Conspiracy Theories

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Let's break those three "points" down:

The first is nonsense, as already demonstrated, even by people who kinda think something was fishy about 9/11.

The second doesn't even make sense. What do you mean how does a plane crashing into the top make a building crumble at the rate of gravity? What would you expect to have happen instead? Have things not fall at the rate of gravity? I assume there's a coherent question in there somewhere, but it's not being asked right, whatever it is.

The third isn't a point at all, it's just a flat statement. It's also a weird statement, since it's not like the Middle East as a paragon of geopolitical stability beforehand.

So we have three points: one is nonsense, one is incoherent, and one isn't a point at all. This is, I'm sorry to say, par for the course with most conspiracy theorists.



Let's break those three "points" down:

The first is nonsense, as already demonstrated, even by people who kinda think something was fishy about 9/11.

The second doesn't even make sense. What do you mean how does a plane crashing into the top make a building crumble at the rate of gravity? What would you expect to have happen instead? Have things not fall at the rate of gravity? I assume there's a coherent question in there somewhere, but it's not being asked right, whatever it is.

The third isn't a point at all, it's just a flat statement. It's also a weird statement, since it's not like the Middle East as a paragon of geopolitical stability beforehand.

So we have three points: one is nonsense, one is incoherent, and one isn't a point at all. This is, I'm sorry to say, par for the course with most conspiracy theorists.
For the incoherent question, I think the poster was asking why both the buildings collapsed just like buildings do in a controlled demolition using carefully placed explosives after being hit near the tops by airplanes... (some have answered they were designed to collapse that way in a catastrophe, such as in fires with temperatures hot enough to melt structural steel).

It is a controversy as other similar buildings since the dawn of skyscrapers have been hit by planes or have suffered tremendous fires and did not collapse at all or did not fall apart in a way that looked like a perfectly controlled demolition.



For the incoherent question, I think the poster was asking why both the buildings collapsed just like buildings do in a controlled demolition using carefully placed explosives after being hit near the tops by airplanes...
Yeah, this was my best guess, too, but the bit about "gravity" makes no sense in that context, so there's clearly a lot of confusion there, whatever the intention.

Technically, a poorly-worded question or argument does not mean someone's position is invalid, but sloppy phrasing, in my experience, correlates heavily with sloppy thinking. Listing a claim as if it were a question/point is another example of this. It doesn't lead me to believe the person has a good grasp on the distinction between claims and evidence, for example, or evidence and motive.

Anyway, these arguments tend to veer all over the place (usually by just introducing more claims when you question the first ones), so you've gotta nip it in the bud by asking for a basic level of clarity and specificity. I'll admit it doesn't often help much, though.

(some have answered they were designed to collapse that way in a catastrophe, such as in fires with temperatures hot enough to melt structural steel).
"Jet fuel can't melt steel beams" is the meme, but what most of them don't bother to learn is that steel is significantly weakened long before it melts, and jet fuel burns more than hot enough to cause steel to lose over half of its strength. That, and jet fuel obviously wasn't the only thing burning after impact, anyway.

Just another one of those "why didn't you bother to learn this?" kind of questions that reveal a lot about a person's mindset, and whether they're really skeptical, or just selectively skeptical.

It is a controversy as other similar buildings since the dawn of skyscrapers have been hit by planes or have suffered tremendous fires and did not collapse at all or did not fall apart in a way that looked like a perfectly controlled demolition.
Feel free to elaborate, but I suspect the fulcrum of this claim will be "similar buildings," which they probably were not.

Here's Popular Mechanics' explanation for the "looked like a controlled demolition" thing:

Once each tower began to collapse, the weight of all the floors above the collapsed zone bore down with pulverizing force on the highest intact floor. Unable to absorb the massive energy, that floor would fail, transmitting the forces to the floor below, allowing the collapse to progress downward through the building in a chain reaction. Engineers call the process "pancaking," and it does not require an explosion to begin, according to David Biggs, a structural engineer at Ryan-Biggs Associates and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) team that worked on the FEMA report.

Like all office buildings, the WTC towers contained a huge volume of air. As they pancaked, all that air—along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse—was ejected with enormous energy. "When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it's going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window," NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition, Sunder adds, "but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception."



They were U.S. planes! No one realized the plan of the hi-jackers to turn them into bombs until it was too late.
Tragically, a huge red arrow was overlooked when the hijackers were taking flying lessons. Apparently, they told their instructors they had no interest in learning how to LAND a plane.
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So we have three points: one is nonsense, one is incoherent, and one isn't a point at all.
And there you have it.



