Help! 9/11 conspiracy theory.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Help! 9/11 conspiracy theory.

And that's where they fail. In order to explain their wacky theories, they have to come up with increasingly elaborate explanations. Each time one of their points are refuted, they explain it away with something even more outlandish.

The more complicated it gets, the more difficult it is to keep a lid on it. The more simple it is, the more effective. What's more likely?

You are preaching to the converted here, but more or less the same form of argument is used by the woowoos.

Having read a bunch of their stuff, they have found a reason to doubt just about every aspect of the 9/11 story. As far as they are concerned it's ridiculous to suggest that fighter planes could be slow, that buildings could collapse because a plane hit them, that buildings could collapse because another building collapsed nearby, that a passport could survive a plane crash, that a plane could hit the Pentagon and not leave a plane-like silhouette in the building and identifiable plane bits scattered liberally for miles around and so on and on.

They honestly believe, mostly I think because they are misled about the actual likelihood of such things, that their complicated conspiracy theories are less complicated than the official story.

I believe the best route to getting through to these people is to show them the facts and the science involved, not to ridicule the "complexity" of their theories. They really don't understand why the official story is much simpler.

 

[CFLarsen]

The wheat is separated from the chaff when it is explained to them. Those who reject the natural explanations are the woos.

 

[Bob Klase]

You would expect an airplane hitting the Pentagon to be obliterated. It did what it was designed to do--protect its occupants.

The Pentagon, not the airplane.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Here's a good example of the modern major 9/11 conspiracy theorist.

http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/unanswered_questions_911.html

Many of the really silly ideas have been shorn away, and the remaining silly ideas have been presented in a superficially factual form with lots of footnotes.

Of course, if you read closely many of the claims they make are not actually sufficient reason to conclude that there was a conspiracy even if they are true. Others, which sound at first blush very concerning and have a footnote, turn out to lead to a kook book rather than to a mainstream news report or other tolerably reliable source.

Skeptical readers will also notice that they are very short on testable or even specific hypotheses, as opposed to collections of alleged facts that look funny.

I do not think many JREFers would be convinced, but to Joe Blow I would not be at all surprised if that site looked very convincing indeed. Especially since it feeds into a popular desire to make GWB the only bad guy on the world stage, rather than have him share the limelight with fundamentalist nutbags of the Islamic persuasion.

 

[luchog]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Help! 9/11 conspiracy theory.

The more complicated it gets, the more difficult it is to keep a lid on it. The more simple it is, the more effective. What's more likely?

The best refutation I've found so far is to point out that this sort of conspiracy would have to involved literally hundreds of people. That even a "Bush knew but let it happen" conspiracy would involve close to a hundred, at least. That a lot of these people would find it personally advantageous to go public with it at the earliest opportunity, regardless of what the government plans on doing.

And that this is a government that can't even keep the names of it's own CIA operatives secret. How the hell are they going to keep something like this so well-hidden?

 

[LTC8K6]

The Chemtrail conspiracy continues right along, and it would need thousands and thousands of people to keep their mouths shut for years and years.

The Moon landing hoax too.

The more people who need to keep quiet, the better the conspiracy, it seems

Where do they think Barbara Olsen is? Do they think she took a big giant bribe to "disappear" from the flight that hit the pentagon? How much money would it take to disappear from your family forever?

Do they think she was killed to maintain the facade?

 

[Luke T.]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Help! 9/11 conspiracy theory.

The best refutation I've found so far is to point out that this sort of conspiracy would have to involved literally hundreds of people. That even a "Bush knew but let it happen" conspiracy would involve close to a hundred, at least. That a lot of these people would find it personally advantageous to go public with it at the earliest opportunity, regardless of what the government plans on doing.

This is the essence of critical thinking.

It reminds me of TWA Flight 800 supposedly being shot down by a Navy destroyer. Being a sailor myself, I took that conspiracy theory personally. I mean, how many sailors would have to have been involved? No way such a thing would have been kept secret.

A conspiracy theory means conspirators. A lot of them. "Them", with a captial "T". Machine-like beings who murder and kill on command and go to their graves by the thousands without ever opening their mouths.