019/384)

</comment><comment><USER55> Found a blog a while back where they linked to all the research papers the Chinese lab in Wuhan was doing. Very interesting read.

Basically they were studying animal to human virus transmission by bio engineering bat viruses to infect human cells.

[https://project-evidence.github.io/](https://project-evidence.github.io/)

</comment><comment><USER56> That evidence looks weak IMO, but it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it is" but rather "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right."

<comment><USER42> It's because normal people are not equipped to deal with the cherrypicking and manipulative narrative that these kinds of "evidence" papers show. Take the 5G conspiracy for example, 100+ cell phone towers attacked, and workers setting up attacked as well. Lots of testable assertions made, none backed up with any kind of evidence.

<comment><USER57> But this could very well be a result of priming people for a consensus (or its opposition) I'm too young to judge but it wasn't always like this or was it?

<comment><USER58> Yes, things have always been this way and if you really want to see just how long, look at speeches and other "news" from Ancient Greece.

The significant difference today is how quickly and widely falsehoods can be distributed and redistributed, and how many different sources this can happen to. Pre Internet, if I started telling my friends about this thing called QAnon, how far and how quickly could it really spread? Not far and not quickly. Today however it can spread across the world in a day and be picked up by every major news outlet. It's disturbing, and we should all be very concerned.

<comment><USER59> Curious people can read the posts directly at qmap dot pub.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This seems to me to be a dangerous paper. It's effectively an opinion piece, pre-published, requiring a high degree of domain expertise to even read, with a clear conclusion in the title that you can see being used to deflect attention from the massive job the world has at hand (not that we shouldn't ask hard questions)

Why am I qualified to comment? Well, I'm a medical doctor (which frankly means jack shit for the ability to parse this paper) but got there through a major in biochemistry and molecular biology (which is a partial toolkit).

Unlike their paper on Biovacc-19 (0) it has not been accepted or submitted for publication yet (not enough to rule it out immediately because there is an increasing trend to pre-publication with the rate of research publications in this space as well as problems with traditional publication methodologies)

Without going too far the dissection, I would just point out that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that SARS-CoV-2 is natural in origin, this nature article describes this well (1).

Worth specifically responding to is their claim that

 _The co-receptor dependent phagocytic general method of action for infectivity and pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 appears to be specifically related to cumulative charge resulting from inserts placed on the surface of the Spike receptor binding domain, right next to the receptor binding motif._

Inserts _placed_ is a poor choice of descriptor in my opinion. The Fox Newsification of research findings. Well, you can see the 4 additional amino acids that give rise to the change in isoelectric point in the spike protein in the nature article, and much greater minds than mine have dissected this genetically and decided that such a mutation is possible through evolutionary methods alone.

They specifically say they disagree with the findings of the nature paper so to go on any longer risks drawing my bow in this area further than I am comfortable, but I would sum it up by saying that in science it is always good to have dissenting voices (such as with climate science for all the good that that does), but with just how fraught the world stage is at the moment I don't believe this dissenting voice deserves much attenion

[0] [https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge- core/c...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge- core/content/view/DBBC0FA6E3763B0067CAAD8F3363E527/S2633289220000083a.pdf/biovacc19_a_candidate_vaccine_for_covid19_sarscov2_developed_from_analysis_of_its_general_method_of_action_for_infectivity.pdf) [1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9)

<comment><USER60> I'd say that the "Proximal Origins" paper makes a very weak case especially given what we now know. The essential argument is that it's more likely that the RBD came from a lineage that includes the Pangolin-CoV than that it was designed by a human. That does seem reasonable. They suggest that the virus was the result of a recombination event. However, that recombination could have occurred artificially at the WIV. The WIV and Shi Zhengli specifically have recently published papers about performing precisely this type of work on SARS like coronaviruses.

Now the closest known viruses to SARS-CoV-2 are RaTG13 and Pangolin-CoV. Pangolin-CoV is a very close match in the spike protein, and RaTG13 is a very close match on the rest of the virus. RaTG13 and Pangolin-CoV were both discovered by WIV but their sequences sat unpublished until after the pandemic started. The grafting of the spike protein onto a "backbone" of another SARS like coronavirus is specifically something Shi Zhengli has been involved with and published with Ralph Baric in 2015.

Furthermore, the spike of SARS-CoV-2 is better adapted to humans than to any other species, and it's better adapted to humans than any other published coronavirus. This doesn't make sense unless the virus spent some time evolving in humans or in human cells. Interestingly, passaging SARS like coronaviruses in human airway cell cultures is also something that has been done in recent years. Ralph Baric's lab specifically has published work on this. The only real other possibility is that SARS-CoV-2 somehow spent many months circulating in human populations undetected while it adapted to human ACE2. There has been no evidence published that this occurred.

Finally, it is quite a coincidence that the lab where both Pangolin-CoV and RaTG13 were discovered is in the same city as where the outbreak started. Yes, both of those viruses were discovered in China, but Pangolin-CoV was discovered about 1000km from Wuhan, and RaTG13 was discovered about 1500km from Wuhan.

