Is there a legitimate reason to question the official narrative*?

[beachnut]

I am surprised that on a skeptics forum so few people are able to be skeptical about 9/11. I don't mean that you have to accept a conspiracy theory, but questioning narratives seems like it should be part of the package of skepticism.

The speed with which buildings went down is "a reason" to question things, even if it is not conclusive what that all means.

Which speed? The tower feel at a speed which physics predicts, using a simple momentum model.

Skeptics would research, run the numbers and question the idiotic inside job silent CD fantasy. Especially since 19 murderers took the effort to hit the same building with a heavy jet with 66,000 pounds of jet fuel.

911 truth are not skeptics, they are conspiracy nuts who make up wild fantasy based on ignorance.

The collapse can be modeled with momentum. WTC 7 has the inside collapsing for 12 seconds before the roof line falls. WTC 7 collapse took over 16 seconds - why is that too fast.

Did 911 truth run a momentum model? Why not? Because the heart of 911 is selling lies. The "experts" are a theologian selling lies in books, using hearsay, quote mining, and cherry picking to fool a fringe few who are not skeptics, they are followers; an architect who runs around speaking and pushing a petition for a new investigation; he lies about 911 saying it is CD, thermite and high explosives, the three lies which net him 500,000 dollars a year in donations. Then we have various nuts on the internet selling DVDs, and ads.

A skeptic would figure out why the speed looks funny, and the skeptic would solve the problem, not do a Gish Gallop pushing an inside job with silent explosives and thermite. A skeptic would look at the 19 murderers, and figure out they did it with 4 airplanes, as seen.

A septic would study the WTC towers, and see the towers are a system, and the fireproofing was dislodged by massive kinetic energy impacts. Steel without fire protection fails fast.

13 years and 911 truth can't do what the Passengers on Flight 93 did in minutes - figure out 911.

A skeptic would see 911 truth faith based followers only come armed with a Gish Gallop of BS.

 

[jay howard]

...the collapses proceeded much as expected, and their speeds are no longer a cause for concern to those of us who understand the issues.

You say you understand, but yet neither you nor anyone else here can explain how the core structures were obliterated. Nor can anyone here say what members failed first, nor how hot it got in the towers (yes, we know it got hot enough to fail, but 5000F is also "hot enough to fail"), nor is anyone interested in seeing a lab demonstration of the loosely understood principle by which both towers reached "collapse initiation".

And those are not nearly the only unanswered questions upon which you hoist your expectations. The question remains: If you can't verify any of these issues (and you can't, as this and many other threads have demonstrated), by what definition of "skeptic" do you subcribe that you think unsubstantiated ruminations count as "understanding" these issues?

Apparently, your definition of "skeptic" means "one who adopts a provisionally plausible idea, and defends it to the death against any reasonable questioning whatsoever." The thing that gets me is your (and all you other defenders of NIST) lack of curiosity about the glaring problems with the official narrative. You didn't even come to the conclusions on your own--NIST gave them to you, and you just defend them as if your life depended on it, with zero regard for developing a sensible mechanism of collapse that can be tested and accounts for the phenomena we all witnessed.

If it was your idea to begin with, I could at least understand your allegiance to it as a personal statement, even with all the contradictions and flaws. But it's not. Yet you can't seem to put their theory under the same analytical scrutiny with which you buy soup.

In general, the argument here is not between whether or not to question narratives. It is over whether to force an alternative explanation on to those narratives

You are explicitly wrong here. You're just making things up. The question is very clear and has nothing whatsoever to do with alternative explanations--as much as you and others want it to be. I suppose the push to insert alternative theories is a good strategy if you want to pull focus away from how poor a job the NIST report authors did in actually explaining what happened.

"Is there a legitimate reason to question the official narrative?"

Pretty clear. Nothing about thermite or the Pentagon or NEADS or any of the multivarious loose ends that cry out for explanation. That's all in your head. And the thing is, if you really wanted to talk about alternative explanations, (which you only do if it detracts from the conversation about the holes in the NIST report), there are literally thousands of threads you could jump into. But you want to insert that conversation here because it beats the **** out of trying to defend NIST.

in defiance of the evidence available, simply in order to give the illusion of greater intelligence...

