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The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VII

JesseCuster said:
Also. you were asked what you meant by open-minded, not someone on Quora's made-up definition of "original thinker".
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This is a particular idiom among conspiracy theorists across different conspiracist genres. When claimants lack the knowledge and skill to support their claims, they resort to aspiring to a different kind of thinking that is alleged to be more effective than traditional knowledge. They fancy themselves to be "free thinkers" who instinctively and intuitively understand things differently than experts who are tied to outmoded or regimented methods, and are thus able to arrive at creative "solutions" only they would be able to find. Obviously this just tries to rewrite ignorance and supposition to look like virtues.

Ironically conspiracy theorists are usually the least open-minded because as a precondition to their claims they have precluded the possibility that the conventional narrative is right. And far from thinking independently, they generally glom onto some attractive claim made by others without any desire to approach it critically.
 
JayUtah said:
This is a particular idiom among conspiracy theorists across different conspiracist genres. When claimants lack the knowledge and skill to support their claims, they resort to aspiring to a different kind of thinking that is alleged to be more effective than traditional knowledge. They fancy themselves to be "free thinkers" who instinctively and intuitively understand things differently than experts who are tied to outmoded or regimented methods, and are thus able to arrive at creative "solutions" only they would be able to find. Obviously this just tries to rewrite ignorance and supposition to look like virtues.

Ironically conspiracy theorists are usually the least open-minded because as a precondition to their claims they have precluded the possibility that the conventional narrative is right. And far from thinking independently, they generally glom onto some attractive claim made by others without any desire to approach it critically.
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Kind of like the Russians with their Smekalka nonsense.
 
Vixen said:
I haven't said his ideas were sound. Stop sneaking words into my mouth.
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Er,
Vixen said:
When it comes to basic buoyancy, his reasoning is perfectly sound. He is an MSc in Naval Architecture. Compare and contrast to the M/S Jan Heweliusz, a ferry in terrible condition, hit by winds of 44 m/s yet none of its windows smashed allowing the ingress of 4,000 tonnes as it capsized. So it floated upside down on the water for at at least five hours. Estonia sank almost immediately. You really don't need to be a rocket scientist to want to understand how and why. Captain Mäkelä expressed surprise there was no sign of it at all when he arrived as CSO. Seriously, are you really saying people shouldn't be interested in it because <fx Baldrick voice> 'It bain't be for the likes of us, Sir'. For goodness sake, it is common or garden current affairs news.
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(Highlighting mine)
 
Andy_Ross said:
It also ignores that a ships 'superstructure' isn't water tight and would flood anyway even if the windows didn't break.
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Obviously. I've stood in the engine spaces of some ships where you can look up and see blue sky. Björkman does not ignore downflooding per se. He admits that it happens, but does not account for it in the subsequent stability model. This amounts to the need for a step 1E′ in his diagram that reads essentially, "And then a miracle occurs." When @Vixen tried to school us on roll stability and metacentric height, I asked her how the model would need to change to account for downflooding. She had no answer, and that's because it's something Björkman wrongly pretends doesn't matter and therefore leaves out. The best way for pseudoscience to fool lay people is to deny them some essential bit of specialized information that changes the outcome. What remains seems reasonably sound; the lay audience has no way of knowing that it's incomplete and wrong. This is what Björkman did, and why his claims are properly disregarded by actual experts.
 
Mojo said:
Incidentally, Vixen was unable to say what "on her beam ends" meant when asked.
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I remember that, which is why I mentioned it again here. These are phrases that people understand even when they are only casually informed and interested about the stability of ships.

Further, the notion of an "intact hull" (see Björkman's figure 1F) is another telltale. Björkman correctly begins with the intact-hull model of stability, although he just pulls all the relevant parameters out of some bilge scuttle and performs no calculations to arrive at his answers. But then he continues to use the intact-hull model after the accommodation of downflooding should have rendered it inapplicable.

Björkman's method is incorrect, but not solely in this way. Nevertheless it is egregiously wrong. In case there's any remaining doubt, his technical argument regarding MS Estonia is just as stupidly wrong from a physics perspective as his claims about nuclear weapons and space engineering.

Then at the end he offers up his own private definition of "intact hull." Not only is it at odds with the definition from naval engineering (which gives rise to the model he pretends to use), it is factually incorrect even according to his own definition. But @Vixen's ongoing misunderstanding of what constitutes an intact hull is—surprise, surprise—exactly the same characteristic, unique, wrong way that Björkman defines it. It's not a matter of being "open-minded" or an "original thinker." It's just wrong. And it's wrong in a way that points straight back only to Anders Björkman.
 
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Vixen said:
"We b'aint be able to identify the guy on the bridge Sir but some guy with a tattoo on his hand is under the cabinet -"

"Don't worry about it - it's all gonna be in Swedish, so no-one cares."
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Can you quit playing games and answer the simple question about what's so funny or ludicrous about the idea that the crew on the bridge would be wearing emergency gear instead of formal uniforms when the ship was foundering?
 
JesseCuster said:
Can you quit playing games and answer the simple question about what's so funny or ludicrous about the idea that the crew on the bridge would be wearing emergency gear instead of formal uniforms when the ship was foundering?
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That is a tough one for Vixen. It was yet another infantile knee-jerk post that she really doesn't understand why she made it.

Memory issues - both short and long term.
Childish knee-jerk posts.
Confusion.
Trouble understanding simple statements.

Sometimes when persons reach a certain age.....
 
Steve said:
That is a tough one for Vixen. It was yet another infantile knee-jerk post that she really doesn't understand why she made it.

Memory issues - both short and long term.
Childish knee-jerk posts.
Confusion.
Trouble understanding simple statements.

Sometimes when persons reach a certain age.....
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... they think they're a 99-er?
 
Mojo said:
When was it debunked?
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According to a 2014 BBC article, some time ago. The mother and daughter team who created it based it, more or less, on Carl Jung's ideas, but it may be better explained by the Barnum Effect. People do believe odd things. According to "Which Disney Character Are You?" I'm Pecos Bill, though my wife insists I'm Goofy.

Now back to your regularly scheduled topic....

ETA: I should never anticipate Jay Utah! Thank you, sir.
 
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