<comment><USER33> So you've got a situation where the natural reservoir of the viruses is geographically proximal to a lab that was set up to specifically study these diseases. It's a conspiracy theorist's wet dream

<comment><USER60> The bats that carried RaTG13 are 1000 miles away from Wuhan. It's unclear how it would have migrated to Wuhan given that horseshoe bats do not live near Wuhan.

On the other hand, the one thing we know for certain is that RaTG13 was present in Wuhan and was brought there by researchers at the WIV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I just showed this to a friend of mine who is a biochemist and he sent me this —

[https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus- cla...](https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-claims/)

</comment><comment><USER62> I am just astounded that anyone is taking this seriously. Epidemiologists have been warning us for decades about the increased likelihood of infectious diseases jumping from animals to humans with the exponential growth of the population and therefore, industrial-scale farming of animal. The intense proximity of animals and humans in these circumstances combined with the shortened lifespans of the animals involved means a virus that both spreads quickly and infects humans would thrive in such a situation.

This speculation is as irresponsible as it is baseless. You know as well as I do it would mean World War III.

</comment><comment><USER63> Between this and the active surpression of research on the topic in China through intimidation and the ongoing denial and destruction of evidence, I see no reason why we ought to give China the benefit of the doubt.

</comment><comment><USER64> Its likely that Viruses like COVID-19 have come and gone over time, and been completely unnoticed.

The difference being now that we have much older and elderly populations, often with chronic health conditions and deficiencies, kept alive 'artificially' by modern healthcare.

For example, approximately 50% of COVID deaths are to people in nursing homes. Without this population, the virus would be put down as regular influenza/pneumonia, albeit an unusually virulent strain.

<comment><USER65> That same modern healthcare is making the covid death rate much lower than it would be otherwise.

We've had plenty of people hospitalized who were not so sick and elderly that they depended on modern medicine to stay alive. Without modern hospital care, more of them would die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> [https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus- cla...](https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-claims/)

Do we know that this is the final version of the paper that was published?

</comment><comment><USER66> [https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus- cla...](https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-claims/)

Not sure this is the final draft of this paper. Do we know that it is?

</comment><comment><USER67> I wonder if this is a good point to be made against the paper's claims, given that viruses like MERS-CoV are not exactly proven to be natural in origin and even about HIV a lot of similar claims have been made over the years:

 _Gunnveig Grødeland, vaccine researcher at the University of Oslo, is one of the scientists voicing their disagreement with Sørensen. She explains that what Sørensen referred to as "inserted sequences" can enable the development of a more serious disease, but this is not unusual in nature: "Examples can be found in other viruses including subtypes of influenza (including "bird flu"), HIV, and several human coronaviruses (MERS, OC43, HKU1)."_

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/06/07/controver...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/06/07/controversial- coronavirus-lab-origin-claims-dismissed-by-experts/)

</comment><comment><USER68> What is important is that this needs to be investigated and the world needs to take measures to protect us from total future annihilation in a similar situation

</comment><comment><USER69> A while ago (18 June) former biology professor Bret Weinstein said the same in a Joe Rogan podcast [0], that there are several indications that seem to point out the virus is engineered.

One of the most interesting point he brings up, at least from my perspective, was the following:

\- Bats are outdoor animals

\- As such a corona virus that mainly targets bats should have little trouble spreading outside

\- However if a virus has been studied in a lab, so perhaps the virus has mutated to spread more easily indoors and "forgot" how to spread outdoors

\- Hence this could be the reason why at the moment this corona virus seems to have trouble spreading outside

\- The virus originated very closely to a lab that is known to study virusus

But Bret also brings up other points.

Also, what I found very interesting about this podcast and related to the development of vaccines, is his statement on lab mice and the possibility that laboratoria currently use mice that might have been (perhaps unknowingly) conditioned to produce desirable results in tests [1].

\---

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRCzZp1J0v0&t=6770s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRCzZp1J0v0&t=6770s)

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRCzZp1J0v0&t=9597s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRCzZp1J0v0&t=9597s)

<comment><USER49> The "spreading indoors" argument that Bret Weinstein made was mind-numbingly stupid. I know he has a degree in biology, but this is just embarrassing.

He's making an argument that this virus has been selected in a lab for a specific transmission mechanism. That means that the virus would have to have undergone many generations of animal-to-animal transmission in a lab. There's no reason why a virus would adapt to _transmit_ well if it were being studied in cell culture - because there's no transmission involved.

So Weinstein's theory requires a large-scale operation in which scientists keep large numbers of animals in the lab, and allow them to periodically come into contact in order to possibly infect one another. This has to go on for many generations, with the researchers constantly bringing in new animals to be exposed, until the virus "forgets" how to transmit outdoors. Where does Weinstein suppose this massive research operation occurred? The people he's alleging did this research are well known (and highly respected) scientists who publish their research in top international journals like _Nature_. Why did they keep silent about this massive research program, and how is it that none of their international colleagues had any idea about it?

