I've found estimations helpful when it's really about breaking down parts of a task that aren't independently deliverable, but still independently estimatable. When working with a sufficiently technical manager, it gives them the best idea of your confidence function. It also helps junior members of the team understand more of your process and get some problem-solving practice without years of experience.
Estimations only has value if you're not going to be held to it, otherwise people start fudging numbers. As a rough guide it can be useful, but too often it's used for more than that.
You speak as if this is a bad thing. If the U.S. funded research that caused the covid outbreak, the international community should lose trust in us, especially since public officials dismissed (perhaps unfairly) theories that would have put the U.S. at fault. Obviously, this goes doubly for China.
Increasing safeguards relies on us knowing what the vectors of outbreak are. It matters if this was caused by an underpaid lab assistant selling animals that were meant to be contained, or a random person catching animals to sell, or a researcher that didn't quarantine after being bit. The safeguards should be different.
> There are any number of other labs around the world working on similarly dangerous research that could get released on accident.
And you don't see a problem with this?
You seem to assume the lab-leak hypothesis assumes malicious intent in creating the virus, but most people are actually concerned about negligence and/or a malicious coverup of the origin.
A definitive answer to the origin of covid could help answer the following questions:
- How much do I trust U.S. public health institutions?
- How much do I trust Chinese public health institutions?
- Should gain-of-function and other high-risk virus research be conducted? And what should the safety standards be of such research?
- Is there a problem of forced consensus/centralization in the broader scientific community?
Same reason black-hat security research exists. By developing a virus in a contained environment, you can study it, model it, potentially develop mitigations or cures.
It seems pretty clear to me that regarding the origin of the virus specifically, there has been bad-faith dismissal of the lab leak theory due to the politicization of GoF research.