Maybe it's not an illusion. Maybe the official narrative is as weak as has been pointed out for years now, without any plausible defense. No lab test corrorboration. No forensic corroboration of the failure modes or the hypothesized temperatures--indeed, by getting the steel temperatures up to 800C for about an hour without the peices falling into dust, or even sagging more than 3 inches, the lab tests definitively rule out the official explanation.

...by holding an alternative view.

In this case, the "alternative" view is that the official narrative is a terrible attempt at explaining what happened.

Just because the majority view is not always right, that doesn't mean that the majority view is always wrong, and automatic rejection of the majority view is no more sceptical than automatic acceptance.

Certainly, the amount of people who agree or disagree with a proposition has no effect on the truth or falsity of that proposition. One need only evaluate the reasons underlying an explanation to check for internal coherence, explanatory power, falsifiability, and corroboration with forensic evidence. You agree with that, Dave, right?

Hence my original reply to the loaded question in the OP.

How is it a loaded question? You are misusing that term. A loaded version of Jango's question might be "what kind of a flunky believes the NIST report?". That's a loaded question.

To call the OP a "loaded question" is to say that NIST is not to be questioned! So says the skeptic.

There is always a legitimate reason to question a narrative...

Especially if the explanatory power of that narrative is particularly low and it's not supported by any lab tests, and it leaves a tonne of unanswered questions that it simply deems "insignificant," then yes. Those are indeed legitimate questions.

...but there comes a point where the preponderance of evidence is so overwhelmingly in favour of that narrative that further questioning is no longer productive. The narrative of 9/11 reached that point, for most of us here, many years ago.

Dave

You're just not that curious for a skeptic.

 

[DGM]

In this case, the "alternative" view is that the official narrative is a terrible attempt at explaining what happened.

I think the confusion comes from you believing the NIST report was created to explain the collapse to the general public. It wasn't, it was for the building and engineering community. It's target audience understands, that's why there is so little criticism in the real world.

 

[NoahFence]

You say you understand, but yet neither you nor anyone else here can explain how the core structures were obliterated. Nor can anyone here say what members failed first, nor how hot it got in the towers (yes, we know it got hot enough to fail, but 5000F is also "hot enough to fail"), nor is anyone interested in seeing a lab demonstration of the loosely understood principle by which both towers reached "collapse initiation".

If we agree that it got "hot enough" then it simply doesn't matter if it got any hotter than that. 5000 degrees? Fine. It got to 5000 degrees. Why does it matter?

Why don't you answer questions?

 

[NoahFence]

Originally Posted by NoahFence View Post
Jay Howard:

1) What IS the official narrative on 9/11

and

2) Why does your version not include the entire day's events

and

3) Why won't you respond?

Tell you what Jay...
Maybe 3 questions at the same time is too much.

So pick one of the three please.

.... and waiting.....



Pathetic. You know you can win the ISF Gold CTer award if you even just answer "I don't know"? I mean, it's yours by default - none of you answer any of those seemingly easy questions, so even saying I don't know puts you in the lead.

 

[JayUtah]

I am surprised that on a skeptics forum so few people are able to be skeptical about 9/11. I don't mean that you have to accept a conspiracy theory, but questioning narratives seems like it should be part of the package of skepticism.

Who says it isn't part of the package? However, you should carefully distinguish between well-intentioned skepticism and, on the other hand, simply repeating or validating the rhetorical mantras that form part of the Truther genre of conspiracism. "Free-fall" is one of them, as is "Airliners can't be flown that way," and "Fire can't melt steel."

You have to consider that you're asking this question of people who, in many cases, have been following these arguments ever since they first arose, many years ago, and have already investigated to their own satisfaction the claims raised in suspicion. I'm widely quoted on this forum as saying the purpose of conspiracy theorists is not to make progress toward a solution -- even an alternative one -- but rather to bog down the discussion in a way that the discussion itself becomes the "thing." As long as the discussion continues to go round in circles, some proponents remain relevant.

Indulging that is not what skepticism means.

