The 9/11 Forum

OneWhiteEye wrote:...Let's not overlook a possible legitimate need to move a subdiscussion to its own topic...

I don't think I did. I made essentially two comments:
1) Take care to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Note "appearance". Justice should be seen to be done and all that.
AND
2) I suggested a thread title.

I even pre-empted the extent/scope of discussion by quoting myself from a few days back.

And there should be no need to remind me (or Oystein) of the realities of the 9/11 sub forum on JREF. We both are regulars there and neither of us is a fool or blind to what is accepted norms there.

Plus both Oystein and I have spoken in support of Major_Tom over there. In my case repeatedly recommending and admiring his work on researching the break up of the towers and the way the perimeter sheets fell. It is outstanding work by any standards. By the way ditto for femr2's work on WTC7 also.

So please excuse my bits of calculated hyperbole...my message passed. My message received.

Now where is that other thread?

Oh, P.S.

I really don't want to pass judgement on the significance of any of these details.

The discussion is a meta level or process discussion - not about specific details although some have been used as examples.

The actual discussion where I have raised it is about the principle of how to decide whether or not details are significant. So it is about the logic associated with the taxonomy of issues. if we start the other thread I'll draw a picture.

ozeco41 wrote:So please excuse my bits of calculated hyperbole...

Oh please, if there were speeding tickets given for hyperbole, I'd be on death row.

OneWhiteEye wrote:

ozeco41 wrote:So please excuse my bits of calculated hyperbole...

Oh please, if there were speeding tickets given for hyperbole, I'd be on death row.

Nuttin wrong with hyperbole - except when someone uses it agin you....

Ozeco, you can start a thread with your own title and OP. You can choose a point at which to split the thread.

Throughout my JREF experience femr and I were accused of a variety of things including having some sort of "tactic".

I am as curious to find out what we have been accused of as much as anyone else. Good Topic. Just not here since I am using this thread to finish my "book".

.....................

It is my opinion that we were probably accused of various things as an excuse for not needing to look at the material offered at the time.

Attack the messenger sort of thing. Your thread will show whether my guess is correct or whether you have a valid argument.

........................

I also like the topic because it goes to the core of why my threads were removed from the JREF 9/11 subforum. I know the two of you were not responsible for that, but it is my guess that your arguments now are going to be similar to the ones given for the removal of the threads. Something about the insignificance of the subject matter.

My guess is that the JREF forum produces such self-serving, shitty arguments that regular readers are not aware of how much of that shit ends up infecting their brains.

My guess is that the current complaint from Ozeco and oystein is an excellent example of the results of this type of infection; habitual shit picked up through JREF. We will know if I am correct shortly.

Ozeco, earlier I called the JREF echo chamber. That wasn't meant as an insult. It is true. Untrue information repeated regularly at a rate the accused has no chance of defending even if they had the interest. At JREF that passes for "thought".

A note for long time readers of this forum....

Please recall the exchanges between a few of us and David Benson earlier. It was very, very difficult to get David Benson to take an interest in video of the collapses themselves.

This caused many problems when some of us tried to explain that the WTC1 "upper block" was toast early into the collapse.

...........................

Same in the present situation. Getting some people to look at aspects of the collapses themselves is like taking a child to the dentist. Since our first exchanges I have never succeeded in getting Ozeco to take an interest in any examination of the visual record. I most probably never will.

Just like David Benson earlier, he considers them to be "details".

.............................

Is it any wonder that no contradictions will be seen in the visual record if one never looks at the visual record? David Benson could defend blocks with the same approach.

Stale-mate. Fork in the road. I can't "debate' such an approach. We do not have much in common from that point forward.

Major_Tom wrote:...Since our first exchanges I have never succeeded in getting Ozeco to take an interest in any examination of the visual record. I most probably never will. ...

Yes. Ask youself "why".
And don't assume the reason is to be found in ozeco's peculiar personality.

Ask yourself: Will you everf succeed in getting anybody to take an interest in any examination of the visual record?

To answer that question, contemplate on two aspects:
- Who do you want to take an interest in the visual record, as assembled by you?
- Why would these people take an interest in the visual record, as assembled by you?

To put it in different words (several pages and days ago):

ozeco41 wrote:All that is required is to put on the table (A)the reasons that a specific technical detail is of significance AND (B) the identification of the group to whom it would be significant. And, by the way, that step would simply open the barriers so that debate can progress.

