Cont: The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VI

[Mojo]

What exactly are you trying to insinuate now? We have a summer island in the archipelago. We have reached it by various means over the years. There have been many occasions when boats of all different shapes and sizes have been in the picture. There were two occasions I was adrift, or seemed to be, as obviously, I am here today, once in a rowing boat when as a small child (the oarsman who was taking us was completely drunk, my mother realised too late) and the other was speedboating with friends when it dawned on me my good friend had lost his bearings and had no idea where we were, nothing but empty sea on all sides. That was my fear but we made it back safely eventually.

Is that adequate for you?

Not really, because it still doesn't explain why you said that an incident you had previously said involved a speedboat was "quite apart from ... speedboats".

The most parsimonious explanation is that you had simply forgotten what you had previously posted about it.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

...

So a whole load of lifesaving equipment, including the two switched-off auto EPIRB's all washed up together

Just a reminder that you have failed to show any model of EPIRB existed which was immersion-activated but could be switched off.

The service manuals which were linked to when all of this was exhaustively discussed before implied no such model existed.

Also can you address the discrepancy between your claim the two EPIRBs washed up together and Andy's claim one was found washed up and the other found by fishermen? What is your source please?

 

[zooterkin]

I get that being 'one of the lads' and 'lad's honour' is more important to several on here than objective impartial truth.

When the laddish backslapping and laddish backing each other up is all said and done, the fact remains that the Estonia was fitted with HRU-activated automatic EPIRBs designed to emit a signal when immersed in sufficient water to trigger the breaking of the HRU seal.

It is a shame that intellectual integrity is not considered of importance but having seen the state of UK news media no wonder people are prepared to accept any old disinformation and not feel any discomfort about it despite knowing it is mostly selective rubbish. So no surprise the same goes for here.

(ETA: I realise I will probably be severely punished for stating this.)

More deflecting nonsense.

How do you seriously expect to proceed here? You make daft accusations, they are shown to be daft with references to external documentation. You go away, then come back with exactly the same nonsense again. How should we engage with you to progress?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Because the Estonia was sabotaged. The two EPIRB's which had been inspected the week before and in operating order (tuned and set in their cages) had been removed. The evidence for this is that they turn up together, washed up on the shore together with a pile of life vests and other life-saving equipment. Yes, shipwrecked stuff floats but how likely is it that all of this stuff is all found together all in the same place. They would have all have had to drift together in one big group 200 kms to this one little shipping village in Estonia. IMV it seems very likely to me, all off this was either dumped before the voyage or someone gathered all of this up with malevolent intent.

https://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/art-2000003371303.html

So a whole load of lifesaving equipment, including the two switched-off auto EPIRB's all washed up together but yet no bodies. So much of it, they had to store it in a warehouse.

Lies from a liar

One was recovered from the sea by a fishing boat, one was found washed up

There is one switch on a buoy, it manually activated it.
There is no switch to stop it being activated on immersion.
They do not need to be tuned. Everything is preset by the manufacturer. There are no user serviceable parts.

Stop repeating obvious lies

 

[phiwum]

Not really, because it still doesn't explain why you said that an incident you had previously said involved a speedboat was "quite apart from ... speedboats".



The most parsimonious explanation is that you had simply forgotten what you had previously posted about it.

Really, her boating history is irrelevant. If you want to catch her in an inconsistency, might as well focus on something relevant.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

 

[zooterkin]

Because the Estonia was sabotaged.

 

[JayUtah]

Because the Estonia was sabotaged.

So, a conspiracy theory.

Yes, shipwrecked stuff floats but how likely is it that all of this stuff is all found together all in the same place.

Quite likely, if you understand wave action.

IMV it seems very likely to me, all of this was either dumped before the voyage or someone gathered all of this up with malevolent intent.

But then you don't know the underlying sciences and you have no experience in the investigation of shipping accidents. So your "IMV" boils down to, "I'm super ignorant, but I'm going to pretend that this somehow gives me super human powers to sit in judgment on those who aren't."

Not to mention that none of these saboteurs found it necessary to spread out the debris so as not to make it look suspicious. In conspiracy theories, the "saboteurs" are always a strange mix between incredibly clever (so that they can fool all the experts of the world) and incredibly stupid (so ignorant lay people can figure out the conspiracy).

