That making lots of money and becoming socially influential and powerful in the real world has a vast chance of massively increasing the extent of achievement of any goal that people here have—such as making scientific discoveries, saving the world or living forever, or a myriad of other goals that money is just really effective at achieving.
This is something I’ve been trying to do for as long as I can remember; unfortunately, it wasn’t covered in school, and I’ve been running into obstacles trying to figure it out on my own.
So… no rationalizations here, I think.
Is there anything that you consider proven beyond any possibility of doubt by both empirical evidence and pure logic, and yet saying it triggers automatic stream of rationalizations in other people?
Ok, not to be a rabid Truther here, but I consider the article to which you linked to be exactly the sort of rationalization we’re talking about. (Here’s another; there’s no shortage.)
Just taking the firs few objections:
Objection #1: controlled demolition goes from the bottom up, while the twin towers clearly collapsed from the top. The obvious responses are:
Answer A: Is it not reasonable to think that someone demolishing a building for other-than-legitimate purposes might possibly not follow all the standard CD protocols? In particular, top-down demolition would be more frightening and look more like the “collapse” claimed by the official story.
Answer B: Compare for yourself (and tell me if I’m missing any points of comparison, or have anything wrong here) - various attributes of different causes of building collapse, compared to the attributes observed in the collapses of WTC1, 2 and 7.
Answer C: WTC7 did collapse from the bottom.
Objection #2: “what are the chances that those planning such a complicated demolition would be able to predict the exact location the planes would impact the towers, and prepare the towers to begin falling precisely there?”
Answer: They didn’t have to know in advance; CD is usually radio-controlled. Is it unreasonable to think that the demolition controllers started the demolition near the impact points, for the exact reason of supporting the official story?
Objection #3: WTC2 “did not fall straight down, as the North Tower and buildings leveled by controlled demolitions typically fall.”
Answer: See answer #1a
There certainly are a few really wacky 9/11 “theories” out there (e.g. the “no planes” theory, the “laser beams” theory—their numbers are legion), and certainly those need to be debunked; I’m not saying that all debunking is itself bunk—but I’ve looked at the evidence, and I’ve looked at the “debunkings”, and what I see in the latter is mostly rationalization.
I really wish I could link to xkcd and leave. I really do.
*deep breath*
Okay. Let me take it point by point.
Point 0 - Three may keep a Secret, if two of them are dead.
In order for your claims to be true, hundreds of people would have to be involved. First, everyone involved in setting up the controlled demolition (no easy task) has to plan, prepare, and execute the task. Second, every witness has to be found and suppressed. Third, everyone in the chain of command to plan, order, and fund the project has to keep mum. Fourth, everyone whose job it is to monitor activities like this has to be kept quiet.
Now, all of this is supposed to be accomplished by the schlobs who couldn’t even hide the faking of evidence that Saddam Hussein had WMDs?
Point 1 - Building implosions don’t look like that
You argue that they could.
Sure. And computers could be built using balanced ternary notation. But to do so with the skill that is brought to the standard method would require a tremendous amount of work to avoid error—work which plays again into Point 0.
Besides, several groups have analyzed the collapses after the event and found them consistent with the mainstream narrative. Requiring that these analyses be false means either inducting them into the conspiracy (Point 0), designing the collapse so effectively that it appears to be due to the obvious factors (see Point 2), or—probably—both.
Point 2 - How could you plan in advance the exact point of impact?
You say that they intentionally detonated the explosives near the point of impact. This implies that there are explosives near the point of impact. This implies—unless you think they knew the point of impact—there are explosives throughout the building. Besides immensely complicating the task of setting these explosives (see Point 0), this would either require that the explosives be left over at the crash site and need quiet disposal (see Point 0) or that they all be detonated during the collapse (which would be very loud—and the sound of these explosions are not reported by witnesses*).
Honestly, I’d love to believe I was imagining things and that it happened the way they said it did. The alternative is truly frightening and disheartening—but I can’t convince myself that it isn’t a more accurate description of reality, based on the available evidence.
