• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

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

Status
Not open for further replies.
Vixen said:
You are talking down to a psychology postgraduate here.
Click to expand...

A direct claim to expertise in Psychology.

You're doing that thing where you try to conflate your interlocutors statement you've made a claim of expertise with the distinct claim no one made that you claimed to be an expert. It's exceptionally rude and dishonest.
 
Vixen said:
You are doing it again. You are employing the logical fallacy of invective which is a close cousin of the ad hominem.
Click to expand...

1. That's not invective, it's an accurate summary of events.

2. Invective isn't a logical fallacy even if I was employing any.

3. It's got nothing to do with ad hominem anyway, which is the assertion that you are wrong because of a perceived personal flaw in yourself. That is to say, you're wrong because you're ugly or similar. It does not cover claims about your abilities that are directly related to the thing you're wrong about even if I was incorrect in my assessment. Stating "you're wrong because you don't understand this" is not an ad hominem.
 
Vixen said:
"put blame on the crew" - there we have it in a nutshell. The case is closed. The crew have been dealt with.

Someone here said it was unkind to do that. I think 'vile' was the word used.
Click to expand...
So you disagree with the two journalists that wrote that book. Ok, that's all fine.

That has of course nothing to do with the Swedish prosecutors decision on not to prosecute. You now have (my summary of) the facts regarding that, as well as a link to the source material.

If you want to show that there is some other reason behind that decision, all you need to do is to provide evidence for it. Speculation is not evidence.
 
Vixen said:
I am not at all a conspiracy theorist and never have been. I started this thread in Current Affairs but people who knew very little about the incident decided it was some kind of conspiracy theory like 9/11, the Apollo Moon Landing or Covid Vaccines. They could not see that this was not a group of enthusiastic pontificators, the investigation into the Estonia accident has been brought about by the governments of Estonia, Sweden and Finland. It involves the shipbuilders. It involves investigative journalists and quality newspapers.
Click to expand...

Speaking as a reformed conspiracy theorist, you are most definitely a conspiracy theorist. I never thought of myself as anything but a "fact-finder", a person who was willing to look deeper beyond what the status quo and teh eebil gub'mint wanted me to believe. I was a thorn in the side of the establishment by spreading "The Truth".

I made the same obvious mistake you're making now: I assumed those "journalists" who wrote articles and books about the "truth" of various historical events knew what they were talking about, and were objective, and used quality sources for their works. Turned out that all of them either half-assed their work, or flat-out fabricated their version of events.

In short, I was a conspiracy theorist because I willingly believed obvious lies.

In the case of the Estonia, only one journalist has pushed the conspiracy and she has been sanctioned for unethical behavior. This last "documentary" team cropped their images to push the lie of explosives. And while this forced a new investigation, you are already discounting the results because they prove you'd been wrong...which is not something a skeptic does, but something a conspiracy theorist does.

Then there are those like yourself who think it is like some argument about religion or philosophy and think all you need do is scornfully ridicule everything as though everything is hinged on whether a person 'believes' or 'disbelieves'.
Click to expand...

No, he just wants facts he can assess. You have yet to present any facts.

Here's the thing, my hobby is ghost hunting. I've been on this board for years without problems because I don't make posts about ghosts because I have no hard data to present to support what I think. If I were to make a post where I spout off a bunch of claims (as you do), I would expect the same treatment if I had no linkable data to post which supported these claims.

As a ghost hunter I've dealt with people like you for decades. They need to believe their charming Victorian is haunted, and it didn't matter that I pointed to the copper pipe rattling against the floorboard in the basement as the source of the mysterious tapping, they still tell people the place has a ghost. Because it makes them special.

I am a hardheaded realist.
Click to expand...

You have yet to demonstrate this.

I am not going to say I am satisfied with the JAIC Report just out of fear that some guy on the internet might call me names because I don't conform to what he thinks is authority, because to my mind they haven't answered the questions people are asking and I am not going to pretend that they have.
Click to expand...

1. Nobody has ever been 100% satisfied with any accident report in the history of accident reports and inquiries.

2. Not all questions can be answered.

3. Not all questions are created equal, and many do not deserve answers.

4. Conspiracy Theorists ignore the answers and or bury them with new questions.

It might work for someone who wants to be one of the lads but it doesn't work on me. There is strong peer pressure on this forum to conform
Click to expand...

And yet I still investigate ghosts, after the years I've spent on this forum. There's no peer pressure here, just a standard to which claims must have supporting evidence. You have presented no evidence.

and most people are too timid to do anything other than assume the Estonia investigation is based on conspiracy theory because 'conspiracy theory' is what it says on the tin, having been moved to the 'loony' thread by popular demand, as though we are discussing Grape Seed Extract or something equally trivial.
Click to expand...

Bad news, the grape seeder person linked to woo websites, just as you link to questionable sources to support your unfounded claim of sabotage.


