That would be an acceptable topic of conversation.
How much research does a truther have to do to get any respect around here?
- Thread starter Thomas B
- Start date
This is disingenuous… Fires in offices don’t stick around in the same spot for 2 to 3 hours, they consume the fuel there and move on. The northeast corner of WTC 7, where the initial failure supposedly occurred, was not a blazing inferno for 7 hours straight.
Also about your claim that fires destroy steel structures daily… Maybe some structures, but not tall buildings. WTC 7 was the first tall building in history to collapse from fire, and the only one for 16 years straight until the Plasco. And you know this, so that’s why you talk generically about “structures”, and not specifically tall buildings.
I don’t know, it feels like in these conversations you’re just trying really hard to convince people, even if you have to resort to half truths to do it. This adds to my feeling of being gaslit, you wouldn’t have argue like this if you actually had a convincing case to make.
econ41
Senior Member
@Henkka the topic of this thread is still: "How much research does a truther have to do to get any respect around here?"
Stated more broadly: "What does a truther have to do to get any respect around here?"
You have been advised several times to "Present reasoned arguments" and "Stop the debating trick of irrelevant generalised derails."
You dismais @Oystein's perfectly correct comments:
And. given the topic of the thread interpreted broadly is: "What does a truther have to do to get any respect around here?" Try responding to these questions:
(1) Do you, @Henkka, agree that for any member, truther or debunker, to merit respect they should present reasoned arguments in support of any claims that they make?
(2) Do you @Henkka, agree that respect is gained over time and that a member who demonstrates over a series of posts an attempt to present reasoned arguments?
(3) Do you agree, @Henkka, that a member who persists in evasive irrelevant comments and fails to address the legitimate topic with reasoned argument is NOT worthy of respect?
Stated more broadly: "What does a truther have to do to get any respect around here?"
You have been advised several times to "Present reasoned arguments" and "Stop the debating trick of irrelevant generalised derails."
You dismais @Oystein's perfectly correct comments:
..when you say:
And once more engage in generalised evasions with this:
IF you want to claim WTC7 was "CDed" say so and support your claim with arguments that specifically relate to WTC7 - the subject of your claim. AND - remember - specific WTC7 debate is ONLY valid as examples of response to the topic of the thread. The topic is a meta-process debate about gaining "respect" NOT arguing the details of specific or generalised building collapses.
So it is wrong for @Oystein to make generalised points in explanation even tho is is all that you do?? Double standards?
Utter hogwash. YOU are, off topic, claiming there was CD at WTC7 - your claim - your burden of proof.
And. given the topic of the thread interpreted broadly is: "What does a truther have to do to get any respect around here?" Try responding to these questions:
(1) Do you, @Henkka, agree that for any member, truther or debunker, to merit respect they should present reasoned arguments in support of any claims that they make?
(2) Do you @Henkka, agree that respect is gained over time and that a member who demonstrates over a series of posts an attempt to present reasoned arguments?
(3) Do you agree, @Henkka, that a member who persists in evasive irrelevant comments and fails to address the legitimate topic with reasoned argument is NOT worthy of respect?
I don't agree it's just a "generalised" point... It's more like changing the topic. If you had a strong argument about tall, steel-framed buildings collapsing from fires, here's what you would say: "You've been misinformed by truthers about the susceptibility of tall buildings to fire, Henkka! Here is a comprehensive list of all tall buildings that have collapsed from fire, and an explanation of what sometimes causes this."
But you can't say that, because it's such an extraordinarily rare event that there's only one example that didn't occur on 9/11! So instead, you slyly change it to just steel "structures", so you can artificially beef up the number of examples, and hope I'm dumb enough to not notice. For example, the skeptic Edward Current, who is a user here, has a video about WTC 7 where he cites a couple of such examples. He cites events like the Kader toy factory, some outer parts of the Windsor tower, and obviously the Plasco. He shows the Grenfell tower standing as evidence that concrete buildings survive fire much better than steel buildings. But he neglects to mention any instance of a tall, steel building surviving a large fire! Again, it just feels like obfuscation and gaslighting, hoping that the audience is ignorant of examples like One meridian, First Interstate Bank, or the Cardington fire experiment.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
You could earn some respect from me here by listing other cases where tall steel skyscrapers were rammed by similar jet aircraft, fully loaded with fuel, leading to uncontrolled fires, where the structure did not collapse -- or by acknowledging that it is only happened twice, at WTC 1 and 2, and that collapses followed in 100% of the cases.
deirdre
Senior Member.
i'll, personally, give you respect if you stop comparing apples to oranges.
