<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;background-color:transparent">On Fri, Jul 31, 2026 at 10:03 PM Gregory Jones <<a href="mailto:spike@rainier66.com">spike@rainier66.com</a>> wrote:</span><span class="gmail_default" style="background-color:transparent"></span></div></div><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="auto"><font size="4" face="georgia, serif"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>If Krugman forgot to add to his list of conspiracy theories one still gaining popularity: that Covid was not a lab leak. That one is still making the rounds. spike</i></font></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>I asked Claude (set to Extra) the following question "Was the cause of Covid a lab leak?<span class="gmail_default" style="">" and this was his answer:</span></b></font></div><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span class="gmail_default" style=""><b>==</b></span></font></div><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large;background-color:transparent"><b style=""><font face="georgia, serif">Claude:</font></b><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> "</font></span><span style="font-size:large;background-color:transparent">There's no scientific or intelligence consensus — the question remains genuinely unresolved and contested.</span></div><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container">
<p class="gmail-font-claude-response-body gmail-break-words gmail-whitespace-normal" dir="ltr"><font size="4"><strong>On the intelligence side:</strong> U.S. agencies are split. The FBI assesses a lab-related origin as most likely with <u>moderate confidence</u>, and the Department of Energy reached a similar conclusion with l<u>ow confidence</u>. The CIA shifted in January 2025 to say a research-related origin is "more likely" than natural transmission, though only with l<u>ow confidence</u>, and it explicitly stated that b<u>oth research-related and natural origin scenarios remain plausible</u>. Other intelligence agencies continue to assess natural spillover as more likely, or say there's insufficient evidence to conclude either way. </font></p>
<p class="gmail-font-claude-response-body gmail-break-words gmail-whitespace-normal" dir="ltr"><font size="4"><strong>On the scientific side:</strong> A 2025 WHO report found the pandemic's origins still uncertain, noting much of the information needed to evaluate the lab-leak theory was never made available to investigators. While a zoonotic (animal-to-human) origin is currently considered the best-supported hypothesis by available scientific data, the WHO says the question will remain inconclusive until more data or information is shared. Scientists remain divided as well.</font></p><div class="gmail-flex-1 gmail-flex gmail-flex-col gmail-px-4 gmail-max-w-3xl gmail-mx-auto gmail-w-full gmail-pt-1"><div role="feed" aria-label="Chat messages" aria-describedby="_r_in_" style="margin-bottom:0px"><div style="width:100%"><div style="display:flow-root"><div role="article" tabindex="0" aria-label="Message 2 of 2"><div class="gmail-group gmail-group/message-row" style="height:auto;opacity:1"><div class="gmail-contents"><div class="gmail-group gmail-relative gmail-relative gmail-pb-[var(--msg-assistant-pb,0.75rem)]" style="opacity:1"><div class="gmail-font-claude-response gmail-relative gmail-leading-[1.65rem] gmail-[&_pre>div]:bg-bg-000/50 gmail-[&_pre>div]:border-0.5 gmail-[&_pre>div]:border-border-400 gmail-[&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent gmail-[&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 gmail-[&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 gmail-[&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 gmail-[&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"><div class="gmail-grid gmail-grid-rows-[auto_auto] gmail-min-w-0"><div class="gmail-row-start-2 gmail-col-start-1 gmail-relative gmail-grid gmail-grid-rows-[auto_auto] gmail-isolate gmail-min-w-0"><div class="gmail-row-start-1 gmail-col-start-1 gmail-relative gmail-z-[2] gmail-min-w-0"><div class="gmail-standard-markdown gmail-grid-cols-1 gmail-grid gmail-[&_>_*]:min-w-0 gmail-gap-3 gmail-[&_>_*:last-child]:mb-0 gmail-print:block gmail-print:[&_>_*_+_*]:mt-3 gmail-standard-markdown"><p class="gmail-font-claude-response-body gmail-break-words gmail-whitespace-normal" dir="ltr"><strong><font size="4">The core arguments on each side:</font></strong></p>
