The 9/11 Forum

Concerning blockhead methods applied to WTC1 and 2 collapse dynamics, I wrote the following at JERF:

Simple ways to recognize Blockheads and harmful Blockhead influences on true, honest debate:


1) Blockheads have the compulsive need to talk of propagation movement of the twin towers in terms of giant rectangles.

2) They have the compulsive need to turn simple "physics 101" block diagrams into equations of motion, imagining they represent real, complex highly non-homogenous systems like the WTC twin towers, and then taking them seriously.

3) Blockhead ideas require total ignorance of the photographic record.

Why am I mentioning blockheads in a thread entitled "smart idiots"? For the obvious reason but also to show that this problem solving technique is a symptom of a much larger problem existing in smart stupid people in general. The much larger problem can be stated thus:

Smart stupid people try to reduce complex systems to a level their limited minds can understand,

whereas honest problem solvers try to expand their minds to encompass the complex system.


I hope all readers can see the difference. In the former case people shut down their perceptions until they can fit the complex system into little mental shoeboxes. These mental shoeboxes are called "models" and the trick is to dumb down your perceptions until the complex system can be stuffed into the little meaningless boxes.

When they manage to stuff the whole thing into the shoeboxes, the smart stupid person claims to "understand" the system.



Readers of this forum have been observing a debate on how complex physical systems actually move. We have all been witness to some incredibly sh*tty physics. In truth if abuse of physics was a crime, most of the major truther and debunker participants in the demolition debate would be doing some hard time.

Words fail me in trying to describe just how sh*tty the physics is all around us. I have personally never experienced anything like it, where people on the internet can repeat lies over and over until they create the illusion of truth.

A classic example of the ability to shrink ones perception down to the level of ones own capacity to understand can be seen in a famous cartoon character called Mr Magoo:



He is basically blind without his glasses, but he acts as if sees clearly.


Mr Magoo can be said to represent the archetypal image of a scientific smart idiot. I hope readers are familiar with the character.

Why does Mr Magoo serve as an effective architype of the smart idiot so well? Here he is trying to get fro "point A" to "point B" in his car:



Mr Magoo is leaving a trail of destruction behind him but he doesn't realize it.

Notice his anger at the people in his way. He perceives the confrontations as being the fault of the people getting in the way of his car.

Examples of physical systems with no limiting constraints:

WIthin all the passionate defense of block models, it is useful to ask ourelves, "What is physics?

How does one describe the time evolution of a complex system using a mathematical model?




In this particular case the mass exists as a density distribution in space-time. It is a highly complex system in that light requires time to get from one side of the mass distribution to the other and gravitation forces as expressed in classical mechanics no longer apply.

The state of the system is written as

rho(r, t)

How would a blockhead approach expressing the time evolution of this system?



With nothing to turn into blocks and no way to draw Newtonian force vectors on objects, the blockhead is at a total loss.

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Electron density distributions around a nucleus take on the same repetitive "states" taking on the same curilinear geometries as the solar system.



Once again, please notice the absence of a single square orbital.

How can a blockhead using only mathematics introduced before 1800 make a mathematical model of these physical systems?

Other examples of complex physical systems:









Notice how the last 2 systems are covered with a whole bunch of dust.


Mr Blockhead, how can these systems be described mathematically?



(He looks confused.)

Curvilinear forms naturally manifest on all levels:





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Do squares and straight lines exist in nature? Beside man made constructions, how many straight lines and rectangles appear in nature, Mr Blockhead?



"Um.....Don't know."

Math really is our friend, you know.


Why do I keep saying this? Because if you look at physical objects and motion on all levels:

1) Astronomical: Extremes of large and fast
2) Smallness to the point that mass as you know it disappears and manifests in complex wave forms: Quantum smallness
3) Extremes of small and fast: High energy, quantum and relativistic limits

you will see complex flows and a very curvilinear universe.


Math is a tool that we use. There are no measurements in nature. No coordinate systems, no calculations.

Nature never requires calculations. Nature manifests as perceptions of complex patterns.


Human beings impose mathematical systems on nature to discover pattern. Math, as you know it, is just a tool your mind uses. And, like any tool, you can mess things up if you don't know how to use it.

Consider, in a curvilinear, flowing world in which we live, what chance does Mr Blockhead have to be able to describe it mathematically with his favorite tool:



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In reality, what mathematicians have done is to learn to "curve" their coordinate systems to nicely fit over any specific system.




Instead of trying to squeeze a universe of curves and flow into a rectilinear shoebox, they made their coordinate mappings of a system fit the nature of the system.