You really think it's a good idea to put an emphasis on airplane impact and jet fuel when debating the events of 9/11? You don't see the blindingly obvious, WTC 7-shaped hole you're digging for yourself there?
If you wish to gain respect you should avoid repetitive arguments.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi... by repetition (ABR,will lead to persua- sion.
Ann K
Senior Member.
You can't just hand-wave away two huge jetliners with full tanks of fuel, witnessed by thousands. Those are verifiable facts that an honest investigator simply cannot ignore, no matter how much idle speculation and unbelievable coincidence is piled on top. Yes, dammit, we think it's ALWAYS a good idea to emphasize the known facts! Why don't you?
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Wait, you want to discuss 9/11 without putting any emphasis on the planes that rammed the buildings which led to the destruction? You are squandering the offered opportunity to earn a bit of respect from me.
benthamitemetric
Senior Member
There's no hole being dug by being truthful about what happened to the towers. Fact-finding shouldn't be reduced by any serious person to be a silly game of "gotcha". The towers can and should be discussed on the merits of what actually happened to them, which was large planes flying into them at high speed followed by large fires. And then WTC7 can and should be discussed on the merits too--as it has been countless times on these forums. Why on earth would we discuss them otherwise?
Of course, the problem for you is that it's patently obvious that truther theories are wrong re the what happened to the towers, while understanding why truther theories are wrong about WTC7 takes a deeper dive on the research (which gives truther theories more room to survive in shadows of the "unknowns"). But truthers feel cornered into defending all of those theories equally because their overall theory of what happened that day (i.e., that the US government somehow perpetrated, or at least drastically exacerbated, the attack) is dependent on all building failures that day being the result of some unspecified US government shenanigans. It's a corner truthers have painted themselves into for 20+ years, but, here's the thing: the paint has been dry for 19+ years. You can just walk out now.
In any case, a respectable research strategy would focus on explaining the differences in what happened in each building, which the "official" story certainly does very well.
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tinkertailor
Senior Member.
I'm going to ignore 9/11 and discuss the topic at hand: what truthers need to do to get respect. Here's a bulleted list, in no particular order and directed at no particular user.
(edit: my keyboard likes to miss strokes sometimes, my apologies for the ugly typos)
- They need to make some level of effort to follow our rules here. The rules exist for a reason, they are what makes MB different from any number of truther sites. So: single claim of evidence per thread, stay focused, be polite, quote your sources. Easy peasy. That's the background for respect here. Honestly, I have respected people who do this and do everything else I mention wrong. It shows a basic willingness to dialog in this space, and I like that.
- They need to follow scientific standards of evidence. I'm picky; I like peer-reviewed research, ideally newer, with few disagreements from experts in the field. That's my gold standard. However, I'll respect a truther with much less than that. As long as they don't quote truther orgs as supporting evidence (truther orgs can absolutely be the claim of evidence investigated in a thread though), I'm good. In other words: don't try to support a truther claim with a truther source, because what's the point then? That's a waste of my time and yours. There are hundreds of truther blogs for that, and there's a reason we're all here.
- I like to see some level of interest in finding the truth beyond trutherism. If someone comes in here and just wants to argue, I'm uninterested. There's no compromise there, there's no point, my energy is best spent elsewhere, come back in a few years if you start to question a bit. People who argue are rarely going to follow the rules or put forth energy to dialog in a productive way.
- Another great way to get respect is to listen. If one member asks you to reframe how you're researching or behaving, they may be wrong. If three or four members ask you to reframe, it's likely that you are wrong. This is a real skill to recognize and honor.
(edit: my keyboard likes to miss strokes sometimes, my apologies for the ugly typos)
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econ41
Senior Member
And attempt to present valid arguments. NOT repetitive evasions, false analogies, irrelevant bad analogies and similar debating trickery.
econ41
Senior Member
AND there are multiple clear explanations as to why those specific buildings collapsed >> which explanations he does not attempt to falsify.