You might be smart but it is clear you have never actually put your mind into actually looking into the issues. You have just assumed the eye-witnesses are all mistaken just because you saw somewhere someone saying the 9/11 eyewitness were all wrong. It is a very shallow superficial way of looking at a serious issue, if you don't mind my saying so..
Click to expand...

But he's not questioning the integrity of the Estonia witnesses, just your misinterpretation of their statements. Conspiracy loons take the statements that the passengers heard explosions as meaning explosives were used. Normal people look at the facts and understand that the mult-ton bow visor made those explosive sounding noises, which supports the evidence found at the wreck site. Estonia was a huge Ro-Ro ferry with a long hollow midship compartment. That bow visor banging into the hull would have sounded like a canon. No reasonable person would be surprised if the survivors thought they heard an explosion.

But the wreck has now been extensively surveyed and no signs of explosions or explosives were found.

He's not being shallow, he's pointing out your claims have no merit.
 
It all follows the same paths of myth-making as religion and overly-revered historical figures.

"God of the gaps" reasoning.

Every inconsistency, subtle incongruity, or deviation from theoretical statistical expectations is explained by this one grand unifying theory of "they did it."

Why is the sky blue? Because God. Why do cats meow? Because God.

My friend is a veterinarian and says it's this other reason based on biology. You're ignorant and lack faith!

Why is Rome located where it is? Because Romulus and Remus.

Why do we have 12 tribes? Because Romulus and Remus.

Why can't Plebs become Consul? You're ignorant and a traitor to your class!

Why do we celebrate 4th of July? Because the founding fathers.

Why did we start with 10 amendments? Because the founding fathers.

Why did we keep slavery for decades and why do schoolchildren have to practice being murdered? HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THE FOUNDING FATHERS, YOU ARE NO PATRIOT!

Same thing here, really.

Why did the bow door/visor/ramp fail? They did it.

Why did the beacons not activate? They did it.

Why did people who were on a ship that sank in a storm drown? CAN'T YOU SEE?! THEY DID IT!

Of course, usually the gaps thing at least retreats to the ever-shrinking gaps.

Yeah, nevermind. This is either pure ignorance or intentional performance.
 
Andy_Ross said:
Survival in a ship sinking quickly in a storm at night in northern waters is a lottery. It's a matter of luck rather than skill. If you don't get to a raft or have a good immersion suit you are probably dead whatever training you have.
If you don't get off the ship at all you are just as dead.
Click to expand...

That ship was a nightmare to escape from just looking at the pictures of the interior. Throw in the survivor's testimonies and it's amazing anyone lived at all.
 
Vixen said:
Please provide the post which you claim you are referring to.
Click to expand...

You know very well which one it is. It's been linked more than once today.

Vixen said:
When you said I 'clamed to be an expert in psychology' please provide the post in which you claim I said this so that we are not talking at cross purposes.
Click to expand...

Straw man. What I said was :—

JayUtah said:
You claim to have expertise in psychology, yet you seem unable to do more than foist straw men when presented with an argument in that field.
Click to expand...

This

Vixen said:
Please stop with the rationalizing and the pop-psychology. You are talking down to a psychology postgraduate here.
Click to expand...

is a colorable claim to expertise. You then tried to walk it back with this :—

Vixen said:
I didn't say I was an expert. But I do recognize pop-psychology when I see it - it is everywhere.
Click to expand...

You couldn't get past the second sentence of your post without equivocating the claim again. Then you went off on an irrelevant rant which I suspect you intended to distract us from your flip-flopping.

Later you added :—

Vixen said:
You have already been told my dissertation was on the subject of memory.
Click to expand...

which is certainly also colorable as a claim to expertise. I would expect someone who wrote a dissertation on memory as a post-graduate student to be able to discuss at a knowledgeable level the work of some of the eminent peer-reviewed researchers in the field. Yet you simply dismiss them as frauds with no attempt to engage the content of their work. It takes no special brains to do that. And I would expect someone who elected to study psychology more than most people to take some interest in the peer-reviewed research into the phenomenon of conspiracism—especially when that person is mired in a debate over whether some set of propositions is a conspiracy theory. But again we get nothing more from you than what we can expect a disgruntled lay person to throw out in desperation. You dismiss it as "pop-psychology" without being able to engage the content.

Then we get the cryptic

Vixen said:
Being a chartered professional is considered postgraduate.
Click to expand...

Was your post-graduate study in accounting or psychology? You gave your specialization initially as psychology, and now it seems to have switched to accounting. And when asked to reconcile claims such as this, you respond

Vixen said:
Oh no, I am not laying myself open to abuse.
Click to expand...

You really don't have much room to complain about how you're being treated. You're making contradictory claims to expertise and evading questions intended to clarify that. This is especially egregious considering all the past times in which you've misrepresented your education, your experience, or other premises intended to form the foundation for your statements.
 
