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On August 04 2008 07:17 travis wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2008 06:45 DamageControL wrote:On August 04 2008 06:35 travis wrote:On August 04 2008 06:30 Kwidowmaker wrote:
Not quite genocide but good point. 1.) not at all genocide 2.) where was the good point? actually, since it wasn't genocide, where was the point at all? The point was they cant keep shit quiet. You REALLY think they could have orchestrated 9/11 and not have someone talk? obviously I do. do you have any idea how many covert missions the cia has done? and how often do their operatives talk?? THEY ARE TRAINED NOT TO. read. there is a ton to read, so much information, so much evidence. http://www.wanttoknow.info/officialsquestion911commissionreportactually look at what those people say. look at the positions they held, how much expertise they should have. I'm not arguing the point that is what he was saying and you just threw it out because he doesn't know what genocide is
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On August 04 2008 07:58 travis wrote:no. both of the words could work there, but the one I chose has the definition I intended.
If you say so... it sounded like you were going for "everyone has an effect on everything", which calls for "affects" . "Effects" is used with sentences like "She effected great change" or something. It means "to bring about", basically, and that doesn't really work in the sentence you had there.
ON TOPIC
(whatever the current topic is)
my opinion:
of course there's SOME chance that the government was behind 9/11, anthrax, whatever. I'm not among the people you're railing at who deny that such a chance exists. I do happen to assess the probability of these events as so minuscule however that there's essentially no use in actively considering them. This is based on my own assessment of the evidence (and I've read/watched most of the 9/11wasaninsidejob stuff).
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sorry mods, u can smother views you don't like, but u can't stop them from popping up again and again.
and travis, i feel for u, it takes a lot of energy to respond to every accusation of being dogmatic etc etc. once you go down that path, u'll realize the best thing to do is to provide more facts and evidence and references. cause in the end, both sides on issues like these just want the truth, am i right?
so ideally, i would like to see both sides dropping the side issues, and having an open debate, with finding the truth as the goal, and discussing the new pieces of evidence like government documents, which abound on the internet. operation northwoods would be one place to start: would our governmnet have any intetion of attacking it's own people in order to use it as a catalyst to do what it wants, say launch wars, infringe upon domestic privacy etc. ?
i think commmon sense would tell everyone that diversity and conflicting opinions are even necessary to a healthy free society. if all of us bought into the conspiracy theories without backed evidence or at least a good reason to believe so, then the nation would be full of paranoids and gripped by fear (although it can be argued, we just went thru the same thing with terrorists after 911, where the suspicion was directed at osama and the middle east). but on the other hand, if we all didn't even take a look at the conspiracy theories and the claims they are making, who would keep the government in check? it is the duty of citizens to bridle their government from oppressing upon the freedoms we secured in our constitution.
Such conflicting opinions duely demands and thorough debate and openmindedness whlie considering all the evidence without rushing or censoring or keeping anything secret is vital so we make the best decision possible and don't believe in false ideas. skepticism and cautiously approachiing things is one of the things that results from a republic like ours.
as long as we firmly believe our side on any issue, we should be able to back it up and present coherency and that it makes sense in a debate. but it is because we are so sure that we become more or less "dogmatic", but then that only means we should be able to defend our stance and not back down or resort to ad hominem and diversion tactics.
but then again, is the news being dogmatic for saying asserting that it is fact? lots of theses by conspiracy theorists do in fact have backing. government documents back them up, the laws of freefall in physics back them up. power goes to your head. who knows what really happened? thats why lets find out for ourselves with independent experts and not take oversimplified answers from our government, an entity to always be suspicious off, innnocent or not.
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travis: this is a debate essentially based on the finer points of architectural engineering and FIRE. It is fucking unreasonable for you to expect us to be able to debunk each one of your sources. The best we can do is give you sources and expert testimony in return, which I've done. That's not how debate works. If you've ever watched a good jury trial or competitive debate, then you'd know that people provide clash where it's possible. Otherwise we make our own responses and let the two sides weigh out. You post as if if we dropped even ONE point of contention from you, we must be wrong.
