I'm just going to share an interesting tidbit from a basic psychology class I took: People's perception is rarely as good as they think it is. Eyewitness evidence, for example, is inaccurate relatively frequently compared to scientific conclusions and evidence. This doesn't mean that people that say they did or didn't see a plane are necessarily wrong, only that we need to take their claims with a grain of salt. Those people that say they saw no plane or heard something that didn't sound like a plane - do we know they were looking in the right place at the right time to see as the plane flew above them? Do we know that they know exactly what a jetliner sounds like, even if there was some type of distortion or echo effects from the environment? The people that saw a plane - from how far away, for how long? In general, I choose to trust the people that say they saw a plane. Their potential failure points seem fairly unlikely, whereas it is relatively easy to find a plausible reason why someone that didn't notice a plane could have missed it.
This video evidence of 9/11 that jammonius is focusing on is vulnerable to similar problems, namely that people tend not to realize what extraordinary or unusual events are supposed to look like. Movies and television are not good sources for this. Even actual crash/collision tests or other crashes are only good sources for comparison if the parameters are similar - size and strength of the barrier and the speed of the crashing object. Most of jammonius' examples have featured stronger barricades being hit at lower speeds - with those as a comparison, his assumption that the WTC should have stopped the jetliner is not really surprising (although still erroneous). This also applies to people saying that it didn't look/sound like a jetliner hitting a building - have any of them actually seen it happen before? In most cases, the answer is no. On top of that, with video evidence, the limits of the technology used needs to be taken into account - it can introduce minor inconsistencies like video artifacts obscuring sound or images whose presence is expected. While it is possible that these sounds or images are not in fact present, it is much more likely that their absence is due to the recording technology.
Now that I'm done amusing myself by talking to myself (since jammonius isn't going to listen), I'll finish by saying that jammonius appears to believe in some massive conspiracy that can successfully dupe 95% of the world, getting many very tricky details exactly correct, while still screwing up such incredibly obvious details as he seems to think are present. This strikes me as unlikely.
I'll just go back to lurking now. Not sure why I bothered in the first place; these points have been brought up before.
Posters and Lurkers,
As we are now on a new page, I would like to renew the call for more lurkers to post up, especially, but not only, if you saw or heard or otherwise experienced some aspect of 9/11.
The constant call for lurkers appears to be working rather well. The above quoted post is from someone with 19 posts that comes within the scope of what is meant by "lurkers;" namely, new posters.
Lyrander, welcome to the thread. Your above post adds greatly to the quality and substance of the thread. Now let's take a look at why that is so:
I'm just going to share an interesting tidbit from a basic psychology class I took: People's perception is rarely as good as they think it is.
Those who support the common storyline of 9/11 have repeated versions of what I call the hypnotically implanted suggestion* claiming that
"...thousands saw zee plane...."
This trance-like demonstration culminated in the declaration that it is not necessary to prove the claim that 1000s saw the plane,** even though the actual, reliable witness statements show that not to be the case.
The same claim was also made in a debunker youtube video that one poster thought we needed to see.***
Point blank: The claim that 1000s saw the plane is false. The reason it is false is that there were no planes there, if by plane we mean Boeing 767 jetliners.
That did not happen and the evidence confirms it did not happen.
What happened was that a PSYOP ensued, employing the latest in military technology in the realm of deception.
Afterall, posters, war is deception. That is what war entails.
Here is a mere representative sampling of posts from just the last couple of pages of posting, starting at pg. 6, claiming, in substance,
"1000s saw zee plane":
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5948930&postcount=203
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5949893&postcount=227
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5949911&postcount=229
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5949985&postcount=235
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5950005&postcount=236
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5950020&postcount=237
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5950386&postcount=258
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5955575&postcount=289
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5955711&postcount=294
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5955897&postcount=297
It is precisely in a context like that that your statement makes sense. I, myself, distinguish between eyewitness accounts that are reliably reported and those that are not. Newspaper clips that read like propaganda stories or movie scripts are unreliable because they are motivated by either biases or other ulterior motives where different
INTERESTS, including hopes for financial gain, or fame, or both are present.
I rely mostly on either police records, official business records of interviews with first responders, spontaneous utterances in real time video and audio clips, and similar sources that have a rational basis for relying on the source. I also rely on lurkers and posters here.
I assume what people say about 9/11 will be true, even though, in a certain sense, posters are anonymous.
Here are the main sources of witness statements that I consider reliable (there are others, but these are the main ones):
1--
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packag...12_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_full_01.html
The above is the best source of witness statements.
2--
http://adam.pra.to/public/mir/www.th...a-transcripts/
Police Reports, Group 1
100 pages, 9.1 megs
Police Reports, Group 2
98 pages, 10.6 megs
Police Reports, Group 3
100 pages, 8.8 megs
Police Reports, Group 4
94 pages, 7.9 megs
3--
The Dick Oliver videos
4--
The Ginny Carr audio
5--
The ALL 43 video
6--
The CM video
In those sources, the number of people who either saw no plane, or report seeing or hearing only an explosion outnumbers those who say they saw a big widebody jetliner and it is not even close.
Plus, the total number of reliable witnesses who report either seeing/hearing or not seeing/hearing a plane is less than 500.
There simply aren't that many reliable witnesses
one way or the other.
Eyewitness evidence, for example, is inaccurate relatively frequently compared to scientific conclusions and evidence.
Actually, one needs to be careful here. Scientific conclusions and evidence can be more reliable than eyewitness information, but that is not always true. Furthermore, the most important element here is that scientifc conclusions and evidence still need to either
MATCH that for which reliable observations have been made; or, at a minimum, explain and acknowledge when, how and by what means the scientific data do not match the observable data.
Observable data are more important than scientific abstractions, when such abstractions either stand alone, with no observable data backing them, or do not match the data dervied from observed phenomena.
The above is a statement of epistemological preference. I will defend it as needed.
I will address more of your post in other posts and I hope you will choose to broaden the discussion that your excellent post has opened up.
Welcome to the thread.
*
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5949942&postcount=234
**
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5955898&postcount=298
***
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5955483&postcount=281