The speed with which buildings went down is "a reason" to question things, even if it is not conclusive what that all means.

Ten or so years ago it was a reason for some people to wonder. Not everyone, as people with formal understanding of large-scale structures were not generally surprised by what they saw. But it would have been appropriate for laymen to question whether that was the expected behavior from a building succumbing only to initial impacts and subsequent fire.

Now that the behavior has been painstakingly investigated and understood, we don't have to keep questioning the same thing. Which is to say, we don't have to keep wondering if the behavior is somehow anomalous or suspicious. Yes, that means either trusting the judgment of people with relevant expertise, or acquiring the relevant expertise yourself. Those are the only rational choices, but that's the nature of the underlying information and always will be in a world where specialized knowledge is required.

Skepticism follows the Popperesque sentiment that conclusions should always be tentative, malleable to new information. But there is no new information. Those who continue to repose suspicion upon what they deem an anomalous collapse rate present nothing more than the same question-begging expectations they did more than a decade ago. Just because someone continues to raise old objections doesn't mean they suddenly become newly relevant.

Unfortunately for some people it was conclusive. Specifically, having convinced themselves that no explanation involving airplanes and office fires could account for how they observed the buildings to fall, they concocted an affirmative claim based on exotic explosives and incendiaries, secret agents, and generally stuff you'd get from bad thriller stories. They say the only way you can get that observed behavior in the structure is if the building was deliberately demolished -- a "controlled demolition." That's more of an inference than a conclusion, but it's held as the belief by many who publicly advocate for "9/11 Truth."

The way the rhetoric plays out on these web forums, you may never hear the affirmative "controlled demolition" claim stated overtly. That's because its proponents don't want the burden of proof to establish it. It's an inference, and they want to limit the discussion only to what they believe are flaws in the conventional narrative, not what they propose instead. But when you start talking about paint chips and little spheres of iron, it's the "controlled demolition" hypothesis that's always lurking just beyond the reach of exposure to skeptical analysis.

The conspiracy theorist's view of the argument is that if they can erode enough faith in the conventional narrative, then "some" conspiracy theory has to be the logical next choice. Every tidbit of evidence the conventional narrative can't explain is considered a reason to reject it. But the conspiracy theory is never subjected to any such test, or even in some cases fleshed out to the point where it can be. In the real-world view of the argument, the conventional narrative and the conspiracy narrative (e.g., the "controlled demolition" scenario) go head-to-head to see which one best explains all the available evidence. Poorly defined and poorly supported hypotheses quickly fall by the wayside, and the persistence of the conspiracy theory devolves into not how well it can explain things but how well it can convince followers that there's still something amiss.

 

[beachnut]

...

3. Why doesn't the upper section exhibit any deceleration in the first several stories of the collapse, as it does in Verinage demolitions where only momentum is used with no explosives involved? The tilt does not answer this question as it is one degree or less in the first two stories of the collapse.

Failure to do a momentum model on your part leads to ignorance on this. In a model there would be a velocity at first floor impact of 8.52 m/s, which would then become 7.86 m/s. Ironically the WTC initial collapse for many seconds matches a momentum model. Got to love science, it makes your fantasy fail. How would you see a velocity change of .66 m/s on video, and given the collapse is chaos, with the top section impacting the lower floor at random. Thus the "missing jolt" is averaged out - but anyone can see that.

Where do you guys find the silent explosives? Are you giving a pass to the 19 murderers in the four planes?

LOL, it takes the top of the WTC less than a second to collapse to the next floor at initiation. Simple physics answers your questions which seem to be opinions based on your realcddeal bias.

Did you drop the arson part yet? Do you have proof? Who did 911 in your fantasy version of silent explosive, no product thermite and the evil inside job? What were the 19 murderers used for?

13 years and you can't find a legitimate reason.

 

[jay howard]

I think the confusion comes from you believing the NIST report was created to explain the collapse to the general public. It wasn't, it was for the building and engineering community. It's target audience understands, that's why there is so little criticism in the real world.

It can't do either if there is no coherent mechanism by which we can duplicate some facet of in the lab.

