The 9/11 Forum

Please clarify we.

I've done my share of debating over the last few years and I've realized that, as a member of the "truth" movement, even when you are right you are still wrong in everyone else's eyes. You think you have somebody handily beaten and then they say well so and so website has a list of all the engineering organizations who support NIST or implosionworld has its list of demo experts. Its just major appeal to authority. So long as CTBUH disagrees with demolition without explanation, its OK, in the eyes of the OCT'er, for them to bash NIST in lots of detail and support their hypothesis.

JSSTyger wrote:even when you are right you are still wrong in everyone else's eyes

Depends upon what is being debated.

Could you give an example please ?

Getting engineers together to try and solve a forensic problem is like letting a toddler do the household finances. Not only can they not do the job properly, but they cannot even comprehend why they are wasting their time.

Some points are just so beyond arguing, but that is a silly characterization of what I said.

Armies do conflict resolution, it does not therefore follow that every conflict can be solved by the army.

Just because engineers do analyses that are used forensically doesn't mean that every forensic problem which involves engineering issues is best solved by engineers or using standard engineering techniques.

Not that I wasn't expecting a response with the comment, I know you are all engineers and proud of it. I know a lot engineers and am even friends with some. My best friend at school became an engineer and I don't hate him.

A series of prominent 'selling points' for a new investigation (or whatever, murder and treason trials) includes serious errors, possibly deliberate lies.

Here's a challenge, find me an organization which cannot similarly accused.

Bullet points are bullet points, marketing hype is marketing hype:

Here is the renowned nature magazine's TAG-LINE, not even just bullet points:
Nature - the world's best science and medicine on your desktop

How do they measure bestness? I am sure a supposedly SCIENTIFIC magazine shouldn't be making unscientific claims like that, they have zero research to back it up.

The headline article is "Rare victory in fight against skin cancer
Research reveals why the latest melanoma drug may succeed where others failed."

People have victories against skin cancer and new discoveries are made all the time, this article is clearly just hype for a particular pharmaceutical company.
"Research reveals"? Really, I have read the article and it is no way conclusive (I haven't read it, but no research is, I'd be prepared to bet that they probably abuse statistical significance in the study as most of them tend to do).

I could continue, but you get the point. It is as much a problem of language itself as anything else.

Darkwing wrote:Armies do conflict resolution, it does not therefore follow that every conflict can be solved by the army.

Just because engineers do analyses that are used forensically doesn't mean that every forensic problem which involves engineering issues is best solved by engineers or using standard engineering techniques.

Good point. Now I'll make one. Consulting, or even abiding, a lay person in matters of physics and engineering is exactly like letting a toddler manage household finances. Part of the forensic issue is technical, and is a large part of what is discussed here in the forum and relates specifically to this thread.

Consulting, or even abiding, a lay person in matters of physics and engineering is exactly like letting a toddler manage household finances.

Nobody's forcing you.

Besides, I have never questioned anybody's expertise in engineering or physics, but I have more than a solid ground to stand on to question the methodology employed.

Darkwing wrote:Bullet points are bullet points, marketing hype is marketing hype

Then greater than g ought to do a better job at selling. Perimeter panels blown into New Jersey. Hell, signed confessions from the Bush administration on file. Where do you draw the line? 19 arabs, planes and a fire?

JSSTyger, Darkwing:

If I signed up with AE911Truth for the purpose of infiltration and intentionally poisoned the well by making false claims, would you support the excision of my claims if my intentions were known to you?

I'm warming up.

- Kerosene fires can't melt all of lower Manhattan
- Plane impacts do not knock office furniture into orbit
- Gravity driven collapses can't punch a hole to China

Those are all true statements, I haven't even gotten to the lies yet! Do you think I'm conjuring the marketing spirit well enough?

If I signed up with AE911Truth for the purpose of infiltration and intentionally poisoned the well by making false claims, would you support the excision of my claims if my intentions were known to you?