Meanwhile, there's an obvious reason why the virus might transmit better indoors than outdoors: many respiratory viruses do. That's one of the explanations for the existence of "flu season" \- people spend more time indoors during the winter. Indoors, people are closer to one another and there isn't as much air circulation.

You don't have to invent completely unsupported theories about scientists carrying out large-scale, secret animal infection experiments in order to explain why a respiratory virus might transmit better indoors than outdoors. But Bret Weinstein is doing that, because he likes attention. I was on his side in the whole Evergreen saga, but now that he's become a celebrity, it's gotten to his head and he's saying stupid things to get attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Do viruses closely related to SARS-Cov-2 do all the "unusual" things it does? Do they cause brain damage, reproductive damage, anosmia without congestion, strokes, and unusual clotting activity? If not, I would be reassured by someone explaining to me how a natural pathogen could pick up all these features at the same time.

<comment><USER71> If the natural pathogen causes blood clots, everything else you described naturally occurs as a side effect.

<comment><USER72> Precisely this. I can't understand how so many people are so dumb that they can't add one plus one and understand that all the scare stories they hear is just normal consequences of a single issue. It's like saying that people who have a salmonella infection also have other issues likes diarrhoea, dehydration, headache, dizziness, tiredness, etc. Well of course, if you have a stomach bug which gives you diarrhoea then you shit water and you get dehydrated. When you dehydrate then you get headaches, can feel dizzy and your energy levels drop and you feel tired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> This version has not been peer reviewed, the peer reviewed version has many of these claims about it's man-made-ness removed

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/qrb- discovery/articl...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/qrb- discovery/article/biovacc19-a-candidate-vaccine-for- covid19-sarscov2-developed-from-analysis-of-its-general-method-of-action-for- infectivity/DBBC0FA6E3763B0067CAAD8F3363E527)

[https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus- cla...](https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-claims/)

</comment><comment><USER74> Even the title seems intentionally written in a misleading way...the OP correctly kept the original title but it is by design misleading with that use of which

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm open to this idea but I cannot imagine a goal for this line of research. It doesn't appear to benefit anyone.

<comment><USER75> "Gain of function" is regularly done to make various viruses "better" so as to study then how to defend against that potential mutation happening naturally.

See the big scandal from some years ago when the H5N1 virus was modified in a lab to be airborne, and the accusations that such research on such a dangerous virus is just reckless.

<comment><USER53> That's interesting but I still don't understand the motivation. There are plenty of currently successful viruses for research that making one airborne seems like it should be taboo. But again I'm not part of that community so maybe it's just natural for virologists you want to play with viruses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Very compelling.

</comment><comment><USER77> The argument is identical to arguments supporting intelligent design, that because it evolved in an unlikely or complex way, it must have been intentionally created.

There's a reason we haven't seen a virus like this in a century - because it's so unlikely that a new virus will appear in any given year with both a high rate of transmission and a high fatality rate.

<comment><USER78> >The argument is identical to arguments supporting intelligent design, that because it evolved in an unlikely or complex way, it must have been intentionally created.

I think intelligent design would be a pretty plausible explanation for humanity, if we already knew there was a god.

<comment><USER79> Intelligent design is kind of stupid because life is clearly not designed very intelligently.

The "evidence" that sars-cov-2 is designed with a guided purpose is kind of there in the paper, though. And that we as a species (and the bois in WIV) clearly had the capacity to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Look, when most virologists/epidemiogists look at this "evidence" and consider it too flimsy and flawed, then I wonder why people here are so eager to jump on it as "I'm not a biologist, covid19 is so unusual, it's obviously man- made". HN is embarrassing right now.

<comment><USER17> The same happened with HIV, these kind of conspiracy theories are inevitable. People always want to blame someone, even when there is overwhelming evidence that a natural catastrophe occurred. Remember the Italian seismologists who got sued because they didn't predict an earthquake?

Fact is that if the virus escaped a lab, the incident could have occurred in any other lab, too. It likely evolved naturally, though, and another fact is that it could have occurred naturally in many places in the world - e.g. in the Middle East or in Africa -, and a more dangerous virus could evolve in many regions of the world at any time.

Many people just don't want to accept this, especially those who reacted in the wrong way to the pandemic initially. It's always easier to blame someone else.

<comment><USER81> The HIV conspiracy theories were kind of silly though and they were able to trace the source to chimpanzees. Things seem different with covid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I ran a blast query against the cov2 glycoprotein that binds to human ACE2, and it just pops out of nowhere in 2020. There is a difference of like 30 amino acids from anything that came before, which is much too great to be explained by the coronavirus wild mutation rate of 1 nucleotide every thousand years. So, possibilities are it is a strain that has evaded researchers till now, some natural phenomenon vastly accelerated its mutation towards infecting humans, or it is genetically engineered.

<comment><USER30> > some natural phenomenon vastly accelerated its mutation

Natural recombination [1] vs gain-of-function lab work. Some of the lab work leverages natural recombination by artificially co-infecting lab animals with multiple viruses and studying the resulting chimeras.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recombinant_virus#Natural_re...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recombinant_virus#Natural_recombination)

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I just wonder if the same questions would've been asked if the virus originated in the west.