A coordinate mapping is like "clothing" that is placed over a physical system. The physical system it self does whatever it does with no calculations and doesn't need math. System flow or evolution is mapped by ones choice of coordinate and variables.

An amazing thing happens when generalized coordinates are used. Concepts like "angle" between unit vectors and "distance" between two points needs to be defined since nobody knows how long a "unit" vecor really is.

When you can curve, bend and stretch ones coordinate mapping to any shape you want, "1 unit" movement no longer means any specific distance.

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In the special and general theories of relativity, why is the word "relativity" in the title?

It is very similar to saying that the earth is not the centerpoint of the universe, or the self is not the centerpoint of the world.

In a psychological sense, "relative" means there is no preference of self over other. There is perfect symmetry between all (inertial) observers and mathematical expressions of laws of nature must express that symmetry.

General realtivity:

"this theory arose primarily from the endeavour to understand the equality between inertial mass and gravitational mass".

-Einstein.

"In accordance with classical mechanics and according to the special theory of relativity, space (space-time) has an existence independent of matter of field. In order to describe at all that which fills up space and is dependent upon the coordinates, space-time or the inertial system with its metrical properties must be thought of at once as existing, for otherwise the concept of "that which fills up space" would have no meaning. On the basis of the general theory of relativity, on the other hand, space as opposed to "what fills space" , which is dependent on the coordinates, has no separate existence."

"Thus a pure gravitational field might have been described in terms of the g(i, j) (as functions of the coordinates,), by solution of the gravitational equations. If we imagine the gravitational field, i.e. the function g(i, j) to be removed, there does not remain a space of type (I), but absolutely nothing, and also no "topological space". For the functions g(i, j) describe not only the field, but at the same time also the topological and metrical structural properties of the manifold. A space of the type (I), judged from the standpoint of general relativity, is not a space without field, but a special case of the g(i, j) field, for which - for the coordinate system used, which in itself has no objective significance - the functions g(i, j) have values that do not depend on the coordinates. There is no such thing as empty space, i.e. space without a field. Space-time does not claim existence on it's own, but only as a structural quality of the field.

Thus Descartes was not so far off from the truth when he believed he must exclude the existence of an empty space. The notion indeed appears absurd, as long as physical reality is seen exclusively in ponderable bodies. It requires the idea of the field as the representative of reality, in combination with the general principle of relativity, to show the true kernel of Descartes'idea; there exist no space "empty of field"."

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"I wished to show that space-time is not necessarily something to which one can ascribe a separate existence, independently of the actual objects of the physical reality. Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended. In this way, the concept of empty space loses its meaning".

- Einstein, 1952




The "field" (mass distribution) determines the local "shape" of space-time (g(i, j) metric tensor coefficients)

The object is not "in space" according to Albert. The very structure of space is inseparable from object.

If object is removed, discussion of the "empty space" as having structure in itself has no meaning.

Consider the galaxy shown above.

"Gravitational forces" in the form of newtonian vectors attached to point mass distributions no longer exist.

Were the object to disappear, the concept of space and time as a leftover underlying fabric no longer exists.

The mass field alters the fabric of space-time that extends from it. What Newton called "gravitational pull" is only the mass field reacting to curvature in the space-time fabric caused by itself.

It is just reacting to the curvature it created, which alters the curvature as a result.

Is it an "interaction" of mass with a space-time fabric? Not really because there is no independent space-time fabric.

So then what is going on? I have no idea, a thing reacting to itself? Like a dance?

Maybe it is drunk.

Many times in the 9-11-01 "debates" the question of a "mathematical model" comes up.


From my experience possibly the best forms of mathematical modelling done by human beings are the systems of mechanics shown below:



I'd include electro-dynamics and thermodynamics to be more clear, but these are about the most advanced mathematical mappings of physical patterns that us humans have ever put together.

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Obviously there is no reason to talk about specifics but each area requires a very different mathematical structure.

General relativity uses the language of Reinmann geometry in which the underlying spatial structure can be altered to create curvature. Classical mechanics comes in a more primitive Newtonian vector form and elegant analytical forms introduced by the mathematicians Lagrange and Hamilton. These latter formulations prepared the ground for the mathematical model of quantum mechanics.

Obviously quantum mechanics is not necessary to the 9-11-01 debate, but it is probably the single most advanced application of mathematical modelling by human beings there is.

The "waves" which represent the smallest objects cannot be seen directly. The wave form itself and the equations of motion exist only as abstract forms in models. The scientist is very limited in how much of the abstract system is actually observable and checkable.

The electron is like Moby Dick. No, much worse. You can never see it, only a glimpse of its manifestation.