I could answer each of your arguments, but that’s not the point of this thread; the point was to answer the original request for something which I “consider proven beyond any possibility of doubt by both empirical evidence and pure logic, and yet saying it triggers automatic stream of rationalizations in other people”. As I said before, the bulk of the counter-arguments I have seen thus far have been flawed at best, and strike me quite firmly as rationalizations.
Nonetheless, I’ll be happy to continue answering your points (well, not happy happy, it’s not like I have the time to kill, but I recognize that I threw down the gauntlet on this one so I have a sort of obligation not to walk away unless it’s by mutual consent; to do otherwise would be a tacit admission that I can’t really counter your points and am just hand-waving) -- but I suspect that to do so in the face of your distaste for it (and the negative points I’ve received—were my comments inappropriate or off-topic? I apologize, if so) would be somewhat sociopathic, and I don’t wish to further reduce my site-karma
Maybe you’re right, maybe it is rational to believe the official story. My statement is an opinion—but as it is an assertion of fact rather than a matter of personal taste, it can still be wrong, and I’m not making the claim you imply I am making (that it’s an opinion and therefore not arguable).
Your links to ShortPacked and XKCD are essentially argument by ridicule, by the way, not a counterargument (and the ShortPacked is also a straw man, since you imply a position which I do not take on this issue) -- though I do understand them as an expression of your frustration, given the apparent firmness of your belief in this matter.
There is one point which I can’t allow to stand, however: you say “every human being who has brought numbers to the table has confirmed the simple, obvious story of events.” I don’t know where you came across that claim, but it is completely and stunningly untrue. Where did you find it?
You’re right about the comic strip links, or, at least, about the Shortpacked! one—I was being a jerk, and your arguments don’t deserve that. (The xkcd one I would stand by, if it weren’t assuming as true the precise thing we are in disagreement about—in general, the rise of conspiracy theories is only marginally associated with the existence of a conspiracy, and I do consider the controlled demolition story about 9/11 to be a conspiracy theory, but that doesn’t make it false. Particularly given the known track record of the second Bush administration.)
Do you have a Livejournal or Dreamwidth account? Or an OpenID account? Moving the conversation off-site would eliminate the risk of distortions to our individual LessWrong karmas, not to mention we could more easily agree to drop the subject without feeling like we’re letting down our side.
An excellent suggestion, and one which I had been considering making too.
Yes, both—I even set up a DW community not long ago which would be appropriate for further discussion on this topic. (The group itself is heavily under-utilized due to my not having had time to post much, let alone promote it, so this seems like a perfect opportunity to generate some content and discussion.).
I’ve posted a series of blog entries on this subject here, and will be responding to your objections next.
If you want to claim that the Bush administration was negligent in fighting terrorism, or that the post 9/11 investigations were poorly done, I won’t argue too strongly. (I’ve heard that they actually reduced the number of FBI agents on counterterrorism duty.) If you want to claim that they had concrete, advance knowledge of the attacks, then I’m going to have to part company with you there.
That claim is not an essential part of my argument here, but there is evidence for it (that is a wiki page with open, anonymous editing—so if you see any errors or omissions, please feel free to comment).
If that page is a bit much to digest, you might start with this little gem.
When it comes to “WTC7 was brought down by a controlled demolition”, I invoke my majoritarian heuristic. I am not an expert on demolition. If the majority of experts say it wasn’t a controlled demolition, I’m going to assume the problem is with your data, and not with the experts, regardless of what you say. As a layman, I am simply not qualified to evaluate the evidence; if you want to convince me, take it up with people who know what they are doing.
And yes, I am aware that this is, indeed, a Fully General Counterargument—but that doesn’t mean I’m not wrong!
It’s not Fully General unless you invoke it without checking the expert opinion first. It’s indirectly correlated with the truth, but provided that the actual empirical data supports it, the correlation is still strong.
