How much research does a truther have to do to get any respect around here?

Yes, many key supports failed, simultaneously. If they didn't fail simultaneously, that would be a major safety risk, as the building could tip over or something like that. That's why they are timed carefully. And if only one column in one corner of the building failed, it's unlikely the building would collapse at all.
the Miami beach condo didnt tip over. you know you are wrong, you just dont want to admit it in front of all these guys you've been arguing with.
 
Yes, many key supports failed, simultaneously. If they didn't fail simultaneously, that would be a major safety risk, as the building could tip over or something like that. That's why they are timed carefully. And if only one column in one corner of the building failed, it's unlikely the building would collapse at all.
I get it!

The perps, when having their planning meeting, thought it was a great idea to make it LOOK like a controlled demolition by detonating simultaneous explosives instead of making it look like fire did it by detonating the explosives in a non-simultaneous way.
 
the Miami beach condo didnt tip over. you know you are wrong, you just dont want to admit it in front of all these guys you've been arguing with.
Okay...? Buildings do tip over, though:



So these are demolitions, but they only blew up some support on the bottom. To get it to go straight down the whole way, they would have had to blow up more so the top part would build up more momentum.
 
A baseball launched by a baseball pitching machine and another one thrown by Pedro Martinez can both have exactly the same velocity and path. Under your logic, by superficially looking at the two baseballs' flight patterns we can conclude they were launched by the same process. And yet you couldn't be more wrong.
I'm saying fire can't accomplish what is seen on the left in the gif. So to fit it into what you're saying here, if we observed two baseballs going at 500mph, I would say both of them must have been launched by some machine, because it's impossible for humans to throw that fast.
 
I'm saying fire can't accomplish what is seen on the left in the gif.

We all know that's what you're saying. I'm saying, without you having demonstrated any errors in my argument, that your logic in proving your case fails.

Instead you've ignored the salient points and taken swipes at either strawmen or regurgitated your initial claims. This has been your pattern, and it doesn't command respect.
 
We all know that's what you're saying. I'm saying, without you having demonstrated any errors in my argument, that your logic in proving your case fails.

Instead you've ignored the salient points and taken swipes at either strawmen or regurgitated your initial claims. This has been your pattern, and it doesn't command respect.
So if I observe a baseball going at 500mph, I should just keep an open mind whether it was thrown by a human or a machine? Or could I comfortably say that because the fastest baseball pitches by humans are about 100mph, it was clearly thrown by a machine?
 
So if I observe a baseball going at 500mph, I should just keep an open mind whether it was thrown by a human or a machine? Or could I comfortably say that because the fastest baseball pitches by humans are about 100mph, it was clearly thrown by a machine?

See what you're doing? You're arguing your own analogy and not the one I articulated regarding baseballs. You butchered my analogy to suit your narrative without responding to the original one and its salient points.
 
See what you're doing? You're arguing your own analogy and not the one I articulated regarding baseballs. You butchered my analogy to suit your narrative without responding to the original one and its salient points.
This is dead on. And it's hard to understand @Henkka 's choice of 500 mph for the baseball in his argument as anything other than bad faith.
 
See what you're doing? You're arguing your own analogy and not the one I articulated regarding baseballs. You butchered my analogy to suit your narrative without responding to the original one and its salient points.
Because your analogy doesn't fit... Obviously if we observe a baseball flying at a completely ordinary speed, like 50mph, we can't really say whether it was thrown by a human or a machine. For your analogy to fit, the baseball has to be going at an extraordinary speed, because fires supposedly causing the total collapse of a tall building is an extraordinary event.

You keep saying that just because something has never happened before, that doesn't mean it can't ever happen. And I totally agree with that.

But there's limits to what I can believe. To keep with your baseball thing, from what I can find the record is 108mph. Does that mean that it's impossible for someone to throw a 110mph pitch? Of course not. All records are something that had previously never happened before. But how far does it go? 115mph, 120mph, 140mph, 200mph? When do we say it's physically impossible for a human to ever throw that fast? If someone claimed to have thrown a pitch at X mph, what does X have to be for you to think there's likely some trickery going on, and he didn't really throw it that fast?
 
