Call for Opinions -- Future Responses to the Truth Movement

[R.Mackey]

Quite a number of you have noted the precipitous slide of quality in the 9/11 Conspiracy Theories. There have been discussions on solving this from the side of moderation, but I would prefer that we all take responsibility for our own posts. To this end, I'm seeking an independent assessment of my own conduct. (As this is not a discussion of moderation it does not belong in Forum Management, but if the moderators feel this should be moved elsewhere, perhaps Community, I apologize. I tried to be relevant.)

In the past, I've argued against obnoxious behavior and ridicule toward the Truth Movement. I explored this in depth in my study of Irreducible Delusion, and I still believe in that conclusion. I've also suggested more profitable avenues for them and their interests, but it appears few have accepted the challenge.

However, the latest crop of conspiracy holdouts posting here doesn't really fit this model. Irreducible Delusion is an interesting mechanism in faulty logic, but where there is no logic, only blind assertion, there are no answers nor any point looking for one. You will recall that I recently attempted a thread to highlight the best Truth Movement posts, acknowledging that some among them are actually quite thoughtful, and others can be thoughtful but are merely inconsistent or biased at times. That thread fell with a dull thump, largely because, I suspect, the current active members of the Truth Movement have posted absolutely nothing that warrants a second look.

About a year ago I started a poll to see if there was anything new coming out of the Truth Movement. The answer then was "practically nothing," and my forecast proved to be accurate -- the only event of any significance in the past twelve months was the second idiotic paper from Steven Jones and company, discussed and retired here. Yet, despite their comprehensive failure, here we are. This kind of repetition will try anyone's patience.

At some point, somebody has to declare a TKO. It won't be the Truth Movement. If they were capable of it, they'd have left years ago. That duty therefore falls to us.

Yesterday I found myself engaged in a rather silly discussion that, looking back upon, I am not proud of -- yet I'm not sure how it should have been resolved. This is the opinion I'm looking for from all of you.

What I was attempting to do, of course, is provide some basic education. I provided some background reading and primary sources, explained the sources of experimental error, and clarified that the "anomaly" doesn't really exist. That failed, of course, and the resulting back-and-forth was quite familiar. Too familiar. A waste of time. I knew it would deteriorate into such, yet I was unable to avoid it.

What should I have done? What should I do in the future? What should we do?

I may or may not go along with majority consensus, but I am genuinely curious about what people think. Please share your thoughts.

 

[Baylor]

They're not here for serious discussion. They're here to act obnoxious. It takes reading an entire two of their posts to figure that out. I've said several times, the one thing that ties all truthers together is, they have a grudge against people who don't buy 9/11 truth. Homeland can barely put together a coherent sentence, yet he thinks he can "debate" anybody. It's best to ignore obnoxious behavior. My recent discussion with JihadJane has gone absolutley nowhere, which is obviously what she wanted. You're pretty good at ignoring the trolls. Why'd you let this guy get to you?

 

[CHF]

Frankly, I think the final TKO is up to us.

The handful of truthers who are left have given up entirely on doing anything constructive with their "evidence" and seem to focus entirely on debating people who can be bothered paying attention to them.

I'm at the point where I mostly just tell them to DO SOMETHING.

Work to free KSM...convince the world's engineers...talk to the FDNY...get something peer-reviewed (seriously this time)....anything other than sitting on the net making fools of themselves.

If they don't take their own nonsense seriously then why on earth should we?

 

[R.Mackey]

You're pretty good at ignoring the trolls. Why'd you let this guy get to you?

I'm only human. I screw up all the time. In my defense, I gave this guy more leeway than usual because he was so new, and so fascinatingly strange.

But I've been mulling this over for months. I think we've educated a lot of people, but they've all moved on. Can't even remember the last "fence sitter" I saw, not here, not anywhere.

 

[ElMondoHummus]

Yesterday I found myself engaged in a rather silly discussion that, looking back upon, I am not proud of -- yet I'm not sure how it should have been resolved. This is the opinion I'm looking for from all of you...

What should I have done? What should I do in the future? What should we do?

You did exactly what you should have done: You pointed out what the margin of error on seismic readings normally is in order to illuminate your point. It's just that he decided to ignore that, and that's not something you can help. Schbleep happens.

And hey, don't sweat occasionally getting silly; we all do sometimes. It's the average that counts, not any single time at bat. KreeL was saying dumb stuff, and when you care about accuracy and veracity, it's hard not to respond.