<ul dir="ltr" class="gmail-[li_&]:mb-0 gmail-[li_&]:mt-1 gmail-[li_&]:gap-1 gmail-[&:not(:last-child)_ul]:pb-1 gmail-[&:not(:last-child)_ol]:pb-1 gmail-list-disc gmail-flex gmail-flex-col gmail-gap-1 gmail-pl-8 gmail-mb-3 gmail-print:block gmail-print:space-y-1">
<li class="gmail-font-claude-response-body gmail-whitespace-normal gmail-break-words gmail-pl-2"><font size="4"><em>Zoonotic spillover</em>: Early cases clustered around the Huanan wet market in Wuhan, which sold live wild animals; this mirrors past coronavirus outbreaks (SARS, MERS) that jumped from animals to humans.</font></li>
<li class="gmail-font-claude-response-body gmail-whitespace-normal gmail-break-words gmail-pl-2"><font size="4"><em>Lab leak</em>: Wuhan hosts a major virology institute with a history of coronavirus research; some proponents argue certain genetic features of the virus, or the fact that all known cases trace to a single introduction event, are more consistent with an engineered or lab-adjacent origin than a natural spillover.</font></li>
</ul>
<p class="gmail-font-claude-response-body gmail-break-words gmail-whitespace-normal" dir="ltr"><font size="4">Notably, some of this back-and-forth is politically charged — the current White House has published material asserting lab leak as the "true origin," while under the prior administration the <u>CIA had stayed agnostic for years before its 2025 shift, which by its own account was a reinterpretation of existing intelligence rather than new evidence</u>.</font></p>
<p class="gmail-font-claude-response-body gmail-break-words gmail-whitespace-normal" dir="ltr"><font size="4">Bottom line: this is an active, unsettled dispute rather than a case with a definitive answer — treat any confident claim in either direction with some skepticism unless it's backed by specific new evidence.<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">"</span></font></p><p class="gmail-font-claude-response-body gmail-break-words gmail-whitespace-normal" dir="ltr"><span style="font-size:large;background-color:transparent"><b style=""><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">John K Clark</font></b></span></p><p class="gmail-font-claude-response-body gmail-break-words gmail-whitespace-normal" dir="ltr"><font size="4"><br></font></p><font size="4"><br><br> </font><br><br><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div><br></div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 12:32 PM John Clark via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><font size="4">Nobel prize winning economist <span style="background-color:transparent"><u>Paul Krugman</u> had something interesting to say a few days ago:</span></font><br></div><div><font size="4"><span style="background-color:transparent">===</span></font></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border-width:medium;border-style:none;border-color:currentcolor;padding:0px"><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border-width:medium;border-style:none;border-color:currentcolor;padding:0px"><div><b><font size="6" face="tahoma, sans-serif"> Reality is a Communist Plot</font></b></div></blockquote></blockquote><div><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><br></font><b style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:large;background-color:transparent"> by Paul Krugman</b></div><div><b style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:large;background-color:transparent"><br></b></div><div><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">The Covid vaccine didn’t work, and <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/a49c1fa7-0056-4810-8036-dfa7a6f60aea?j=eyJ1IjoiNngzbm4ifQ.I1PMvYo4mI3PquTDRhL5Dev-9_ouIq3kw6ZhrVNsy8o" style="color:rgb(54,55,55)" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">vaccines cause autism</a>. But <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/da5a2025-ec96-4773-a734-a0f1be26cb4c?j=eyJ1IjoiNngzbm4ifQ.I1PMvYo4mI3PquTDRhL5Dev-9_ouIq3kw6ZhrVNsy8o" style="color:rgb(54,55,55)" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">hydroxychloroquine</a> worked, and so did ivermectin. Anthony Fauci killed <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/abcbf591-99ca-4400-8842-fa3dfc792cb1?j=eyJ1IjoiNngzbm4ifQ.I1PMvYo4mI3PquTDRhL5Dev-9_ouIq3kw6ZhrVNsy8o" style="color:rgb(54,55,55)" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">millions of people</a>.