The 9/11 Forum

Oystein wrote:I happily see that no one has found any facts that falsify my theory, and everybody admits they don't have a better theory.

I hope the OP will one day notice the answer I provided to one of his questions.

Good night.

Isn't your theory essentially the government theory? Regarding passports and boarding and such?

If so, that theory is not proved. Mere repetition proves nothing.

Heretic76 wrote:

Oystein wrote:I happily see that no one has found any facts that falsify my theory, and everybody admits they don't have a better theory.

I hope the OP will one day notice the answer I provided to one of his questions.

Good night.

Isn't your theory essentially the government theory? Regarding passports and boarding and such?

If so, that theory is not proved. Mere repetition proves nothing.

Is the theory of electromagnetism proven? No. It just isn't falsified or superceded by a better theory that explains ALL observations.

The official theory regarding the passport has a lot of evidence going for it - I hope you are not pretending there is none - and, as this thread has shown, no evidence against it. In particular, YOU have not presented any facts that disprove the claim that Suqamis passport escaped the crashing plane and was found on the ground a bit away, and you have no evidence that supports any alternative explanation at all. At all, Heretic76. At all.

SanderO wrote:I don't know if this is the correct approach... it is one approach to solving a mystery. Another would be assemble the facts and look for a connection.

It's been over 10 years, SanderO, how long have you been looking, and what have you found?

SanderO wrote:If you take the destruction of the twin towers, for example, I see that those with a theory seem to look at the evidence through a filter in support of their theory. They tend to cherry pick and exclude evidence or facts which don't support their theory. On the the other hand examining the towers, their structure, the visual evidence of how they came down/apart, the actual debris, its distribution and motion and applying engineering principals, physics and so forth one might come to a reasonable explanation which describes the destruction.

Yep. That happened in 2005 wrt the Twin Towers, if I remember correctly.
Has any alternative reasonable explanation come about since? Not? Then I guess there is none, as we speak, and we should not pretend like there is one, or like there soomn will be one. It's been over 6 years since the first.

SanderO wrote:You don't need a theory to do this. You need accurate observations, and a thorough knowledge of the characteristics of the object(s) being destroyed and the forces which could produce the observation.

This knowledge of the forces that COULD produce the observations - that's already a step towards a theory.

SanderO wrote:As far as the passport information. It's not especially interesting to me in understanding the destruction of the towers. The planes did damage the structure and how they did is important. So it would be important to establish what the planes were, their weight, speed, profile, mass distribution and so forth. A found passport doesn't seem to be an important consideration to understanding the destruction of the towers.

No?

I didn't claim it was. I simply replied to the topic of this thread. Which wasn't "understanding the destruction of the towers". You might want to review the OP.
The passport isn't even important to prove who the perpetrators of 9/11 were. If we didn't have it, the incumbent theory of how 9/11 was done wouldn't change one bit.

I think that several who post to this forum have been revealing a lot about the destruction of the twin towers and perhaps to a lesser extent bldg 7. The key seems to be the initiation of the actual collapses. This forum seems to have established that the collapse phase of the twin towers did not require explosives and there appears to be no evidence of them either, despite what many 9/11 Truthers believe. But in both the twins there was a period of time from the initial plane damage until the tops were "let loose" and the towers then came down. All we can see in that period is/was smoke and fire. We can't see into the core and there is good reason to believe that the collapses were initiated inside the core structure.

The NIST sagging truss explanation (theory) is not supported by the observations nor engineering. So we have at least falsified sagging trusses. If you want to call a core failure led collapse as a working theory... fine. We have a theory! This forum has also another "theory" called ROOSD which explains the towers' collapse phase... We have another "theory"

We haven't solved it yet.

SanderO,

I think all this is still off-topic in this thread. The topic is still that which the OP inquired about, including the issue of Suqami's passport and how it came to be reported as found near GZ. I offered a theory about that, and it is still the only und unrefuted theory about that. Right?

Now as for the other two theories you mention: These do not challenge, and are, as far as I can see, entirely consistent with, the story that Suqami was a hijacker whose gang took control of AA11 and slammed it into the North Tower, sending his passport fluttering to the ground, taking out a number of columns, and starting freaking huge fires that eventually brought the tower to collapse. Do you agree or disagree?



Earlier I looked at the Theories - section of this board and found, to my surprise, that in over three years, only thread in MIHOP theories has seen any debate at all. It was Major_Tom's "Rational MIHOP". It started with these words:

A question we are all here to answer is whether there is any evidence of physical damage on 9-11-01 that could not have been caused by the accused hijackers. If so, it means there must have been a second party responsible, yet to be identified.

I argue that there is such evidence and this physical evidence is already in our possession.