Take care you are not assuming Heiwa style solid blocks. What is the actual problem you see? Why do you think it is a problem? I'm not familiar with the details but what makes you think that a cascading failure could not produce two corners dropping at similar times?

What the **** is that? And how does it work. And more importantly, can anyone replicate even a portion of this effect in the lab?

 

[jaydeehess]

You say you understand, but yet neither you nor anyone else here can explain how the core structures were obliterated. Nor can anyone here say what members failed first, nor how hot it got in the towers (yes, we know it got hot enough to fail, but 5000F is also "hot enough to fail"), nor is anyone interested in seeing a lab demonstration of the loosely understood principle by which both towers reached "collapse initiation".

The core was hit by the dynamic forces of the falling debris above it and consequent loss of lateral bracing both internal and external to the core. Its components came apart at their connections. That has been explained to you before.
You contend its possible to determine what specific components failed in the specific order they did fail. As I said, have at it. If you tried to do it or contacted relevant expertise in FEA you would learn differently. Why won't you do that?
Many years of scientific research and forensic study of the effect of fire on steel structures demonstrates that fire can and do get hot enough to fail steel structural members. What part of that escapes you?

And those are not nearly the only unanswered questions upon which you hoist your expectations. The question remains: If you can't verify any of these issues (and you can't, as this and many other threads have demonstrated), by what definition of "skeptic" do you subcribe that you think unsubstantiated ruminations count as "understanding" these issues?

Your personal expectation and misunderstandings do not constitute an argument.

Apparently, your definition of "skeptic" means "one who adopts a provisionally plausible idea, and defends it to the death against any reasonable questioning whatsoever." The thing that gets me is your (and all you other defenders of NIST) lack of curiosity about the glaring problems with the official narrative. You didn't even come to the conclusions on your own--NIST gave them to you, and you just defend them as if your life depended on it, with zero regard for developing a sensible mechanism of collapse that can be tested and accounts for the phenomena we all witnessed.

The "provisionally plausible" idea makes use of definitively obvious mechanisms of damage leading to collapse, impact and fires. "Skeptic" reasoning requires one not invent unsubstantiated, unseen and fictional mechanisms.
NIST used off the shelf FEA programs for fire spread and continuing damage. Those programs use the cumulative knowledge set of fire and engineering sciences.
Since there is no reason to suspect it was done incompetently or fraudulently, there is no reason to be skeptical of the consequent results of that research.

If you have a better way to do this, have at it.

You are explicitly wrong here. You're just making things up. The question is very clear and has nothing whatsoever to do with alternative explanations--as much as you and others want it to be. I suppose the push to insert alternative theories is a good strategy if you want to pull focus away from how poor a job the NIST report authors did in actually explaining what happened.

You have not managed to explain why or how the NIST reports are poor, nor can you demonstrate that relevant professional organizations such as the ASCE or CBTUH would characterize the reports as "poor". You simply wish and demand that we accept your premise that they are.

"Is there a legitimate reason to question the official narrative?"

Pretty clear. Nothing about thermite or the Pentagon or NEADS or any of the multivarious loose ends that cry out for explanation. That's all in your head. And the thing is, if you really wanted to talk about alternative explanations, (which you only do if it detracts from the conversation about the holes in the NIST report), there are literally thousands of threads you could jump into. But you want to insert that conversation here because it beats the **** out of trying to defend NIST.

It gets brought into the conversation because no truther ever is interested solely in perceived issues with the NIST reports. It is simply a door by which to push an alternative through as if proving-NIST-wrong somehow enhances an alternative.

Your perceived problems have been dealt with. Your refusal to understand or accept them does not alter the fact that they have been dealt with.

In this case, the "alternative" view is that the official narrative is a terrible attempt at explaining what happened.

Which has been shown to be an incorrect assumption.

Certainly, the amount of people who agree or disagree with a proposition has no effect on the truth or falsity of that proposition. One need only evaluate the reasons underlying an explanation to check for internal coherence, explanatory power, falsifiability, and corroboration with forensic evidence.

In fact the number of relevant persons and organizations that either agree or reject a proposition is indeed relevant. The 911 truth movement comes out on the losing end of such a listing.