PLUS neither he nor any other truther has ever presented a valid hypothesis showing EITHER that CD help was needed OR that CD was performed.
econ41
Senior Member
Point #1 - Please recognise @Henkka, that airplane impact was a feature of both Twin Towers collapses. It was not a (direct) feature of WTC7 collapse. The implied false analogy is YOUR strawman. No one here as far as I am aware has claimed that aircraft impact and jet fuel were causal factors in the WTC7 collapse. IF anyone ever did make that claim it should be soundly rejected.
IF you want to gain respect STOP making silly claims - in this case a "strawman" lie by innuendo.
And your ever-present reliance on "false generalisation" - in this post your comment "when debating the events of 9/11`"!!
Of course, airplane impact and jet fuel are key factors in 9/11 discussion. When the specific topic is WTC Twin Towers. NOT when the topic is WTC 7.
Please desist from your reliance on false generalisations, false analogies, "apples to oranges" comparisons as @deirdre expressed it. If you want respect try presenting valid reasoned arguments free of the debating trickery.
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JMartJr
Senior Member.
Mea culpa, Landru. A timely reminder, which I can benefit from and take to heart as much as anybody.
That is a great answer, not just for 9/11 "Truthers" but for anyone posting here!
Well no, I just mean you probably don’t to hang your hat on plane impacts and jet fuel, since the events of that day include a third building collapsing without either of those things. And I was talking about WTC 7 in the post you quoted, so I’m not sure why you brought up the planes anyway.
Oystein
Senior Member
This is rich! This is extremely disingenuous! This is a prime example of why you deserve no respect whatsoever for your utter lack of research:
You stubbornly resist acknowledging facts.
I presented you with some facts - facts that establish an a-priori plausible case, a null-hypotheses, that rests on premises that are 100% true:
- WTC7 was on fire <- Please acknowledge that this is 100% correct, no ifs and buts!
- Fires were HUGE<- Please acknowledge that this is 100% correct, no ifs and buts!
- Fires were unfought<- Please acknowledge that this is 100% correct, no ifs and buts!
- Fires are a known hazzard to buildungs, including steel-framed ones<- Please acknowledge that this is 100% correct, no ifs and buts!
- There is no evidence of damage from demolition devices
- There is no evidence for the presence of demolition devices
- There is no evidence for the use of demolition devices
Therefore, my argument, which you totally refuse to address (and that earns you massive disrespect), is that to get respect, your research needs to result in a theory that is based ion the preponderance of all known facts and actually explains the collapse as a result of controlled demolition, and also exlains the (seeming) complete lack of evidence for the presence, the use and the observable direct effects of demolition devices.
Because this is a FACT; Thousands (some claim: millions) of Truthers, after two decades, have FAILED entirely to come up with any theory at all of CD that survives first contact with reality. Again; There exists no such Truther theory! <- Please acknowledge that this is 100% correct, no ifs and buts!
LilWabbit
Senior Member
Basic conversational respect is rarely commanded by:
The stratagem of ignoring a well-argued post, assuming sinister motives behind it, and/or resumption to just parroting the original truther position/post that's being refuted by it whenever counter-arguments to truther claims become rationally irrefutable.
@Henkka, I think as a respectable poster you should own up to the fact you've done this a multiple times, including on this thread with your derail into good ol' NIST computer simulation. You routinely ignore counter-arguments to your claim of a faulty NIST model by repeating, further down the line or on an entirely different thread, your initial claim of a faulty NIST model. Such a stratagem is, frankly, rude and a bit obtuse for an evidently intelligent person. Here's one such ignored counter-argument:
"You're still subscribing to the misinformation that an exact match is necessary for the simulation to validly yield the conclusion of a fire-induced initiation of the WTC 7 collapse the progression of which was affected be debris impact".
Another counter-argument is @econ41 responding to your perpetually parroted claim that the WTC 7 had no precedents of tall buildings brought down primarily by uncontrolled fires and therefore the hypothesis of a fire-induced collapse being unlikely.
Here's one of @econ41's many responses to this trope: "Note: "uncontrolled" - and put that in context with my assertion that there were no effective sprinklers AND the deliberate decision to not undertake active fire fighting. It was possibly one of few burnings left unfought. And the only 47 storey "tall building"."
