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Any Conspiracy-Busters here?

thesyntaxera said:
Maybe not. However, science is conducted by people with personal points of view and their limited perceptions. Like you already know, people can look at the same data and draw completely different conclusions.
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I get the feeling you, at most, glanced at my link.
Through the scientific method, we aim for objectivity: basing conclusions on external validation. And we avoid mysticism: basing conclusions on personal insights that elude external validation.

Science leads us toward rationalism: basing conclusions on logic and evidence. And science helps us avoid dogmatism: basing conclusions on authority rather than logic and evidence.

It is important to recognize the fallibility of science and the scientific method. But within this fallibility lies its greatest strength: self-correction.

A scientific law is a description of a regularly repeating action that is open to rejection or confirmation.

Scientific progress is the cummulative growth of a system of knowledge over time, in which useful features are retained, and nonuseful features are abandoned, based on the rejection or confirmation of testable knowledge.
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thesyntaxera said:
Well...I certainly didn't imply anything that you are listing above. That much is certain. What I was saying is that your opinion on this matter is based on your limited perspective...ie your perception.
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All of those things I listed were discovered by humans with limited perception and their own point of view. Do you believe they're correct? If so, why?
thesyntaxera said:
Don't you think there is a bit a facism involved when you try to convert a mass of people over to your way of thinking even if your ARE more correct than the person you seek to convert?
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But isn't that what you're doing now? It's amazing how your philosophies always break down as soon as we examine your very own behavior. That suggests to me that you don't think very much or very well.
thesyntaxera said:
I repeat, I do believe what I am typing, unless you can provide some empirical data to suggest otherwise, and thus convert my pov of my pov...
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I already have. If you actually believe everything is just a matter of perception and that it is fascist to try to change someone's point of view, you wouldn't be posting here trying to convince me that your view is correct. Your own posts are empirical data of your hypocracy.
 
chipmunk stew said:
Science is not a post-modern exercise. The philosophy you're espousing flies in the face of hundreds of years of contributions made by this enterprise that have added vastly more to the base of human knowledge than any other method of pursuit.
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So scientists aren't people with personal points of view who are limited by their perception? Post Modernism has little to do with any of this...as I said I am trying to steer clear of all that murk...regardless of your views on that vein of philosophy humans are still limited to their senses and previous data.

A simplified way of saying this...Science is the data and the process used to collect it...what we make of it is up to our brains to interpret, which ultimately falls on our perception, preconceived notions, and previous experiences...etc...
 
All of those things I listed were discovered by humans with limited perception and their own point of view. Do you believe they're correct? If so, why?
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They are good idea's with data to back them up...how does that equal an absolute belief?

But isn't that what you're doing now? It's amazing how your philosophies always break down as soon as we examine your very own behavior. That suggests to me that you don't think very much or very well.
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I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything...nothing could be more clear. I have challenged the arguments and methods that you are using to debunk this particular conspiracy claim...and as I have stated, this case is not unlike a lot of cases where pov is based on who is looking at the data.

I already have. If you actually believe everything is just a matter of perception and that it is fascist to try to change someone's point of view, you wouldn't be posting here trying to convince me that your view is correct. Your own posts are empirical data of your hypocracy.
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Like I said before, if I were trying to convince you of something I would be claiming something else as the truth. All I am trying to get you to do is admit that there are certain fallacies in pure skepticism when it comes to things like this...and especially with the sort found in these forums. It's like a bunch of dejected teenagers banding together to give themselves self worth by aggrandizing how clear their view of reality is.
 
thesyntaxera said:
They are good idea's with data to back them up...how does that equal an absolute belief?
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Do you believe they are true or do you not believe they are true?
thesyntaxera said:
I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything...nothing could be more clear. I have challenged the arguments and methods that you are using to debunk this particular conspiracy claim...and as I have stated, this case is not unlike a lot of cases where pov is based on who is looking at the data.
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Nothing could be more clear? Everything you typed there is trying to convince me of something.
thesyntaxera said:
Like I said before, if I were trying to convince you of something I would be claiming something else as the truth. All I am trying to get you to do is admit that there are certain fallacies in pure skepticism when it comes to things like this...and especially with the sort found in these forums. It's like a bunch of dejected teenagers banding together to give themselves self worth by aggrandizing how clear their view of reality is.
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You are trying to convince me that you are not trying to convince me of something. Do you realize how silly that is in the context of this discussion?
thesyntaxera said:
Don't you think there is a bit a facism involved when you try to convert a mass of people over to your way of thinking even if your ARE more correct than the person you seek to convert?
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I guess you're a bit of a facist.
 
thesyntaxera said:
So scientists aren't people with personal points of view who are limited by their perception? Post Modernism has little to do with any of this...as I said I am trying to steer clear of all that murk...regardless of your views on that vein of philosophy humans are still limited to their senses and previous data.