Quantum mechanics is a highly abstract "probability theory" and is a great example of what happens when people study an elusive something they can never see. The mathematical model is "confirmed" by how well it matches "observable", but the things being studied are theoretically too small to see.

Instead, they manifest in what we perceive to be mutually contradictory ways. It is an excellent opportunity to see how human beings apply mathematical models because we have nothing in our normal experience of objects in space or time with which to compare. From our own daily experience, these little objects appear to have "unphysical" properties........

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"Stupid Major_Tom! You don't know models, you stupid twoofer!

Publish! I'm an engineer!

Are you an engineer? Where's the math??? Huh? Real engineers would laugh in your face!

Are you a structural engineer??? Huh?? Huh??? Have you ever taken a math class???

You loser! You are a fake! Where is your engineering degree? This is engineering, not physics, you idiot! "
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Whoa Nelly! Relax, Mr Blockhead.

Many times in the 9-11-01 "debates" the question of a "mathematical model" comes up.

One example of the relation of how mathematical models are fit over patterns observed in nature is given by R Feynman during an interview.


Q: "There's another thing that seems to happen a lot in modern physics: the discovery of applications for kinds of mathematics that were previously "pure", such as matrix algebra or group theory. Are physicists more receptive now than they used to be? Is the time lag less?"

Feynman: "There never was any time lag. Take Hamilton's quaternions: the physicists threw away most of this very powerful mathematical system, and kept only the part - the mathematically almost trivial part - that became vector analysis. But when the whole power of quaternions was needed, for quantum mechanics, Pauli re-invented the system on the spot in a new form. Now, you can look back and say Pauli's spin matricies and operators were nothing but Hamilton's quaternions...but even if physicists had kept the system in mind for 90 years, it wouldn't have made more than a few weeks difference."

"Say you've got a disease, Werner's granulomastosis or whatever, and you look it up in a medical reference book. You may well find that you know more about it then your doctor does, although he spent all that time in medical school...you see? It's much easier to learn about some special, restricted topic than a whole field. The mathematicians are exploring in all directions, and it's quicker for a physicist to catch up with what he needs than to try to keep up on everything that can conceivably be useful."

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My point is this: Mr Blockhead would have to be an idiot to imagine that a 4 year engineering degree from Bumblef*ck U qualifies him as an "expert" in using mathematical systems to describe patterns in nature.

Human beings called "physicists" have been placing mathematical models over natural patterns on all perceivable levels small and big since around 1700 beginning with this sharp looking guy:



Isaac "Take no BS" Newton without one of those ridiculous wigs.

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Are Blockheads smart idiots?



No. It is when they stubbornly and vainly insist on blockhead physics that they become smart idiots.

Read the whole thing, and found it amusing, thought provoking and instructive.

I wouldn't be able to add much of value, I'm not a physicist and I can't quite wrap my head around things that go beyond my current understanding. But I do remember a discussion I once had with a friend who teaches 3d design and multimedia and did insist I should rethink my strictly Newtonian perspective when it came to those building collapses, since I was musing aloud about the "perfect computer simulation" which would be able to "answer all the questions".

Yet, I think, at this time, plenty of mistakes are made within the Newtonian framework. Things like Galileo's square-cube law ( how non-circular is that! ) and "path of least resistance", as well as reducing the collapsing WTC buildings to two solid, massive blocks colliding, with the concomitant "expectations".

Anyways, thanks for this entertaining treatise. Feels like time spent usefully.

Major_Tom wrote:Obviously quantum mechanics is not necessary to the 9-11-01 debate, but it is probably the single most advanced application of mathematical modelling by human beings there is.

The "waves" which represent the smallest objects cannot be seen directly. The wave form itself and the equations of motion exist only as abstract forms in models. The scientist is very limited in how much of the abstract system is actually observable and checkable.

The electron is like Moby Dick. No, much worse. You can never see it, only a glimpse of its manifestation.

Quantum mechanics is a highly abstract "probability theory" and is a great example of what happens when people study an elusive something they can never see. The mathematical model is "confirmed" by how well it matches "observable", but the things being studied are theoretically too small to see.

Instead, they manifest in what we perceive to be mutually contradictory ways. It is an excellent opportunity to see how human beings apply mathematical models because we have nothing in our normal experience of objects in space or time with which to compare. From our own daily experience, these little objects appear to have "unphysical" properties........

Reminds me of the great Hans-Peter Dürr. Here he is explaining his and Heisenberg's journey into matter:



Outside the block is nothing but woo.

Thanks for the link. It is a very good link about a thing called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and a mathematical operation called "anti-commutation".

I'll try to explain it in simpler terms for my purpose.....

The tiniest objects do whatever the hell they want in highly, highly complex ways. They don't give a shit about us, Newton, mathematics, science, coordinate systems or any of our mental contraptions.