Debating this isn't going to get us anywhere :|. If I found debunkings of your debunkings I'm sure you could find people to debunk that. What it comes down to is credibility. In my mind the people that popular mechanics had access to are probably a lot more credible than joe schmoe tinkering on his website. But whatever. You and I reading shit on the internet isn't going to settle any of this. I'm just not goign to continue this argument. Besides, you seem like a cool guy outside of this thread.
I will post somethign I wrote to Ecael regarding conspiracy theories in general. I'd be interested in discussing this with you, if you want to read the whole thing. But I don't think we'll get anything done pulling up random web pages for or against conspiracy.
+ Show Spoiler +These kinds of debates always boil down to something like "who do you trust?" I choose to trust the "mainstream media" and their story. People like you and travis could argue that this is just an intuitive judgement, that I need to go and "research the facts". I would argue that your beliefs are just as intuitive.
I choose to trust the experts at CNN, Popular Mechanics, the 9/11 commission, etc. etc. Their explanations make sense to me based on my worldview and experience. That is, I expect a degree of the "unintuitive" in all things. And this is an important part -- I realize that not every story will make perfect sense. Everything has "holes". Planes crashing into buildings don't make the impression you expected. Taking down a skyscraper requires a lot less explosive power than I might've intuitively guessed.
Travis, on the other hand, chooses to distrust CNN. He's chosen to place his faith in the Dylan Averys of the world. Moreover, he's chosen to trust his intuition as the sole arbiter of what is right. Part of the appeal of conspiracy theories is that they promise to make an imperfect story perfect. Now I've said before that real stories are often unintuitive, they're never perfect. The only reason conspiracies can create this idealized world is by evading the question. Conspiracy theories never explain what happened, they only describe possibilities of what may have happened. A "real" story goes like this: "Al Qaeda trained people to attack the U.S. They did this by doing A B and C." A conspiracy goes like this: "Al Qaeda could never plan something that sophisticated. Skyscrapers can't collapse like that. Planes make bigger holes. So it's likely that the US government did this. I don't know how but they probably did." Nobody ever writes a full "conspiracy narrative." If we were to apply the scientific model to conspiracies, you'll find that there is no hypothesis to test. Like Freud with his theories of psychoanalysis, whenever a new finding produces something contradictory, the theory is adapted.
The "mainstream" story, on the other hand, provides a complete testable narrative. It doesn't surprise me at all that there are imperfections in the story. I don't expect any explanation to be perfect. Conspiracies on the other hand don't give me a story at all. They just tell me I should doubt, and that's fine because that's how new ideas come about, through doubt, but it's stupid to believe a totally ungrounded story just through this doubt. Whereas the mainstream story has video evidence and more "credible" sources telling the story (credible here being a subjective term... the people telling the story are more credible to me, I don't really want to argue about the quality of sources), the alternative story is undetailed, untestable, and ungrounded.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is: the reason I don't believe in conspiracies is because I accept that stories and explanations can never be perfect. It is unintuitive for me to believe in an untestable hypothesis.
FUCK THAT WAS LONG but i felt like i needed to express that. if you don't read this that's all good but this has been an interesting discussion. Maybe I'll post it later.
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Upon further reflection I see what you are saying about "opening our minds". You did come off as if you were trying to convince us of a conspiracy. I will admit the possibility there is a chance there could be a conspiracy. But I still don't believe there is.
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On August 04 2008 08:41 talismania wrote:
If you say so... it sounded like you were going for "everyone has an effect on everything", which calls for "affects" . "Effects" is used with sentences like "She effected great change" or something. It means "to bring about", basically, and that doesn't really work in the sentence you had there.
after a bunch of research I am convinced that what I said is grammatically correct, just weird.
but I will concede that affect was the word I should have used(I hate that I was wrong)
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What's the difference between knowing and not knowing?