"Get familiar with truther tactics. Truthers routinely argue that "cannot happen for the first time". All three WTC Tower collapses, allowing for commonality between WTC1 and WTC2, were "first times". And we more than sufficiently fully understand the collapse mechanisms and the primary role played by unfought fires in all three collapses."
You respond to this argument with the same stratagem: Ignoring, derailing, fanatically parroting your initial position on another thread.
Here's my two cents to add to @econ41's point. I'd love you to respond to exactly what it propounds rather than ignoring it or repeating your initial claims like a parrot:
You're basically abusing Bayesian logic of priors strengthening probability to suit a particular (truther) narrative. Yes, Bayes' theorem is a useful tool and a premise for many helpful probability distributions. However, its limitations are also well-known. For events without any priors or sufficient amount of priors, Bayes' theorem is a terrible predictor and generator of helpful probabilities.
This can be said without even broaching the theme of causal analysis of each specific event (rather than their statistical probability derived from prior comparable events) as the most important content of a valid scientific hypothesis. Such as Philadelphia's One Meridian Plaza (a 38-story skyscraper that burned for 18 hours in 1991) having a sturdier structural design and the WTC 7 having the following structural peculiarities that led to a fire-induced initiation of a collapse:
Again, you can choose to (1) actually discuss these details (2) in a reasoned way (3) on the appropriate threads, or employ the stratagem articulated at the beginning of this post. Either way, your respectability as a conversationalist is directly affected by your choice of response.
Kind regards and with the best of intentions,
Wabbit
The stratagem of ignoring a well-argued post, assuming sinister motives behind it, and/or resumption to just parroting the original truther position/post that's being refuted by it whenever counter-arguments to truther claims become rationally irrefutable.
@Henkka, I think as a respectable poster you should own up to the fact you've done this a multiple times, including on this thread with your derail into good ol' NIST computer simulation. You routinely ignore counter-arguments to your claim of a faulty NIST model by repeating, further down the line or on an entirely different thread, your initial claim of a faulty NIST model. Such a stratagem is, frankly, rude and a bit obtuse for an evidently intelligent person. Here's one such ignored counter-argument:
"You're still subscribing to the misinformation that an exact match is necessary for the simulation to validly yield the conclusion of a fire-induced initiation of the WTC 7 collapse the progression of which was affected be debris impact".
Another counter-argument is @econ41 responding to your perpetually parroted claim that the WTC 7 had no precedents of tall buildings brought down primarily by uncontrolled fires and therefore the hypothesis of a fire-induced collapse being unlikely.
Here's one of @econ41's many responses to this trope: "Note: "uncontrolled" - and put that in context with my assertion that there were no effective sprinklers AND the deliberate decision to not undertake active fire fighting. It was possibly one of few burnings left unfought. And the only 47 storey "tall building"."
"Get familiar with truther tactics. Truthers routinely argue that "cannot happen for the first time". All three WTC Tower collapses, allowing for commonality between WTC1 and WTC2, were "first times". And we more than sufficiently fully understand the collapse mechanisms and the primary role played by unfought fires in all three collapses."
You respond to this argument with the same stratagem: Ignoring, derailing, fanatically parroting your initial position on another thread.
Here's my two cents to add to @econ41's point. I'd love you to respond to exactly what it propounds rather than ignoring it or repeating your initial claims like a parrot:
You're basically abusing Bayesian logic of priors strengthening probability to suit a particular (truther) narrative. Yes, Bayes' theorem is a useful tool and a premise for many helpful probability distributions. However, its limitations are also well-known. For events without any priors or sufficient amount of priors, Bayes' theorem is a terrible predictor and generator of helpful probabilities.
This can be said without even broaching the theme of causal analysis of each specific event (rather than their statistical probability derived from prior comparable events) as the most important content of a valid scientific hypothesis. Such as Philadelphia's One Meridian Plaza (a 38-story skyscraper that burned for 18 hours in 1991) having a sturdier structural design and the WTC 7 having the following structural peculiarities that led to a fire-induced initiation of a collapse:
Again, you can choose to (1) actually discuss these details (2) in a reasoned way (3) on the appropriate threads, or employ the stratagem articulated at the beginning of this post. Either way, your respectability as a conversationalist is directly affected by your choice of response.
Kind regards and with the best of intentions,
Wabbit
econ41
Senior Member
Thanks "Wabbit".