(Exchange "a specific technical detail" for "collection of specific technical details", if you like)


Perhaps you are having a marketing problem. Perhaps you need to find good reasons for others to take an interest in what you find interesting. And use that as a preface. Which, by they way, should be written in a style that is friendly, affirms the competence and place of the reader rather than that of the author, and, well, all the other tricks to make writing apealing to readers. Avoid telling the reader he is dumb, wrong, evil, or a moron.

Oystein,

Last comment showed remarkable ignorance.

If someone is trying to explain an event ... they would have to observe it or they are not describing the event but their own mental construct of the event... no matter how much technical, engineering, logic and other forms of mentation is used.

First we need to accurately log the visual data of the event and then we need to find the engineering and physics etc. which explains the observations.

Bazant, apparently a respected and otherwise intelligent engineer engaged in what amounts to pure sophistry with his theoretical papers published about the collapses. He didn't even bother to look at the collapse, take measurements etc. He went right to his advanced physics and engineering calcs in some sort of platonic world which does not exist. And he's not the only one who have approached a real event with mental constructs all of which seem to have some level of internal logic and even a vague relationship to the event. An example being the *fact* that most truthers look at the collapses of the twin towers and see them exploding.

This is not the case that they are not looking or trying to use observations to inform their understanding, but a case that these *observers* don't have the requisite technical background or previous experiences with such events to understand what they are seeing. What happens in their minds is that they construct an explanation which *makes sense* because it looks like something else they have seen. This, in itself is not a bad starting point if one recognizes that they are seeing something that may look like X but in fact be Y which shares some characteristics of X. They, of course, fail to make this caveat or consider the possibility. They express their thinking by saying, "if it look like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck... it MUST BE A DUCK!" Even that is limiting their use of analogy to 3 factors. If you ask these people to describe what a collapse would look like... they go silent and can't come up with a description. Many expect to see a pile of recognizable building contents and components stacked up perhaps 30-40 stories tall. Things simple don't *disappear* is why they might come to such a description... telephones, door knobs, arms and toilets!

But then they reach for a controlled demolition... building here one minute... and then all nicely destroyed and lots of dust and pyroclastic flows the next... ergo it had to be a controlled demolition.

The NISTians really dropped the ball for the general public in explaining how a collapsing building with a mass of several hundred thousand tons can collapse and crush everything up as we witnessed, except, of course the very strong steel frame parts. Global collapse is what they called it. Ain't that kinda vague?

So we have a series of mental failures in play. The NISTians didn't bother to get the observations correct, then failed to correctly describe the initiation or the collapse phase. What DID they get right? I am referring to details.

Then we have the truthers who have a failure of imagination because most don't have the technical background and see the world through Hollywood special effects filters. They latch on to duck thinking and take that to the conclusion that NIST et al were part of a MIHOP... and of course carted away all the evidence which is proof of complicity.

Then we have the sad case of the professionals and especially those responsible and intimately aware of the technical issues and they did the *don't look at me* it was the terrorists whodunnit. This is not a equating of the professionals and developers with terrorists. But their intellectual honesty about their ill conceived professional decisions is telling... much like the blue line of silence... of the police.

Sure, even if the towers didn't come down, they'd probably be unusable, likely unrenetable and a real disaster looming over the cityscape. So their actual collapse didn't matter in the bigger picture... and may have simply been a better outcome for the real estate market down there.

We're not in the land of Oz and we do need to see when the emperor is running around naked and stop making shit up to get along.

Oystein, I look forward to seeing your formulated arguments against whatever you imagine I or this forum has been doing for the last few years.

Both you and Ozeco can lay down your arguments for whatever it is you are arguing for in a different thread and I'll promise you will have the chance to lay out your full argument uninterrupted.

I think it will be a treat for all readers.

Oystein wrote:

Major_Tom wrote:...Since our first exchanges I have never succeeded in getting Ozeco to take an interest in any examination of the visual record. I most probably never will. ...

Yes. Ask youself "why".
And don't assume the reason is to be found in ozeco's peculiar personality.

Ask yourself: Will you everf succeed in getting anybody to take an interest in any examination of the visual record?

.

Words cannot express how stupid such a comment is.

Are either of you going to start a thread to explain the logic behind this? If not, will you have a problem if I get shit like this out of this thread?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..