It seems Orientalism is still very much alive.

</comment><comment><USER84> There's evidence but not proof. People confuse these words all the time.

</comment><comment><USER85> Wait, didn't Chinese authorities said when this all started that there was a minor outbreak in the BSL4 lab, but it's under control? It's just when the "under control" didn't work, they started to cover things up.

</comment><comment><USER82> Also weird is Fauci both promoted this sort of research and oversaw the funding line that went to the Wuhan lab that funded a very similar research in 2019. My theory is this is an accidental lab outbreak, and Fauci is advising because he knows the cause and is trying to undo his mistake.

</comment><comment><USER86> Can't be coincidence

[https://medium.com/@yurideigin/lab-made-cov2-genealogy- throu...](https://medium.com/@yurideigin/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the- lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748)

[https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial- wuhan...](https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab- millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741)

<comment><USER87> I really hope anyone with a genetics background, or the desire to go really in depth about what makes a virus 'Lab-made', read through the above posted first article.

[https://medium.com/@yurideigin/lab-made-cov2-genealogy- throu...](https://medium.com/@yurideigin/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the- lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748)

It takes a long time but explains why the source is not very likely to be an evolved combined bat x pangolin virus, and has curious markers similarly used in other gain-of-function research, even similar techniques as used in past research by Dr. Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Natural origin not ruled out as being impossible, but not likely.

Combining it with this possible explanation looking at the possibility of RaTG13 being entirely fabricated altogether by Dr. Shi in January 2020, and you can at least definitely see where the conspiracy arguments come from, and why the CCP has an overwhelming need to create and play up a 'natural origin' argument, along with passing on mountains of misinformation.

[https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/ratg13-is- fake.html](https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/ratg13-is-fake.html)

Very convincing articles, scary times if this is actually true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> My first step in filtering crank papers is to ask is this written with Microsoft Word.

</comment><comment><USER89> This forbes blog piece contains a compilation of refutations attempt for the said theory [https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/06/07/controver...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/06/07/controversial- coronavirus-lab-origin-claims-dismissed-by-experts)

<comment><USER90> This seemed mostly fluff and argument from authority to me, with the main substantial counterpoint this:

> Gunnveig Grødeland, vaccine researcher at the University of Oslo, is one of > the scientists voicing their disagreement with Sørensen. She explains that > what Sørensen referred to as "inserted sequences" can enable the development > of a more serious disease, but this is not unusual in nature: "Examples can > be found in other viruses including subtypes of influenza (including "bird > flu"), HIV, and several human coronaviruses (MERS, OC43, HKU1)." Grødeland > also says that Sørensen's paper offered no biological confirmation on the > relevance of positively charged patches.

<comment><USER89> To be fair, this claim (the main paper) is released for a month. I even remember encountered a HN submission for it. However, the claim doesn't really attract much attention. A few UK media mention it, but focus mainly on the MI6 chief. Googling the researcher names also found mostly Norwegian sites. Since the traction of this claim is quite low, then not much further discussion by other scientists as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> A unrelated(?) repo of material about Covid-19's source, last update was May 2: [https://project-evidence.github.io/](https://project-evidence.github.io/)

Regardless of the source of this one, it is only getting _easier_ to engineer these extraordinarily valuable weapons. The 24x7 induced fear response is the real threat, not the virus.

Excess deaths are the only real measure: [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER91> This is very unlikely. The technology to design a virus reliably just isn't there.

What is much more likely is that a lab was studying coronavirus isolates from animals, and had a failure of containment. This has happened multiple times before (eg. with small pox).

But even then it is a moot point, because there is no way China, or any country for that matter, would admit they unleashed a global pandemic. Can you imagine the fall out?

<comment><USER92> The technology to design a virus has been around for a decade. You need a computer, a biology degree and 8 dollars. 8 dollars is the cost for a lab to synthesize your virus and put in a container (you may also have to pay postage). It's really really cheap.

<comment><USER91> You are confusing 'making' a virus with designing one with particular virulence and transmission characteristics. The latter is what I am talking about.

<comment><USER79> Other guy said it but looks like the scientists figured that exact thing out...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> The evidence is pretty compelling and I've suspected something was up the whole time in fact I began social distancing November of last year after hearing reports of a mystery virus. At some point in my life I met a mechanical engineer while helping out a friend who lost his job. This guy happened to be his neighbor and was the only one who was willing to run an electrical cable to my friend's unit for a small sum since his electric got cut off. This guy explains he was working in a lab that did continuous culture experiments and explained how it worked. He had the blueprints in his unit so I had no reason to doubt him and paperwork from the lab. Long story short he quit due to military influence on the project and was pushed out over his concerns which were ethical in nature. He opened my eyes to the fact a virus can be evolved rapidly and made extremely resistant without specific genetic modification. A little bit of googling and I could see the same company was involved in research going on in that Wuhan lab. The point here is how do we define "modified" as it is certainly possible through rapid continuous cultures and selective survival of strains any virus can be modified. This happened in the early aughts and so it's been nearly two decades this research technique has been in play. If it wasn't for that chance encounter I'd naturally be more skeptical about possible modifications of the virus but just so happens that I'm not as a result.</comment>


LSD is 'harmonizing' for the brain – and can change your personality for years - <AUTHOR> http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/article203341684.html <comment><USER2> Placebo LSD? How would that work?

