You can do it at home with some kids wooden stick-bricks, we like to build a tower about 2m tall and take turns throwing stuff at it to collapse it, it is also fun to see what we can support at the top without collapsing it.
A big narrow tower of whatever is simply not strong enough to fall like a domino, that tipping places diagonal forces on structures never designed for them, even the twin towers tried to tip for the top, but that quickly turned into a vertical collapse because the towers, and all normal buildings, were not designed to support any serious diagonal force.
6 Likes
Pick any soap opera or telanovella, though I prefer to imagine it as a BBC costume drama, that is the house of Saud.
BTW are residents of Saudi Arabia not Arabians, as in not all of them are Saudis as in members of the Saud family or house of Saud?
BTW2, how narcissistic is it to slap your name on an ancient place after you drive out the Jordanian Royal family during WW-I?
1 Like
Conspiracy nuts are too easy to make fun of. Sooo easy that I think sometimes people push back a little too hard.
Remember the totally ridiculous and unconscionably frivolous, unsubstantiated and bat-shit-insane, nonsense claims that there was evidence of thermite found in the dust and debris of the towers? Just, deserving of total mockery right?
What!? Some team of ninjaâs spent years infiltrating the structure of both towers, painting thermite on all the steel, awaiting the fateful day when their bosses in gubâmint would finally send their agents to fly planes into the towers?
Crazy pants! Look out!
Until analysis of the dust revealed that the sheer crushing force of the collapsing towers had ground the concrete and insulation materials into a super-fine particulate powder than when mixed with powdered steel, air and fire created a kind of thermite-like material which burned hotter than hell.
Iâm not saying conspiracy nuts deserve much attention, if any, but the reactionary position most people seem to take âThere are no criminal conspiracies (and any evidence that seems to undermine that proposition should be ignored or impugned),â is just so weird a philosophy to trumpet that I canât wrap my head around the naivete.
Or perhaps itâs not naivete, perhaps itâs just folks earning their sceptic points.
3 Likes
The real skeptics donât get embroiled in any of this nonsense. This thread got hot enough to melt steel.
4 Likes
I think the geopolitical-chess move is to control the Gulf of Aden.
Yemen was one of those Soviet-aligned countries back in cold war days, and it never wanted to join NATO or Europe or whatever. So now, it has a tenuous connection with Russia, but not with the âWestâ. I suspect the need to eradicate âHouthi Rebelsâ is the end result of that old political alignment.
2 Likes
Right? Arent a large number of crimes by definition Conspiracies? Jeez, wasnât the coordinated actions by the people who committed the tragedy a conspiracy?
Bush can still be Super Asshole #1, and culpable for shit before and after, without that part being a secret plan.
Now Cheney on the other hand⌠
7 Likes
This is why itâs bad to look to the internet to define logical fallacies. People think youâre an idiot for what you believe. That is an insult, not an ad-hom. If they see your beliefs as buffoonery, it is tangential.
2 Likes
Probably because that statement only exists in your own head.
Donât jerk your knee hard enough to kick yourself in the gut, youâll only have yourself to blame?
1 Like
Wait, who said THAT? I think pretty much everyone is in agreement that the 9/11 attacks were a criminal conspiracy. The main point of disagreement is who the conspirators were. (My money is on âa bunch of Saudi terrorists.â)
Edit: well, mostly Saudi terrorists.
8 Likes
Muhahaha, pray I donât add a fourth column: âAjitpropâ!
I donât see you under âAmusingly Deluded.â Pray I donât add âwackyâ or âzany.â
2 Likes
Yâall.
My example of the thermite discovery was supposed to highlight the way in which fervent conspiracy bashing can lead to unthink.
Of course nobody used thermite to melt the steel beams and collapse the towers. So we can just make fun of all these loonies who say they have found evidence of thermite particles in the dust.
Which did happen.
And believe it or not (Iâm walkinâ on air) Iâm not suggesting that anybody said out loud âthere are no criminal conspiracies,â but the self-aggrandising flock behaviour of denouncing conspiracy theories and their accompanying theorists often steps over the line from rational scepticism into ignoring real evidence because it doesnât jive with the counter-conspiracy.
Yes the statement existed in my own head, I was using it to illustrate the assumptive, non-rational stance many people adopt that runs counter to actual scientific investigation.
Iâm not advocating conspiracy nonsense. Iâm appalled at the reflection of idiotic flock behaviour by people who seem to want to accrue sceptic points for criticising the exact same type of unthink as the conspiracy nuts.
Itâs not enough to oppose seemingly ignorant conspiracy shite with trite dismissal, you have to use rational thought and keep your mind open, otherwise you fall into the trap of ignoring real evidence in favour of waving a flag for your ideological preference.
Which seems to be what most people are actually concerned with. Flocking.
People have their battle lines drawn and treat them with such pious concern that they âknee-jerkâ with the kind of response I appear to have elicited here.
Blah blah âjust world fallacyâ.
2 Likes
I wanted to pick up on this separately.
What is the official narrative concerning the Saudi operatives who piloted the planes?
Werenât they all working for Osama and had nothing to do with our illustrious trading partner in the east? I mean, officially.
1 Like
I am skeptical of your argument.
You can slap me now.
10 Likes
Well Iâm sceptical of your skepticism, so I guess we need a large fish, some long socks and an unused pier.
5 Likes
How about you not use your unthink to combat supposed unthink?
Itâs fine to combat actual hypocrisy, but to invent straw pseudoskeptics to knock down the factual crowd is only hurting your cause. Misleading for the purpose of devilsâ advocacy is unnecessary.
1 Like
MausiamWHUT!?
Look up âjust world fallacyâ and get back to me.
It has a fucking fallacy named after it!
Okay, looked it up.
What on earth does that have to do with your questionable attempts to create a narrative of a double-standard for evidence?
Persons can certainly hold that-
Thermite was not used
and
âThermiteâ was found but created and not placed there.
This is what people state. And it is not at odds with your strange all or nothing perspective.
1 Like
15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals, the others were from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon. The nationality of the hijackers who did the piloting was different for each plane. All apparently had training from Bin Ladenâs base in Afghanistan. Obviously the governments of all five countries (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Lebanon and Afghanistan) denied knowledge or involvement.
So I suppose a more accurate summary of my position is that the conspirators were âa bunch of (mostly) Saudi terrorists.â
2 Likes
I canât criticise people who shit on scientific method because they adopt the apparently sceptical stance on an issue without proper investigation and go on to ignore evidence in favour of ideological adherence?
All the while fostering a non skeptical environment by treating situations like a game of politics?
It doesnât work that way. Look at any news story on scientific breakthroughs, like, ever. People donât care about the facts. They care about belonging to the right team. The team that is right. And all that us and them bullshit gets shouted all the louder by the neo-sceptics, drowning out proper discourse.
Creating environments in which the underlying assumption becomes: âAhh conspiracy bullshit, ignore the crazies,â makes investigation of real criminal conspiracies all the harder.
Where am I going wrong here?
Edit :âwringâ LOL
2 Likes