 

[Brainster]

One of our cats toyed with a field mouse, and then when it was finally dead, he tossed it up in the air so that he could continue to bat it around as if it was still dangerous.

 

[MG1962]

Ultimately it will die down and settle in next to the Bermuda Triangle, Moon Landings and Titanic theories. The hardcore will never go away, but will become increasingly cloistered in their activities

 

[Hokulele]

I voted for the "Three strikes" option, but it really shouldn't be any fixed number of strikes, but rather an established pattern of discussion. If it looks like a new member wants to try and discuss the issues, give them a fair shake. If it is clear that they are just posting to cause a reaction, be elsewhere. As usual, the easiest way to test their sincerity is to link back to an earlier thread and see if they even bother to read it or can show that they have read it and understand the points brought up previously (and yes, there is always an earlier thread that covers whatever point they are making).

That said, I would hesitate to dictate any set of rules to any group of posters on a public forum. If it doesn't violate the Membership Agreement, who am I to say what is or is not an appropriate response to something said here? I can self-police (the Ignore option being the easiest way to accomplish this), but I would hate to police others.


ETA: Nuts, I didn't realize that was a multiple-choice poll.

 

[R.Mackey]

That said, I would hesitate to dictate any set of rules to any group of posters on a public forum. If it doesn't violate the Membership Agreement, who am I to say what is or is not an appropriate response to something said here? I can self-police (the Ignore option being the easiest way to accomplish this), but I would hate to police others.

I agree wholeheartedly -- hence why this is a call for opinions only. No one is under any obligation to follow this, I'm just curious. I did ask, so I deserve whatever answers I get.

 

[ref]

I voted for "Stick around.. help the debunkers.. ignore the rest".

I have noticed I actually already do that. Although to date I have had zero people on ignore, I ignore reading their posts. Its pretty easy, actually. Just a quick glance at the poster's name, and decide not to read it. It's worked pretty well. But I have to admit, this way I have missed much of the Heiwa saga, which has actually been pretty amusing, I noticed that while reading the recent Gravy thread.

But I have absolutely no idea, why some debate Chris Sarns or Björkman (Heiwa) month after month. Both of these are 60+ year old, confused men, who have been hating the government or official accounts for decades. They will never change their minds, never.

Or the debates with the CIT gang of supporters, another ongoing fight, year after year.

Come to think of it, why debate anybody anymore.. TKO. Ding ding!

Doing this for educational purposes is one thing, but debating the same people/arguments for the zillionth time is worth nothing. At least in my opinion

 

[240-185]

Personnally, I don't think there is neither a point now to fight the Truth Movement, nor a point to have a discussion with the twoofers. Discussing with them? Pure waste of time, they are just bitching here, and they act like children. I have already ignored 4 active truthers in this subforum, completely disgusted by their way of non-discussion.

The Truth Movement is dead. It is only defibrillated when a mainstream media deals with a topic more or less related with 9/11, by flooding the comments area of one of these articles. At least, for english-speaking people.

Trutherism is more active in France. The main website against the "official" version is ReOpen911, which contains the same kind of delusioned people, invading every forum (not only skeptical ones, but forum for women, medical forums, IT forums, etc.) in order to try to deal with 9/11. It's quite proselytism. The worst is that they build their arguments on outdated data (They even don't know new papers from American Truth Movement) and on the belief that "FBI == liars". Trying to prove that the "official" version is real is just useless, unless you want to read logical fallacies or read that you are "not rational" (Irony...), "a Bush shill", or other kind of courtesy. But it's like American trutherism? Not quite. Whereas American Truthers launch these words when they haven't any argument left, these are the basics of French Truthers' reasoning.

I think the main problem is that to debate with Truthers, we must have a common reference. At this time, we don't have any.
Videos? Debunkers will refute it, they're not proving anything. Official reports? Truthers will refute it, they're official. An independant structural engineer's report trying to explain physics? Truthers will refute it, as this independant engineer will be considered as a shill more or less paid by Bush. A regular guy's report trying to explain physics? Debunkers will refute it, he's not qualified enough.

Once debunkers and Truthers will have found a common reference to start the debates, maybe the discussions would go less insane, and be more productive...

 

[Pantaz]

Since there really are no new arguments, every posting could likely be answered with just, "already answered here: [link to relevant data]".