Especially if the explanatory power of that narrative is particularly low and it's not supported by any lab tests, and it leaves a tonne of unanswered questions that it simply deems "insignificant," then yes. Those are indeed legitimate questions.

Low explanatory to whom? To laymen or to those with relevant expertise?

 

[Animal]

If we agree that it got "hot enough" then it simply doesn't matter if it got any hotter than that. 5000 degrees? Fine. It got to 5000 degrees. Why does it matter?

Why don't you answer questions?

Once again, we have circled back to the box of toothpicks scenario.

A box of toothpicks falls to the floor and scatters 1000 toothpicks. Rational people seek to find why the box fell and prevent it from happening again. Troofers, on the other hand demand to know why each toothpick landed in its precise location, failure to provide such information = CD.

JH's insistence on the precise temperature, which connection / member/ structure failed first etc is no different than demanding specifics on the toothpick final resting place.

 

[DGM]

It can't do either if there is no coherent mechanism by which we can duplicate some facet of in the lab.

Why do you keep saying this? What are you looking to repeat in a lab (that hasn't already)? "Coherant" to whom?

Their methods were sound and established. Can you argue where their methods were wrong (besides burning down a 47 story building)?

Before you start on the "truss sag". Heat would not be the only consideration as would the expansion of one member.

 

[JayUtah]

You're just not that curious for a skeptic.

Nonsense. Ten years ago, when the truss testing was first raised as an issue, we listened carefully to the argument. Then we patiently pointed out that the Truth movement's understanding of the nature and intent of the testing was incorrect, and that the significance and interpretation of the test outcomes was misrepresented.

Your attempt to resurrect that argument, with no more spark of life in it today than it had when your predecessors committed the same errors as you, does not create new curiosity. Your unwillingness to answer questions about NIST's methods and your proposed alternatives makes it unlikely that the strength of your argument lies instead in your expertise.

 

[abaddon]

I am surprised that on a skeptics forum so few people are able to be skeptical about 9/11.

Be honest. That is not what you really mean, is it? What you seem to really mean is don't be skeptical of me, be skeptical of "them".

I don't mean that you have to accept a conspiracy theory,

Yes. It does. That is the goal being sought, because...

but questioning narratives seems like it should be part of the package of skepticism.

The working assumption of the CT is that debunkers have not already examined the common narrative and asked pertinent questions and recieved valid answers. And they have. And the CT crew don't much like it because they do not have any answers. Therefore they resort to sniping from the sidelines. That is all they have to offer. No narrative of their own, just many contradictory narratives no two of which agree.

The speed with which buildings went down is "a reason" to question things, even if it is not conclusive what that all means.

Nope. It really isn't. I would bet you cannot even express what exactly is the problem with the speed the buildings went down, nor state what speed they went down at, nor why that may or may not be wrong. I will further bet that in response, you will copy pasta long discredited claims from long discredited websites composed by long discredited authors.

If you have something new and original then by all means, share.

 

[jay howard]

In addition, the WTC towers did not have fires that slowly ramped up in size and severity. They had multiple vertically adjacent levels involved in large area fires within seconds of impact.

How hot were these fires? Do you think the UL workstation burn tests were not a good way to assess the temperature parameters for the towers?

You're so incurious that it seems you couldn't care less what the temperatures were.

In addition, the towers had structural damage to parts of several vertically adjacent floors. That would stress floor sections next to them.

Ok, so what's your hypothesis? Is it falsifiable? That is, can you be wrong about it?

In addition, the towers were reacting to the loss of perimeter columns and tilting which again puts an additional stress on floor pans connected to core and perimeter

How does that explain the core structures for both buildings being destroyed at the bottom floors? Whatever strange phenomenon happened, it appears to have happened at least twice that day, and maybe 3 times?

With such a popular collapse mechanism, why is there such a gaping void in experimental confirmation?

Jay H, how did the tests account for the other stresses on the trusses?

They were loaded to their maximum rating. Two of the truss sections allowed for expansion. Two did not. Do you think this line of questioning is going to allow you to ignore the results of the tests? It has that feeling to it...

What was the initiating failure that led to global collapse? Hint, was it floor failure.

