Self selection in conspiracy theorists
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists
This thread is fun. We should do JFK next.
"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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- Captain Moroni - 'Address to the Inhabitants of Canada' 1775
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists
I feel ya, Shades. You have to fight against processes hard-wired in through evolution. In some sense, you have to be self-skeptical to a high degree. Like, why do you think you can recognize thermite from a video?
“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
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists
mikwut wrote:Hi Exiled,Markk pointed out that a lot of people would have had to have had access for some time to wire the building for the 9/11 controlled demolition to have worked. Are you aware of any investigation into who had access to the building prior to 9/11? ]Also, wouldn't the operation require a lot of people who would have been noticed by others who worked in those buildings?
The architects present some anomalies prior to the attacks like alarms placed on test:
https://www.ae911truth.org/news/479-sec ... efore-9-11How do you respond to the fact that people generally can't keep secrets like the 9/11 inside job seemingly required?
1) It's funny in the whistleblower threads on impeachment I asked EAllusion an analogy to this question. I asked if everything was so damn obvious; that what the president was asking for was not only inappropriate but actually criminal and impeachable why weren't there more whistleblowers? I was told how human nature is to not come forward. I say that where I agree with much of what EAllusion said. That was said in more benign setting like everyday work life.
2) I was a criminal defense lawyer. Although not a perfect analogy. I did a lot of work for drug clients. Usually lower down the chain type of dealers and such. It was common that I could get my client a better deal if we could provide bigger fish up the chain. When my clients were working in such a chain I couldn't get my clients to say, they'd rather suffer worse consequence. So it isn't some kind of impossible human thing for large numbers of people to keep the workings of a criminal enterprise silent.
3) Military keeps top secret secrets within a group all the time.
4) I think of when I was Mormon, again not a perfect analogy, but all these give hints, no one could get me to just talk about what happens in the temple all based on a spiritual fear and bonding within the group.
4) Why would someone from the inside come forward? They got away with it. No one would believe them. What would anyone have to gain?
mikwut
aaaaand the gish gallop begins...
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.
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.
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists
Dr. Shades wrote:DoctorCamNC4Me wrote: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.
Well, in light of the further light and knowledge posted within this thread, I may have to update my opinion about the controlled demolition theory. Even so, I can't stop myself from doing what Res Ipsa advised against:
Focusing on the anomalies, especially since they are so well documented by video footage. For example, I can't seem to ignore the melted thermite pouring out of the side of one of the towers, nor can I bring myself to ignore the individuals inside the towers reporting hearing multiple explosions after the planes had impacted.
1) I can't seem to ignore the melted thermite pouring out of the side of one of the towers
Answer: I don't know why we keep going back to ea911 as a source for truth. We've already posted multiple incidents where its presented really, really bad information. That said, https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/9/11
Thermite was used to cut structural members in the buildings
Rebuttal: This is based on a few pictures of vertical beams that had been sheared off by recovery workers. Although a thermite reaction is highly exothermic, it is nearly impossible to effectively channel it sideways to cut a vertical beam, since it tends to pour straight down as it burns.[note 6]
Some creative truthers have suggested the use of "thermite straps"; given that thermite is generally a powder delivered from a cone-shaped cup, it's not clear that such a device is even possible, much less practical. This was later amended to thermate, a variation which includes sulfur, and appeared when there were chemicals found that matched what was found in the debris. However, such claims ignore the natural occurrence of these chemicals, do not match the chemical signatures that were found in the debris, and do not have corresponding traces of two major byproducts from thermate, aluminum oxide[note 7] and barium nitrate.[14]
Moreover, the thermite reaction is highly exothermic. Supposed evidence of thermite use is the presence of unreacted thermite in the WTC debris. This, however, comes as close to falsifying the hypothesis of thermite use as one can reasonably get: any place containing significant amounts of elemental aluminum and iron oxide (unreacted thermite), yet not far higher amounts of aluminum oxide and elemental iron (the reaction products), can be safely assumed to be not even close to where a thermite reaction recently occurred. This criticism has been "answered" by claiming that the unreacted "nanothermite" is indeed merely a trace residue. But this would require attaching some 100 metric tons[note 8] of thermite to the WTC buildings' structure, in hundreds or even thousands of small packages, with nobody noticing. And even if that were true, the corresponding amount of reacted thermite has simply failed to turn up. Finding thermite educts yet failing to find the appropriate amount of thermite products turns the supposed "proof" of thermite use into a quite robust refutation of thermite use.
