jay howard
Muse
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2007
- Messages
- 627
To begin to have a dialogue about the adequacy of the NIST report, we cannot simply approach an interlocutor with a lump-sum of data that only corroborates itself from its own perspective. For the skeptics sake, this dialogue must begin at the beginning. With that, please read this whole thing, because pieces of it will come up again.
Without omnipotence, we will always fall short of absolute truth. There is no way around this. Anyone who doubts this needs to read and understand Kant before proceeding. That said, every bit of evidence is open to interpretation. However, at some point, if none of the evidence to support a position can be verified, or it turns out to be based on unverifiable claims, or is in contradiction to well-designed tests, then that evidence must be weighed against the entirety of the claim: what S. Pepper calls “danda corroboration.”
Because our human nature makes it difficult to admit when problems exist in our theories, we can appeal to a set of criteria from which all theories can be judged. These criteria do not care about anyone’s political agenda nor are they affected by tricks of logic.
These criteria exist in response to real-world epistemic conditions. That is, these criteria are not designed to be able to tell which theory is “true” and which is “false,” but which theory is better designed to answer the question at hand. In the real world, “truth” bears no capital “T”. If it did, we would need no such standards, and we would not need evidence and argument to bring us to conclusions. This epistemic problem goes much deeper than this introduction can even allude to, however, we can (and do, everyday,) make judgments regarding the probability of certain events: i.e., that the oxygen in the room will remain relatively evenly distributed; that our vehicle will not explode without forewarning; that our chair will sustain our weight, etc. These are reasonable probabilities on which most of us waste little deliberative thought. The fact remains that these judgments are probabilities, not guarantees.
Please bear with me.
Parsimony—also called Ockham’s Razor—states that of two competing theories with equal explanatory power, the simplest theory is more theoretically appealing than the more complicated one. Strictly defined, parsimony demands us not to “multiply entities beyond necessity.” In terms of JFK, the “lone assassin” theory (LAT) better meets this standard as it has fewest moving parts: crazy assassin, high-value target. Whereas the alternative theories require government-mobster collusion, coordination across time and space and through multiple levels within our own government, etc. Not very parsimonious.
Explanatory power: Simply put, the theory that explains the most phenomena and disregards the least evidence is the more powerful theory. Put another way, if theory A must disregard some evidence, and theory B does not, theory B is a better theory. This ties directly with the choices noted above to wit, evidence in contradiction to an explanation requires either the dismissal of the evidence or a shift to a more powerful theory—or a more powerful version of a theory. When taking into account the Zapruder film, we cannot deny the apparent snap of the President’s head toward the lone assassin. The (LAT) cannot account well for this evidence and is thus thrown into doubt despite its parsimonious nature.
Experimental repeatability: The events espoused by a theory should be repeatable or at least observable in analogous circumstances. Theories that hinge on results that are unrepeatable are suspect as unlikely. See “Falsifiability” below.
As a further explication of the above criteria, we should recognize that theories that fly in the face of long-standing, fundamental principles (otherwise known as “laws of physics and thermodynamics”), are highly questionable, and require very strong evidence to even consider as plausible, much less as likely explanations.
Falsifiability: If there do not exist any criteria by which a proposition might be false, then it is not really an explanation at all. That is, if there is no way a theory could be false, then there is no way that theory could be right. For a theory to be a contender explanation, it must be possible for the claim to be wrong. If I claim that you have a scorpion on your face, but you cannot see it, feel it, get stung by it or otherwise test for it in any way, then the claim is indistinguishable from its denial. There is no way to prove or disprove it, so functionally, it is meaningless. Undetectable scorpions play a larger role than for which we give them credit, however, they bring us no closer to discerning fruitful probabilities from wild speculation.
If we suspect a theory of being unfalsifiable, we may check to see what conditions would satisfactorily take it out of the running as a likely explanation. For instance, if the neighbor claims to have talked to a demon, what possible criteria could be employed to dissuade such a view? None exist. The statement is only useful science if our object of inquiry were our neighbor’s mental processes and should not be used to explain physical phenomenon. Such views should be quickly identified and sifted from plausible explanations of the world—or incorporated into theories that account for moon-bat neighbors. These all seem like things that don’t need to be pointed out, however, the emotional power of an American mass murder can be more persuasive than logic.
This is where the initial question for anyone’s theory needs to start. So let's do a thought experiment:
Take your favorite position on the cause of the WTC towers collapse and ask: "What conditions would need to be met in order to disprove my theory?"
If I believe mini-nukes brought down the WTC buildings, and I know that any fission reaction will produce high amounts of tritium or tritiated water, then my theory can be false if we only find background levels of tritium or strontium-90 or other by-products of a nuclear fission reaction. If any of these fission by-products are found, we do not have sufficient grounds to dismiss the mini-nukes theory altogether; however, if none are found (above background levels), then we need to just depart from that theory because it doesn't help us predict evidence or otherwise make sense of the situation.
If one must alter the evidence to fit the theory, there is a very good chance that the theory is either incomplete or completely wrong.
If I believe in the CD theory, and subsequent lab experiments show that floor trusses do, in fact, fail at the temperatures we have evidence for, then my CD theory fails in terms of parsimony because there's no need to throw in extra entities to account for the evidence.
Given all this, is there anyone who believes the NIST report meets these criteria as a good theory?
