Self selection in conspiracy theorists

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_Lemmie
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists

Post by _Lemmie »

canpakes wrote:
DarkHelmet wrote:And videos that were taken that day show the remaining, intact perimeter columns bucking and failing seconds before the collapse started.

Exactly true. And folks watching this on TV witnessed this in real time. It was probably the most heart-wrenching moment to see because even as quickly as that buckling occurred, it was still immediately perceptible and understood within that fraction of a second that all hope for saving anyone left in the building was removed, and that what was left to witness in the next moment was inevitable and horrifying.

To attribute this moment to the machinations of clever demolition experts is to unjustly blunt the magnitude and despair of the true cause and the victims caught within it. In my own opinion, anyway.


Having watched the events of 9/11 unfold in real-time, both on tv, out my east coast window, and by phone with my spouse (after far too many hours of terrifying lack of communication service), while he was watching out his window from the Bronx side, unable to come home (bridges and tunnels closed due to fear of further terrorism) and also unable to find his twin brother (a first responder NYC firefighter), I appreciate this comment more than you can know.

In reviewing the research to respond to this thread, three times I had to stop watching or listening to videos because I found myself broken down and audibly sobbing, tears running down my face, as though it happened yesterday.

Dr. Shades:

How so?


I can’t speak for canpakes, but my answer to this is to note that the theories that suggest “controlled demolition” also seem to without exception imply that there was “advance knowledge of the attacks among high-level government officials,” for some reason such as it was “carried out by the government as a false flag operation as a pretext for launching the War on Terror.”

Suggesting that 9/11 was cold-bloodedly planned and carried out, resulting in the massive and horrifying execution of their own people, simply to make a point, while ignoring the straightforward and well-proven conclusion that this was an act of war, is what “unjustly blunt[s] the magnitude and despair of the true cause and the victims caught within it.” in my opinion.

But. Moving on.

DocCamNC4Me:

I'd be interested in you explaining your 9/11 CT positions more than you asking other posters to explain their emotional reactions to the terrorist attacks. You've gone essentially silent, and it'd be nice to see someone that most of us respect actually engage the topic thoughtfully so we can have a decent conversation about the incident and your beliefs vis a vis what occurred.

- Doc


Agreed.
Last edited by Guest on Mon Nov 25, 2019 6:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
_mikwut
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists

Post by _mikwut »

Well, I'm not convinced that a satisfying answer has been given. Let me concede Markk's hypothesis of the fuel weakened the steel initiating a collapse. How does that make a symmetrical free fall collapse? How does that larger building below provide no resistance to smaller mass above?

mikwut
All communication relies, to a noticeable extent on evoking knowledge that we cannot tell, all our knowledge of mental processes, like feelings or conscious intellectual activities, is based on a knowledge which we cannot tell.
-Michael Polanyi

"Why are you afraid, have you still no faith?" Mark 4:40
_Lemmie
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists

Post by _Lemmie »

mikwut wrote:Well, I'm not convinced that a satisfying answer has been given. Let me concede Markk's hypothesis of the fuel weakened the steel initiating a collapse. How does that make a symmetrical free fall collapse? How does that larger building below provide no resistance to smaller mass above?

mikwut

Gravity.
What Did and Did Not Cause Collapse of WTC Twin Towers in New York

Journal of Engineering Mechanics ASCE, Vol. 134 (2008), p. 15.

Zdenˇek P. Baˇzant , Hon.M. ASCE, Jia-Liang Le , Frank R. Greening , and David B. Benson

Abstract:

Previous analysis of progressive collapse showed that gravity alone suffices to explain the overall collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers.

However, it remains to be checked whether the recent allegations of controlled demolition have any scientific merit. The present analysis proves that they do not.


The video record available for the first few seconds of collapse is shown to agree with the motion history calculated from the differential equation of progressive collapse but, despite uncertain values of some parameters, it is totally out of range of the free fall hypothesis, on which these allegations rest.

It is shown that the observed size range (0.01 mm—0.1 mm) of the dust particles of pulverized concrete is consistent with the theory of comminution caused by impact, and that less than 10% of the total gravitational energy, converted to kinetic energy, sufficed to produce this dust (whereas more than 150 tons of TNT per tower would have to be installed, into many small holes drilled into concrete, to produce the same pulverization).

The air ejected from the building by gravitational collapse must have attained, near the ground, the speed of almost 500 mph (or 223 m/s, or 803 km/h) on the average, and fluctuations must have reached the speed of sound. This explains the loud booms and wide spreading of pulverized concrete and other fragments, and shows that the lower margin of the dust cloud could not have coincided with the crushing front. The resisting upward forces due to pulverization and to ejection of air, dust and solid fragments, neglected in previous studies, are found to be indeed negligible during the first few seconds of collapse but not insignificant near the end of crush-down.