<comment><USER3> It would look the same and be administered in the same way, but would have no drug in it. I imagine it would be a pretty coloured tab much like the real thing.

Unfortunately, even the full text of the paper doesn't say what it was or how it was administered.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17546-0](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17546-0)

Edit: I just missed it - the details are: healthy participants (mean age 30.5 ± 8, 4 females) received 75 μg LSD in 10 mL saline (intravenous, I.V.) or placebo (10 mL saline, I.V.), 70 minutes prior to fMRI scanning. LSD and placebo sessions were separated by 14 days and occurred in a counter-balanced order</comment></comment>


Does Running Java on Docker Containers Violate Agreements? - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2016/03/docker-java?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=external <comment><USER2> tl;dr: "...it is clear that distribution of these images may open both the users and the publishers of these images to public repositories to legal action."

If you build your own images that include the Oracle JDK, host them in a private registry, and don't distribute them to 3rd parties you are probably fine. Otherwise, you may be in violation.

I am definitely not a lawyer, but I don't see how this is something specific to docker. Wouldn't this apply to VMs as well?

<comment><USER3> Sure, but the default Docker registry is public, and Docker encourages you to create and publish images without any mention of copyright.

The same argument applies to e.g. EC2 machine images, but AMIs are private by default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stick to OpenJDK, or zulu, and you are fine.

<comment><USER5> If you use OpenJDK you can end up with an unknown version of Java - specifically whatever Debian or Canonical happened to pull from the source tree and ship, which in some cases have been automated top-of-tree pulls before. See for example: github.com/docker-library/openjdk/commit/00a9c5...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If this is true, I really hope that it begins a mass abandonment of everything Oracle.

<comment><USER7> As a fanboy for clojure I have mixed feelings about this

<comment><USER8> You could always use ClojureScript :)

<comment><USER7> Definitely! I'd love a compile to rust-like target though, that would be something</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can karma inflated by the HN vote hack be reset? (Mine included) - <AUTHOR>

For the record, I think I was at about 561 before I tested it. (Maybe 541, am not sure.) <comment><USER2> What vote hack?

<comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742742> and <http://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=3742902> and <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3743051>

Since fixed. (Considered Unsportsmanlike.)

Exploited CSRF with Direct Object Reference on article submissions.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: So I quit my job to focus on my startup... - <AUTHOR>

Who can recommend good books/articles on negotiation?
And.
How about good freelance/temp resources to pay bills until I become ramen-profitable or secure funding?
Perhaps the second question becomes irrelevant if pg is listening... <comment><USER2> I am surprised at the negative responses you've received in the last ten minutes of posting this, it is very much against the spirit of what usually occurs.

1) The book that I've seen mentioned the most often in the area of negotiation is not actually directly on that topic. It is just a general book on "getting it your way" - Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people".

2) I am in NYC, there are local python-nyc and ruby-nyc user groups, and they get a decent amount of traffic with people asking for help on various projects, a lot full-time, but occasionally a part-time gig offer comes up. Research the equivalent in your area.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Yuri! I appreciate your support, or at least constructive evaluation :)

I'm familiar with the book - I'll give it a go. As for my areas, mostly I'm finding people looking for full-time deals related to hadoop/hbase/lucene. Thanks for the reminder though, I'll look "harder".

<comment><USER3> You can also read "How to get Rich" by Dennis Felix

<comment><USER4> +1 for _Felix Dennis_ & How to Get Rich. Holds a permanent place of honor on my bed-stand. He shares his steps and missteps on his way to becoming a self- made bill-eee-on-air. Owes much of his success to negotiation. Fun read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you actually want to make your startup work, avoid freelancing. It's way too easy to get sucked into spending all of your time consulting, and it's pretty difficult to be fully mentally engaged in multiple projects. Also, the hardest part of freelancing is when you're just starting out. If you don't already have clients or a reputation, you'll spend all of your time trying to find clients and bidding on projects.

During this time, you won't be making any money, and the money you do make will probably be shitty because your clients will be the kind you find on craigslist that want you to build them "a facebook for X" in exchange for a sandwich. More importantly, all of this time will be time you didn't spend developing your startup.

<comment><USER6> I second this, pick up work when you absolutely have to and no more. I usually tell everyone I'm always open to contract work but then set my hourly high enough that it creates a nice filter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I once asked a very good negotiator for the best book he could recommend on negotiation, and he directed me to _Start With No_. (URL: [http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2...](http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=randomobser0b-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&asins=0609608002))

I've read it, it made sense to me, I've noticed a number of good negotiators doing things it suggests and my (admittedly few) negotiations I've done since have gone much better.