In any case, "unreacted thermite" is composed (in bulk) of elemental aluminum and iron oxide. Commercial aircraft contain enormous amounts of aluminum, and the WTC was an aluminum-clad, steel-cored building. If an airliner crashes at high speed into a large steel-frame building, causing an enormous explosion, fire, and building collapse, we can expect to find aluminum and iron oxide, as well as aluminium oxide and metallic iron, in the debris without any thermite charges being required to explain it.
A more recent truther claim is that traces of red-gray chips and iron-rich microspheres in the WTC rubble are best explained by thermite. This is held as their "smoking gun." A study of the dust from Ground Zero contradicts this: "There is no evidence of individual elemental aluminum particles of any size in the red/gray chips..."[15] Essentially, the chips are epoxy resins.
Explosions coming out the windows of the towers are indications of an explosive demolition
Rebuttal: What happens when you squeeze a concertina? These side-jets of air and dust were not really explosions as such but debris being expelled from the buildings as the floors pancaked on top of each other. There is a lot of air in a quarter-mile-tall office building, and when compressed it has to go somewhere.
Add to that, the Twin Towers were full of water in water mains, toilets, sinks, and beverage machines. Water heated to boiling temperatures expands violently, and if contained, it expands explosively. Water has a high heat capacity which usually precludes rapid heating to boiling temperatures, but the heat of burning jet fuel will force water to heat rapidly to boiling that causes explosions of such objects as unopened soft-drink cans or whiskey bottles. Such explains many of the explosions that survivors heard.
The "pyroclastic flows" of dust indicate that explosives must have been used
Rebuttal: A pyroclastic flow is a movement of hot gas. In the context of a volcano, it is usually hot gases containing hot dust and other chunks spreading out. In the context of WTC, these flows were claimed to be the cloud of dust that dispersed during collapse and when the towers hit the ground.
Aside from not being hot enough to qualify as a pyroclastic flow (see volcanoes and shuttle launches), most claims try linking it with the controlled demolition theory. The only thing this debris flow indicates is a fast vertical compression that caused air inside the building to push dust outward over a large area. The same flows can also be seen during controlled demolitions but usually much smaller than what happened at WTC.
It has been estimated that the total mass of sheetrock in the internal walls was on the order of 1000 tons (US). An enormous cloud of white dust is, therefore, not entirely surprising or unexplainable.
Molten steel was found in the basement seven weeks later and jet fuel can't melt steel beams.
Rebuttal: There is no documented evidence of the presence of actually-melted steel at ground zero. The molten material noted in the 9/11 Commission report was "slag," not a molten metal. Most of the reports of "molten steel" found at ground zero were merely references to obviously red-hot solid steel. Even if they actually found "molten" metal, aluminum (which the planes were made out of) melts well under the temperature of jet fuel (pure aluminum melts at 660° C, jet fuel burns around 980° C[16] going up to +2,000 °C[17]). In addition, the mix of jet fuel, plastics, rugs, curtains etc. may burn hot enough to melt aluminum. (This can be demonstrated by placing an empty aluminum soda can on top of an ordinary campfire.)
Additionally, the melting point of steel is within the range of 1425-1540° C,[18] well outside the temperatures recorded at Ground Zero in the weeks following the attacks. What conspiracy theorists fail to note is that steel thermally expands while it remains strong and thus fire rapidly destroys uninsulated steel structures, and steel begins to lose its structural integrity (and red hot steel itself burns in air or in the presence of steam) at well below its melting point, or 700-820° C, well within temperatures recorded at Ground Zero in the weeks following the attacks). Meanwhile, molten steel is not typically found at the site of buildings that have actually been demolished using "explosives" to sever columns. Also, the first law of thermodynamics prevents even the super hot molten product of thermite charges from remaining molten long after thermite ignition. Therefore, whatever molten materials were observed at ground zero in the weeks following the collapses, that molten material was not originally present and molten at the time of the collapses (it began to melt after the collapses, not before the collapses).
That all being said, a 767 Family plane can carry up to 90,000 liters of fuel in its hull. It is estimated the two planes had about 28,000 Liters left in their tanks which is spread all over the hull from the wings to the fuselage (for ballast and balance control). The crash and shredding of the plane hardware caused the fuel to ignite almost instantly. Since it was not a controlled burn it is likely to hit the highest end of the combustion scale at its core, causing simultaneous ignition of anything around that was combustible and causing severe damage to load bearing pillars.
2) nor can I bring myself to ignore the individuals inside the towers reporting hearing multiple explosions
Answer: See above about trapped water. I'd also suggest there are a LOT of things that go boom when have all sorts of stuff burning or breaking or collapsing... moreso if the thing above you weight 3,200,000+ pounds drops 3 meters it's going to make a HUGE boom.