This is exactly what I described in my previous post:
Anyway, these arguments tend to veer all over the place (usually by just introducing more claims when you question the first ones), so you've gotta nip it in the bud by asking for a basic level of clarity and specificity.
This is standard operating procedure: post a big ol' infodump, rather than something specific and focused, so that anyone who wants to dispute it has to do a lot of homework first. Most conspiracy theorists don't so much win arguments as they eventually just convince the other person to tap out.

Suffice to say, even just skimming that first link, it becomes obvious it's not a debunking at all, unless you think "debunk" is just a synonym for "say something in response." Which seems to be what that site thinks: you can see that the goal is not to actually levy (or dispute) a meaningful claim, but just to say A Thing in response to each bit.

For example, one of the very first sections ("Intercepts Not Routine") cites as evidence another conspiracy site (OilEmpire.us), if you can believe that. Almost immediately afterwards you see tell tale phrases like "It is safe to assume that..." So, circular citations and an unexplained assumption, right off the bat.

Another example: the section on demolition, which is the focus of the part of the article I quoted above. They don't seem to be able to dispute any of the technical claims, so they resort to saying the choice of photo "minimizes the explosiveness of the event" and complains that the article talks about "dust" rather than "concrete" (nevermind that the "dust" is "concrete dust"). It also makes a very strange distinction between one type of demolition conspiracy and another:

The article's lead point in the World Trade Center topic is an obscure idea that explosives in the basements of the towers damaged the lobbies at about the time the planes hit. This claim is difficult to find in 9/11 skeptics' literature, and is entirely distinct -- in both the support that exists for it, and the support that it provides for "conspiracy theories" -- from the contention that explosives brought down the towers (56 and 102 minutes after the plane crashes).
Does it go on to explain why this distinction is important, because the explanation provided explain the first thing but not the second? Why no, no it doesn't. But it doesn't matter, because they have successfully posted a paragraph, full of actual words, in response. Debunk complete!

In that same section, they imply the explanation is invalid because it doesn't explain "where the concrete dust came from, or even attempting to quantify the amount of dust that should be expected in the absence of explosives." In other words, they don't even have anything to contradict the testimony in question, they just have some follow-up questions that were not preemptively and explicitly addressed, which...makes the explanation suspect? Somehow?

This is how these exchanges always go. It starts off with accusations of contradictions, lies, or falsehoods ("how do you explain THIS?"), and when someone sits down and takes those seriously, it quickly shifts to "well what about this other thing?" Suddenly it's no longer contending that something is false or making a clear contention, it's just prodding at anything which hasn't been discussed in granular detail, which is a pretty substantial retreat.



A system of cells interlinked
Curious about what people think about the group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

A collection of kooks that all happen to be based in these professions or...
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If I remember correctly, wasn't there recently some NYC Fireman's association calling for a new investigation of 9/11 (as they felt the whole truth still has not been revealed)?



Ah yeah, that's another issue with this stuff: equating "we don't know the whole truth," which is a pretty mild statement when you think about it, with the way more grandiose "it was an inside job and/or people are deliberately lying about important stuff." It's a classic motte-and-bailey.



I know it can't and should not be compared to the scope and scale of 9/11, but the Las Vegas massacre in 2017 seems a much deeper mystery with even less answers.

Maybe deeper isn't the right word, but the most "quickly forgotten" or "swept under the rug" incident (considering it was the single largest gun mass murder in U.S. history).

The way it seemed to be so quickly dismissed by the authorities & the media in the face of so many unanswered questions and conflicting narratives almost makes it seem like some kind of mass hypnosis. (Now that's a conspiracy!)



Curious about what people think about the group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

A collection of kooks that all happen to be based in these professions or...
I think that it's a pretty impressive group of architects and engineers whose scientific approach and conclusions to the causes of the 9/11 catastrophe are very difficult to dismiss-- certainly as being "kooks". And none of the 3200 or so stand to gain financially from their opinions.

The same might be said of the opinions of the large pilots and aviators group, the University of Alaska, and other scholars.

Here is partial listing in no particular order of websites containing information that answer a lot of questions for me. And the last is a link showing how in the 1960s the CIA coined the term "conspiracy theorist" in order to belittle and marginalize those who questioned the opinions of government investigations.