The quote demonstrates a fundamental difference in the approach we take to check facts.

It shows why some people will see contradictions while others will not. If the contradictions are within the visual record itself, clearly the person who examines the visual record carefully will see contradictions while the person who does not will not see those same contradictions.

In the end, it must be obvious why no communication is possible between a person who sees contradiction within the visual record and one who sees no need to examine it.

As I mentioned earlier, a stale-mate must result. A stale-mate has resulted.

Which is why I wrote this earlier (on page 46)....

Major_Tom wrote:Having seen various approaches, there is very little doubt that there is no way I could agree with how Ozeco approaches these issues. Sharing thoughts does not mean posters will eventually agree. It means that one can observe how the other approaches these complex problems and come to an understanding, each individually, on why they will always disagree.


In a nutshell, I see rather blatant and unexplained contradictions within the photographic record. In the cases of both femr and achimspok, I sense through their posting histories that they also see rather blatant contradictions within the photographic record.

For a few years I have had mostly one-way discussions about these contradictions. My conclusions from these discussions is that many other people do not notice or record these events. They approach the larger issues from a different place.

There is no amount of post exchanges that will either make these contradictions intelligible or make them go away. They will always exist since their are captured in the visual record. For me, there is no amount of mental gymnastics that will make them go away and ignoring visual evidence is not an option.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
...

After close to 2 years of observation and experiment with the psychological phenomenon of blinkered vision and selective memory, my own studies have concluded that very few people will ever be able to apply the level of observation and documentation of the building collapses that I witnessed from a very small group of people earlier in my studies.
.....................

Not surprisingly, a type of "stale-mate" (chess term) within these latter discussions seems inevitable. My main interest for the last year (within the "smart idiot" thread) was to try to understand why this is the case.

Ozeco, you appear to me to be the the best current poster at JREF. I thank you for coming to this less noisy forum to explain your thinking clearly. The posts on the last few pages have been a treat. I do not have to agree with a poster to appreciate and learn from their posts. Because of the care you take while posting, I have been able to learn more from your posts than any other JREF poster. By reading your posts, the sources of the inevitable stale-mate and core disagreements between us have become clear to me.

I suspect these disagreements are not just between "you" and "me". They are core divisions that go far beyond us two individuals. They are core positions that are fundamentally irreconcilable.

The fruit of such an exchange is not to agree, but to identify the core divisions between our views. In the end, I see contradiction while you do not. The contradictions I observe will most probably never be explained, and they will always exist within the visual record. They will never be explained because they are simply ignored.

In the end, I cannot ignore what I see and I cannot get a sufficient number of people to see what they ignore, hence the unavoidable "stale-mate".

For example, from pg 44:

ozeco41 wrote:As for that small number of structural engineers and architects practising in the high rise sector the lessons of 9/11 will have driven home the need to be more secure in structural design. And they will achieve that without any need for a few wild amateurs on the Internet telling them that NIST was wrong on some details. They will already have advanced way beyond NIST reporting. And way beyond the ability of me or you or M_T et all to offer meaningful advice or corrections.

My guess is that this viewpoint is glossing over a major contradiction. My own viewpoint is more in line with SanderO. In fact, a few of those recent SanderO posts describe the issue excellently (imho), so well that there is no need for me to write the same thing.

From now on I will call the absense of the identification of progressive floor collapse in what seem to be the largest examples of progressive floor collapse in history "Red Flag #1".

The absense of any ROOSD type description in any government, academic or professional literature, in my opinion, should serve as a big red flag that there are major, major omissions within the technical records of the collapses.

In the above Ozeco quote, he sees this absense of any official or professional literature connectiing the towers with progressive floor collapse as no big deal. No actual literature was necessary for the small number of structural engineers and architects practising in the high rise sector on the subject of progressive floor collapse. I, on the other hand, see it as "Red Flag #1" that we are witnessing serious omissions and the resulting confusion all around us.

Failure to identify what needs to be made more secure and why is at the heart of the matter here. It's a no brainer to say a stronger building can withstand more abuse. That entirely misses to point in both engineering and in the failure analysis which should have been undertaken by the officials... but was actually achieved by the armchair outsiders on this forum.

When the structural designs for the twins and bldg 7 were being developed, the engineers were supposed to understand the structures they were designing, and design against progressive failures, root out the achillles heels and essentially *balance* the elements of design so that there was sufficient reserve strength to deal with damage... damage of a reasonably predictable nature. In NYC planes hitting a 1/4 mile skyscraper should have been a consideration just as the 100 year storm is for wind shear.