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">Climate change is a hoax. Wind power caused a <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/c6b894f5-a94a-4880-a265-e80bbe76f163?j=eyJ1IjoiNngzbm4ifQ.I1PMvYo4mI3PquTDRhL5Dev-9_ouIq3kw6ZhrVNsy8o" style="color:rgb(54,55,55)" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">massive TV blackout</a> during the Trump-Biden debate. Solar power is useless because the sun doesn’t shine at night, and batteries don’t exist. Smoke blanketed North America, not because of climate change, but because Canada <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/3fe8b8c6-18e0-4500-ab3c-750b8fd86d2f?j=eyJ1IjoiNngzbm4ifQ.I1PMvYo4mI3PquTDRhL5Dev-9_ouIq3kw6ZhrVNsy8o" style="color:rgb(54,55,55)" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">didn’t rake</a> its 2 million square miles of boreal forest.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">We’ve destroyed Iran’s military, and the Iranian regime is begging for a deal. Also, the U.S. isn’t running out of precision weapons as a result of the Iran war, and furthermore the shortage is Joe Biden’s fault.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">The economy is in a “golden age.” Prices are down. And Trump has a <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/f477f9fb-f775-4864-a952-28d2fd71d2f5?j=eyJ1IjoiNngzbm4ifQ.I1PMvYo4mI3PquTDRhL5Dev-9_ouIq3kw6ZhrVNsy8o" style="color:rgb(54,55,55)" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">59 percent approval rating</a>.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">Trump won the 2020 election.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">Communism is the greatest threat facing America.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">The modern American right is very good at hating. MAGA hates immigrants (unless they’re white South Africans); it hates liberals; it hates scientists.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">What the ongoing <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/5381f7e7-a885-47be-8dfe-1fe50c569363?j=eyJ1IjoiNngzbm4ifQ.I1PMvYo4mI3PquTDRhL5Dev-9_ouIq3kw6ZhrVNsy8o" style="color:rgb(54,55,55)" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">show trial of Fauci</a> — which motivated this post — has really driven home, however, is that what Trump and his supporters hate most of all is reality. They know what they want to believe. They fly into paroxysms of rage whenever someone points out that the world isn’t what they want it to be. And they always want to shoot the messenger.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">Of course, motivated reasoning isn’t confined to the right. Some people on the left insist that zoning restrictions have no role in causing high housing prices, that it’s all about Wall Street greed. Many centrists insist that being in the middle on a left-right scale — which isn’t even how most voters <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/d4a07203-f369-4717-9c8b-c6093004660f?j=eyJ1IjoiNngzbm4ifQ.I1PMvYo4mI3PquTDRhL5Dev-9_ouIq3kw6ZhrVNsy8o" style="color:rgb(54,55,55)" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">think about politics</a> — is the secret to electoral victory. And so on.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">I’m not immune to the temptation to believe what I want to be true. I try to fight it, but don’t always succeed. Still, I try to acknowledge and admit it when I have let wishful thinking warp my judgement.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">But what we’re seeing now isn’t run-of-the-mill motivated reasoning. It’s something far more extreme.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">If believing something suits MAGA’s prejudices and interests, they don’t hesitate: they simply insist that it’s true. They routinely dismiss scientific and statistical evidence, but they don’t stop there. They’re perfectly willing to deny reality even if the truth is staring them in the face.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">Thus, Trump urged Americans to remember that 2024 TV blackout, which nobody remembers because it didn’t happen. He insists that California has “<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/b51cede3-a3b6-4f53-a618-0d553187cbe0?j=eyJ1IjoiNngzbm4ifQ.I1PMvYo4mI3PquTDRhL5Dev-9_ouIq3kw6ZhrVNsy8o" style="color:rgb(54,55,55)" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">blackouts and brownouts every weekend</a>,” when the state’s 39 million residents can tell you it doesn’t. He says that you must show ID to <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/a886c68e-c550-4a12-9b0b-db828fbfbe8c?j=eyJ1IjoiNngzbm4ifQ.I1PMvYo4mI3PquTDRhL5Dev-9_ouIq3kw6ZhrVNsy8o" style="color:rgb(54,55,55)" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">buy groceries</a>, which everyone who buys their own food knows isn’t so.