But frankly I didn't see that theory. that explains what planes could not.
And a little further on:

The fall of WTC7 cannot be explained as a natural result of the actions of the accused hijackers.

So already in the OP, the theorist had made up his mind and had a proto-theory. And what is it with those who have a theory?

SanderO wrote:...those with a theory seem to look at the evidence through a filter in support of their theory. They tend to cherry pick and exclude evidence or facts which don't support their theory. ...

Yes, indeed, Major_Tom cherry-picked his way through the visual observations.

I have debated these visual observations elsewhere. He presented a list of observations he wanted to have explained. These included things with a gravity on a scale such as a dust trail here, a misaligned aluminum cladding there (not literally - I am too lazy to look up the actual list), but there were two things that, amazingly, were not among the things MT observed visually: Plane crashes, and freaking huge fires!
Methinks if one ignores the planes and the freaking huge fires, then one would indeed have serious doubts about the official story!
Also, MT absolutely refused to also consider non-visual evidence. Unreal.
I decided to take no further interest in that elaborate nonsense until a real theory emerges that does tell me who did what how to demolish the towers. I predict that this theory will not come in another 10 years.

I believe I suggest an explanation (theory) that the destruction of bldg 7 might have been initiated in the Con Ed sub station which was damaged as a result of a voltage spike when the plane hit tower 1. But even if this was so it does not have anything to do with who was on the plane.

I have a theory that my pelargonia grew and blossomed so very nicely on my roof top terrace last year because I was truly in love with someone. But that likewise is not a theory that would challenge or supercede the "official" 9/11 top-level theory of 19 AQ terrorists from the middle east crashing planes and setting fires. That latter theory is both relevant to and consistent with Suqami's passport being found a couple of blocks away, with no known fact falsifying the claim. Substations exploding is a nice theory, but as off-topic and irrelevant here as my theory about pelargonia. It likewise does not challange supercede the overall theory that 10 of the 19 Al Qaida terrorists caused all the destuction on GZ by crashing two plane, while losing one passport. I have no idea why you would insist on making all those off-topic posts.

If your next post does not address the topic of this thread, which includes discussion of the passport find, I have nothing more to say top you.

Oystein wrote:So already in the OP, the theorist had made up his mind and had a proto-theory. And what is it with those who have a theory?

Yeah Oystein, what's up with that?

For the record, I believe hijackers were on those planes and they crashed into the buildings.

I don't care much about the passport. I don't think it's impossible for it to have exited from the plane and/or the building during impact, then land in the vicinity of where it was found, in whatever state ranging from relatively unscathed to singed to partially burned to completely burned and charred. I also think it possibly could have been planted, but I prefer direct evidence over promoting speculation as fact. I'm not a "no hijacker theorist". Scroll through my comments at 911blogger and Truth Action the past years and you will see what I mean. That doesn't mean the outcome of this discussion is already set in stone, to be enforced with JREFian bullying.

You have a theory about the participants of this forum, most of which haven't spoken on this thread; you referred to all of us with "everybody" earlier.

That theory is premature. Let's try to keep the animosity to a minimum, shall we? You haven't got much posts here yet, and I'm interested to see what else you have to contribute.

Just before Osama Bin Laden was murdered (about two weeks), I predicted online he was alive, in Pakistan and could be snatched by a team of commandos. Only thing I got wrong was I thought he was in the mountains, not under the nose of the Pakistani military academy. My theory was right. Want to 'lump me in' with the rest of the 'truthers'?

I don't see that you provided proof which addresses the OP's question if a passport could survive a plane crash and conflagration passing through the building and landing to the SE.

You are welcome to go back to where you came from.

SanderO wrote:I don't see that you provided proof which addresses the OP's question if a passport could survive a plane crash and conflagration passing through the building and landing to the SE.

IMO, you are reversing the burden of proof, based on nothing more than argument from incredulity, then the supposed slot of impossibility is filled with whatever fantasy you prefer. This is a grave epistemological error, and a typical example of falsification-speculation.

SanderO wrote:You are welcome to go back to where you came from.

To me? Or Oystein?

That comment was directed at Oystein.

Explain this:

This is a grave epistemological error, and a typical example of falsification-speculation.

I wouldn't want to see him leave yet, I'm interested to see where all of this goes.

It's easy to get all entrenched ... I'm hoping to bring some good to this forum, most conspicuously by not being as bellicose as I sometimes tend to be.

SanderO wrote:Explain this:

This is a grave epistemological error, and a typical example of falsification-speculation.

Suppose you were expected to be in church on Sunday. It has presumably been established you weren't there. (falsification)

Does this prove you were at the bar instead? (speculation)

Were you really not in church? (Has your presence been conclusively, empirically falsified?)