The leap from spit-polished hooks to infiltration is a leap to far for me. But yes. And I have said that I would support a drive to tighten up the catch-phrases.

Do you think I'm conjuring the marketing spirit well enough?

No, no. Your doing it wrong.

It has to be something that SOUNDS real good and plausible, see here:
Vitamins are good for you
Therefore Vitamin supplements are good for you
Things that are good for you make you live longer
Longer life = More sex (on average)

Supavite Vitamins - For More Sex!

The best ones are the ones that ask you to do the mental calculation yourself.

So for AE... hmmm...

Fires brought down the WTC
Fires are caused by heat
Global warming causes heat
Global warming is caused by fuel use
Oil companies gain from fuel use
If you gain from it you had motive to cause it
There was an oil company office in the towers (was there?)
Motive means opportunity

Oil companies caused the WTC collapse!

(okay so this one may inadvertently be not so far from the truth, but you get the point)

Darkwing wrote:

If I signed up with AE911Truth for the purpose of infiltration and intentionally poisoned the well by making false claims, would you support the excision of my claims if my intentions were known to you?

The leap from spit-polished hooks to infiltration is a leap to far for me. But yes. And I have said that I would support a drive to tighten up the catch-phrases.

Cool.

JSSTyger, Darkwing swam by the attractive light twirling around in front of the row of menacing teeth. It will probably be a little more difficult for you, starting much closer to the teeth.

Supavite Vitamins - For More Sex!

Haha, nice!

Your methodology is effective marketing. It occurs to me that's not really what they're doing. More plausible than my caricatures, but that's the first of two general categories of misleading points - claims which would be anomalous if true. The other is presenting true facts as proven anomalies when there may be nothing anomalous.

claims which would be anomalous if true

The best science magazine, EVAH!

The other is presenting true facts as proven anomalies when there may be nothing anomalous.

Major breakthrough in XYZ research!

The dialectic is more important than the actual statement. You can think of it as a shotgun approach to marketing, you only need someone to seriously ponder at least ONE of the claims to get some intellectual leverage.

Once you start seriously and looking at the event it is hard to conclude that everything is honkey-dorey. I suspect AE's philosophy is that the major hurdle is to get them to look, while others (at this site, myself included probably) feel that credibility is the bigger issue.

A catchy phrase is worth ten technically more accurate but more clunky ones (not that you'd guess that from my writing style ).

The question remains, why don't they deal with "corrections" to their stated positions? Why the silence? Why not refute them with some hokus pokus science or something? Do you suppose that ignoring dissent will have no downside over time? It will just whither and die? Or will it be rebound and undermine their credibility after they have oddles of supporters? That would be trowing out the baby with the bath water, eh?

Or will it be rebound and undermine their credibility after they have oddles of supporters?

I rather doubt that, which may be why I am not overly concerned.

The most important thing is that they are using this "evidence" as a basis for a call to start a new investigation. They don't pretend to be doing an official investigation.

I don't think this is on par with some real scientific debacles. Even NIST didn't explicitly FUDGE the data as such, they just used the data and described the data in such ways as to allow them to reach conclusions which most here feel are not supported by said data.

The distinction is a subtle but important.

What AE is doing is orders of magnitude less problematic than what NIST did in my opinion, but AE has no burden to be fair or even scientific in their approach. Otherwise I would be expecting an almighty backlash against Fox news any time now, but, sadly, I am not.

One interesting thing about marketing that expected perception is far more important than perception itself. You enjoy a movie far more if it was good and you expected it to be bad than if it is as good as you expected. In the same way the wacko groups may ironically make AE look more respectable than they are, and AE makes this forum look more respectable.

So, really, you should be thanking them for the great service they are doing to the image of this forum.

I suspect that this forum is not well known or well read for that matter. That may be intentional to a certain extent. One does have to meet a higher standard to participate and participating seems to be what many want from a web based forum.

As a resource, it's like the library.. How 20th century!