Because your analogy doesn't fit... Obviously if we observe a baseball flying at a completely ordinary speed, like 50mph, we can't really say whether it was thrown by a human or a machine. For your analogy to fit, the baseball has to be going at an extraordinary speed, because fires supposedly causing the total collapse of a tall building is an extraordinary event.

Except that the analogy referred to the stupidity the error of drawing causal conclusions based on your two collapse videos viewed superficially side by side.

The footage shows some similarities of the effect. So did the baseball analogy. The point being, superficially similar phenomena can have very different causes. There's nothing extraordinary about that.

In other words, your arguments for causal equivalence (appeal to CD collapse footage) and faulty generalizations (appeal to 'no previous collapses by fires') are logically flawed. And these flaws have been demonstrated carefully without you refuting them.

Therefore, since you're unable to refute them, you'd better not appeal to them any more and instead limit your argument to the actual causes of the 9/11 events. On the appropriate threads.
 
You keep saying that just because something has never happened before, that doesn't mean it can't ever happen. And I totally agree with that.

Excellent. Then quit appealing to priors and focus on the actual causes. But do it on the appropriate threads. And do it by respectfully responding to the exact counter-arguments already made to yours on those threads, without your characteristic derails and patterns of ignoring your opponents' salient points.
 
Except that the analogy referred to the stupidity the error of drawing causal conclusions based on your two collapse videos viewed superficially side by side.

The footage shows some similarities of the effect. So did the baseball analogy. The point being, superficially similar phenomena can have very different causes. There's nothing extraordinary about that.
But the cause can't be anything, right? We can, to some extent, reason backwards from the effect to think about what the cause could have been. So if we observe a baseball flying at 500mph, we can reason backwards from that it was definitely not thrown by a human. And if we observe a baseball flying at 90mph, we could reason it could have been thrown either by a human or a machine, but probably not a dog.

And what we're looking at is a tall, steel building collapsing more or less straight down through its own structure, and quite smoothly. I think everyone should agree that its visual appearance is very similar to that of many controlled demolitions. And if you're claiming that office fires caused an effect that is typically only caused by precisely placed and timed explosives, well, you've got to pony up some extraordinary evidence for such an extraordinary claim.
 
But the cause can't be anything, right? We can, to some extent, reason backwards from the effect to think about what the cause could have been. So if we observe a baseball flying at 500mph, we can reason backwards from that it was definitely not thrown by a human. And if we observe a baseball flying at 90mph, we could reason it could have been thrown either by a human or a machine, but probably not a dog.

And what we're looking at is a tall, steel building collapsing more or less straight down through its own structure, and quite smoothly. I think everyone should agree that its visual appearance is very similar to that of many controlled demolitions. And if you're claiming that office fires caused an effect that is typically only caused by precisely placed and timed explosives, well, you've got to pony up some extraordinary evidence for such an extraordinary claim.

I'm happy I no longer see faulty appeals to logical equivalence and unwarranted generalizations from priors. Now you're focusing on causes. Bring it to the appropriate threads. I've made the point I wanted to make on this one.
 
Because your analogy doesn't fit... Obviously if we observe a baseball flying at a completely ordinary speed, like 50mph, we can't really say whether it was thrown by a human or a machine. For your analogy to fit, the baseball has to be going at an extraordinary speed, because fires supposedly causing the total collapse of a tall building is an extraordinary event.

You keep saying that just because something has never happened before, that doesn't mean it can't ever happen. And I totally agree with that.