Although yours is a reasonable position for getting along in society, and therefore rational to some degree, I think I would have to call it “weakly” rational rather than “strongly” rational: you are willing to accept the meme which has gained the most mindshare rather than attempting to assess the relative merits of each meme.
There is certainly a high degree of reliability in this technique, but it has two drawbacks:
one: It forces you to reject your own rational conclusions when the evidence seems, as you understand it, to contradict the “expert consensus”
two: It forces you to reject, possibly without cause, the rationality of experts who dissent from this consensus
three (three drawbacks): It overlooks the possibility that the “expert consensus” has been manipulated for reasons other than maximum fidelity to the truth
four (amongst the drawbacks are such diverse elements as...): It overlooks the possibility that the majority of the experts forming this consensus may have their own reasons for stating or reaching a false conclusion.
I submit the following principle: An expert should always be willing to at least try to explain her/his position on any subject on which there is disagreement.
It seems to me an integral part of the rational worldview that analysis of expert opinions can be subject to lay evaluation. You take the explanations offered by the various experts, with all their experience and understanding of the field, and keep track of each point raised by each side, and whether it has been satisfactorily answered (and whether the answer has been rebutted, etc.).
If, for example, Expert B consistently offers rational refutations of points raised by Expert A, while Expert A consistently offers points which have already been refuted by Expert B, you might begin to suspect that Expert A is being less than honest and does not really have a case.
It forces you to reject, possibly without cause, the rationality of experts who dissent from this consensus
If experts disagree, then there simply isn’t a strong consensus.
Personally, I am not a professional demolitionist, but I have yet to see any argument that WTC7 was brought down in a controlled demolition which reflected a technical understanding of the subject greater than, or even equal to, my own. If I did find such an argument, it would change my opinion on the subject considerably… although that would only be the first of many hurdles to overcome before I would be willing to believe that the full “inside job” hypothesis had been proven beyond any reasonable doubt.
This is something I’ve been trying to do for as long as I can remember; unfortunately, it wasn’t covered in school, and I’ve been running into obstacles trying to figure it out on my own.
So… no rationalizations here, I think.
9/11 was an inside job
Most people would immediately deny that 9/11 was an inside job, but only because the evidence usually called upon to prove it doesn’t do so.
Ok, not to be a rabid Truther here, but I consider the article to which you linked to be exactly the sort of rationalization we’re talking about. (Here’s another; there’s no shortage.)
Just taking the firs few objections:
Objection #1: controlled demolition goes from the bottom up, while the twin towers clearly collapsed from the top. The obvious responses are:
Answer A: Is it not reasonable to think that someone demolishing a building for other-than-legitimate purposes might possibly not follow all the standard CD protocols? In particular, top-down demolition would be more frightening and look more like the “collapse” claimed by the official story.
Answer B: Compare for yourself (and tell me if I’m missing any points of comparison, or have anything wrong here) - various attributes of different causes of building collapse, compared to the attributes observed in the collapses of WTC1, 2 and 7.
Answer C: WTC7 did collapse from the bottom.
Objection #2: “what are the chances that those planning such a complicated demolition would be able to predict the exact location the planes would impact the towers, and prepare the towers to begin falling precisely there?”
Answer: They didn’t have to know in advance; CD is usually radio-controlled. Is it unreasonable to think that the demolition controllers started the demolition near the impact points, for the exact reason of supporting the official story?
Objection #3: WTC2 “did not fall straight down, as the North Tower and buildings leveled by controlled demolitions typically fall.”
Answer: See answer #1a
There certainly are a few really wacky 9/11 “theories” out there (e.g. the “no planes” theory, the “laser beams” theory—their numbers are legion), and certainly those need to be debunked; I’m not saying that all debunking is itself bunk—but I’ve looked at the evidence, and I’ve looked at the “debunkings”, and what I see in the latter is mostly rationalization.
I really wish I could link to xkcd and leave. I really do.
*deep breath*
Okay. Let me take it point by point.