Some sources for 9/11 skeptics:

Major University Study Finds "Fire Did Not Bring Down Tower 7 On 9/11"

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-09-05/major-university-study-finds-fire-did-not-bring-down-tower-7-911

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth: (over 3000 architects and engineers disprove the official story)
https://www.ae911truth.org/

Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice: scholars examine and research 9/11 unanswered questions
https://stj911.org/

Journal of 9/11 Studies: peer reviewed research on 9/11
http://www.journalof911studies.com/

Pilots for 9/11 truth: aviation professionals and pilots do not accept the 9/11 commission report
http://pilotsfor911truth.org/index.html

9/11 Hard facts: lists some of the better websites, videos and books on the subject
http://911hardfacts.com/report_23.htm

CIA coins the term “conspiracy theorist” to belittle disagreement of official stories:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-23/1967-he-cia-created-phrase-conspiracy-theorists-and-ways-attack-anyone-who-challenge



Hey look, I called it again.

This is exactly what I described in my previous post:
Anyway, these arguments tend to veer all over the place (usually by just introducing more claims when you question the first ones), so you've gotta nip it in the bud by asking for a basic level of clarity and specificity.
This is standard operating procedure: post a big ol' infodump, rather than something specific and focused, so that anyone who wants to dispute it has to do a lot of homework first. Most conspiracy theorists don't so much win arguments as they eventually just convince the other person to tap out.
Somebody gimme a prod when they're ready to have a sustained conversation about the evidence.

But remember this: if you go looking for confirmation, but never for contradiction, then you're not really investigating anything. You're not doing research. You're not even being honest with yourself.

Genuinely skeptical people, genuine truth-seekers, try just as hard (harder!) to invalidate what they believe as they do to validate it. It's very telling when someone is familiar with the arguments for what they think, but not at all familiar (or prepared to deal with) even the most common and obvious responses to it. That's a dead giveaway that they're not interested in the truth.



Genuinely skeptical people, genuine truth-seekers, try just as hard (harder!) to invalidate what they believe as they do to validate it.
The only agreement we had in a long, long time. Except the part about truth.




Don't ask me to pity those people. I don't mourn the 2,996 that died in those towers, any more than I do for the 182,000 civilians that died in the Iraqi war.
That's a pretty awful sentiment, dude. Also a confusing one, since I think most people with a basic amount of human empathy would indeed mourn the civilians that died in the Iraq war, as well.

I guess maybe you're trying to make a pithy point about what 9/11 led to and what you feel is a disproportionate amount of attention paid to the former group, but you accidentally phrased it in a way that makes it sound like you don't care about any civilians deaths at all, but who knows.



Just to lightly touch on it, because the conversation about vaccines is kinda tired as well, but I've heard nothing about this 'Bill Gates Foundation vaccination project causing widespread paralysis in India' story....I agree that delivery of vaccines has had a spotty history, but it's still much more advantageous to receive one than not.



since I think most people with a basic amount of human empathy would indeed mourn the civilians that died in the Iraq war, as well.
Yes they should, but I'm guessing that overall, they did not. In the very deep essence of it all, I don't make a distinction between human beings, I don't care if you cured cancer, you're equality important and unimportant in my eyes.

I guess maybe you're trying to make a pithy point about what 9/11 led to and what you feel is a disproportionate amount of attention paid to the former group, but you accidentally phrased it in a way that makes it sound like you don't care about any civilians deaths at all, but who knows.
And your guess would probably be correct. I do think one had a huge amount of attention while the other had none (comparing), but I understood it. And yes, I used this quotation from the famous movie understanding that would lead people to think that I don't care about any of those casualties. But my quest is the exact opposite of the Joe Doe's.



I don't really follow what you were trying to do with the quote, or why, but yeah, as I said, the literal meaning of what you posted is that you don't care about any.

One group got a huge amount of attention specifically because of the circumstances. It's exceptional and unusual for people to die in a stable, democratic, wealthy, first-world country in what appears to be relative safety, with no warning or clear connection between them and their killers.

It's the same reason people react differently to a sudden murder or kidnapping in an affluent area than they do to another random drug murder in the bad part of town: not because they have wildly fluctuating values for human life, but because one is a lot more predictable and foreseeable than another.

People die every day, and we have all internalized that. What gets our attention or scares us are when those deaths appear random or arbitrary, or even counterintuitive to circumstance.