The calculated crush-down duration is found to match a logical interpretation of seismic record, while the free fall duration grossly disagrees with this record.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1c2a/5 ... 7d70bd.pdf

_Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

mikwut wrote:Well, I'm not convinced that a satisfying answer has been given. Let me concede Markk's hypothesis of the fuel weakened the steel initiating a collapse. How does that make a symmetrical free fall collapse? How does that larger building below provide no resistance to smaller mass above?

mikwut


The tower collapses were NOT symmetrical, as shown vividly by the Weidlinger Associates Debris Maps And WTC 7 wasn't symmetrical, either.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Weidlin ... 24&bih=659

Edited to add:

Image

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaps ... ade_Center

- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.

Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
_DarkHelmet
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists

Post by _DarkHelmet »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
mikwut wrote:Well, I'm not convinced that a satisfying answer has been given. Let me concede Markk's hypothesis of the fuel weakened the steel initiating a collapse. How does that make a symmetrical free fall collapse? How does that larger building below provide no resistance to smaller mass above?

mikwut


The tower collapses were NOT symmetrical, as shown vividly by the Weidlinger Associates Debris Maps And WTC 7 wasn't symmetrical, either.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Weidlin ... 24&bih=659

Edited to add:

Image

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaps ... ade_Center

- Doc


Who did the conspirators hire to demo those buildings? That's gotta be the worst controlled demolition in history.
"We have taken up arms in defense of our liberty, our property, our wives, and our children; we are determined to preserve them, or die."
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_Xenophon
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists

Post by _Xenophon »

I'm not sure how prevalent the theory is among "truthers" but I always thought it you were going to go with a 9/11 conspiracy the better play was to assume that Bush & Co (or Illuminati or whatever) just knew about it and let it happen anyways in order to justify their desire for war. Don't get me wrong this still has all the messy parts about needing a minimum of hundreds of conspirators, none of whom having broken ranks over the years, willingingly murdering thousands of innocent US civilians (to say nothing of the ensuing casualties from the War on Terror) and leaving absolutely no trace of said conspiracy...

But at least you don't also have the messy bit about trying to place explosives in the buildings too.
"If you consider what are called the virtues in mankind, you will find their growth is assisted by education and cultivation." -Xenophon of Athens
_Dr Exiled
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists

Post by _Dr Exiled »

Here is where Dan Rather explains the collapse of building 7:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WQXEHQlNM4

The problem is that the collapse looks like controlled demolition and so the conspiracy theory gains a level of plausibility that others like those crazy flat earthers don't. However, the devil is in the details and looks can be deceiving.
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen 
_Res Ipsa
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists

Post by _Res Ipsa »

Oh yeah, well explain THIS. (just channeling my inner conspiracy theorist)
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
_Lemmie
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists

Post by _Lemmie »

mikwut wrote:How does that larger building below provide no resistance to smaller mass above?

mikwut
the answer to your second question is addressed specifically in this section of same source:
Generalization of Differential Equation of Progressive Collapse

The gravity-driven progressive collapse of a tower consists of two phases—the crush-down, followed by crush-up (Fig. 2 bottom), each of which is governed by a different differential equation (Baˇzant and Verdure 2007, pp. 312-313).

During the crush-down, the falling upper part of tower (C in Fig. 2 bottom), having a compacted layer of debris at its bottom (zone B),
is crushing the lower part (zone A) with negligible damage to itself. During the crush-up, the moving upper part C of tower is being crushed at bottom by the compacted debris B resting on the ground.

The fact that the crush-up of entire stories cannot occur simultaneously with the crush-down is demonstrated by the condition of dynamic equilibrium of compacted layer B, along with an estimate of the inertia force of this layer due to vertical deceleration or acceleration; see Eq.
10 and Fig. 2(f) of Baˇzant and Verdure (2007).

This previous demonstration, however, was only approximate since it did not take into account the variation of crushing forces Fc and F
during the collapse of a story. An accurate analysis of simultaneous (deterministic) crush-up and crush-down is reported in Baˇzant and Le (2008) and is reviewed in the Appendix, where the differential equations and the initial conditions for a two-way crush are formulated.

It is found that, immediately after the first critical story collapses, crush fronts will propagate both downwards and upwards. However, the crush-up front will advance into the overlying story only by about 1% of its original height h and then stop. Consequently, the effect of the initial two-way crush is imperceptible and the hypothesis that the crush-down and crush-up cannot occur simultaneously is almost exact.

The aforementioned distance of initial crush-up would be larger if the column cross sections changed discontinuously right below or right above the first collapsed story. However, this does not appear to be the case.

A sudden change of column cross section after the crush-down front has advanced by more than a few stories would not produce crush-up because the compacted layer B has already become quite massive and acquired a significant kinetic energy.


In other words, gravitational energy converts into kinetic energy, and its all over but the settling of the dust.
Last edited by Guest on Mon Nov 25, 2019 7:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.
_Lemmie
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists

Post by _Lemmie »

Res Ipsa wrote:Oh yeah, well explain THIS. (just channeling my inner conspiracy theorist)

:lol:
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