I have some skepticism for the HIV/AIDS theory, perhaps on the level of say 20-30%.
It takes courage to voice a low but not negligible degree of doubt in a emotionally salient mainstream position. I would expect it to result in almost as much social punishment as in the case of outright denial. (Emotional backlash isn’t good at math.)
More concretely, I would roughly say I am only about 70% confident that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS, or 70% confident that the mainstream theory of HIV/AIDS is solid.
I am surprised that those two confidences happen to be the same. Is it not a distinct possibility that HIV is, in fact, the sole cause of AIDS even when the mainstream theory is itself rubbish? (For example, if the theory got important details such as mechanism completely wrong.)
I tend to think of “HIV being the sole cause of AIDS” as the central tenet of the mainstream theory, but sure that could be true even if much of the details are wrong. Actually, I think many within the mainstream would admit most of the details are wrong—last I checked all the important details, such as how the retrovirus could come active after many years and damage T-cells and what not are all still hot research items.
And most of the specific results have been failures—no vaccine yet, just some drugs with a bunch of side effects which may or may not even improve mortality, etc etc.
I find hypotheses in the middle more likely overall—examples: that HIV is a mostly harmless retrovirus but in some people with (X, Y, Z cofactors) it can cause immune damage.
And I yes, I am at least mildly concerned about taking an HIV skeptic position in a public internet forum—and just thinking about the reasons for that causes me to slightly update to be more skeptical.
It takes courage to voice a low but not negligible degree of doubt in a emotionally salient mainstream position. I would expect it to result in almost as much social punishment as in the case of outright denial. (Emotional backlash isn’t good at math.)
More concretely, I would roughly say I am only about 70% confident that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS, or 70% confident that the mainstream theory of HIV/AIDS is solid.
I am surprised that those two confidences happen to be the same. Is it not a distinct possibility that HIV is, in fact, the sole cause of AIDS even when the mainstream theory is itself rubbish? (For example, if the theory got important details such as mechanism completely wrong.)
I like this sentence.
I tend to think of “HIV being the sole cause of AIDS” as the central tenet of the mainstream theory, but sure that could be true even if much of the details are wrong. Actually, I think many within the mainstream would admit most of the details are wrong—last I checked all the important details, such as how the retrovirus could come active after many years and damage T-cells and what not are all still hot research items.
And most of the specific results have been failures—no vaccine yet, just some drugs with a bunch of side effects which may or may not even improve mortality, etc etc.
I find hypotheses in the middle more likely overall—examples: that HIV is a mostly harmless retrovirus but in some people with (X, Y, Z cofactors) it can cause immune damage.
And I yes, I am at least mildly concerned about taking an HIV skeptic position in a public internet forum—and just thinking about the reasons for that causes me to slightly update to be more skeptical.