But there's limits to what I can believe. To keep with your baseball thing, from what I can find the record is 108mph. Does that mean that it's impossible for someone to throw a 110mph pitch? Of course not. All records are something that had previously never happened before. But how far does it go? 115mph, 120mph, 140mph, 200mph? When do we say it's physically impossible for a human to ever throw that fast? If someone claimed to have thrown a pitch at X mph, what does X have to be for you to think there's likely some trickery going on, and he didn't really throw it that fast?
If you want to make this analogy pat, you would have to imagine that only 6 baseball pitches were ever known to have been thrown, which would mirror the number of very serious fires within modern, steel-framed skyscrapers that were known prior to the collapse of WTC7--the two in the towers plus the four reference fires that NIST cited, which you referenced earlier. Four of those fires did not result in a collapse, while two of those fires did, so, in your analogy, four pitches were under your expected speed limit and two were over. Based on that record, could you really rule out that another pitch could reach speeds above your speed limit? It seems pretty obvious that when you drill down on the data set that you don't have enough data to know where the limit is.
 
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If you want to make this analogy pat, you would have to imagine that only 6 baseball pitches were ever known to have been thrown, which would would mirror the number of very serious fires within modern, steel-framed skyscrapers that were known prior to the collapse of WTC7--the two in the towers plus the four reference fires that NIST cited, which you referenced earlier.
Why did you specify "modern" here? Do you think it's plausible that modern skyscrapers are more susceptible to fire than older skyscrapers?
 
We're eight pages in. I believe we have established the parameters for what is proper research with examples of what and what not to do. Any further digression into 9/11 topics will be deemed offtopic.
 
Why did you specify "modern" here? Do you think it's plausible that modern skyscrapers are more susceptible to fire than older skyscrapers?
Another great example of you choosing a silly reason to not address the substance of a post. In any case, if you think there is a larger and more relevant sample size than the four reference fires NIST noted + WTC1 and WTC2, that would be a great example of something you could research and compile in the context of supporting an actual argument (in another thread, of course.).
 
Let's see if we can both get back onto the topic AND identify the status of discussion. The topic is:
"How much research does a truther have to do to get any respect around here?"

We have several times identified that to "get any respect" ANY person needs to participate in discussions by presenting or attempting to present reasoned arguments. That requirement applies to "truthers" because they are a subset of "any person". And "attempting" is inherent in the nature of these discussions. Few if any of us "get it right" the first time. Discussions should be a process of explanatory discovery. Mutual learning.

So, if we stay strictly with the question as written the "How much research..." should be obvious. It is "the amount of research needed to support the reasoned arguments the "person" wants to present. And, also discussed indirectly many times, it needs to be valid, relevant research and possibly a couple of additional qualifiers. And it applies to everyone, not just the limited class of "truthers" as identified in the OP topic.

That is the positive side. The downside should be to avoid what can loosely be called "Debating Tricks". Two specific classes of "debating tricks" seen repeatedly in this thread are evasions and variants of false generalisations - notably failure to define which specific topic is being addressed leading to false analogies.

If I avoid the letters W, T and C and use other parts of the alphabet a claim that the letters K, L and X are formed from straight lines is NOT negated by references to the shape of the letter O. That is evasion, moving the goalposts. Nor does the reality that O is "round" prove that F and W are also round. That is one form of false generalisation. And we have seen multiple examples of those forms of false "argument" in these recent discussions.

OK - that is the philosophic basis of this SITREP.

So what is needed from any person including a truther who seeks to gain respect?

I'll stay with a generic explanation and avoid the letters W, T and C. Let's start with "A".

The generally accepted opinion is that the upper case letter "A" is formed from three straight lines.

The "truther" seeking to gain respect wants to claim that the accepted opinion, the "extant hypothesis" in scientific terminology, is WRONG.

So he needs to:
(a) State clearly and explicitly what he intends to do. e.g. "I claim that the letter A is NOT formed from straight lines",
(b) Present an outline of the argument he intends to put forward in support of his claim.

And he should not deliberately engage in debating trickery, including but not limited to:
(c) Changing the target or scope of his claim. i.e. "Shifting the goalposts"; ("many shapes have curved lines")
(d) Argument by false analogy or invalid comparison. ("But the letter C is curved" >> the discussion is about A)
(e) False application of probability-based arguments to situations that are binary "true<>false"; ("the letter A cannot have straight lines because there are many alphabets which have lots of curved lines")

AND - possibly the most important with regard to "respect",
(f) NEVER practice the gross discourtesy of ignoring reasoned responses to his questions and comments.