 

[Mojo]

Yes, that's the entire argument: she knows the Estonia was sabotaged because of the conspiracy and she knows there's been a conspiracy because the Estonia was sabotaged.

 

[Mojo]

Really, her boating history is irrelevant. If you want to catch her in an inconsistency, might as well focus on something relevant.

Perhaps, but she did bring it up to support a claim of experience of maritime matters. In fact, it seems from what she's posted recently that she wasn't actually adrift on either occasion, just lost.

 

[JayUtah]

Of course the preliminary report is going to say that. What did you expect it to say?

The Swedish government already knows what caused the accident. The problem is how to spin it to the public so that they will accept it without demur.

So not just "current events." You were all excited at the prospect of a new investigation. You tried to argue that just undertaking it was proof there was enough doubt over the JAIC report (which you dismissed as a conspiracy). Now that the new investigation is on track to confirm the JAIC findings, you need to expand your conspiracy theory to encompass it.

 

[JayUtah]

Really, her boating history is irrelevant.

On this point, yes. But I disagree in general. Most conspiracy theorists—Vixen included—want to measure the propriety of events against their own experience. "It happened this way, but I say it should have happened that way." Thence a conspiracy to produce "suspicious" evidence. In most of these cases it's necessary to test the validity of the claimant's expertise or experience. Otherwise the reasoning boils down to begging the question.

At the end of a long career in science and engineering, I learned this from lawyers. Often the most powerful question you can ask is, "How do you know that?"

Here Vixen has made inconsistent claims to maritime experience, just as she has made inconsistent claims about her education in other areas such that she can bring expertise to bear. Some of us believe that she habitually lies about her past depending on what expertise it's expedient in the moment to claim.

 

[phiwum]

Perhaps, but she did bring it up to support a claim of experience of maritime matters. In fact, it seems from what she's posted recently that she wasn't actually adrift on either occasion, just lost.

I don't doubt that she brought it up. She makes lots of eminently mockable claims, but I would still prefer to see the discussion focus on things relevant to the Estonia rather than focusing on her silly but irrelevant claims.

Same thing goes with the continual return to issues like whether 700 deg temperatures could be attained outside of the laboratory. When that first came up, it was relevant to the disaster because she was using this claim as evidence for some sort of foul play. But that's one of the things she's actually admitted was in error and has dropped, so why do we return to that silliness again and again? Because it's low-hanging fruit, just an easy opportunity for mockery.

Just would be better to focus on the current (if repetitive) discussion, as Jay and Andy do so well.

Of course, just my worthless opinion.

 

[Vixen]

I don't doubt that she brought it up. She makes lots of eminently mockable claims, but I would still prefer to see the discussion focus on things relevant to the Estonia rather than focusing on her silly but irrelevant claims.

Same thing goes with the continual return to issues like whether 700 deg temperatures could be attained outside of the laboratory. When that first came up, it was relevant to the disaster because she was using this claim as evidence for some sort of foul play. But that's one of the things she's actually admitted was in error and has dropped, so why do we return to that silliness again and again? Because it's low-hanging fruit, just an easy opportunity for mockery.

Just would be better to focus on the current (if repetitive) discussion, as Jay and Andy do so well.

Of course, just my worthless opinion.

Re the heat issue. This is what Professor Ida Westermann had to say. She specializes in metallurgy; in particular, deformation.

According to the experts who spoke at the press conference today, including the metallurgical expert Ida Westermann at the Norwegian University of Technology NTNU, several damages can only have occurred because the ship's steel has been exposed to heat of over 850 degrees. She had polished a piece of metal from the visor and then looked at microstructures in the plate through a microscope, which she says indicate that the metal had been exposed to very high heat.

- It is only at a bit over 850 degrees that the steel starts to deform, she says at the press conference.

She then shows another piece of metal from the visor where damage is visible to the naked eye. This injury has also been analyzed under a microscope by her, and the conclusion is clear.

- This requires very high temperatures and a very high pressure to occur. And if you compare this formation to this joint here, it's very similar to what you see after explosion welding, except we have this waveform that's only about 0.2mm high.

She then shows another image where the metal has undergone a solidification process, which requires temperatures of over 1,200 degrees for ship steel.

- What you see here is a solidification structure, there is no doubt about that, she says.

- This has been exposed to a temperature of around 1,200 degrees.

https://www.friatider.se/1200-graders-varme-bakom-estonia-skador

No doubt, all the naysayers will come out and claim they know better than an expert and that she is wrong.