<comment><USER8> Ben, you should give this a read "Bargaining for Advantage : Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People" By Richard Shell - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=921079>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Getting to Yes is a pretty classic negotiation book:

[http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement- With...](http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement- Without/dp/0140157352)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm the guy who quit with OP. In fact, his lead engineer (on paper). There's an interesting dynamic when two people quit at the same time. Game theory time!

We do have a fair amount of leverage when it comes to negotiating severance pay, due to our knowledge of distributed architecture.

But yes, we're committed 150% to the startup. And submitted our YC application a few days ago :)

<comment><USER11> If you have knowledge they need why not just offer to provide consulting services back to the company while they transition. This way you get to eat and they get a smoother transition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _"... Who can recommend good books/articles on negotiation? ..."_

Negotiation is as much about non-verbal as it is verbal. So what's a good way to learn negotiation aside from watching _"Lie to me"_ ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie_to_Me> or _"Hustle"_ ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustle_(TV_series)> ? What about playing and learning poker?

In any sort of negotiation it helps if you can understand a) where the person you are negotiating with is coming from and b) what they are really thinking.This is where playing poker can help. To win you sometimes have to bluff (or lie) about your hand. People who are superior at understand and reading what others are thinking can use this to their advantage so try some books on psychology. A good start is understanding _"cognitive bias"_ (how individual psychology can influence individual decisions) ~ <http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Cognitive_bias>

Another good reference ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman>

</comment><comment><USER13> "Who can recommend good books/articles on negotiation?"

The best book on negotiation, bar none, is "Bargaining for Advantage : Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People" By Richard Shell. [http://www.amazon.com/Bargaining-Advantage-Negotiation- Strat...](http://www.amazon.com/Bargaining-Advantage-Negotiation-Strategies- Reasonable/dp/0140281916) (looks like it is out of print, but used copies seem cheap enough)

<comment><USER14> "looks like it is out of print"

There's a new edition out:

[http://www.amazon.com/Bargaining-Advantage-Negotiation- Strat...](http://www.amazon.com/Bargaining-Advantage-Negotiation-Strategies- Reasonable/dp/0143036971)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Best of luck to you with your startup! Here are some good articles about negotiation: <http://www.negotiatormagazine.com/subject_index.shtml>

</comment><comment><USER16> If you are a techie, the best freelance/temp work will come from your persistently networking with people and companies that match your interest and expertise. Those may also lead to partnerships or investments or just plain old good advice for your startup.

Of course there can be a lot of difficult balancing required between freelancing and starting up, but many people make it work. The salesmanship, discipline, and customer relations skills you learn freelancing can certainly come in handy in a startup.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've recently finished listening to "Influencer": [http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/ProductDetail.jsp?...](http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/ProductDetail.jsp?productID=BK_HIGH_000356&BV_UseBVCookie=Yes)

From my review: "I expected this book to be less scientific and less valuable than it turned out to be. Not one of those stupid motivational books, but rather a good theory source with real-life cases as illustrations.

Some of the chapters move you away from the major subject while trying to prove a point, and discuss things like, for example, delaying gratification studies or skills acquisition processes. These topics, however, are presented in a great scientific manner (well, maybe not a scientific, but at least authors are not bullshitting with you and consider you to be smart) and are supplied with data and good examples, so it's a pleasure to read (listen to) them.

I also think this book is a must-read for entrepreneurs, as they are the ones, who must influence people all the time and be good at it. And while they usually learn to do so by practicing, this book might provide a great deal of theory to start with."

I'm also listening to the other book by these authors now - it's called "Crucial Conversations", seems like it's really useful too.

</comment><comment><USER18> Highly recommended, and no one has mentioned yet:

Getting To Yes <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_YES>

And anything by Cialdini: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini>

</comment><comment><USER19> For starters, I'd recommend 'How to win friends and influence people' by Dale Caregie and 'How to talk to anyone' by Leil Lowndes.

Freelancing to pay bills also turns out to be a big distraction. I'd recommend exploring other creative ways that don't take your focus off of your startup to pay (or avoid) your bills.

<comment><USER20> I second the Leil Lowndes.

<comment><USER21> Thirded. "How to Talk To Anyone" is an excellent book. I need to read it again though as there are so many things to remember :-)

<comment><USER20> I actually use the tip on nametags. I'm now known as "Smiley" because I put smiley faces on nametags instead of my name. I'm dorky what can I say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am taking a negotiation class right now and we are using the three books listed below. The professor is really great, and the books are not boring college textbooks - they're really engaging and I'd read them on my own if I wasn't taking the course, too.

"Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive" by Goldstein, Margin, & Cialdini is a great book on influence and persuasion.

Cialdini is a great resource for influence/negotiation in general, so look for other articles/books written by him.

"Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions" by Ariely is a great book on behavioral economics

"Negotiation" by Lewicki, Saunders, and Barry

</comment><comment><USER23> why are you jumping right into negotiation skills? do you have a product yet? has someone approached you and said "we want to buy your company!"?

i know zackattack's comment got downvoted pretty badly, maybe because he was a bit too facetious in how he phrased it. but you do have some money saved up to last at least a few months, don't you?

edit: i'm not trying to be negative, i am very much for quitting to do your start up. but trying to learn how to negotiate seems like a bad sign. if anything, you should be focused on building something people want right now.

</comment><comment><USER24> All of these questions should of been researched to death before you leaped.

<comment><USER25> Paralysis by Analysis

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I started doing that when I ran out of all my previous savings. If you are confident that you can always make money, wait and give all the time to your startup before it runs out.

</comment><comment><USER27> Congrats.

Why are you looking for books on negotiation? I don't have any other than the ones mentioned, but the first rule of negotiation is to pretend like you don't give a shit about the favorable outcome, then proceed from that premise and everything will be fine.

This is jacquesm's must read on consulting: <http://jacquesmattheij.com/be- consultant>

</comment><comment><USER28> Fisher and Ury's "Getting to Yes" is the most authoritative text on negotiation and very accessible.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_YES>

</comment><comment><USER29> So what is your startup?

<comment><USER10> Fully scalable, faceted, bolt-on search :)

<comment><USER30> Google?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Agree with thomaspaine. I'm freelancer and working on others projects takes most of my time

</comment><comment><USER32> Against All Odds by James Dyson and Pouring Your Heart Into it (starbucks) are on my list

</comment><comment><USER33> Negotiation is about getting a good deal that both sides feel is of value to them.

</comment><comment><USER34> I had a class called "Negotiation and Conflict Management". The two required texts for it were "Getting to Yes" and "The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator". My recollection is that these are the only two books on the topic (or were at the time) that are based on research. "Getting to Yes" is short and an easy read. "The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator" is a much meatier book. I recommend it often.

</comment><comment><USER35> You're fucked.

The first principle of negotiation is to always have a better option.

<comment><USER11> Actually the first principle of negotiation is to make the other person THINK you have a better option. :)

<comment><USER23> yes, but there is a lot of psychology involved. if you're in a needy position, it will be difficult to fake it. and experienced negotiators will catch your BS pretty qucikly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> one of the regulars here posted an awesome guide about freelancing. i would look it up but i'm going to grab a beer instead =)

<comment><USER37> This is probably what you're talking about: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848370>

If not, it's good anyway.</comment></comment>


Wisee uses wi-fi signals to recognise body gestures - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22780640 <comment><USER2> Even though the article does not go into a large amount of detail about it, the actual paper [0] does a fairly good job addressing the issue of interference with the signal. I'm still skeptical about the potential for something like this, but it would be a very cool solution to ubiquitous control systems if they can iron out the kinks.

[0] <http://wisee.cs.washington.edu/wisee_paper.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER3> Discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5824286>

Currently #9 on the front page.</comment>


Show HN: A Python tool for text-based AI training and generation using GPT-2 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/minimaxir/aitextgen <comment><AUTHOR> For fun, here's a little demo of aitextgen that you can run on your own computer.

First install aitextgen:

        pip3 install aitextgen

Then you can download and generate from a custom Hacker News GPT-2 model I made (only 30MB compared to 500MB from the 124M GPT-2) using the CLI!

        aitextgen generate --model minimaxir/hacker-news --n 20 --to_file False

Want to create Show HN titles? You can do that.

        aitextgen generate --model minimaxir/hacker-news --n 20 --to_file False --prompt "Show HN:"

<comment><USER2> how does one download these models?

<comment><USER2>
      Ask HN: What's your favorite computer science podcasts?
      </comment></comment></comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: How do I convince a non-technical exercise to keep a journal
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: Is it just me or not?
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: What do I do with my MVP?
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: How to sell?
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: How do you use HackerNews?
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: Best way to make a B2B startup?
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: Why do I have to live in San Francisco?
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: How to tell my heart changes?
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: How to deal with the difference between a job interview and a product?
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: What is your favorite open-source sytem?
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: What are your favorite blogs and resources?
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: What are the best books for learning a new language/frameworks?
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: What's your favorite HN post?
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: What is your favorite RSS reader
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: Is the SE not a mistake like a safe space business?
      </comment><comment>====
      Ask HN: How do I start programming in a job?

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been following minimaxir's work with GPT-2 for a while - I've tried building things on [https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-2-simple](https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-2-simple) for example - and this looks like a HUGE leap forward in terms of developer usability. The old stuff was pretty good on that front, but this looks absolutely amazing. Really exciting project.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is just brilliant. For someone who has little working knowledge but has massive interest in this field I found your guide exceptionally well written and newbie friendly (the way you've mentioned on how to setup this and that and left so many tips throughout is indeed very useful).

I'm going to have a lot of fun with this and this is going to be my starting point about learning more about colab notebooks and ai (always loved doing practical things instead of reading theory to learn something new).

Kudos to you for all this amazing work.

p.s. sorry if this is a lame question, but can this be used like how gmail recently has started to autocomplete my email sentences?