You mean the floor truss sections that held up the floors? The same truss sections that the simulation had sagging 40 inches? The ones that when heated to a higher temperature than was even possible in the towers with hydrocarbon fires sagged 3 inches?

How are the truss sections supposed to pull the perimeter walls in if they exhibited less than 3 inches of sag in real life? Any way you cut it, the NIST model is bunk.

It's time to re-evaluate the facts and come up with a better theory that explains what happened. There are simply too many contradictions, incoherecies and assumptions that are not warranted by the data to take the NIST explanation seriously.

 

[JayUtah]

It's time to re-evaluate the facts and come up with a better theory that explains what happened.

Then do so.

 

[DGM]

You mean the floor truss sections that held up the floors? The same truss sections that the simulation had sagging 40 inches? The ones that when heated to a higher temperature than was even possible in the towers with hydrocarbon fires sagged 3 inches?

How are the truss sections supposed to pull the perimeter walls in if they exhibited less than 3 inches of sag in real life? Any way you cut it, the NIST model is bunk.

Was the heat the only force the simulation applied to the trusses? Be honest............

You're showing a prime example of why the engineering world ignores you.

 

[NoahFence]

Then do so.

I think we're supposed to do the work for him.

Problem is we already have and draw the same conclusions as reality.

 

[rakovsky]

It looks like I got a mix of answers, some agreeing with me that the answer to the poll question should be "Yes", some perhaps not agreeing (83% voted No). Let me restate it:

Being a general skeptic and having a skeptical approach means that you are skeptical about things, particularly widespread viewpoints. It means that you question those things. So if the topic like an official narrative on a major event like 9/11 comes up on a forum for skeptics, then skeptics would be one of the first groups to question and be skeptical about the common viewpoint on the issue.

The poll question is "Is there a legitimate reason to question the official narrative?" Naturally, skeptics would be one of the groups most inclined to answer "Yes" in contrast to other social groups, as they would naturally tend to question such narratives. The question here is not whether there is a legitimate reason to reject the official narrative, nor whether there are more reasons than not to question the official narrative. All it's asking is whether there is a single, legitimate reason to even question the official narrative.

The official narrative is made up of many claims, like the buildings falling at near free fall speed, or the identities of 19 hijackers being known, or a plane hitting the pentagon, or the same planes that were labeled hijacked being the same ones that hit the targets, or the government lacking foreknowledge of a plan to attack the WTC on that date, or many other claims. To find a legitimate reason to question the narrative made up of all these claims, all you need to do is find a legitimate reason to question one of these many official claims, not to accept or reject the official narrative.

So this is a simple question. The BBC reported that several people with names and identities that are listed as those of the hijackers are alive and have contacted authorities asking to be taken off the official list of attackers. A BBC report is definitely a legitimate reason to question whether in fact the official list is correct, because the BBC is a reputable news source. You don't have to accept the BBC as ultimate truth to question the narrative on the attackers' identities, all you need to do is accept that it's a legitimate news source giving a report that contradicts the official narrative in order for you to ask the question.

And in fact there are many more news reports that give claims of fact that contradict the official narrative on many issues like those I listed. The existence of such reports is grounds to question that narrative, since contradictions are grounds for questioning things.

The answers from some posters here seems to be that they have investigated the official narrative and critics' answers and decided those critics lack enough basis to reject that narrative. Some posters seem to go further and say that since the correct responses have been given, there is no longer any basis for questioning. I disagree from the viewpoint of people who are by nature "skeptics". A skeptic need not always reject official narratives, but he/she should always have a skeptical, questioning approach. Once they say there is no more any reason to ask any questions of an official narrative, the person has left the attitude of a strong skeptic of mainstream views.

Let's take a few examples. A mainstream view is that 1+1 is always 2, and that the earth is a sphere. Probably a big majority of people believe this. However, a strong skeptic will even question these things. My brother took a deep physics class and learned that sometimes even such elementary math equations do not always require the accepted answer to be the only real answer. Additionally, some physicists might tell you that the earth is actually oval shaped, rather than a pure circle. I believe a geocentric model can really be made of the universe. The mainstream view would be that all of my ideas are ridiculous, and yet skeptics who do think about the issue should be the first to question it, try to see whether a geocentric model is even conceivable, etc. However, a skeptic whose questions have all been answered to his satisfaction and declares that there is no more any reason to ask a question on the issue is no longer a skeptic on the topic.