You are equally powerless.
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On August 04 2008 09:03 travis wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2008 08:41 talismania wrote:
If you say so... it sounded like you were going for "everyone has an effect on everything", which calls for "affects" . "Effects" is used with sentences like "She effected great change" or something. It means "to bring about", basically, and that doesn't really work in the sentence you had there.
after a bunch of research I am convinced that what I said is grammatically correct, just weird. but I will concede that affect was the word I should have used(I hate that I was wrong)
yea,, see... discussion about topics like these always devolve to dogmatism, grammar, adhominem and shit like that. it's a good experience though, travis, and you will find other places to have more fruitful discussions. just don't die out on us. xp
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On August 04 2008 09:06 naventus wrote:
What's the difference between knowing and not knowing?
You are equally powerless.
I call bullshit
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On August 04 2008 08:49 ahrara_ wrote:
travis: this is a debate essentially based on the finer points of architectural engineering and FIRE. It is fucking unreasonable for you to expect us to be able to debunk each one of your sources.
I agree, I never asked that of anyone
The best we can do is give you sources and expert testimony in return, which I've done. That's not how debate works. If you've ever watched a good jury trial or competitive debate, then you'd know that people provide clash where it's possible. Otherwise we make our own responses and let the two sides weigh out. You post as if if we dropped even ONE point of contention from you, we must be wrong.
what are you talking about. You posted your reply with that popular mechanics article, and I posted a direct reply to it with my own article.
and it rarely has to do with credibility, at least for me. something either makes sense or it doesn't.
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How are you at all qualified to determine what makes sense when it comes to architectural engineering? If you used this measure to judge all things, then just because the theory of relativity doesn't make intuitive sense then it's wrong? No to make credible judgements on these things you have to be trained in these areas. That's why if you don't understand the field, it's really stupid to just take somebody's word over people who have better credentials.
what are you talking about. You posted your reply with that popular mechanics article, and I posted a direct reply to it with my own article.
What, and that makes the second article right?
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On August 04 2008 08:46 crabapple wrote:
so ideally, i would like to see both sides dropping the side issues, and having an open debate, with finding the truth as the goal, and discussing the new pieces of evidence like government documents, which abound on the internet. operation northwoods would be one place to start: would our governmnet have any intetion of attacking it's own people in order to use it as a catalyst to do what it wants, say launch wars, infringe upon domestic privacy etc. ?
I don't think on a subject like this you can have fruitful debate. When I posted the popular-mechanics article, travis responded with his own. There will always be people on either side who will argue back and forth one way and the other. You have to choose who to believe. Like I said to travis, no you don't have ground here to judge either of their theories, because you are not an expert in the field. You wouldn't judge theoretical physics or economic theories based on your untrained intuition, so what gives you the right to determine who is right or wrong in a debate about building engineering?
Thanks for the civil and thoughtful post, crab.
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On August 04 2008 09:19 ahrara_ wrote:
How are you at all qualified to determine what makes sense when it comes to architectural engineering?
I never said I was
If you used this measure to judge all things, then just because the theory of relativity doesn't make intuitive sense then it's wrong?
no. but it's definitely more likely than it would be if it did make intuitive sense. But comparing the theory of relativity to this, lol, such an extreme analogy.
No to make credible judgements on these things you have to be trained in these areas. That's why if you don't understand the field, it's really stupid to just take somebody's word over people who have better credentials.
I already know this.
But it's also stupid to choose what you believe based solely on the credentials of the source.
What, and that makes the second article right?
uh, no.
did it mean your article had to be right when you posted yours?
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You don’t need to believe in anything. Whether or not the conspiracy theory is true does not change the fact that the American public don’t even try to accept anything other than what they want to believe. Their mentality does not go beyond trying to cover their own eyes and ears and live in their own fantasy world. When you present evidence of corruption, they dismiss you as a nut because they don’t want anything to sway them of the notion that all is good. They’ll find one or two loosely concocted arguments to justify their own biased beliefs and end discussion, as though they’ve actually proven something.
