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A comment on CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid's Origins. Parent comment

Re:CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid's Origins by mlyle on Sunday January 26, 2025 @01:26AM (#42828168)
I think you need to discount possible farther future benefits, because so much change can intervene and make the analysis invalid.

That is, when people want to do something-- risks tend to be understated and possible future benefits tend to be overstated.

I don't back the precautionary principle, but I do think risk in cost-benefit analysis has to be viewed from a pretty cautious place, in general (not just science).

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Re:CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid's Origins by Retric on Sunday January 26, 2025 @01:41AM (#42828226)
Ultimately, we don’t know the actual benefits and I just picked numbers from thin air to illiterate a point. But yea linear extrapolation of such estimates hundreds of years into the future is nonsense.
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