"Research" is not the only thing and not even the critical thing that a truther needs to do to gain"respect". The primary need is that the truther attempt to present reasoned arguments to support their claim. And try to avoid all forms of debating trickery whether intentional or not.

However the strict, literal answer to the OP question "How much research..." should be obvious. It is "the amount of research needed to support the reasoned arguments the "person" wants to present.
 
But the cause can't be anything, right? We can, to some extent, reason backwards from the effect to think about what the cause could have been. So if we observe a baseball flying at 500mph, we can reason backwards from that it was definitely not thrown by a human. And if we observe a baseball flying at 90mph, we could reason it could have been thrown either by a human or a machine, but probably not a dog.

And what we're looking at is a tall, steel building collapsing more or less straight down through its own structure, and quite smoothly. I think everyone should agree that its visual appearance is very similar to that of many controlled demolitions. And if you're claiming that office fires caused an effect that is typically only caused by precisely placed and timed explosives, well, you've got to pony up some extraordinary evidence for such an extraordinary claim.
Definitely heavy false equivalence being made here.

By that I mean that a 500mph baseball (so impossible to have been thrown would by a human) does not equal "visual appearance is very similar to that of many controlled demolitions" equaling having been done with demolitions.

Something being "visually similar to one thing" (controlled demolition), but being explainable, and has been by numerous experts in the relevant fields (result of impact and combustion of massive amounts of jet fuel), does not mean that an "extraordinary claim" is being made.
 
Definitely heavy false equivalence being made here.

By that I mean that a 500mph baseball (so impossible to have been thrown would by a human) does not equal "visual appearance is very similar to that of many controlled demolitions" equaling having been done with demolitions.

Something being "visually similar to one thing" (controlled demolition), but being explainable, and has been by numerous experts in the relevant fields (result of impact and combustion of massive amounts of jet fuel), does not mean that an "extraordinary claim" is being made.
One thing demonstrated in this thread is that analogies are a poor way to present an argument. They are enticing because they provide an illusion of clarity but often they breakdown because the otherside starts arguing the analogy. Often until it no longer makes much sense (see Henkka above). That is why it has been suggested on this forum not to use them.
 
It would help the Truther cause if they could provide positive information, not just repeatedly saying "everybody else is wrong".
I would apply that to all CTs (assuming truthers are a subcategory of CT). At the risk of sounding like i'm taking this a little personally, it always feels like there's an implied "but I'm right because...I'm right".

Sure, they'll back up their claim eventually (maybe not effectively but they'll at least try) but I've had occasions where I've had to really badger them into doing it.

a lot of the CTs I've seen prefer to jump straight to the usual "how could you possibly think (insert authority here) is telling the truth" line, or similar equivalents. They're basically using a flawed logical progression by saying "these guys are evil, therefore i'm right because i'm not them" and then when pushed to provide evidence either the usual "do your own research" walls crop up, or they play ball and provide their sources...sometimes to the extreme (see gish gallop).

In some cases there can be a little bit of classism attached: "I'm right because i'm poor and they're not".

But i'm sliding away from the point. Basically what I'm trying to say is that anyone can lose credibility in their claim when they're reluctant to provide evidence to back it up. This isn't because we're indoctrinated to believe that evidence is a requirement (as I've genuinely heard a few CTs say to me in the past) it's because without the requirement for evidence you can make absolute anything you like become true.
 
I would apply that to all CTs (assuming truthers are a subcategory of CT). At the risk of sounding like i'm taking this a little personally, it always feels like there's an implied "but I'm right because...I'm right".

Sure, they'll back up their claim eventually (maybe not effectively but they'll at least try) but I've had occasions where I've had to really badger them into doing it.
this is about belief. the reasoning is just window dressing, it's not what matters
 
So basically, all any truther needs to do to get my respect is follow the rules.
While the implied "just" is valid I think it's worth noting that some, not all, truthers are generally anti-authoritarian or even anarchistic. Which, to them, makes the act of following the rules feel like a self betrayal.