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome work! Whenever people tell me they want to get started with NLP I tell them to play around with your libraries as they're the easiest way to immediately start doing cool things.

</comment><comment><USER6> Huge fan of your gpt2-simple library, which I used to train a satirical news generator in a Colab notebook: [https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1buF7Tju3DkZeL- EV4Ft...](https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1buF7Tju3DkZeL- EV4FtSu2KEJ4yepbL0?usp=sharing)

> Generates text faster than gpt-2-simple and with better memory efficiency! > (even from the 1.5B GPT-2 model!)

This is exciting news. One of very few drawbacks of gpt2-simple is the inability to fine-tune a model of more than ~355M parameters. Do these memory management improvements make it possible to fine-tune a larger one?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Do these memory management improvements make it possible to fine-tune a > larger one?

Unfortunately not yet; I need to implement gradient checkpointing first. Memory-wise, the results for finetuning 124M are promising (<8 GB VRAM when it used to take about 12 GB VRAM with gpt-2-simple)

<comment><USER7> Have I been using gpt-2-simple wrong..? I've been fine-tuning 355M on a 8GB 1080 for months..

<comment><AUTHOR> gpt-2-simple has gradient checkpointing; aitextgen does not (yet).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks great!

If I want to fine-tune this to some text data, are there obvious constraints to be aware of? I've got a reasonable amount of text (~50-100G) but seeing that there's a json file created makes me think that's probably too much. gpt-2-simple seems to describe 100M as 'massive' so what's a reasonable amount to aim for?

Or should I be training from scratch? (edit - looking into training from scratch since I don't have thousands to throw at this I'm guessing that's a 'no')

<comment><AUTHOR> ~50-100G isn't "some" text data. The _original_ GPT-2 was trained on 40G of text data.

I'm not 100% sure you can encode and store that much data in memory with the current implementation, even with the fast tokenizers.

<comment><USER8> Oh, that's less than I was expecting - I'm used to having significantly less data to play with than the major entities. I guess I do but in this case a pretty reasonable amount of data was enough for very impressive results.

> I'm not 100% sure you can encode and store that much data in memory with the > current implementation, even with the fast tokenizers.

That makes sense. I wasn't too sure what sensible sizes would be, there's probably some interesting subsets of the data I could take though and use for fine tuning (or some sampled data) - maybe down to 100M as that sounded like a large-but-ok amount to use.

I'm looking forward to seeing what I can get out of this, thanks for making something simple enough that I can do that for a "I wonder if" kind of problem!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Your API looks really clean but what's the difference between this and just GPT-2 (or) HuggingFace's implementations?

<comment><AUTHOR> I talk about deviations from previous approaches in the DESIGN doc ([https://github.com/minimaxir/aitextgen/blob/master/DESIGN.md](https://github.com/minimaxir/aitextgen/blob/master/DESIGN.md)), but to answer the difference between aitextgen and Huggingface Transformers:

Model I/O: aitextgen abstracts some of the boilerplate and supports custom GPT-2 models and importing the old TensorFlow models better.

Training: _Completely_ different from Transformers. Different file processing and encoding, training loop leverages pytorch-lightning.

Generation: Abstracts boilerplate, allowing addition of more utility functions (e.g bolding when printing to console, allow printing bulk text to file). Generation is admittingly not that much different than Transformers, but future iterations will increasingly diverge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know an efficient way to "embed" models like this? I'm currently working in a Tamagotchi-style RPI toy and I use GPT-2 to generate answers to the chat. I wrote a simple API that returns from the server. If I could embed my model, it would save me having to have a server.

<comment><AUTHOR> The hard part of embedding is that the smallest 124M GPT-2 model itself is huge at 500MB, which would be unreasonable for performance/storage on the user end (and quantization/tracing can't save _that_ much space).

Hence why I'm looking into smaller models, which has been difficult, but releasing aitextgen was a necessary first step.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't understand why this didn't get more hype. This is amazing. Well done

<comment><AUTHOR> AI text generation in general is an industry that's been underhyped. Which is why I'm trying to help shape it. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very cool. Can I ask what your use case is, or if it's just for fun?

<comment><AUTHOR> I intend to productionize text generation, and this is a necessary intermediate step. (gpt-2-simple had too many issues in this area so I needed to start from scratch)

<comment><USER13> That is cool, do you have a timeline set out for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll likely start by creating a web API service similar to what I did for gpt-2-simple, except more efficient: [https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-2-cloud- run](https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-2-cloud-run)

The next step is architecting an infrastructure for scalable generation; that depends on a few fixes for both aitextgen and the base Transformers. No ETA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice trying this out

</comment><comment><USER7> Great work, been loving gpt-2-simple recently!

</comment><comment><USER15> One question: Why put more sh!!t on top of huggingface already really good code?

</comment><comment><USER16> Very interesting results

>>> ai.generate(1, prompt="Trump") Trump] The best way to start your life is to have sex with someone who is still a virus

As funny as it seems, it shows what things are being associated with</comment>