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">Do Trump and his followers actually believe these things? As I see it, that’s a category error, starting from the presumption that they even accept that objective facts exist. All the evidence (Hah! “Evidence!”) says that they don’t.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">George Orwell, whose work seems more relevant by the day, knew all about this mindset. In his essay “<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/4e798ccd-8d7e-49a0-8d16-ae546e2baf0b?j=eyJ1IjoiNngzbm4ifQ.I1PMvYo4mI3PquTDRhL5Dev-9_ouIq3kw6ZhrVNsy8o" style="color:rgb(54,55,55)" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">Looking back on the Spanish war</a>” he wrote about how the rise of totalitarianism had changed the rules:</font></b></p><blockquote style="border-left:4px solid rgb(232,181,0);margin:20px 0px;padding:0px"><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><i>In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that ‘the facts’ existed and were more or less discoverable. And in practice there was always a considerable body of fact which would have been agreed to by almost everyone.</i></font></b></p></blockquote><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">Totalitarians, however, denied that objective facts existed. Furthermore, reality is mutable, changing with the leader’s whims:</font></b></p><blockquote style="border-left:4px solid rgb(232,181,0);margin:20px 0px;padding:0px"><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><i>If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five.</i></font></b></p></blockquote><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">If you find the assertion that MAGA has a totalitarian mindset over the top, all I can ask is, have you been following the news?</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">What’s remarkable is the extent to which Republican politicians act as if they are living in a totalitarian state, when they aren’t — not yet, anyway. ICE would clearly like to be an American Stasi, policing any deviation from the party line, but it’s not able, so far, to arrest members of Congress who express skepticism about the president’s claims. And many Republican politicians still, I believe, know the difference between fantasy and reality.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">But they behave as if they were courtiers to Kim Jong Un. Trump speeches are sometimes followed by “<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/249c4a19-6eff-4e54-bbd2-b3c11ac10ede?j=eyJ1IjoiNngzbm4ifQ.I1PMvYo4mI3PquTDRhL5Dev-9_ouIq3kw6ZhrVNsy8o" style="color:rgb(54,55,55)" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">endless applause moments</a>,” because none of Trump’s loyalists wants to be seen as the first person to stop clapping.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">The susceptibility of the GOP to this totalitarian mindset has come as a surprise even to cynics. I have some idea of how this happened: It involves a confluence of big-money corruption, crony capitalism, religious fanaticism, and the ever-present forces of racism and sexism. But that’s a subject to be delved into another day.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">What’s clear is that the war on reality is exacting a high price on America as a whole.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">Remember, 1.2 million Americans died from Covid — a number that would have been much lower if MAGA misinformation hadn’t caused so many people to refuse vaccination. Now we’re seeing a frightening rise in measles and other infectious diseases, and God help us if another pandemic strikes with Trump or his successor still in charge.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">Climate denial and hostility to renewable energy will mean more pollution even as it consigns the U.S. to energy and economic backwardness.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">And the Iran war — which Trump started and now refuses to end because he won’t accept reality — has destroyed America’s credibility and depleted our weapon stocks with stunning speed.</font></b></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;color:rgb(54,55,55);line-height:26px"><b><font size="4" face="tahoma, sans-serif">But anyone pointing out the obvious is, of course, a Communist.</font></b></p></div></div><br>
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