Admittedly plane strikes and fuel loading are not typical engineering considerations. But, unfortunately, that would go with the territory with the twins. Same with building a high rise over top a huge electric power sub station and including 20,000 gal diesel tanks for emergency generation. How did that manage to skate by the authorities? And what about the engineers... didn't any red flags appear in their minds or was it dollar signs for fees?

Both designs represented serious lack of planning and vision... the type engineers are supposed to do. Now recall the Challenger disaster.... the o-rings failed because they were used outside of temp spec. There should have been a warning label on the main booster... DO NOT USE IN TEMPS BELOW 50° (or whatever the limit was). This was knowable. And it was incompetence that led to that tragedy... just as it was on 9/11... incompetence of design allowed them to collapse like a house of cards... not withstanding WHAT hit them.

just sayn'

A quick review of my main thesis in the "book":

there is no fact-based technical account of the World Trade Center collapses. This is verifiably true beyond doubt. The true collapse modes of the Twin Towers are not accurately determined within any academic, professional or government literature.

Direct measurements and observations extracted from the visual record of the collapses grossly contradict history as it is generally presented.

"Red Flag #1" is just my thesis applied to the specific cases of the WTC1 and WTC2 collapse progression mechanisms.

The effects of the massive void in information of "red flag #1" can be seen throughout the written record of this forum and other forums that cover the subject of the WTC collapses.

Everything from Heiwa to Ryan Mackey to crush down, then crush up to angle-cut columns to Richard Gage are examples of the results of the information void created by "red flag #1".

.....................

Red Flag #1 is a major contradiction that exists right in the center of the technical histories of the collapses as it is currently presented. It will always exist. It has resulted in massive confusion.

Even so, many people will see no contradiction at all. The existing literature is "good enough" for them and no "red flag #1" exists.

To me, much of the debate takes place inside an information void. Many people deny this void exists. It is as if they are floating on a sea of contradiction, but they see themselves as standing on firm, dry land.



The water is contradiction and confusion.

For some reason the people on the raft don't seem to be aware they are surrounded by water. To fill the information void, people offer their own explanations.

People tend not to recognize the information void and the resulting atmosphere of confusion and tend to judge the confused instead.

But nobody takes responsibility for the atmosphere of confusion or the false information which fills the void.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>....

Contradiction, responsibility........contradiction, responsibility.......hmmmmm..

Could there be a relation between contradiction blindness and the inability to take responsibility?

If one doesn't see the contradiction, they clearly do not consider themselves responsible for accounting for it.

No contradiction means no need for responsibility. This is the philosophy of "good enough".

Independent citizen investigations of radiation levels following the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns.

From this wikipedia link.

Japanese authorities have admitted that lax standards and poor oversight contributed to the nuclear disaster.[370] They have come under fire for their handling of the emergency, and have engaged in a pattern of withholding damaging information and denying facts of the accident.[371][370][372][373] Authorities apparently wanted to "limit the size of costly and disruptive evacuations in land-scarce Japan and to avoid public questioning of the politically powerful nuclear industry". There has been public anger about an "official campaign to play down the scope of the accident and the potential health risks".[372][373]

There are obvious reasons why citizens would independently check radiation levels and not believe their government or industry representatives concerning their own health.




Consider the parallel to the WTC building collapses. What appears to be the largest case of progressive floor collapse in history happens 2 times that day, yet there is no government, academic or professional record that any such progressive floor collapses occurred.

After 1 decade, is there any reason to believe what the government investigative bodies say about the collapses?



When one looks for independent citizen fact-checking of government claims concerning the collapses, they see quite hostile people attacking anyone who points out these major contradictions within their own technical histories of the collapses.

......................

Red Flag #1 should be able to demonstrate to most anyone that there are MAJOR omissions from the written histories of the collapses. These omissions are CRITICAL in that it is not possible to gain a global overview of the physical processes witnessed without knowledge of the strong possibility of large scale progressive floor collapse.


When communicating with the proverbial "Uncle Joe", pointing out the contradiction called "Red Flag #1" may be the best place to begin. It is such a massive omission from the written collapse histories that even ol' Uncle Joe should be able to see the blatant contradictions before his eyes.