I know things aren't that black and white but I'm speaking as someone who has experienced people who feel that breaking any rules they can is a constant necessity in life. In reality there are some rules that aren't worth following and some that are (such as the rules of Metabunk). It really just depends on why the rules are there to begin with. In Metabunk's case it's basically to prevent chaos and keep the conversations on topic.
 
In it's simplest form.

You're looking at a black swan. One person says it's a black swan. The other person says it's a white swan that is painted black, but cannot provide any evidence whatsoever to back that claim up.

Who are you going to believe?
the word "unfalsifiable" seems valid here. The quickest and laziest solution for me would be to just shrug and find something else to do with my day.

The better alternative, however, would be to take as much time as needed to research the subject via credible sources who have the tools at their disposal to back up their claims (zoologists in the case of this analogy).

Then there's the two mid-way solutions: one where you do a little bit of research, accept that you don't have all of the answers you need and just go for a walk/watch telly/some other mindless activity to keep yourself busy.

And the other is where you try to fast track the necessary studying by believing that any experts on swans are liars being manipulated by an authority with a hidden agenda, then try and push this idea onto everyone else without backing up any of the anti-black swan claims thus creating a situation where you've got people siding with you based on nothing but a combination of faith towards your claim and a distrust in authority.

You can also throw in some grains of truth, maybe one, or even a group of the zoologists was given a research grant that they instead spent on an expensive boat thus showing that zoologists aren't 100% trustworthy, however, all this really proves is that said group of zoologists let their greed get to them, it doesn't prove any of the zoology related claims wrong or even that all zoologists are untrustworthy. Even if someone with the capacity to paint a white swan black used a black swan to justify a war in the middle east (whatever the mechanics of such a process would be) it wouldn't prove that they painted the white swan black, it would just prove that they could. I could eat 1000 doughnuts and get fat, that doesn't mean I did eat 1000 doughnuts and got fat (as fun in the short term as that sounds).

The problem with using fear over evidence is that you wind up making people feel scared about something they might not have to worry about. I see this all the time when people worry that their local active volcano is going to erupt despite the predicted margin of the eruption being anywhere from the next few minutes to the next few centuries. Could the volcanologists be lying about the margin? Sure, but that doesn't mean they are. Would it be convenient for them if the volcano erupted minutes after they just said it seems unlikely? Yes, but sadly nature doesn't take sides otherwise the volcano would've tried extra hard not to undermine the volcanologist but waiting a few centuries before erupting.

I'm going to make a bold claim knowing that my deeper knowledge of the English language isn't that great, but I feel like there is no such thing as an "expert" in any subject. We as a species can make educated guesses about what will happen and the chances of it happening will increase in percentage if the educated guesses are based on solid evidence, but there is no way to know when the unexpected will happen or how it'll happen.

This next part might sound unrelated but there was an interesting coincidence that happened to me recently. I was creating characters for a fantasy story and one of them comes from a race of blue amphibious dragons that live by the sea. I noticed after drawing said character that she looked like one of the Na'vi from Avatar. How did I fix this? I changed her colour from blue to teal....shortly afterwards hollywood released a trailer for Avatar 2....which featured teal Na'vi....that are amphibious....and live by the sea. Now I could say that James Cameron decided to hack my iPad and steal from my project that's unreleased to the public. Or even suggest that one of my friends has secret ties to James Cameron, but as tempting as that is it's more likely that we both saw teal as being a very "sea-like" colour that's pleasing to the eye. Also, while my mates are incredibly creative types I highly doubt they're sitting around drinking martinis with James Cameron and then living in a relatively cheap and basic house just for the sake of fooling little ol me.

What i'm getting at with that last paragraph is don't underestimate coincidence.

Sorry if I went off topic, it's easy for me to go on tangents with subjects like this. I'll probably review this reply later when i'm less tired if it doesn't get deleted by that point and make the necessary edits.
 
