econ,
while composing a longer reply, I think it dawned on me where I conflate things. I was thinking of a causal chain of events from "nose of plane touches wall" to "all rubble is on the ground"; which implies that starting conditions for phase two could/should/would not be modeled without consideration of what the planes and fires did until the end of phase one.
Do I understand right that you'd propose a model for phase two without direct recourse to planes and fires - your often stated "when top block falls, column ends have already passed each other" (or similarly)? So such a model would start off with severed columns, as closely resembling the actual conditions as observed at the moment of release?
That said, I don't think my stage boundary is really different from yours. By the time the top block is seen tilting (and I don't mean any slight leaning before release; I mean the increasing tilt after release), it already started "to fall bodily".
2) Two audiences for the models.
(a)One needing rigorous verifiable accurate numeric data which I labelled "professional". Naturally some informed lay persons would need and could access such a model; AND
(b) One needing nothing more than a visual display of the mechanisms. I labelled that group "lay persons"
By definition those who want a visual display want a visual display and "diminished credibility" is not a weakness.
This puzzles me.
You mean there legitimately exists an audience that merely wishes to see the visuals, even if they knew they are "faked"? Will a conjurer's trick do?
Or what amount of faking would be acceptable?
From my science classes in primary and secondary school I remember at least three expermients that produced the visuals to convince everyone except (and, in one case, for many years including) me that they witnessed the effects of a certain physical mechanism. One might say that the display thus served a legitimate educational purpose; but once you look through the deception, that ought to backfire.
The first was an experiment to show the 20 % oxygen proportion in air. A burning candle is placed in a flat basin filled with water. A beaker s placed upside-down over the candle, edges submerged. The air thus cut-off from environment is depleted of oxygene after a while, finally the flame goes out. After this, water is sucked into the beaker, it's surface within the beaker higher than in the basin around, filling about 20% of the beaker volume. BUT this didn't happen because oxygen was gone; it was actually mostly the result of cooling air.
Nice visuals, fake model. This was ok in 4th grade perhaps, but I am not sure it would fly with adults...
I realize I am overstating the amount of fakery needed to design visual features into the lay model. I do that on purpose, of course: To highlight how any amount of manipulationg a model to reach a desired outcome is legitimate target of attack.
The two groups which I deliberately left on one side are:
(c) Those obsessed truthers who will not accept any model or argument no matter how rigorous. AND
(d) Those persons who want to explore the science out of their own curiosity.
Both are legitimate aspects of the demography. The former will not be satisfied by any model and therefore do not fall within the legitimate scope of the analysis I am presenting.
Why, if not for group (c), are we debating this topic
at all?
The entire point of this forum is debunking bunk.
Back to my first question: Does a lay audience actually exist that is interested in having the visuals demonstrated without having been prompted by truthers?
I imagine that most lay people who want to understand the visuals have at least once been told by truthers: "
Hey, look at that dustification / falling in footprint / speed of descent / flling outside of footprint / those squibs / these ejections / etc etc! This can't happen without sinister devices!" Such lay persons would legitimately expect a model that cannot be rejected out of hands by truthers because it has been openly "faked".
You see, you can't shield the interested lay folk from truthers. Suppose you get "your" model, it is shown, and has all the collapse features you desired; the very next day, truthers will have heard about it, they'll dug up this thread and whine "see, econ41 admitted that he wants a fake model", and your legitimate lay folk will ask you: "Hey econ, what do you say to this?"