 

[Vixen]

You didn't understand it or the 'expert' is ****

It is true that Prof Ida Westermann is not a lad.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

No doubt, all the naysayers will come out and claim they know better than an expert and that she is wrong.

People will only say what they said last time: The report is consistent with steel which has been welded.

Your unfamiliarity with what welding actually is then led you to doubt this simple explanation could be the case. You were wrong.

It's surprising that you return to this matter again. It's as if you failed to absorb the information first time around.

 

[Vixen]

Lies from a liar

One was recovered from the sea by a fishing boat, one was found washed up

There is one switch on a buoy, it manually activated it.
There is no switch to stop it being activated on immersion.
They do not need to be tuned. Everything is preset by the manufacturer. There are no user serviceable parts.

Stop repeating obvious lies

The Estonia EPIRB's were mounted in brackets designed for free-floating automatically activated EPIRB's and with a hydrostatic release unit.

A fact cannot be a lie.

 

[Vixen]

People will only say what they said last time: The report is consistent with steel which has been welded.

Your unfamiliarity with what welding actually is then led you to doubt this simple explanation could be the case. You were wrong.

It's surprising that you return to this matter again. It's as if you failed to absorb the information first time around.

Can I take it that you are better qualified in deformation metallurgy than Professor Ida Westermann? A cold objective scientist, by the way, interested only in observable and replicable results and with a high statistical confidence level.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

The Estonia EPIRB's were mounted in brackets designed for free-floating automatically activated EPIRB's and with a hydrostatic release unit.



A fact cannot be a lie.

No. They were not solely compatible with auto-activating EPIRBs. The implication that they were is your own invention and is not true.

 

[Vixen]

So not just "current events." You were all excited at the prospect of a new investigation. You tried to argue that just undertaking it was proof there was enough doubt over the JAIC report (which you dismissed as a conspiracy). Now that the new investigation is on track to confirm the JAIC findings, you need to expand your conspiracy theory to encompass it.

If the cause of the accident was sabotage, then that is a matter for the police or the military security service if it is a national security issue. In other words, if it is classified information, then of course the various investigations can only report on mundane descriptive matters, such as how the bow visor fell off.

You note it didn't bother explaining why the EPIRB's were not activated. Skipped right over that it!

 

[JayUtah]

Same thing goes with the continual return to issues like whether 700 deg temperatures could be attained outside of the laboratory. When that first came up, it was relevant to the disaster because she was using this claim as evidence for some sort of foul play. But that's one of the things she's actually admitted was in error and has dropped, so why do we return to that silliness again and again? Because it's low-hanging fruit, just an easy opportunity for mockery.

In this case, Vixen lately asked for list of her allegedly absurd claims. It's one thing to have made a mistake and then left it behind. It's another thing to insinuate the mistake was never made. But the exchange :—

Forum: "You've made absurd claims, therefore we don't take you seriously."
Vixen: "No I haven't! What absurd claims?"
Forum: [posts a list]
Vixen: "Why do you keep dredging this stuff up?"​

illustrates that it's really just a rhetorical game being played here, not any sort of debate or investigative exercise.

Just would be better to focus on the current (if repetitive) discussion, as Jay and Andy do so well.

But not with infinite patience. You can only tell someone so many times that automatic release does not equate to automatic activation before realizing you're just being taken for a ride. Nobody is legitimately that thick.

Why do we engage? For the same reason everyone—no matter who they are—slows down to gawk at the road accident. It's hard for a skeptic to pass up such a train-wreck of reasoning. Once we engage, the rules of this forum compel us to assume sincerity on the part of the claimant. This creates quite a playground were one side can be as deliberately irrational as they want, and the other is constrained to be serious.

Let's be clear: there is no legitimate doubt about the causes of this accident, except for interesting but ultimately inconsequential detail. None of what Vixen is claiming has the slightest toehold in reality. So every form of engagement will be, to some extent, an exercise in Absurdity Management. No amount of sober or fact-filled refutation will affect someone who is determined to be irrational just to see what mischief they can stir up.

This leads us to consider Zooterkin's dilemma: how shall we treat such a person? The right answer in the world at large might be simply to ignore it. Here in our little microcosm, a reasonable answer might be, "Like the misbehaving child she acts like."

Of course, just my worthless opinion.

No, it's worth considering. Self-policing is a skeptic virtue.