And here are two building collapses:


That's bizarre - it's almost as if gravity acts the same way at both places and times. I might even conclude that all buildings have mass too.

Did you expect one of the buildings to collapse upwards, or sideways, or something - I'm confused what you think your images prove?
 
You post these two clips and expect that because one IS a controlled demolition due to explosives and what it looks like, the other HAS to be controlled demolition due to explosives and not fire induced. Even though there is no evidence whatsoever for explosives in the other, but fire was present.

Falling under gravity is not evidence for CD. Looking white is evidence for being white. So there is no analogy in his two images.
If he'd claimed that one of the swans just bit the photographer, and therefore both swans just bit the photographer, it would have been a closer analogy.
And *way* more useful, as that new argument would have been an obviously fallacious one. And now we have a working analogy, the building one is shown to have the same error.

And this is why the amount of research doesn't matter for truthers to get respect.

Indeed. To reiterate one of my top tips on how to get respect: Avoid logical fallacies.
 
Indeed. To reiterate one of my top tips on how to get respect: Avoid logical fallacies.

Amen.

In the case of his truther argument of showing two similar collapse videos side by side, @Henkka is perpetrating the fallacy of Affirming the Consequent. Just because a type of CD causes a type of building collapse, it cannot be logically deduced that another roughly similar type of building collapse has the same cause.

Article:
Affirming the consequent, sometimes called converse error, fallacy of the converse, or confusion of necessity and sufficiency, is a formal fallacy of taking a true conditional statement (e.g., "If the lamp were broken, then the room would be dark"), and invalidly inferring its converse ("The room is dark, so the lamp is broken"), even though that statement may not be true. This arises when a consequent ("the room would be dark") has other possible antecedents (for example, "the lamp is in working order, but is switched off" or "there is no lamp in the room").

Converse errors are common in everyday thinking and communication and can result from, among other causes, communication issues, misconceptions about logic, and failure to consider other causes.

The opposite statement, denying the consequent, is a valid form of argument (modus tollens).[1]


This fallacy is essentialy also an inherent property of faulty generalizations which Henkka repeatedly perpetrates whilst thinking he's being logical and reasonable. He does this by his visual argument of the two white swans. He unwittingly falsely generalizes from the accepted fact that since the whiteness of the two swans are likely caused by the same process, therefore two similar building collapses must also be caused by the same process.

And as demonstrated earlier on the thread, the same fallacy is perpetrated in his generalization that since prior fires have not caused tall buildings to collapse, hence future collapses of tall buildings can't be the result of fires.

This fallacy, a.k.a. Denying the Antecedent, is basically just the inverse form of the fallacy of Affirming the Consequent.

These logical fallacies are common in 'lay reasoning' due to a naive misunderstanding of the valid logical inference rule of modus ponens. Hence, lay reasoning is, indeed, often veritably unreasonable at closer scrutiny.

These fallacies are common not only amongst CTists but sometimes even established scientists and researchers have momentary lapses of rigorous reasoning, for they too are humans after all. Especially in the 'conclusions' chapters of their otherwise rigorous papers such a lack of rigour is surprisingly common.
 
That's bizarre - it's almost as if gravity acts the same way at both places and times. I might even conclude that all buildings have mass too.

Did you expect one of the buildings to collapse upwards, or sideways, or something - I'm confused what you think your images prove?
The thread title should honestly be reversed, to ask what people who make arguments as bad as this need to do to get any respect from truthers.
 
Indeed. To reiterate one of my top tips on how to get respect: Avoid logical fallacies.
Out of curiousity, is there a kind of "logical fallacies for dummies" book or website for studying logical fallacies? I've been using RationalWiki for a fair while but I don't know if they cover anything or even if I'd call them 100% reliable.
 
Out of curiousity, is there a kind of "logical fallacies for dummies" book or website for studying logical fallacies? I've been using RationalWiki for a fair while but I don't know if they cover anything or even if I'd call them 100% reliable.