Were you really at the bar instead? (The speculation filling the gap, does it have any merit? Is it clouded by wishful thinking? Is it an exhaustive list of possible alternatives or an artificially narrowed one?)

Notice my choice of the word 'gap'... think 'God Of The Gaps'

Let's transpose this to Controlled Demolition and/or progressive collapse analysis, your bailiwick.

A natural progressive collapse is deemed scientifically impossible (neglecting initiation for this discussion), for various reasons, such as (not exhaustive):

- Collapse acceleration
- Lateral ejections
- Degree of concrete pulverization
- A small part/block cannot crush a larger part/block
- Path of most resistance is followed

Many of these arguments, originating with AE911truth, have been discussed. More on that shortly.

Then, the presumed falsification is augmented with speculation: an alternative hypothesis is proposed, with its primary evidentiary force being the aforementioned falsification: explosives brought the building down.

However, this argument can fail in two ways:
(1) The falsification is in error
(2) The speculation or alternative explanation is chosen from an artificially limited set of choices, favoring a preferred (in this case conspiratorial) scenario, while there could be other explanations excluded from the domain of choices.

As the refutation of the points above in this forum have demonstrated:

- Acceleration is erroneously measured and tested against an unrealistic column-on-column collapse mechanism
- Lateral ejections and concrete pulverization could be explained by the release of potential energy and communition theory respectively
- A small part can indeed crush a larger part, and the notion of a rigid block is false
- "The path of most resistance" is a misunderstanding of physical principles, readily refuted by Balzac-Vitry. OWE refers to "path of least action" instead.

So the falsification-speculation chain is already likely to fail.

Then, the speculation part: the alternative theory proposed can itself be falsified: shaped charges don't hurl multi-ton wall units outwards at the velocity observed, while at the same time making little explosive noise on the video tracks available, instead we hear a continuous rumble, and in the Naudet video inside the North Tower, we only hear what could be identified as explosions near the end of the collapse. (However, what caused those explosions? Bazant claims sonic boom) Controlled demolitions don't pulverize concrete, potential energy does, and the nanothermite allegedly discovered doesn't appear to have the explosive properties required.

So... It would have been preferable to rely on direct evidence of foul play (without fingering a specific scenario) from the outset, and some of that exists: many (100+) firefighters hearing explosions, temperature anomalies in the pile and serious anomalies in the dust, but more interestingly: whistleblowers involved in the actual rigging operation, which we haven't seen yet, although I've seen one apocryphal example on Youtube:



Caveat emptor... I said it was apocryphal.

The same applies to the Pentagon: rather than allege the possibility of physical evidence fakery such as light pole planting, where is the direct evidence for such fakery, rather than relying on falsification-speculation based on an alleged NoC flight path to make the case indirectly?

That is what I mean by grave epistemological errors. In the case of footnote 44 of the 9/11 Commission Report, the 9/11 Truth Movement now has a rock solid case without resorting to falsification-speculation. However, this line of inquiry is rejected as hostile, a form of limited hangout, refuted by "Controlled Demolition" or even a manifestation of cognitive infiltration.

To come back to the topic: the claim that a passport couldn't survive a plane crash and a fireball is the falsification pillar, and the claim that it therefore must have been planted by government conspirators is the speculation part. I contend that this thinking mechanism, labeled by some as the "Conspiracy Theory Method" is a cognitive mine field fraught with dots which seductively invite connection to arrive at a baseless conclusion.

I also contend that understanding this mechanism and developing means to avoid it, in conjunction with understanding the rich field of logical fallacies and cognitive biases can equip an independent researcher and/or an activist movement with the proper research methodology to steer clear from wild goose chases and various time consuming pitfalls which shape moribund and deeply flawed theories and cripple effectiveness.

SnowCrash wrote:So... It would have been preferable to rely on direct evidence of foul play (without fingering a specific scenario) from the outset, and some of that exists: many (100+) firefighters hearing explosions, temperature anomalies in the pile and serious anomalies in the dust, but more interestingly: whistleblowers involved in the actual rigging operation, which we haven't seen yet,

[/quote]

100 firefighters hearing explosions is not evidence of explosive devices going off. What would be the expected normal temperatures when 100,000 tons of concrete have been mechanically destroyed in about 10 seconds and collapses down into a "pile"? Or why are the temps deemed serious anomalies? And by whom with what baseline criteria?

- Lateral ejections could be explained by the release of potential energy

Is this a generalization or do you think this explanation will hold true for every case? Wouldn't it be necessary to go case by case for extreme and/or unique examples of lateral ejection?