Point 0 - Three may keep a Secret, if two of them are dead.
In order for your claims to be true, hundreds of people would have to be involved. First, everyone involved in setting up the controlled demolition (no easy task) has to plan, prepare, and execute the task. Second, every witness has to be found and suppressed. Third, everyone in the chain of command to plan, order, and fund the project has to keep mum. Fourth, everyone whose job it is to monitor activities like this has to be kept quiet.
Now, all of this is supposed to be accomplished by the schlobs who couldn’t even hide the faking of evidence that Saddam Hussein had WMDs?
Point 1 - Building implosions don’t look like that
You argue that they could.
Sure. And computers could be built using balanced ternary notation. But to do so with the skill that is brought to the standard method would require a tremendous amount of work to avoid error—work which plays again into Point 0.
Besides, several groups have analyzed the collapses after the event and found them consistent with the mainstream narrative. Requiring that these analyses be false means either inducting them into the conspiracy (Point 0), designing the collapse so effectively that it appears to be due to the obvious factors (see Point 2), or—probably—both.
Point 2 - How could you plan in advance the exact point of impact?
You say that they intentionally detonated the explosives near the point of impact. This implies that there are explosives near the point of impact. This implies—unless you think they knew the point of impact—there are explosives throughout the building. Besides immensely complicating the task of setting these explosives (see Point 0), this would either require that the explosives be left over at the crash site and need quiet disposal (see Point 0) or that they all be detonated during the collapse (which would be very loud—and the sound of these explosions are not reported by witnesses*).
* Thank you, NIST, for pointing out this argument in the video review of your WTC 7 analysis.
I don’t expect to convince you. You have your opinion, and opinions are never wrong. But engineering is done with numbers—and every human being who has brought numbers to the table has confirmed the simple, obvious story of events.
Honestly, I’d love to believe I was imagining things and that it happened the way they said it did. The alternative is truly frightening and disheartening—but I can’t convince myself that it isn’t a more accurate description of reality, based on the available evidence.
I could answer each of your arguments, but that’s not the point of this thread; the point was to answer the original request for something which I “consider proven beyond any possibility of doubt by both empirical evidence and pure logic, and yet saying it triggers automatic stream of rationalizations in other people”. As I said before, the bulk of the counter-arguments I have seen thus far have been flawed at best, and strike me quite firmly as rationalizations.
Nonetheless, I’ll be happy to continue answering your points (well, not happy happy, it’s not like I have the time to kill, but I recognize that I threw down the gauntlet on this one so I have a sort of obligation not to walk away unless it’s by mutual consent; to do otherwise would be a tacit admission that I can’t really counter your points and am just hand-waving) -- but I suspect that to do so in the face of your distaste for it (and the negative points I’ve received—were my comments inappropriate or off-topic? I apologize, if so) would be somewhat sociopathic, and I don’t wish to further reduce my site-karma
Maybe you’re right, maybe it is rational to believe the official story. My statement is an opinion—but as it is an assertion of fact rather than a matter of personal taste, it can still be wrong, and I’m not making the claim you imply I am making (that it’s an opinion and therefore not arguable).
Your links to ShortPacked and XKCD are essentially argument by ridicule, by the way, not a counterargument (and the ShortPacked is also a straw man, since you imply a position which I do not take on this issue) -- though I do understand them as an expression of your frustration, given the apparent firmness of your belief in this matter.
There is one point which I can’t allow to stand, however: you say “every human being who has brought numbers to the table has confirmed the simple, obvious story of events.” I don’t know where you came across that claim, but it is completely and stunningly untrue. Where did you find it?
You’re right about the comic strip links, or, at least, about the Shortpacked! one—I was being a jerk, and your arguments don’t deserve that. (The xkcd one I would stand by, if it weren’t assuming as true the precise thing we are in disagreement about—in general, the rise of conspiracy theories is only marginally associated with the existence of a conspiracy, and I do consider the controlled demolition story about 9/11 to be a conspiracy theory, but that doesn’t make it false. Particularly given the known track record of the second Bush administration.)