 

[Dave Rogers]

Speaking as someone who still bothers to argue with Christopher7 and Heiwa from time to time, I voted for the politest options (although I'm well aware my own behaviour doesn't live up to that standard). My worry is that someone will read their erroneous calculations and unjustified absolute assertions, notice that nobody here is even bothering to dispute them, and start to believe that there is some substance to their arguments. However, on this particular forum I suspect that's unlikely to happen any more, because as the OP points out there doesn't seem to be anybody undecided any more.

What I think might be a timely move now, given the very much reduced level of activity, is to merge the 9/11 subforum back into the conspiracy theories forum. There's still some confusion at times over what belongs where anyway, and I suspect that the reasons for the split are no longer as compelling as they were a year or so ago when there was still a coherent truth movement to debate with.

In short, I think 9/11 conspiracy theories are falling back into the general conspiracy theory continuum. It's maybe time for us to move into the wider arena now.

Dave

 

[Bananaman]

My rational self says politeness is the best way, and I hold in high regard all those who manage it. Unfortunately, whenever I visit this site, usually after a few days away living in the real world, the insanity of troofers drives me to clatter my keyboard and vent my spleen and generally let myself go.

I assume most troofers have me on ignore, so no real harm done.

Besides, sometimes troofers needs to be told they're raving loonies.

Bananaman.

 

[GStan]

The most attractive option is to pretend to be a truther. It would be nice to have the luxury of proving my arguments without the burdens of sound logic and the need for evidence. In any case, I chose the "good guys never give up" option, as I would hate to think that even one honest fence-sitter fell victim to trutherism simply because there wasn't someone around providing a reality check. Can't save everyone, but we can save those in our own backyard.

 

[ElMondoHummus]

My worry is that someone will read their erroneous calculations and unjustified absolute assertions, notice that nobody here is even bothering to dispute them, and start to believe that there is some substance to their arguments.

This is something I think deserves emphasis. As I've said before, I've long since abandoned the idea of educating conspiracy peddlers themselves. The ones that come here are doing it more to show off ("Hey! I've fought Gravy!"...) than anything else. Rather, I view continued "engagement" as sort of a live, rolling lesson for lurkers and other future readers as to why conspiratorial fantasies are empty. Like Dave said, if someone doesn't see the rebuttals, that someone might think there's substance to the argument. And unfortunately, given the ease of clicking away to other sites, and the difficulties of searching any information, the refutations should be in reasonably close proximity to the ridiculous proposal itself, otherwise they might go unnoticed. Even if those refutations amount to nothing more than saying "No. Refuted. Link...", they should be close to the outbreak of illogic.

And even though trutherism is dead in that it's not putting forth any new hypotheses (pretty much everything I've seen has merely been new ways of stating the same old stuff that dragged me into this gig back in '06), I fear it's a mistake to think that the job of demonstrating that is done. The job of assembling refutations to the central dogma of 9/11 conspiracy fantasy is what's complete, and indeed, has been finished for years now thanks to Gravy, Mike W., the owner of Debunking911.com (sorry! Forgot your name!), Pat & James B., and others who've put up central depositories of information. But the task of showing people where that information's at and interpreting the new ways of presenting old distortions unfortunately will continue for as long as someone's willing to pitch the distortions on the other side. So there's still value to doing what we do, because there are still people willing to distort the truth. That they're predictible in what they say, and are not choosing to develop new conspiracy fantasies to peddle to others doesn't mean that there are no longer opportunities to educate.

 

[timhau]

Why is there no 'point and laugh' option?

 

[T.A.M.]

I already tend to utilize a version of "three strikes and ignore" anyway. It is a little looser then "three strikes". Basically I give everyone a chance, but the minute I hear them parroting the same stupid mantra from 2006, on ignore they go.

TAM

 

[The Big Dog]

Wait, I'm the only one who infiltrated the Truth movement?

Perhaps I should not have said that.

Well, they kept claiming that we were disinfo, so I had to make them right about one thing.

Hee hee! Look for my profile on AETwoof, LCF and PFFFT!

 

[zorro99]

I would say that the future of the Truth Movement is not very bright. As can be seen over in the KSM trial thread, the Truthers are not interested in moving their claims into any sort of public forum beyond internet message boards. I think it will become further and further marginalized until it enters the realm of Elvis sightings.