Most logical fallacies are types of violations of the Rules of Inference found in formal logic, especially propositional logic. Frankly, these rules of inference should be taught already at the primary school level as they're foundational to all our logical thought processes covering all sorts of topics, including much of higher-order math. These two intro videos provide a rudimentary but helpful outline of the most important inference rules of first order logic:


Source: https://youtu.be/oasIqX74Mhc



Source: https://youtu.be/zMtToQelLN8
 
The thread title should honestly be reversed, to ask what people who make arguments as bad as this need to do to get any respect from truthers.
It wasn't an argument at all. It was referring to your bad argument, your "look at the similarities in behavior, so they must have the same cause" bad argument.

"Truthers", the name implies, think they know the "truth" (and cannot even all agree upon what that "truth" is), but all we are asking is that they provide some material evidence that accounts for all the verifiable facts. So far, they've done nothing of the kind, and mostly just try to cast suspicion on the conclusions of a panel of experts who had access to the remains.

Let me repeat a point that doesn't get enough consideration: you cannot prove yourself right merely by showing someone else may be wrong.
 
It was referring to your bad argument, your "look at the similarities in behavior, so they must have the same cause" bad argument.
maybe better to say "the same catalyst" because Henkka is already confused enough.
 
The thread title should honestly be reversed, to ask what people who make arguments as bad as this need to do to get any respect from truthers.
His argument isnt bad. His argument is sound. But mocking sarcasm doesnt need to be respected, no.
 
Out of curiousity, is there a kind of "logical fallacies for dummies" book or website for studying logical fallacies? I've been using RationalWiki for a fair while but I don't know if they cover anything or even if I'd call them 100% reliable.
There are several, out there on the interwebs, but most borrow a lot, I'd say too much, from classical (and yes, by that I do mean going back to the Greeks) rhetoric, and waste too much time repackaging the same mistake in many different ways. There are so many variations on /ad hominem/, for example. "Your argument is wrong because of who you are" is basically the same as "Your argument is wrong because of some property you have" - and even that's not as generic a grouping: that fallacy is simply the one of evaluating the argument by not addressing the actual argument, whatever you address instead of the actual argument is mostly irrelevant.
 
Gravity and mass distribution tend to drive the form of a collapse... and of course where the failures in the structure are.
 
I'm saying fire can't accomplish what is seen on the left in the gif. So to fit it into what you're saying here, if we observed two baseballs going at 500mph, I would say both of them must have been launched by some machine, because it's impossible for humans to throw that fast.

Again, you're attempting to obfuscate the weakness of your argument by using a false analogy - but the obfuscation fails and you have instead drawn attention to its weakness.

Your analogy now contains the prior knowledge that something is impossible. You're asserting that the building example is analogous to something that contains the conclusion you desire - but with no proof. So basically you're assuming and asserting the conclusion you wish to derive; this is again a logical fallacy, often called "begging the question".

Now you've seen how your use of analogies is repeatedly failing, and definitely not helping you earn any more respect, you could consider desisting, and instead addressing the facts and the evidence of the situation under discussion - in the appropriate thread of course. This thread is about approach and methods.
 
"visual appearance" — you don't have any insight on why collapses look the way they do, and that there may be different causes that lead to similar looks. It's been repeatedly suggested to you that the progression of the global WTC7 collapse is a consequence of column 79 failing, and that the collapse sequence is the same no matter whether this column is cut with a thermite charge, or it fails from being overloaded. [2]
1 hour and 45 minutes later:
And here are two building collapses:
It's not about research. It's about the failure to engage in meaningful dialogue.

I honestly do not know if that failure is deliberate (aka trolling), or if there is anything that can be done to address it: the failure of a person to engage in dialogue also indicates there's no easy way to reach them.
 
1 hour and 45 minutes later:

It's not about research. It's about the failure to engage in meaningful dialogue.

I honestly do not know if that failure is deliberate (aka trolling), or if there is anything that can be done to address it: the failure of a person to engage in dialogue also indicates there's no easy way to reach them.
Well, I don’t know if I can respond to anything without my posts being deleted as “off-topic”…

...off topic information removed.
 
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