Hi, Folks.
This will be my last post in this subforum. I'll be posting in other subfora and will be getting involved in other skeptical pursuits, but will still be available for 9/11 questions, interviews, debates, etc. if need be, so don't hesitate to let me know if I can help.
I'm looking forward to getting back to exercising my baritone in my much-neglected vocal group, The Free Kix: The Official Barbershop Quartet of Major League Soccer:
[qimg]http://911stories.googlepages.com/FRDevr.jpg[/qimg]
The Free Kix
I've been planning to move on for some time. I don't have anything new to offer, the truthers are out of ideas, and the current crop of deniers posting here consists mostly of whining children and self-debunking delusionists.
I was going to share with you a study (mostly a time study) I did of truther-rationalist interaction on this forum, but I've decided against it. How people choose to spend their time here is their own business. I will point out that in the past month these 10 people have made 80% of the truther posts (listed alphabetically):
bofors
Christopher7
GregoryUrich
Heiwa
Major Tom
Max Photon
Miragememories
realcddeal
RedIbis
Sizzler
The 20 truthers who account for the remaining 20% of posts in the last 30 days are no better.
In various email exchanges in the past 10 days I've asked truthers this question nine times: "Can you tell me one significant claim that the truth movement gets demonstrably correct?"
Not a single person had an answer. People have been touting Diane (last name?) as the most articulate truther they've come across. I asked that question of her three times. She had no answer, and became upset and accused me of "pestering" and "pressuring" tactics. It seems to me to be a simple question that any member of a "truth" movement should be able to answer immediately.
A few of the funny/sad things I mentioned in my TAM presentation were:
- Truthers stating that I am a CIA agent.
- Truthers stating that I am an evil Freemason
- A truther demonstration using aluminum soda cans as superior models to NIST's computer models.
In the week after I got back, new occurrences of these things were pointed out to me:
- Truthers stating that I am a CIA agent.
- Truthers stating that I am an evil Freemason
- A truther demonstration using aluminum soda cans as superior models to NIST's computer models.
If I'm going to be on a carousel, I'd prefer that it be this one in Prospect Park, with my skeptical friend Lu:
[qimg]http://911stories.googlepages.com/LuCarousel.jpg[/qimg]
Coming back to the CT forum after a few days away was eye-opening. I could hardly bear to look at the new thread titles.
"WTC Was Nuked."
"This is what really happened at the Pentagon"
"Was there a WTC arson investigation?"
"JONES new paper: Microspheres and Temperatures"
That last one really gets to me. 557 responses (including some by me). Don't get me wrong: many of the threads here that are silly on their faces elicit excellent and educational responses. In this case, because of the astute comments of this forum's members, Steve Jones may even be encouraged to start practicing science some day! But I do feel that the focus on these very esoteric details feeds the truthers' need to involve others in the minutia of their fantasies, and causes the big picture to go out of focus for all involved. For me, this subject boils down to:
Q: What can Steven Jones or anyone else determine about the collapse mechanism of the WTC buildings by examining a bit of dust?
A: Nothing, ever.
My hope is not that the details go unexamined, but that the big picture be emphasized much more. That this
dust has become a major issue for the truthers, with many looking expectantly at uncle Steve to crack this case wide open, shows how truly desperate and intellectually bankrupt their religious movement is.
We know that for every JREF forum member who's reading or participating in a thread, two or three non-members are "lurking" and not participating. "We're doing this for the lurkers" has been a consistent argument for continuing to engage with the clueless and the delusional. I've made that argument several times myself. However, (for me, anyway) that's no longer a valid argument, for these reasons:
1) Although few new issues are raised, each day still brings an average of 12 new CT threads, which means that the signal-to-noise ratio can be quite low.
2) Since the 5,355 threads here aren't organized into easy-to-browse categories, and the search function is poor, newcomers and lurkers are easily overwhelmed by quantity. We had such a case in the past week. A newcomer asked if there was a summary of the issues he could refer to, because he certainly wasn't going to read thousands of unorganized threads containing 375,000 posts. And when a newcomer asks about a specific subject here, in my opinion it's no longer acceptable to say, "Use the search function."
That's why I created my site, which links to hundreds of posts here, organized by category. It doesn't get much use except by me, but I've found it to be extremely handy and will update it periodically. Please let me know if there's anything you want me to add to it.
If anyone is interested in maintaining the "
Finding the Truth by Refusing to Act" thread, or in doing something similar, that would be great. I started that as an example of what I think we should have been doing much more of all along. Okay: truthers make their case, we make ours, they remain unswayed. Rather than doing what they want and endlessly bickering over the same details, we should be pressuring them to DO something about these very, very serious claims.
And when they finally agree to do something, they should be held to that promise and reminded of it as much as possible. That will starkly reveal the truth: that almost none of them are willing to do
anything at all except whine on an internet forum. You can see how much they HATE to be reminded of their impotence and indolence, by their extremely defensive and irrational reactions: realcddeal accusing me of being a "dual citizen" with shadowy allegiances, Sizzler accusing me of spreading "propaganda." All because I ask them to take the baby steps they've already promised to take.
Perhaps the best way to keep track of these is for someone to keep an offline list of just the names of the "promise keepers" who are added to the Refusing to Act thread, and to send them reminders when they're posting here, or to bump the thread and post that X number of days/weeks/months have passed and the promises remain unfulfilled, yet that truther is still complaining on the forum. Just an idea, and I won't be offended if no one runs with it.
***
Thanks for putting up with my aggressive style for all this time. I know it doesn't make for pleasant reading, but it's been important to me not to use kid gloves on these revelers in ignorance and these apologists for the terrorists who killed my neighbors.
I wish I could thank several hundred of you individually for all I've learned from you and for all you've done for rationalism and honesty. This is one very special collection of people who give a damn. I hope to see you in the more sane parts of the forum!
All my best,
Mark
[qimg]http://911stories.googlepages.com/Markonfloat.jpg[/qimg]
Aah!
Good luck with your vocal thing!