Without any calculations they follow patterns. These patterns are not like anything we can see in our ordinary sense of 3 dimensional space.

Human beings invent mathematics and coordinate systems to try decipher the complex patterns. While human beings struggle to decipher the patterns, the objects themselves keep doing whatever the hell they want oblivious to the whole process.

Quantum mechanics is a huge mathematical transition from classical mechanics. That is why I think it is a great place to see how human beings use mathematical modelling. Physicists had to give up on their belief that they "know" material objects. They had to confine themselves to a system where the object being studied can never be "known" and "dances" in ways that cannot be described by our ordinary sense of space, time, object, wave, geometrical concept....

It is a great example of humans trying to see what is happening inside a big black box from the outside.

I'll be touching on physics and mathematics but I hope it is written in a way that is accessible to everyone who wants to read. Everyone has their own experiences with smart idiots

My whole point is that no matter how you look at it, life is too flowing and subtle for blockheads to "categorize".

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An introduction to complex systems of movement and mathematical modelling.



Lesson 1 for the engineer.

1) This is how the physical center of our solar system appears through one type of light detection system.

2) The sun never needs to make a single calculation to do all this. It doesn't require any knowledge of physics. It seems to do whatever it wants without asking anyone.

3) The system requires no maintenance staff to fix problems. The system exists far beyond any engineer's capacity to understand it. The system cannot break or "make a mistake".

4) The sun appears to have no intention of dumbing-down its own movements to a level that an engineer can understand.

5) The sun has existed far, far longer than Isaac Newton and any fantasy conception that our sun has ever "obeyed" either Newton or his laws is comical vanity. All we really seem to know is that the sun does whatever it wants whenever it wants acording to what appear to be a complex set of detectable patterns far beyond anything Newton could have explained.


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Lesson 2:



1) This is another complex system of movement

2) For those of us who do not believe there were thousands and thousands of little bombs placed on every floor, we are looking largely at a complex natural flowing process.

3) Needless to say it is a far simpler flow than the sun though it is quite complex.

4) This is a building, but that does not mean that a 4 year degree in structural engineering from BumbleF*ck U will give you any advantage in tracing, mapping and understanding the complex motion shown. Once complex non-symmetric collisions and flow begins, a structural engineer has no clue whatsoever how to map, explain ahnd predict the complex flow witnessed.

Lesson 3:

1) All theories, geometries or mathematical models are just clothes we place over the complex, flowing system.

2) Never fall in love with a model. Never forget the system doesn't care about your theory or math and will do whatever the hell it wants.

As soon as you prefer a model over the visual record of the event, you are a lost soul.

3) Models don't have feelings. They won't be hurt or jealous if you leave it for another. You should have no sentimental bond for a model whatsoever. You could go through 6 models in one day without causing any hard feelings or breaking up any homes.


We have all observed people with neurotic attachments to models, inexplicable from the perspective of rational argument. People often freely substitute models for visual evidence, as if a block model is somehow preferable to the real thing. As if the real thing can be forgotten in preference of the model.



On long term commitments....

4) Never marry a theory. Or soon you will have theory children and a theory mortgage on your theory home, and it won't be easy to say goodbye when a better theory comes along (And go you must, man!)

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Theories are only mental projections. All geometry, mathematics and models are only mental projections, tools that can be used if applied carefully, but not meant to replace the real thing.


People have to be careful not to trip over their own mental conceptions, not to be caught in a web of their own making.

Thinking outside the block. Complex collisions.



Since first posting on The 9/11 Forum, I thank my lucky stars that OWE has participated in discussions as much as he has.

My humble opinion is that he doesn't slop block physics together like many other people He is one of the best examples of how to approach a complex problem more carefully.

Three examples in this forum of how to approach complex problems with the necessary caution...

2008, he was doing careful feature tracking before sub-pixel tracking became cool:

(1) Technical notes on video motion analysis

This is an area that later blossomed.


When buckle up-buckle down mechanics was the rave, the only person to explore a fuller range of mechanical possibilities was OWE:

(2) Solid mechanics simulacra of the toy variety


And now, in a debate filled with dishonesty and cheap answers to subtle questions, the only person who carefully explores the particulars of crush mechanics and collisions based on the actual visual evidence:

(3) Attributes of a rubble driven collapse

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Some observations:

a) We see people approach the the same issues with much less care, and needless to say much more quickly.

b) People who do not approach complex motion with care are pretty clumsy by comparison.

This may be what stands out the most for me, how clumsily many people treat complex motion. Like Blockheads.
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You do not need a technical mind to see and appreciate the difference between styles.