When the relevant fact is known there is no need for probability based guessing. And, for the specific factual issues of each of the three WTC collapses, the necessary facts to support the extant hypotheses are known. And any person seeking "respect" would focus on falsifying those issues of fact. And "it didn't happen on other occasions" does NOT falsify "it did on this specific occasion".
"two cents" undervalues the advice by several orders of magnitude.
I will go further. There is no place for probability-based false analogies when the details of a specific event are being discussed. And there is more than sufficient evidence to support the hypotheses being presented.
When the relevant fact is known there is no need for probability based guessing. And, for the specific factual issues of each of the three WTC collapses, the necessary facts to support the extant hypotheses are known. And any person seeking "respect" would focus on falsifying those issues of fact. And "it didn't happen on other occasions" does NOT falsify "it did on this specific occasion".
Agreed.
And the specific details are known for each of those two examples. And the details for One Meridian Plaza are of zero relevance to WTC 7 where different details applied. And vice versa - tho' I don't recall anyone claiming One Meridian Plaza should have collapsed because WTC 7 did.
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LilWabbit
Senior Member
And vice versa - tho' I don't recall anyone claiming One Meridian Plaza should have collapsed because WTC 7 did.
The claim is implicit, by the logic of contraposition, in the truther claim of 'WTC 7 should not have collapsed because One Meridian Plaza didn't. And yet WTC 7 collapsed. Hence CD'.
Yes I am using Bayesian probability, I would object to you saying I'm abusing it heh. But really, there isn't a sufficient amount of priors for... fires in tall buildings? Really? How many would there have to be? How do you determine that number? And mind you I'm talking about WTC 7, so let's not bring up that we don't have priors of airliners striking skyscrapers here.
I think if you're being honest, you should at least be able to admit that fires causing the total collapse of a tall building is an extremely improbable event. This is because in the entire history of such fires, only two buildings have collapsed, those being WTC 7 and the Plasco tower. Doesn't mean it can't happen, just that it is improbable.
In addition to that, if fires were to cause the total collapse of a tall building, what is the probability that the collapse would have the visual appearance of a controlled demolition? This is also extremely unlikely, as fires and demolitions damage buildings in totally different ways. Fires are gradual and asymmetrical, whereas demolition charges go off instantaneously and are often symmetrically placed. Fires also can't cut the steel like demolitions do. So you would expect a fire-induced collapse to look nothing like a controlled demolition. Some people dispute what happened to the Plasco tower, but I think everyone should agree its collapse doesn't really visually resemble most controlled demolitions. But you have to believe that not only did fires cause the collapse of WTC 7, it just coincidentally looked so much like a demolition that it even fooled a top expert in the field.
Then thirdly, what is the probability that such an unprecedented event could be predicted many hours ahead of time? You would think that since in September 2001 we had literally zero priors of tall buildings collapsing from fire alone (Not counting buildings hit by planes here), nobody could have foreseen that WTC 7 would be the first one in history. You would think that with the prior experience from cases like One Meridian, fire experts on the scene would predict the building will probably stand just fine, regardless of how badly it burned. But instead, the impending collapse was announced with absolute certainty as early as noon to 1PM. This is according to eyewitness Indira Singh, who was told by a firefighter that a controlled demolition of the building was being considered. (!!)
So let's recap our Bayesian probability here:
1) The fire-induced total collapse of a tall building is very improbable.
2) A fire-induced collapse looking like a controlled demolition is very improbable.
3) Predicting an unprecedented event is very improbable.
So what is the probability of all of those things occurring at once, as required by the official story? I don't know if putting a number on it is relevant, but from my point of view, it's like 0.000000001% or something. Then let's look at those three in light of the CD hypothesis:
1) If it was a controlled demolition, a total collapse is very probable.
2) If it was a controlled demolition, it would probably look like one.
3) If it was a controlled demolition, it seems probable that there were people on the scene with foreknowledge of it, that could then mislead the fire department. They could spin a story about the building being "structurally damaged", or "unstable", while concealing their true motivation.