A simplified way of saying this...Science is the data and the process used to collect it...what we make of it is up to our brains to interpret, which ultimately falls on our perception, preconceived notions, and previous experiences...etc...
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What you're missing is that science isn't just collecting data. It's a process to interpret the data, too. When done right, it limits the influence of our subjective biases. The process is designed such that investigations can be replicated by those who don't share the same biases. Because of this, science has a self-correcting attribute such that over time the knowledge built using this method tends ever closer towards a true representation of reality.

As a practical example, we can collect data about a set of correlated events, and our subjective biases may make us inclined to attribute a causal relationship between them. To remove this bias, we set up a double-blind experiment that tests for cause and effect. The results of the experiment hopefully shows us that a) the causal relationship exists or b) it does not. If we've documented our experiment properly, then it can be replicated, or flaws can be discovered in our methodology. If our methodology is good, our experiment is replicated independently, and the results are similar, we have good evidence that our results are sound. The more the experiment is replicated with similar results, the stronger our evidence becomes.
 
chipmunk stew said:
What you're missing is that science isn't just collecting data. It's a process to interpret the data, too. When done right, it limits the influence of our subjective biases. The process is designed such that investigations can be replicated by those who don't share the same biases. Because of this, science has a self-correcting attribute such that over time the knowledge built using this method tends ever closer towards a true representation of reality.

As a practical example, we can collect data about a set of correlated events, and our subjective biases may make us inclined to attribute a causal relationship between them. To remove this bias, we set up a double-blind experiment that tests for cause and effect. The results of the experiment hopefully shows us that a) the causal relationship exists or b) it does not. If we've documented our experiment properly, then it can be replicated, or flaws can be discovered in our methodology. If our methodology is good, our experiment is replicated independently, and the results are similar, we have good evidence that our results are sound. The more the experiment is replicated with similar results, the stronger our evidence becomes.
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I agree completely with what you are saying. I am just failing to see how that was done in the case of the Official 9/11 investigation. Skeptics explaining this away is just the same as a CT'ist explaining it away. Both are using the same evidence with the same holes and filling those holes with whatever they chose.

This article more succintly describes what I am getting at:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0427-29.htm
 
delphi_ote said:
Do you believe they are true or do you not believe they are true?

Nothing could be more clear? Everything you typed there is trying to convince me of something.

You are trying to convince me that you are not trying to convince me of something. Do you realize how silly that is in the context of this discussion?

I guess you're a bit of a facist.
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Apparently cleverness is not a requisite? I sort of figured that ninja aren't known for their ability to lighten up.
 
thesyntaxera said:
I agree completely with what you are saying. I am just failing to see how that was done in the case of the Official 9/11 investigation. Skeptics explaining this away is just the same as a CT'ist explaining it away. Both are using the same evidence with the same holes and filling those holes with whatever they chose.

This article more succintly describes what I am getting at:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0427-29.htm
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You don't seriously believe that the official investigations and the truth movement investigations approach the evidence with equivalent methods, do you? The author of this article doesn't.

Let's take the explosions heard at WTC:
The CT improperly concludes that this points to explosives and seeks further evidence to support this conclusion.
The professional investigator properly considers explosives as one of many possibilities, checks the evidence to see if there's a hint of what one should expect from explosives--explosive residue, recovered detonators, witness accounts of unusual activity, an unusually large purchase of explosives, video/images/eyewitness accounts consistent with intentional detonations, etc.--and if the corroborating evidence is not strong, he rejects the possibility in favor of more mundane possibilities.

There's simply no conclusive evidence proving what these explosions were, and there probably never will be. They will forever be a hole in the story, open to some degree of speculation. But explosives is probably the worst, most weakly supported possibility. Explosions are common in large fires and were not unexpected or surprising to people who deal with large fires.

If the author has looked further into the holes he lists since April, he hopefully has discovered that many of the issues raised have been addressed squarely and adequately (not "explained away") and that others turn out to be irrelevant since they don't undercut the OV in any meaningful way. (In the case of WTC7, the "smoking gun" of the CT's, there's not even a finalized OV to criticize yet!)
 
thesyntaxera said:
So scientists aren't people with personal points of view who are limited by their perception?
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Of course they are. But the number of different scientists on the same subject makes it less likely that a mistake will go unnoticed. It increased objectivity. That's the whole point of peer review.
 
thesyntaxera said:
Apparently cleverness is not a requisite? I sort of figured that ninja aren't known for their ability to lighten up.
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Oh, I'm being light hearted. These philosophies aren't something I take very seriously at all. Sorry if I gave you the impression I was upset.
 
The thread that started it all! Now that the 9/11 Truth Movement is nothing but an insignificant ghost of its former self, I thought it’d be a great service to all our fellow debunkers to dig up the first thread here to see how all our debunking careers began.

I have two questions to the veterans who’ve been doing this since the beginning. 1. Why did it take until 2005/2006 for 9/11 Conspiracy Theories to start spreading rapidly on the internet, instead of let’s say... right after 9/11. 2. Why did it only take until about three years ago for 9/11 theories to almost completely die off. Most of us assumed they’d fade away after Loose Change stopped being popular in 2006. Nope they kept spreading online. We thought Bush leaving office would be their demise. Nope, they kept spreading in 2009 and the years that followed. We hoped the death of OBL in 2011 and the 10th anniversary of 9/11 would cause the theories to fade away. Nope, they were still popular online. The 15th anniversary? Still around. Yet the years 2017/2018 showed a rapid decline in support for the theories, as evidenced even here in this sub-forum, where 9/11 CT threads declined to only once a month or less.
 
MrFliop said:
The thread that started it all! Now that the 9/11 Truth Movement is nothing but an insignificant ghost of its former self, I thought it’d be a great service to all our fellow debunkers to dig up the first thread here to see how all our debunking careers began.

I have two questions to the veterans who’ve been doing this since the beginning. 1. Why did it take until 2005/2006 for 9/11 Conspiracy Theories to start spreading rapidly on the internet, instead of let’s say... right after 9/11. 2. Why did it only take until about three years ago for 9/11 theories to almost completely die off. Most of us assumed they’d fade away after Loose Change stopped being popular in 2006. Nope they kept spreading online. We thought Bush leaving office would be their demise. Nope, they kept spreading in 2009 and the years that followed. We hoped the death of OBL in 2011 and the 10th anniversary of 9/11 would cause the theories to fade away. Nope, they were still popular online. The 15th anniversary? Still around. Yet the years 2017/2018 showed a rapid decline in support for the theories, as evidenced even here in this sub-forum, where 9/11 CT threads declined to only once a month or less.
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I think it's interesting that 9/11 conspiracy theories declined just as Trump and QAnon became infamous.

People became too involved in debating those things to have time to argue about 9/11 and its minutiae.

The woo from Trump and Q was coming in so fast, the old 9/11 CTs got swamped.
 
MrFliop said:
The thread that started it all! Now that the 9/11 Truth Movement is nothing but an insignificant ghost of its former self, I thought it’d be a great service to all our fellow debunkers to dig up the first thread here to see how all our debunking careers began.

I have two questions to the veterans who’ve been doing this since the beginning. 1. Why did it take until 2005/2006 for 9/11 Conspiracy Theories to start spreading rapidly on the internet, instead of let’s say... right after 9/11. 2. Why did it only take until about three years ago for 9/11 theories to almost completely die off. Most of us assumed they’d fade away after Loose Change stopped being popular in 2006. Nope they kept spreading online. We thought Bush leaving office would be their demise. Nope, they kept spreading in 2009 and the years that followed. We hoped the death of OBL in 2011 and the 10th anniversary of 9/11 would cause the theories to fade away. Nope, they were still popular online. The 15th anniversary? Still around. Yet the years 2017/2018 showed a rapid decline in support for the theories, as evidenced even here in this sub-forum, where 9/11 CT threads declined to only once a month or less.
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Sweet effing jeebus, it's been fifteen years. There are fora where you'd be lucky not to be banned for that sort of necro.
 
Orphia Nay said:
I think it's interesting that 9/11 conspiracy theories declined just as Trump and QAnon became infamous.

People became too involved in debating those things to have time to argue about 9/11 and its minutiae.

The woo from Trump and Q was coming in so fast, the old 9/11 CTs got swamped.
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In that case I think it's more along the lines of 911 Truthers looking at Qanon idiots and asking out loud how anyone can be so stupid, and then having a painful self-awakening.
 
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