> least shitty theory

I read about CIA false flags in Cuba. Nordstream didn't blow itself up because the pipe was angry it allowed .de and .ru to engage in commerce.

I guess a rogue western intelligence group bribed or compelled a Chinese lab worker to sabotage something.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/rfk-ope...

"The CIA had been plotting to assassinate Castro since the summer of 1960, even before John Kennedy was elected. A congressional investigation of the CIA later uncovered eight separate plots of varying ridiculousness between 1960 and 1965."

I really doubt this. The pandemic was bad for the whole world, not just China. I'm sure it was an accident.

I agree with this statement, COVID is very likely to be an accident, unless it was created by a mad scientist or aliens, I can't think of any reason to artificially create COVID to harm the interests of China or other countries other than China.

They were making deadly viruses in a lab. It’s like handing out loaded shotguns to school children then claiming anything that happens is an accident.

Bad for whom? Some billionaires reportedly believe in the discredited Malthusian population problem.

I believe in it - not that population itself is a problem but that we have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet

I don't think it would have been unreasonable for a nation-state to imagine, pre-pandemic, that China would be better equipped to handle such a thing with their lack of individual rights and that it might provide a competitive advantage.

Yes, a thing can be most likely, and not likely.

It is talking about the relative likelihood of the possible origins.

> It is talking about the relative likelihood of the possible origins.

That's how you read it. GP is reading "most likely" as statement of absolute likelihood, making it false here, because the most likely thing is "any of the possibilities not under consideration", which takes most of the probability mass.

IMO, GP's interpretation is the one that most people take for "most likely" statements, which in our opinion makes this headline a blatant lie.

If you told most people you had 10 rolls of a dice to land a 6 and then suggested the most likely number of rolls you'll get it on is 1 I wonder whether they'd believe you...

I think most people would have the same reaction as me, that is "er, I'm having trouble parsing this, could you rephrase?".

Anyway, a different way of putting my point is: "most likely" modifies meaning of the thing it attaches to. "Lab leak [is the] most likely origin of" strongly suggests the absolute take. Relative take would be phrased "Lab leak [is the] most likely of hypotheses proposed for the origin of", or something to that effect - that is, attaching "most likely" to the body of proposed explanations (which, by definition, excludes "anything else not on this list" as an option), not to the origin itself.

A yet different way: NYT is doing the equivalent of me putting some object under a color detector, and announcing "Blue most likely color of Object", without mentioning that my color detector consists of separate R, G, and B color sensors, and that I'm just reporting which sensor gave the highest reading. Most people would read my announcement as "Object is some shade of blue, unless their machine is broken or something", whereas the object itself could be purple, or white, or yellow, or near-black, or any other color that just has "B" component stronger than "G" and "R".

The headline is absolutely, literally true.

The story is that the DOE determined a lab leak is the most likely origin. And that’s exactly what the headline says.

Did they decide it’s only marginally more likely than other theories? Perhaps, but the headline remains true.

This is not complicated.

it is if you have a narrative to sell.