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1. No one is saying "let the people die". Health and safety standards should be raised as we gain more understanding of health risks. My point is that we need to increase the safety standards and health codes at wet markets, beginning first by banning the wildlife trade and bushmeat.

2. Wet markets actually serve an important role in the local economies of markets where supermarkets are not easily accessible. Actually, we still have wet-markets in the US and Europe and we love them. They're called fish markets, where local fishermen sell their daily catch directly consumers, and they would kill and clean animals right in front of buyers. We have no grievances with that, and chefs often recommend them to people. The difference between these wet markets and the ones we see in China is regulated standards, so that's a big area of improvement.

Thanks for sharing that particular report. There's a couple of things worth pointing out.

1. This report is also strangely claiming that the H1N1 swine flu most likely "came from a frozen source and a laboratory seems the most probable culprit", a claim that both the WHO and CDC refuted. This raises a red flag for me.

2. I appreciate you sharing the article, and I want to read it critically. Unfortuantely this article does not provide any hard evidence (from tests or physical analysis) showing a clear direct link between SARS and wet-market. It doesn't even have a methodology section, so I'm not sure why it's in a scientific publication. I'm guessing this is a paper that tried to summarize current findings, but the best evidence this paper can give is this: "The host range of SARS coronaviruses in wild or farm-raised animals is not resolved. Yi Guan and colleagues14 recently established a potential zoonotic origin of SARS coronavirus (CoV) and wet markets as a possible source of the original outbreak." In other words, they think it could from wet-markets but they don't even know the transmission vector. Where's the hard science to back up the provocative title that "wet market is a continuing source of severe acute respiratory syndrome and influenza"? I guess putting a question mark in the title lowers the burden of proof for the author.

3. I do take one point from this study seriously: The butchering process of animals should be regulated. When animals are butchered at an industrial scale in factories, health inspectors can easily check the butchering process. But when they are done at very small scale in smaller wet-markets, it is very difficult to inspect them. This is a rightful public health concern, whether or not it is the source of influenza.

4. Actually, the US and Europe still have wet markets, and the public seem to love them. They're called fish markets, where fishermen sell their daily catch directly to consumers. They'll cut and clean the animals right in front of customers. To be clear, they have tighter regulation than the wet markets we see in Latin America, Asia, or Africa, but they are exactly the the same kind of markets: they allow farmers and fishermen to sell directly to consumers in small daily batches, which can include butchering services.

I'm not here to defend selling bushmeat or the trade of wildlife for "medicine", but wet markets are simply markets where farmers can set up stalls and sell directly to consumers, including livestock and meat. Yes, it doesn't have the same sanitation code as supermarkets, but these wet markets are actually just what regular markets looked like 100 years ago. There's nothing nefarious going on there that breeds pandemic, except for the ones where they trade bushmeat, but these are exceptions; and the problem is the bushmeat, not the wet market.

This author is painting a picture of wet market like it's some kind of seedy underground butcher shop, but the reality is that this is how places like New York or London were selling groceries and food just a hundred years ago. It's just a regular market before the age of super markets.

The wildlife trade definitely contributes to the increased likelihood that disease jump from animals to humans. However, it seems that most of the risk comes from bushmeat, or meat from wildlife that are not domesticated sources. As far as we know, the SARS outbreak was from bushmeat, for example. But China is not the only country that has a problem with bushmeat. Africa, also has a problem with bushmeat, which has been linked to Ebola outbreak. Bushmeat is a problem, and illegal poaching for "medicine" is a problem; but these are two separate phenomenons. What they have in common is the victim: wildlife.

This is a direct consequence of their agricultural practices

Sorry, but you seem very certain of this claim, and I don't see evidence to back it up. Please point us to evidence that Chinese agricultural practices are directly responsible for pandemic viruses. If anything, the common agricultural practices of over-using antibiotic, which the both the US and China engages in, is what most scientific studies have pointed to sources of public health concerns because they can breed super germs. Point us to evidence of practice unique to Chinese agriculture that's causing pandemics. It is concerning when an audience that's supposed to be fact-based like Hackernews is circulating this type of uninformed "cultural shaming". Please exercise evidence-based reasoning, and exemplify the values of Hacker News community when you feel the urge to cast broad judgment about an entire cultural system.

I'm not here to defend the Chinese agricultural system specifically, but I'm happy to stand up and call out this kind of nonsense whenever and wherever it pops up, may it be directed toward an Asian culture or Western one.

I'm sure this is good and expedient in confronting difficult situations, but I'm not sure if it is helpful in building genuine connections. Of course, I don't have the definitive way to build genuine connections, but ... I wouldn't imagine this is the solution. Though, faced with a tough situation, I'll deploy this method for safety.

Is the implication that if you didn't tip, then the service was bad? I'm sorry, but it should be a given that the service adequately good in the normal course of business --otherwise, why is it a restaurant? I am fine if tipping is something you do when you experience exceptional service that is above and beyond satisfactory, instead of something you are compelled to do every time. The argument that waiters might not be paid enough is a valid point, but it is separate.

Am I the only person who prefer to get the drinks myself without a waiter? I don't even like it when someone pour drinks for me, especially not when they are compelled do it because their livelihood depends on it.

Unless it's an event where I feel under pressure to appear "stately", I don't prefer to have people waiting on me at all, so I feel this is what all restaurants should try to do.

AI's aim is not to adopt poor strategies. It seeks to optimize, but the point is you can lead it to believe a point is global optimum, when in fact it is only local optimum.

As to your point about the EV, this is why collusion can work. By colluding over a long enough horizon, the AI can believe that the average expected value to be something that it is not. If only one individual feign a weakness and the rest do not, then the strategy doesn't work.

I just looked it up and collusion is illegal in poker, though players could do it.

This is a multi-day competition. Players may coordinate in each round, but I mean to coordinate in each day. If you only coordinate over a short horizon then the complexity of your deception is lower. So for example, all players adopt a common feigned weakness on a given day, and let the computer believe those behaviors is part of a pattern to exploit. Then on the second day, up the bets and stop the feign.

This happens in algorithmic trading, where traders would make a large number of low-valued, bad bets to mislead the algo. Then bet big and go the other direction.

I wonder if the players tried colluding: coordinate their bets to fake a weakness so the AI start to adopt a poor strategy, then up the bets and stop the feign. I don't see how the AI can protect itself against that.