I’ve laid this all out before, but the conversation has only resulted in a lot of accusations of how ignorant I am of the NIST report. Thought I’d give you guys a shot at an adult discussion.
Without omnipotence, we will always fall short of absolute truth. There is no way around this. Anyone who doubts this needs to read and understand Kant before proceeding. That said, every bit of evidence is open to interpretation. However, at some point, if none of the evidence to support a position can be verified, or it turns out to be based on unverifiable claims, or is in contradiction to well-designed tests, then that evidence must be weighed against the entirety of the claim: what S. Pepper calls “danda corroboration.”
Because our human nature makes it difficult to admit when problems exist in our theories, we can appeal to a set of criteria from which all theories can be judged. These criteria do not care about anyone’s political agenda nor are they affected by tricks of logic.
These criteria exist in response to real-world epistemic conditions. That is, these criteria are not designed to be able to tell which theory is “true” and which is “false,” but which theory is better designed to answer the question at hand. In the real world, “truth” bears no capital “T”. If it did, we would need no such standards, and we would not need evidence and argument to bring us to conclusions. This epistemic problem goes much deeper than this introduction can even allude to, however, we can (and do, everyday,) make judgments regarding the probability of certain events: i.e., that the oxygen in the room will remain relatively evenly distributed; that our vehicle will not explode without forewarning; that our chair will sustain our weight, etc. These are reasonable probabilities on which most of us waste little deliberative thought. The fact remains that these judgments are probabilities, not guarantees.
Please bear with me.
Parsimony—also called Ockham’s Razor—states that of two competing theories with equal explanatory power, the simplest theory is more theoretically appealing than the more complicated one. Strictly defined, parsimony demands us not to “multiply entities beyond necessity.” In terms of JFK, the “lone assassin” theory (LAT) better meets this standard as it has fewest moving parts: crazy assassin, high-value target. Whereas the alternative theories require government-mobster collusion, coordination across time and space and through multiple levels within our own government, etc. Not very parsimonious.
Explanatory power: Simply put, the theory that explains the most phenomena and disregards the least evidence is the more powerful theory. Put another way, if theory A must disregard some evidence, and theory B does not, theory B is a better theory. This ties directly with the choices noted above to wit, evidence in contradiction to an explanation requires either the dismissal of the evidence or a shift to a more powerful theory—or a more powerful version of a theory. When taking into account the Zapruder film, we cannot deny the apparent snap of the President’s head toward the lone assassin. The (LAT) cannot account well for this evidence and is thus thrown into doubt despite its parsimonious nature.
Experimental repeatability: The events espoused by a theory should be repeatable or at least observable in analogous circumstances. Theories that hinge on results that are unrepeatable are suspect as unlikely. See “Falsifiability” below.
As a further explication of the above criteria, we should recognize that theories that fly in the face of long-standing, fundamental principles (otherwise known as “laws of physics and thermodynamics”), are highly questionable, and require very strong evidence to even consider as plausible, much less as likely explanations.
Falsifiability: If there do not exist any criteria by which a proposition might be false, then it is not really an explanation at all. That is, if there is no way a theory could be false, then there is no way that theory could be right. For a theory to be a contender explanation, it must be possible for the claim to be wrong. If I claim that you have a scorpion on your face, but you cannot see it, feel it, get stung by it or otherwise test for it in any way, then the claim is indistinguishable from its denial. There is no way to prove or disprove it, so functionally, it is meaningless. Undetectable scorpions play a larger role than for which we give them credit, however, they bring us no closer to discerning fruitful probabilities from wild speculation.
If we suspect a theory of being unfalsifiable, we may check to see what conditions would satisfactorily take it out of the running as a likely explanation. For instance, if the neighbor claims to have talked to a demon, what possible criteria could be employed to dissuade such a view? None exist. The statement is only useful science if our object of inquiry were our neighbor’s mental processes and should not be used to explain physical phenomenon. Such views should be quickly identified and sifted from plausible explanations of the world—or incorporated into theories that account for moon-bat neighbors. These all seem like things that don’t need to be pointed out, however, the emotional power of an American mass murder can be more persuasive than logic.
This is where the initial question for anyone’s theory needs to start. So let's do a thought experiment:
Take your favorite position on the cause of the WTC towers collapse and ask: "What conditions would need to be met in order to disprove my theory?"
If I believe mini-nukes brought down the WTC buildings, and I know that any fission reaction will produce high amounts of tritium or tritiated water, then my theory can be false if we only find background levels of tritium or strontium-90 or other by-products of a nuclear fission reaction. If any of these fission by-products are found, we do not have sufficient grounds to dismiss the mini-nukes theory altogether; however, if none are found (above background levels), then we need to just depart from that theory because it doesn't help us predict evidence or otherwise make sense of the situation.
If one must alter the evidence to fit the theory, there is a very good chance that the theory is either incomplete or completely wrong.
If I believe in the CD theory, and subsequent lab experiments show that floor trusses do, in fact, fail at the temperatures we have evidence for, then my CD theory fails in terms of parsimony because there's no need to throw in extra entities to account for the evidence.
Given all this, is there anyone who believes the NIST report meets these criteria as a good theory?
I’ve laid this all out before, but the conversation has only resulted in a lot of accusations of how ignorant I am of the NIST report. Thought I’d give you guys a shot at an adult discussion.