Further, what if all the questions have been answered to near total certainty? With so many contradictory alleged details in such a major national event, i am very skeptical that this is the case. Take for example Mohammad Atta drinking alcohol and violating Islamic rules before an Islamic attack. There might be a good reason for this (going undercover), but it's still strange enough for Muslims to at least leave a reasonable doubt about what they were doing.

In other words, with many contradictory news reports, legitimate reasons exist to ask whether the official narrative is correct. And, with so many very details and facts making up the official story across the nation, it's extremely doubtful that every part of the story has been so absolutely proven that there is not even a real reason to even ask a question about any part of it.

So my question then is why would 83% of self-identified skeptics answer in this clear poll that they accept a far-ranging, detailed narrative so dogmatically that they cannot even entertain any more questions at all?

(A) Do such a large number of intelligent people misread the poll question,
(B) Have they lost their ability to see reasons to even ask questions, or
(C) Are they so absolutely well-informed that they practically know that nothing exists that could raise any question about the official narrative anymore?

 

[chrismohr]

Jay, You repeat the Thread title, "Is there a legitimate reason to question the official narrative?" My answer is yes. But picking up on DGM's post above, "who is qualified to really question the official narrative?" would be a good secondary question to ask. There are a few people here, like Ozeco41 and JSanderO, who may be qualified to question the narrative because of their technical expertise. There are other people and organizations, like CTBUH, Purdue, FEMA, Universities in Hawaii and Cardiff, who tested the original narrative of the NIST Report and gave their technical answers. Some had minor to perhaps moderate challenges to the collapse initiation sequence proposed by NIST. None of them trashed the report as thoroughly as you do, and all of them reject the CD hypothesis.
I know that all the claims you make in your posts here seem major, even devastating, to you. But neither you nor I have the full context to make an actual judgment as to how serious (if at all) these accusations are.
If you believe these are deadly serious flaws in the NIST Report, you need to go to a truly independent structural engineering firm and show them your concerns and get a report from them. WHY HAS NO ONE DONE THIS?
You said, "neither you nor anyone else here can explain how the core structures were obliterated." I can't explain it, and neither can you, but I did notice that the aerial shot of the collapse of one of the Towers clearly showed the core collapsing last, even though Gage says the core has to be destroyed first. And he went on to say that the core was destroyed by tons of nanothermite. At that moment in the collapse, those several dozen fully exposed floors of the core (no dust to obscure the view in the aerial shot) should have shown a 20-story "candlestick" burning brighter than the sun if it were nanothermite. Looks to me like maybe the core came down without blindingly bright nanothermite at all. And it looks to me like it came down slower because the core provided more resistance. Just a layman looking with his own eyes.
Maybe your concerns and critiques are valid. I'm not saying you are unqualified to share your incredulity. Just don't try to convince me. Your incredulity is not evidence, but if you are right, it IS a place for YOU to start a real investigation. Take it to real structural engineering experts who know the full context. Get that independent investigation Gage and others keep saying they want. But if you hire them and they say, actually, the beams and columns could have failed in the real world because the thermal expansion lab tests don't show the whole picture, will you accept their answer? I couldn't understand the thermite-in-the-dust paper from 2009, so I hired Jim Millette. I was willing to accept either answer he gave me. His answer: NO THERMITE in the dust. Would you accept an answer from a totally independent structural engineering firm that specializes in tall buildings? (Hint: the answers can already be found with Purdue, CTBUH, Hawaii, Cardiff, MIT and other major institutions if you want to save a LOT of money).

 

[Grizzly Bear]

For the most part the the information possessed today is more developed than the available information we had 13 years ago. The investigations into the collapse of the buildings for example have been satisfactorily resolved for several years now.

Is there variation in this for other facets of the attacks? Certainly, but for the core aspects the large scale picture is answered to the degree that inside job is not likely nor proven