Self selection in conspiracy theorists

[_Dr. Shades]

While we're on the subject, I can't resist mentioning that there's a conspiracy theory about Perfume.

[_Res Ipsa]

Thanks for the perfect example of the fallacious use of Cui Bono.

Anomalies that indicate foreknowledge is not Cui Bono, dude.

This is not an anomaly that indicates foreknowledge anymore than winning the lottery indicates foreknowledge of the numbers that would be drawn.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

The SEC and FBI, aided by other agencies and the securities industry, devoted enormous resources to investigating this issue, including securing the cooperation of many foreign governments. These investigators have found that the apparently suspicious consistently proved innocuous."

So, now that they know the 'truth', are all these agents and agencies in on the conspiracy?

- Doc

[_Smokey]

The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency got lucky by shorting United Airlines Stock the day before 9/11 ...

[_honorentheos]

And George Carlin recorded a special on 9/10/2001 titled, I Kinda Like it When a Lotta People Die.

The idiot was in on it, too.

[_Res Ipsa]

The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency got lucky by shorting United Airlines Stock the day before 9/11 ...

What is your evidence that the “institutional investor” referred to in the footnote was the Director of the CIA. And how would you go about characterizing the relevant odds?

[_Res Ipsa]

While we're on the subject, I can't resist mentioning that there's a conspiracy theory about Perfume.

Now that’s a doozy.

[_Markk]

I'm not an expert, of course. According to the towers' schematics, was there maintenance access to the structural supports, or were the latter always directly behind the drywall?

You don't have to be a expert, just use a little common sense.

To answer your question...It would depend on the tenant improvements (TI). Spaces are empty shells when leased out, the owner hires a separate architect, interior designer, and contractor to build out the space

There are certain things like MEP's shafts, egress stairs, and elevators shafts that are part of the "core and shell" of the building, everything else is TI. Their are generally two separate permits, the first being "core and shell," and the second being "tenant Improvements."

If you leased a space to say a Starbucks...they hire a architect and contractor to build out the leased " core and shell" space. If they do not like a beam or column exposed, they simply wrap it with drywall, wood, tile, or some other finish to make it go away. Support columns are also a obvious "ending place" for "partition walls"...in other words they dictate how space is divided. One would end a wall at a column, instead of having the column in the middle of a room, and it would normally be "boxed out" to make it go away. If the architect chose to keep th esteel support column open...then I am sure someone would notice TNT strapped to the beam, let alone the cuts into the columns and beams to direct the charge.

It is really no different than your local strip mall, just 100 plus stories upward. And in case of the twin towers, high end tenant improvements, meaning they would not allow folks coming into their space to cut open walls and ceiling to plant explosive charges.

The logistics, the planing, and engineering that would take to implode a building in a timed explosion in a manner you suggest would take a 100's of workers to do and months of Old Testament. And to do it without anyone knowing is simply impossible in my book.

[_Dr Exiled]

Cui bono (who benefits) is a good question to ask when investigating crime. Motive seems to point to the universe of possible perps and investigators use this fact to aid in their investigations. Conspiracies happen all the time and your local court is filled with them. Even the elites dabble in conspiracies like Enron when they are taking time off from ruling us and giving back, allegedly. Prince Andrew seems to have been involved with Epstein and his recent BBC interview seems to have led to his supposed banishment from public life. Further, and more importantly, calling/dismissing someone a conspiracy theorist seems to be a great way to silence criticism. If I were defending a client in the media, I would accuse the accusers of being illogical conspiracy theorists and try to paint them as crazies in my attempt to gaslight them.

Misuse of Cui Bono is one of the hallmarks of CT. Cui Bono is a good tool for identifying possible suspects when you have good reason to believe that someone has committed a crime. CTers use it exactly backwards. They use it as proof that a crime was committed in the first place. For example, the claim that lots of people made money as a consequence of 9/11 is not evidence that they caused 9/11. People trade on stock exchange for all kinds of reasons. And within that set of people, there are winners and losers each time the value of a stock changes. The fact that some people made money off the behavior of the stock market after 9/11 is not an anomaly — it’s exactly what we should expect to happen.

This is an example of the paternity bias and the intentionality bias at work. I see what I think is an anomalous pattern — certain people made money in the stock market off of 9/11. The pattern cannot be a coincidence. Therefore, those people must have caused 9/11.

That’s what conspiracy thinking looks like. It assumes, without any evidence that the mere existence of a pattern means some intentional agent caused the pattern. It never stops to think about whether coincidence is a better explanation (the volume of trading means that every change of price means there are winners and losers.) And it jumps to the conclusion that benefiting from an event equals causing an event.

Finally, Exiled gave a great example of one of the hallmarks off the CT. The mere fact that I correctly label the reasoning as CT means that I’m in on the conspiracy! Again, parallel to mopologetics, the conspiracy becomes an all-powerful Swiss Army knife that can be deployed to reject any evidence or reasoned argument just like a mopologist used God.

Please remember that I’m not dismissing you as a nutter. I view CT thinking as the product of biases hardwired in the brain.

Wouldn't further investigation resolve a lot of the issues you raise? It seems to me that the best way to shut up people like smokey is to investigate their claims, publicly, with as many people as possible commenting on the evidence and reviewing it. Interview and cross examine all the witnesses, etc. Flat earthers' claims are easy to debunk that way. Holocaust deniers can also get their a$$es handed to them that way as well.

[_EAllusion]

Wouldn't further investigation resolve a lot of the issues you raise? It seems to me that the best way to shut up people like smokey is to investigate their claims, publicly, with as many people as possible commenting on the evidence and reviewing it. Interview and cross examine all the witnesses, etc. Flat earthers' claims are easy to debunk that way. Holocaust deniers can also get their a$$es handed to them that way as well.

That doesn't happen with flat earthism at all. Coordinated teams of scientists aren't out there investigating the claims of flat earthers with systematic reviews of evidence and argument. Scientists occasionally respond to flat-earthers mostly as a hobby.