I lost sleep this weekend watch EV Nautilus dive the wrecks of the USS Yorktown and the Japanese carrier, Kaga live on their Youtube channel. The damage from explosions is still visible after 70+ years. Yorktown is sitting upright in deep mud, so they can't see torpedo damage, yet no one will claim there is no torpedo damage. No one will claim either ship sank for reasons other than what has been detailed in the historical records of the US Navy and the Japanese Navy.

The point is the new investigation cannot hide the facts and evidence. Not with the hundreds of people involved in this project from all different nations. Many of the tech people weren't even born when the Estonia sank, so they have no emotional ties to this mission other than their job.

Oh, and the Yorktown looks fantastic for her age.
 
Vixen said:
"put blame on the crew" - there we have it in a nutshell. The case is closed. The crew have been dealt with.
Click to expand...

Operator error, negligence, or misfeasance accounts for a substantial percentage of transportation accidents. Maritime shipping is notorious for this. (See e.g. Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents.) While it may seem callous to draw such a conclusion when the operators are among the victims, it is nevertheless a reality of transportation engineering. You seem to want to dismiss these findings as inappropriately perfunctory, but you provide no detail. You seem able only to offer an emotional reaction.
 
Mojo said:
You were claiming to have postgraduate expertise in psychology, not accountancy.
Click to expand...

Neither of which, even if true, have zero relevance to the discussion of the mechanics of a ferry sinking. Vixen has provided more than ample evidence that she has no relevant expertise of any type related to the topic. When she tries to throw her crap against the wall literally nothing sticks.
 
Steve said:
Neither of which, even if true, have zero relevance to the discussion of the mechanics of a ferry sinking. Vixen has provided more than ample evidence that she has no relevant expertise of any type related to the topic. When she tries to throw her crap against the wall literally nothing sticks.
Click to expand...

Psychology is a little relevant when we're discussing how properly to treat witness testimony as evidence. When the body of evidence combines witness testimony and circumstantial evidence, the process of reconciling conflicts in that evidence requires some expertise in psychology and cognitive science. We've pointed to well-regarded, peer-reviewed psychology research to justify where in some cases we've prioritized circumstantial evidence over witness testimony in the MS Estonia question.

But also Mark Corrigan and I have had a tangential discussion on the psychology research into conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists. He asked some questions that I was able to answer in part from my experience and in part from my knowledge of the relevant scientific literature. That doesn't directly relate to the MS Estonia incident or investigations, but it does seem marginally on-topic.
 
JayUtah said:
Psychology is a little relevant when we're discussing how properly to treat witness testimony as evidence. When the body of evidence combines witness testimony and circumstantial evidence, the process of reconciling conflicts in that evidence requires some expertise in psychology and cognitive science. We've pointed to well-regarded, peer-reviewed psychology research to justify where in some cases we've prioritized circumstantial evidence over witness testimony in the MS Estonia question.
Click to expand...


If the witness testimony is contradicted by the physical evidence, the only role psychology is going to have is to try to explain why the witnesses were mistaken.
 
Mojo said:
If the witness testimony is contradicted by the physical evidence, the only role psychology is going to have is to try to explain why the witnesses were mistaken.
Click to expand...

Yes, for evidence that's reasonably self-conclusory. Circumstantial evidence combines a physical observation with one or more inferences that develop the observation into evidence aimed at a particular question. It's proper to challenge those inferences as part of weighing the evidence, and that's a more accurate depiction of what happens in a forensic engineering investigation.

Let's say we recover a jet engine from a crash site. We find plant matter from the site in the combustor inlets. This is a physical observation. We infer that the engine was running at the time of impact, because experiments show that's the only way you'll get that kind of fouling. If the pilot says, "No, the engine was stopped," then we want to develop that evidence further by additional questioning to see how well founded it is. And we will also develop other circumstantial evidence such as readouts from the DFDR. If the N1 RPM channel reads out at 73% at the end of the recording, then this is also circumstantial evidence that the engine was running. The unstated inference is that we take that value to be a true measurement. While that's usually a strong inference, we reserve the right to circle back to it if needed as we go.

And in this toy example we have a consilience of circumstantial evidence that recommends strongly against taking the pilot's word—however well intentioned it is. Two different kinds of circumstantial evidence incorporating two different modes of inference point to the same conclusion: the engine was running at impact. But we don't just ignore the pilot's statement. In a proper investigation we'll want to carefully interrogate him to discover how he determined the engine was stopped and look for assumptions or openings for error along the way.

We do this because too often a witness statement contains its own inferences that we need to challenge. We hope to peel back the layers of inference that the witness may have applied and get to the raw physical observation. And at the same time, the witness inference may be important and part of the evidence. We just need to correctly separate it. Expert witnesses in or out of a legal setting are entitled to have their inferences given greater weight.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom