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Skeptisism vs Cynicism on 911

Hyperviolet said:
I understand your point of view, and that your just trying to be objective and free of bias.

However, if i say "The Earth is really cube shaped" - there should be no expectation for you to take me seriously or even consider my deluded outlook unless i provide real evidence of this claim. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Also, if after my cube theory is debunked and then i say "Aliens live in the core of the earth" - should you be expected to take me seriously, especially after my last claim was wrong?

You have to draw a line somewhere. If real evidence is submitted: it will be tested truly and fairly. Until that, there is no reason for anyone here to write an essay on why Aliens dont live in the core of the earth.
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Good point.
You are catching my drift. Write the post, please do...
Rules in the OP, Good luck

SYL :)
 
Gravy said:
THANK YOU. I'm not a dentist, you know. Perhaps you should amend your OP, since it seems to say the opposite.

No, I stopped taking essay assignments with word counts in high school.

Sure. I have no idea what opinion you're talking about, but you're welcome to it.

All done, teach.
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Too bad
 
Stellafane said:
Here's my two cent's worth:



I don't think so. However, you may have a stronger point if you're referring to skepticism about conspiracy theorists. When I see a new one posting here, I have to fight off the impulse to automatically think, "Here we go again." Not that it's an entirely unfounded impulse -- after all, just how many times have we seen CTers come here and do one of the following: (1) come out with both guns blasting, all conjecture and insults, or (2) start off with some "I'm a skeptic, I'm just asking questions" ruse, which quickly morphs into full frontal denier mode as soon as the poster is challenged. The one thing both approaches have in common is an utter disregard for actual dialogue; the goal apparently is for us to listen and agree, nothing else. See this enough times, and it's virtually inevitable to conclude all 9/11 CTers are like this, so the next new one gets painted with the same old brush. That's cynicism of a sort I suppose, but it may be arguably justified.



"Missionaries" is sort of a loaded word in a skeptic forum. I think we're missionaries when we're so invested in our views, we're no longer open to logical, verifiable information. I for one believe few if anyone here has reached that point. Show us some actual, solid evidence that the CTers are right, and I believe most here would seriously consider it. The thing is, the CTers don't have any -- real evidence that is. All they present is the same tired, old speculation, misinformation, misinterpretation, errors, and plain old lies that have been debunked 1000 times over. We have every right to continue to reject this stuff until something new and far more solid comes along, something that can stand up to scrutiny. Hasn't happened yet, not by a long shot.



Thanks, I think I get it.




I think I already answered this above.



This is where we seriously diverge. We are under zero obligation to give any idea a chance until it has been disproved beyond any doubt. In fact, the exact opposite is true. As skeptics -- indeed, as rational thinkers, however we may refer to ourselves -- it is our duty not to give any theory any consideration whatsoever until and unless there is a reason to believe it may be true. Simply because a theory hasn't been disproved "beyond any doubt" is absolutely no justification to give it even a second's worth of attention. There are literally an infinite number of ideas that haven't been disproven beyond any doubt. Theories that have actual facts to back them up, now that's a much rarer and more valuable commodity. As others have pointed out -- innumerable times -- the burden of proof rests with the theorist, not with the debunker. Failure to understand this simple but critical concept is probably the ultimate reason CT theories exist at all.



I'm not sure I agree. There's nothing wrong in believing one thing is true and another untrue, if there's evidence to back that up. An open mind is not a sieve; thoughts and beliefs are allowed to stay in once in a while.



Well, I hope I've given you civil, anyway.
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Thank you, good effort.

I'm gone take a breather, I'm beat... (it's 4.30 in the morning over here)
I will check in later to read and if needed reply to all the rest.

SYL :)
 
Hyperviolet; said:
I understand your point of view, and that your just trying to be objective and free of bias.

However, if i say "The Earth is really cube shaped" - there should be no expectation for you to take me seriously or even consider my deluded outlook unless i provide real evidence of this claim.
Click to expand...

I also understand what you are saying, but do some 20-30% of people think it is a cube? Are there forums upon forums of people who constantly address this issue? To be fair, more than a few "twoofers" exist, some aren't crazy, and some have a genuine concern for about the things this government has done in the past. Getting a picture of the globe and explaining the world is round is a lot easier to do than explaining how 2 of the largest buildings on the planet were hit by a plane and fell in an hour. There is a wide variety of "Twoofer", from "no planers" to "WTC 7 was probably a CD". It would be much easier if they were all "no plane" 'ers. I can dismiss, or draw the line on a "no plane" 'er but it really isn't so easy to dispel a "WTC fell down, thats kinda weird" 'er.
 
3bodyproblem said:
I also understand what you are saying, but do some 20-30% of people think it is a cube? Are there forums upon forums of people who constantly address this issue? To be fair, more than a few "twoofers" exist, some aren't crazy, and some have a genuine concern for about the things this government has done in the past. Getting a picture of the globe and explaining the world is round is a lot easier to do than explaining how 2 of the largest buildings on the planet were hit by a plane and fell in an hour. There is a wide variety of "Twoofer", from "no planers" to "WTC 7 was probably a CD". It would be much easier if they were all "no plane" 'ers. I can dismiss, or draw the line on a "no plane" 'er but it really isn't so easy to dispel a "WTC fell down, thats kinda weird" 'er.
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Yeah, im not referring exclusively to Sept 11th theories.

Im just touching on Syl assertion that he'll give anything a fair test with an open mind and skeptical viewpoint. This is an honest but not very practical method. Some things need to earn peoples sincerity.
 
3bodyproblem said:
I also understand what you are saying, but do some 20-30% of people think it is a cube? Are there forums upon forums of people who constantly address this issue?
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Please avoid the argumentum ad numerum. Most Americans believe in Hell. That doesn't mean they've got evidence of it.

I can dismiss, or draw the line on a "no plane" 'er but it really isn't so easy to dispel a "WTC fell down, thats kinda weird" 'er.
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What's to dispel? The burden of proof is on them. If someone presents evidence that disproves the official version, then they've accomplished something. Otherwise they're just flapping their gums.
 
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Hyperviolet; said:
Yeah, im not referring exclusively to Sept 11th theories.

Im just touching on Syl assertion that he'll give anything a fair test with an open mind and skeptical viewpoint. This is an honest but not very practical method. Some things need to earn peoples sincerity.
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Absolutely. I personally have a hard time just dismissing people who have genuine skepticism about certain events on 9/11 and government complicity. Then you combine that with books like John Perkins: "The Secret History of The American Empire" and all of a sudden things aren't so clear.
 
Gravy; said:
Please avoid the argumentum ad numerum. Most Americans believe in Hell. That doesn't mean they've got evidence of it.
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Lol, sorry about the number, I have no idea what that number actually is. I just know it's higher than the number of people that think the earth is a cube, and lower than those that believe in hell.

Gravy; said:
What's to dispel? The burden of proof is on them. If someone presents evidence that disproves the official version, then they've accomplished something. Otherwise they're just flapping their gums.
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Yah, but I was always the kid that got brought up to the front of the class to explain it to the rest. I just hate seeing people having trouble understanding something. I want to understand how they think and why they think the way they do. I'd like to help them in the process. Some aren't worth the bother, but some are. I'm not sure how to tell the difference until you give them a chance.
 
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You make it sound like cynicism is bad. Obviously, I speak only for myself (for, who in their right mind would agree with me?), but one can only be "skeptical" of claims of flying microwave ovens for so long.

Let's be honest: The 9/11 conspiracy meme is the dumbest thing to come down the pike since Scientology. THAT is quite an accomplishment.

The microcephalic mouth-breathers who eagerly bend over and take every single word ever printed on websites like prisonplanet.com and the LC forums demonize everyone who dares to disagree with them by calling them sleeping sheeple or whatever the hip agitprop phrase is these days. They divide the world (more accurately, they divide a few hundred people who read certain internet forums) into Us vs. Them, where of COURSE everything BRAVE and NOBLE is Us, the free-thinking faithful slurpers of the Alex Jones nozzle and the Dylan Avery spigot. Heretics are excommunicated at best, or accused of being "disinfo" (i.e. "in league with the devil") at worst. So far, apostate ex-truthers aren't actually being murdered as far as I know, but that's probably only because the Faithful are too lazy. In this, they are exactly like every single religious cult ever to infest the earth.

Never for half a picosecond will the CTers ever stop to wonder just how it could be that a website like prisonplanet -- hosted on servers in the US, served by ISPs in the US, and paying taxes to the US Internal Revenue Service off its significant merchandise sales can continue to function without so much as a 30 minute-long DDOS attack, "convenient" DNS resolution problems, or even slow ping times, never mind IRS audits, trumped-up child porn raids, or mysterious accidental deaths attributed to auto-erotic asphyxiation gone wrong.

Right this very moment, BUSH'S OWN ATTORNEY GENERAL IS CURRENTLY UNDERGOING A FAR MORE THOROUGH ANAL PROBE THAN ALEX JONES OR ANY OTHER SNOT-GURGLING "TRUTHER" EVER HAS.

I could drive you to a neighborhood in my city where ratting out a small-time coke dealer would land you in some serious hurt. You can find neighborhoods like this all over the US, I'm sure. Your dead ass could turn up in pieces in an industrial park, and the police would get bored investigating after a while, because it's "just another drug deal gone bad". After a while, you'd fade from the back pages and that would be that. Yet SOMEHOW CTers think that they can BLOW THE WHOLE THING WIDE OPEN OMG LOLZ, and not only do they not get poisoned by every waitress, they don't get driven to an out-of-the-way place by every cab driver, they don't get beaten within an inch of their lives on the way out of the convenience store and warned to keep their flap shut.

In China, people go to Hard Core, No-S[rule8] Prison for merely suggesting in blog posts that their government doesn't in fact poop tulips and fart talcum powder.

Yet it never crosses the little peanut minds of CTers that they're getting away with accusing what they apparently believe to be the single most evil and omnipotent power ever to grace the earth of savage crimes they only the CTers have noticed.

I speak for nobody but myself, but here is my humble curse upon you CT types:

MAY YOU DIE SLOWLY OF INSATIABLE RECTAL ITCH.

There is very little more fitting for the CT cultists than to end up as heaps and piles of dead, hemorrhaging Troofers in a black-shirted pile, each one with cheese graters, brillo pads, rusty iron shards, and discarded syringes jammed uselessly into their unquenchable itching aft port, their "INSIDE JOB LOLZ" banners smeared with bloody, finger-painted pleas to "make it stop" and "please kill me".

That's just me, of course. I'm a little cynical.
 
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SYLVESTER1592 said:
Like I said no personal attacks, I´m not looking for the animated debate. If this is your point. Write it down in the post, follow the rules and convince us in your own words of the validity of the argument either for skeptisism or cynisism.
Thank you

SYL :)

(Sorry forgot the qoute again, going too fast. This one is for ktesibios)
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It makes no sense. The 9/11 truth movement has nothing real to offer. That points to fraud and worse. I am not skeptical about it or cynical, they just have nothing to offer on 9/11. Just lies. What do you call that.

There is no question, they are all spewing false ideas. They are cynical people who make up stuff about others. They are the skeptics who do not believe airplanes can cut through steel even as it happened. The 9/11 truth movement sucks at research and critical thinking.
 
beachnut said:
It makes no sense. The 9/11 truth movement has nothing real to offer. That points to fraud and worse. I am not skeptical about it or cynical, they just have nothing to offer on 9/11. Just lies. What do you call that.

There is no question, they are all spewing false ideas. They are cynical people who make up stuff about others. They are the skeptics who do not believe airplanes can cut through steel even as it happened. The 9/11 truth movement sucks at research and critical thinking.
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I beg to differ. The 9/11 truth movement has one thing of real value to offer: an apology (to who, we all know).
 
AZCat said:
I beg to differ. The 9/11 truth movement has one thing of real value to offer: an apology (to who, we all know).
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Yes


Just replace skepticism/cynicism with disgust and we would have a real OP. They are disgusting cult members spewing false information.
 
I’ll respond to all the past comments I missed so far

Thank you 3bodyproblem and hyperviolet, I try to keep a skeptical viewpoint.

Good post by negative, fits the rules and eventhough they are not my views, well written and I understand why you feel as you do. Good job.

AZCat and especially Beachnut, glad to see ya…
I see what you mean beachnut, but I like to stick with my OP. I like to see opinions on this specific subject. Negativ showed how a post like this can be written. Your point of view sounds interesting as well. Is it different from the dichotomy of either skepticism or cynicism? How and why? I like to read more about that…sounds interesting. How did you come to that viewpoint? Something specific or more a general perception of 911 truthers?

I also like to see ktesibios’ views on this especially since I like to see all views.
Like I said I’m a skeptic not a cynic, …

I have reasons to prefer skepticism to cynicism, hyperviolet has caught on to the reasons for it. Cynicism does not work for me, not for me personally, not in my work, not in the way I think and not in the way I want to live. It ends all progress. But I understand the choice for it by others especially concerning 911, that makes it interesting. I look forward to see hyperviolet's views most, but anyone else expressing that view is also valuable to me.
3bodyproblem, I already know how you feel about this, but feel free to join in

I'll read and look forward to the posts

SYL :)
 
negativ said:
You make it sound like cynicism is bad. Obviously, I speak only for myself (for, who in their right mind would agree with me?), but one can only be "skeptical" of claims of flying microwave ovens for so long.

Let's be honest: The 9/11 conspiracy meme is the dumbest thing to come down the pike since Scientology. THAT is quite an accomplishment.

The microcephalic mouth-breathers who eagerly bend over and take every single word ever printed on websites like prisonplanet.com and the LC forums demonize everyone who dares to disagree with them by calling them sleeping sheeple or whatever the hip agitprop phrase is these days. They divide the world (more accurately, they divide a few hundred people who read certain internet forums) into Us vs. Them, where of COURSE everything BRAVE and NOBLE is Us, the free-thinking faithful slurpers of the Alex Jones nozzle and the Dylan Avery spigot. Heretics are excommunicated at best, or accused of being "disinfo" (i.e. "in league with the devil") at worst. So far, apostate ex-truthers aren't actually being murdered as far as I know, but that's probably only because the Faithful are too lazy. In this, they are exactly like every single religious cult ever to infest the earth.

Never for half a picosecond will the CTers ever stop to wonder just how it could be that a website like prisonplanet -- hosted on servers in the US, served by ISPs in the US, and paying taxes to the US Internal Revenue Service off its significant merchandise sales can continue to function without so much as a 30 minute-long DDOS attack, "convenient" DNS resolution problems, or even slow ping times, never mind IRS audits, trumped-up child porn raids, or mysterious accidental deaths attributed to auto-erotic asphyxiation gone wrong.

Right this very moment, BUSH'S OWN ATTORNEY GENERAL IS CURRENTLY UNDERGOING A FAR MORE THOROUGH ANAL PROBE THAN ALEX JONES OR ANY OTHER SNOT-GURGLING "TRUTHER" EVER HAS.

I could drive you to a neighborhood in my city where ratting out a small-time coke dealer would land you in some serious hurt. You can find neighborhoods like this all over the US, I'm sure. Your dead ass could turn up in pieces in an industrial park, and the police would get bored investigating after a while, because it's "just another drug deal gone bad". After a while, you'd fade from the back pages and that would be that. Yet SOMEHOW CTers think that they can BLOW THE WHOLE THING WIDE OPEN OMG LOLZ, and not only do they not get poisoned by every waitress, they don't get driven to an out-of-the-way place by every cab driver, they don't get beaten within an inch of their lives on the way out of the convenience store and warned to keep their flap shut.

In China, people go to Hard Core, No-S[rule8] Prison for merely suggesting in blog posts that their government doesn't in fact poop tulips and fart talcum powder.

Yet it never crosses the little peanut minds of CTers that they're getting away with accusing what they apparently believe to be the single most evil and omnipotent power ever to grace the earth of savage crimes they only the CTers have noticed.

I speak for nobody but myself, but here is my humble curse upon you CT types:

MAY YOU DIE SLOWLY OF INSATIABLE RECTAL ITCH.

There is very little more fitting for the CT cultists than to end up as heaps and piles of dead, hemorrhaging Troofers in a black-shirted pile, each one with cheese graters, brillo pads, rusty iron shards, and discarded syringes jammed uselessly into their unquenchable itching aft port, their "INSIDE JOB LOLZ" banners smeared with bloody, finger-painted pleas to "make it stop" and "please kill me".

That's just me, of course. I'm a little cynical.
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You know, this is the best summary of the complex density of stupid that the truth movement is.

You my friend, are a total LORD OF ALL FEVERS AND PLAGUES. Legend.

My two cents on the op?

Skeptical : If you believe in no plane theories, how do you account for the witnesses?

Cynical : If you believe in no plane theories, how do you account for the witnesses? You retards.

I find it hard not to be cynical when such outlandish accusations are presented. I dont see why it should approach skepticism when its not getting past simple logic issues. Some things require a better understanding of science. Some things like 'the plane flew through the smoke and away from the pentagon' are totally retarded and deserve scorn. They are not theories based in anything close to reality. They deserve cynicism and ridicule because it would only find a home next to 'the earth is flat' and other gems like 'I speak to dead people'.

Skeptical: If you follow the scientific method to the letter, removing bias and your own humility to accept the conclusions, determined or not, you will find many things about reality you never ever realised, one being that there is no 9/11 NWO conspiracy.

Cynical: If you think thousands of people were paid off to commit a huge crime, al queda dont exist and there were no planes, your a retard.

I dont need to be skeptical or nice to people who push these theories.
 
Brainster said:
1. Speaking only for myself, I'm skeptical about new claims, but becoming more cynical about claimants. I used to doubt it when somebody would post the "socks" graphic, but after seeing it turn out to be right so many times I'm inclined to believe it than not. I guess you could say that my skepticism has switched direction on that point; I used to be skeptical about claims that newbies were just socks, now I'm skeptical about claims that they're not.

The problem is that there's really very little left that hasn't been thoroughly debunked. I'd love to see something new that has at least some validity, but about all we've seen this year has been the "North of the Citgo" claim and the "WTC 7 BBC script" claim, neither of which increased my respect for the 9-11 Deniers, as the arguments were ridiculous on their face.

2. As I have given two high school lectures on the mistakes of 9-11 Denial, I could be perceived as a missionary for the official story. However, I also stress that the kids should always strive to be skeptics but not cynics, as it seems to me that the Deniers are the cynics. Remember, Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas both asserted in the debate with Gravy and Pomeroo that there was nothing that could falsify their beliefs.
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Brainster said:
Cough, cough!
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:D I'm sorry Brainster... missed that one while posting a comment to Gravy.
I have a feeling it works for most in the forum like that. You slowly shift from skepticism to cynicism. I suspect it applies to both sides, but still think it's wrong to give into that.

I might have missed a few more that were not directly aimed at me during all the hectic posts.

SYL :)
 
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My US$0.02 on this:

I don't feel that I personally am cynical at all; I don't have enough emotional investment in this place to be that way. I don't feel that I've contributed enough to the debate to have earned the right to be cynical. I come here to read the latest posts, be enlightened or entertained, or sometimes just stand in awe of the factual grasp that some of the major-league posters have on the events of 9/11 (since that's what a good 80% of the threads here are about anyway).

Certainly, though, some of us are cynical; maybe that was inborn, or we have been made that way by constant, irritating repetition to the same tired factoids and arguments. I've seen the pattern a hundred times. A new poster comes in, asks "what about (insert thoroughly debunked factoid here)?" Twenty people jump on the guy and beat him to death with facts, with a side order of ridicule.

I don't have a problem with the fact-beating. This is the big leagues of skepticism, and you'd better be ready to defend your arguments WITH FACTS. Sadly, though, the truthers can't defend their arguments, so they are treated rather more cynically than others would be.

This is the James Randi EDUCATIONAL Foundation forum. Its very purpose is to educate people regarding critical thinking. We're not missionaries for our beliefs. We don't HAVE "beliefs" as much as we have conclusions we've reached by logic, analysis of the facts, and research. We're missionaries for critical thinking.

Pretty much everything the truthers bring to the table has been critically examined and found wanting; I can understand a certain degree of cynicism when it gets brought back to the table for the hundredth time. Not from me, though; I'm just a member of the peanut gallery.

Didn't quite make 400 words, sorry.
 
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In what way does making a post between 400-1000 words make it any more valid than a shorter or longer one? In what way does making a post between 400-1000 words make it any more valid than a shorter or longer one? In what way does making a post between 400-1000 words make it any more valid than a shorter or longer one? In what way does making a post between 400-1000 words make it any more valid than a shorter or longer one?

In what way does making a post between 400-1000 words make it any more valid than a shorter or longer one?

In what way does making a post between 400-1000 words make it any more valid than a shorter or longer one? In what way does making a post between 400-1000 words make it any more valid than a shorter or longer one? In what way does making a post between 400-1000 words make it any more valid than a shorter or longer one? In what way does making a post between 400-1000 words make it any more valid than a shorter or longer one? In what way does making a post between 400-1000 words make it any more valid than a shorter or longer one? In what way does making a post between 400-1000 words make it any more valid than a shorter or longer one? In what way does making a post between 400-1000 words make it any more valid than a shorter or longer one? In what way does making a post between 400-1000 words make it any more valid than a shorter or longer one?
 
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