Do you have a Livejournal or Dreamwidth account? Or an OpenID account? Moving the conversation off-site would eliminate the risk of distortions to our individual LessWrong karmas, not to mention we could more easily agree to drop the subject without feeling like we’re letting down our side.
An excellent suggestion, and one which I had been considering making too.
Yes, both—I even set up a DW community not long ago which would be appropriate for further discussion on this topic. (The group itself is heavily under-utilized due to my not having had time to post much, let alone promote it, so this seems like a perfect opportunity to generate some content and discussion.).
I’ve posted a series of blog entries on this subject here, and will be responding to your objections next.
Excellent—my account name is “packbat” on both. I will read your remarks soon and attempt a reply.
“Packbat”? That is outrageously cute, have a karma point.
(:
If you want to claim that the Bush administration was negligent in fighting terrorism, or that the post 9/11 investigations were poorly done, I won’t argue too strongly. (I’ve heard that they actually reduced the number of FBI agents on counterterrorism duty.) If you want to claim that they had concrete, advance knowledge of the attacks, then I’m going to have to part company with you there.
That claim is not an essential part of my argument here, but there is evidence for it (that is a wiki page with open, anonymous editing—so if you see any errors or omissions, please feel free to comment).
If that page is a bit much to digest, you might start with this little gem.
When it comes to “WTC7 was brought down by a controlled demolition”, I invoke my majoritarian heuristic. I am not an expert on demolition. If the majority of experts say it wasn’t a controlled demolition, I’m going to assume the problem is with your data, and not with the experts, regardless of what you say. As a layman, I am simply not qualified to evaluate the evidence; if you want to convince me, take it up with people who know what they are doing.
And yes, I am aware that this is, indeed, a Fully General Counterargument—but that doesn’t mean I’m not wrong!
It’s not Fully General unless you invoke it without checking the expert opinion first. It’s indirectly correlated with the truth, but provided that the actual empirical data supports it, the correlation is still strong.
Although yours is a reasonable position for getting along in society, and therefore rational to some degree, I think I would have to call it “weakly” rational rather than “strongly” rational: you are willing to accept the meme which has gained the most mindshare rather than attempting to assess the relative merits of each meme.
There is certainly a high degree of reliability in this technique, but it has two drawbacks:
one: It forces you to reject your own rational conclusions when the evidence seems, as you understand it, to contradict the “expert consensus”
two: It forces you to reject, possibly without cause, the rationality of experts who dissent from this consensus
three (three drawbacks): It overlooks the possibility that the “expert consensus” has been manipulated for reasons other than maximum fidelity to the truth
four (amongst the drawbacks are such diverse elements as...): It overlooks the possibility that the majority of the experts forming this consensus may have their own reasons for stating or reaching a false conclusion.
I submit the following principle: An expert should always be willing to at least try to explain her/his position on any subject on which there is disagreement.
It seems to me an integral part of the rational worldview that analysis of expert opinions can be subject to lay evaluation. You take the explanations offered by the various experts, with all their experience and understanding of the field, and keep track of each point raised by each side, and whether it has been satisfactorily answered (and whether the answer has been rebutted, etc.).
If, for example, Expert B consistently offers rational refutations of points raised by Expert A, while Expert A consistently offers points which have already been refuted by Expert B, you might begin to suspect that Expert A is being less than honest and does not really have a case.
As far as I can see, this has been the situation with Intelligent Design, global warming denial—and the official story of 9/11.
If experts disagree, then there simply isn’t a strong consensus.
Personally, I am not a professional demolitionist, but I have yet to see any argument that WTC7 was brought down in a controlled demolition which reflected a technical understanding of the subject greater than, or even equal to, my own. If I did find such an argument, it would change my opinion on the subject considerably… although that would only be the first of many hurdles to overcome before I would be willing to believe that the full “inside job” hypothesis had been proven beyond any reasonable doubt.