- 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.
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.
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists
Res Ipsa wrote:I feel ya, Shades. You have to fight against processes hard-wired in through evolution. In some sense, you have to be self-skeptical to a high degree. Like, why do you think you can recognize thermite from a video?
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:aaaaand the gish gallop begins...
There is no way that Shades and mikwut can give up. Given the choice between:
(a) Accepting that when an unprecedented event like a fuel-loaded plane crashing into a skyscraper occurs, the subsequent events will be in many respects unprecedented and hard to comprehend in detail.
AND
(b) Saying that all is perfectly explained by the fact that there was a weird conspiracy involving hundreds of people from the highest levels of government right down to construction workers (who managed to do their work without ever being noticed), all of whom have since stayed silent.
They will choose (b), in the face of every piece of counterargument and evidence that can be provided. Once you have checked into the Hotel Conspiracy, you can never leave. Because if you left, you'd feel soooo stupid for ever having checked in there. And in a dull life, being in on a secret is a little bit of treasured excitement some people can't afford to lose.
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists
Dr. Shades,
Give the picture or video of molten material flowing out the side of the WTC I think that could've been aluminum alloys from the aircraft (melting point between 475 °c and 640 °c - depending on the particular alloy -, which is way below the temps of the fires. It's also likely the molten metal was mixed with large amounts of hot, partially burned, solid organic materials (e.g., furniture, carpets, partitions and computers) which can display an orange glow, much like logs burning in a fire pit.
- Doc
Give the picture or video of molten material flowing out the side of the WTC I think that could've been aluminum alloys from the aircraft (melting point between 475 °c and 640 °c - depending on the particular alloy -, which is way below the temps of the fires. It's also likely the molten metal was mixed with large amounts of hot, partially burned, solid organic materials (e.g., furniture, carpets, partitions and computers) which can display an orange glow, much like logs burning in a fire pit.
- 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.
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.
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists
Chap wrote:They will choose (b), in the face of every piece of counterargument and evidence that can be provided. Once you have checked into the Hotel Conspiracy, you can never leave. Because if you left, you'd feel soooo stupid for ever having checked in there. And in a dull life, being in on a secret is a little bit of treasured excitement some people can't afford to lose.
I hereby renounce my previous opinion and accept the official narrative.
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists
I think there are very good reasons why it’s hard to abandon a conspiracy theory. I think of my brain as a big story-telling machine. It takes all this disparate input and crafts it into a story that it tells itself. And it’s more important that the story makes sense to me than telling story that’s 100% accurate. The videos look like a controlled demolition, and so it makes sense that it is a controlled demolition. Once the brain patches onto a story, it’s awfully tough to dislodge it. Unless it’s a matter of life and death or immediate peril, where’s the upside in throwing away a conclusion that makes sense?
“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
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists
mikwut wrote:Doc and Honor,
Are you claiming that the debris and ejection of pulverized material that found its way outside the exact footprint of the buildings refutes the basic straight down falling of the buildings?
mikwut
No.
There was interior structure that remained standing for up to twenty seconds as the outer structure and floors began to fall. This is not consistent with how a controller demolition would occur. It IS consistent with what would happen if a building begins to fail, collapsing inward.
It's the third column missing from your table again.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth?
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~ Eiji Yoshikawa
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Re: Self selection in conspiracy theorists
honorentheos 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
It wasn't symmetrical. From the quotes I provided:
From video evidence, significant portions of the cores of both buildings (roughly 60 stories of WTC 1 and 40 stories of WTC 2) are known to have stood 15 to 25 seconds after collapse initiation before they, too, began to collapse. Neither the duration of the seismic records nor video evidence (due to obstruction of view caused by debris clouds) are reliable indicators of the total time it took for each building to collapse completely.
Lemmie wrote:I didn’t know that detail, honor, thanks. It just emphasizes that just using certain video angles or worse, eye-witness accounts, won’t tell the whole story.
That’s what surprised me about an earlier reference given. A crucial part of the conspiracy theory was supported ONLY by selected video and witness statements. It’s surprising how much of the controlled detonation theory rests on stuff like this.
A very good point. The conspiracy theory is a position built on selective observations and evidence that, when put up against the investigation clearly views the events through the aperture of a very small periscope compared to the evidence available. This example shows mikwut isn't even aware that the building didn't just collapse downward uniformly despite this being described in the report, the NIST website faqs, and is discussed in most engineering responses to the CT.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth?
~ Eiji Yoshikawa
~ Eiji Yoshikawa