Face it, people don’t like unhappy thoughts; they prefer to be blissfully ignorant, and that’s exactly what makes them a bunch of tools.
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by the way, anyone reading this that has an open mind, please check out the article i linked to that replies to the popular mechanics article. it makes it look really silly.
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no. but it's definitely more likely than it would be if it did make intuitive sense. But comparing the theory of relativity to this, lol, such an extreme analogy.
No it's not. How can you have any knowledge about the temperature at which steel melts? Unless you've studied the field, you know just as much about it as you do about theoretical physics. And are you saying that what the popular mechanics people are saying doesn't make intuitive sense to you? What part exactly?
You can't tag something like "likelihood" to theories. Science is full of counterintuitive results. Could you have guessed that the same thing that keeps planets in orbit is also what keeps us attached to Earth?
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On August 04 2008 09:27 Juicyfruit wrote:
You don’t need to believe in anything. Whether or not the conspiracy theory is true does not change the fact that the American public don’t even try to accept anything other than what they want to believe. Their mentality does not go beyond trying to cover their own eyes and ears and live in their own fantasy world. When you present evidence of corruption, they dismiss you as a nut because they don’t want anything to sway them of the notion that all is good. They’ll find one or two loosely concocted arguments to justify their own biased beliefs and end discussion, as though they’ve actually proven something.
Face it, people don’t like unhappy thoughts; they prefer to be blissfully ignorant, and that’s exactly what makes them a bunch of tools.
WOW, YOU'RE EXACTLY THE KIND OF PRICK ADVOCATING THESE THEORIES THAT I HATE.
http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll
More than one third of americans dude. Stop crying as if you're the minority.
you're the tool for thinking you're better than the rest of the american public for believing in a bloody conspiracy theory. look at how easy it is to play on your intellectually fragile ego. obviously anyone who disagrees is living in a fantasy world. clearly we have to live our lives open to each and every possibility. maybe george bush really is a repetilian. NO you fucktard. If I'm a biologist and I'm familiar with the evidence of evolution, I'm not going to be open to the possibility of intelligent design. I find it funny that al ot of the people like you are the same ones who are ready to rail against creationism, but when you come into threads like this anyone who disagrees with you is being close minded.
NO YOU DONT GET TO BE THE SOLE ARBITER OF WHAT COUNTS AS CLOSE MINDED. SOME PEOPLE THINK WHAT YOU BELIEVE IS RIDICULOUS. YOU THINK THEY'RE RIDICULOUS.
welcome to life. check in at the front desk you mindless twit.
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now fuck all of you and fuck this thread, i couldn't contain it anymore. god i hate 9/11 conspiracy junkies.
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On August 04 2008 09:32 ahrara_ wrote:Show nested quote +no. but it's definitely more likely than it would be if it did make intuitive sense. But comparing the theory of relativity to this, lol, such an extreme analogy. No it's not. How can you have any knowledge about the temperature at which steel melts? Unless you've studied the field, you know just as much about it as you do about theoretical physics. And are you saying that what the popular mechanics people are saying doesn't make intuitive sense to you? What part exactly? You can't tag something like "likelihood" to theories. Science is full of counterintuitive results. Could you have guessed that the same thing that keeps planets in orbit is also what keeps us attached to Earth?
are you trying to be difficult?
I can find out the temperature that steel melts in google in no time at all.
http://www.chemicalelements.com/elements/fe.html
iron melts at about 1500 C. Steel is made out of iron, so the temperature is going to be close to that.
actually, I found a better answer, including a source.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070329141828AAaJfps
and answers.com says jet fuel burns at less than 1000 C
http://www.answers.com/topic/jet-fuel
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what I want is answers. how is it EVER EVER EVER closeminded to want answers. thats the opposite of closeminded. ridiculous
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EPT