So yeah this is kinda going pretty far off-topic, but the above is a short summary of why I find the evidence so compelling. And that isn't even getting into things like the two seconds of free fall acceleration. I guess to try to tie it more to the topic a bit, what is it that I'm getting so wrong here? What is the most unreasonable argument in the above? Can anyone really say that I haven't thought critically about this at all, I'm just a crazy conspiracy theorist who unthinkingly accepts whatever is said on ae911truth.org? Mind you, I've never really cared for labels like "skeptic", but I think it would have applied to me just a few years ago. I used to follow and participate in arguments about atheism vs. theism, creationism vs. evolution, and was a big fan of like Richard Dawkins, Matt Dillahunty, Sam Harris and all those people. I feel like my reasoning abilities haven't changed at all, the only thing that changed was I learned a whole bunch of new information about this specific historical event I found well argued and compelling.
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JMartJr
Senior Member.
OK, fair enough, can you list other examples of tall building on fire and struck, not by planes, but by debris from massively tall buildings that stood next door and collapsed? Or are there no other such examples? If the latter, do you then acknowledge that in the universe of fueled jet liners striking buildings and resulting in massive fire, 100% of such buildings have collapsed, and similarly in the case of a building subjected to massive fires and struck by massive debris from the collapse of an adjacent building, 100% collapsed?
Note I am not asking you to abandon your CD hypothesis (not at the moment, anyway! ^_^), just for a respect-earning acknowledgement of relevant facts.
Sure. The problem with this is that NIST says the building collapsed due to the fires, not the damage from debris. This makes sense as the collapse started in the northeast corner of the building, so basically the opposite side of where the debris hit.
https://www.nist.gov/world-trade-center-investigation/study-faqs/wtc-7-investigation
Mendel
Senior Member.
see that is why I don't respect you any more
we have gone over the many signs of impending collapse with you on this forum, you didn't even need to research them yourself, from noises to walls bulging, and the idea that an engineer who sees these signs and has the drawings of the building has an idea of how this specific building is going to behave to the point where this expert can predict it is going to collapse
(see https://www.metabunk.org/threads/di...red-in-designing-a-stucture.12482/post-272819 )
but you ignore all that, and argue as if you didn't know any of it
which makes the idea that you do research laughable
because for normal people, the idea of research implies that we learn something and remember it
but truthers rarely remember inconvenient facts
and that's how we know their aim isn't learning
and therefore what they do is not really research
it's pseudo-science and pseudo-research because it serves an agenda that is only not obvious to people who haven't heard both sides
p.s. "Not counting buildings hit by planes here"—really? this is an insult to the NYFD
p.p.s. you argue as if the FD's expert engineer should've gone on youtube, looked for videos of similar buildings collapsing, not found any, and told everyone it's going to be fine. It's an insult to the profession of structural engineering and that engineer in particular.
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deirdre
Senior Member.
A tall building without working sprinklers and receiving no firefighting efforts is very improbable.
How do you know?, you just said we have too few examples of a fire induced collapse.
1.They predict buildings will collapse all the time (ex: One Meridian, which HAD firefighting efforts and working sprinklers above floor 30 which is what put out the fire.)
2. This building was hit by twin debris, had a big chunk missing, had creaking and groaning sounds very early on, had no water to fight fires, etc. It wasn't a prediction, it was an educated guess derived from the afore mentioned points and the fact that they just watched the twins collapse from fire.
Your
is based on comparing apples to oranges. It's slight of hand tricks to confuse the viewer. Your tactics are never going to work on MB, because the guys (and me apparently) will continue to point out your slight of hand for viewers....so maybe time to move on from these false points you keep bringing up.
econ41
Senior Member
Your use of probabilities is wrong. Whether or not you attempt to dress it up as "Bayesian".
The probability of a past event that has happened is 1.0 >> certainty. And it is certainty for all three WTC Towers each standing independently. The certainty for each of the three is NOT affected by there being three WTC towers collapsing on the same day. Nor a Plasco tower on another day NOR the reality that One Meridian did not collapse on yet another day. No matter how many dozens or more examples of other towers that did or did not collapse they do not change the reality that WTC1 fell by the mechanism that WTC1 fell by on 9/11. Ditto WTC2 and ditto WTC7. Not does the mechanism by which WTC1 fell affect the reality of collapse for WTC2 or WTC7.
Why? It is a false and inappropriate argument. How do you expect to gain respect by once again repeating a wrong argument that you have already been informed is wrong??
benthamitemetric
Senior Member
This sounds reasonable until you realize that we aren't just talking about any building. We are talking about a specific building under specific conditions--in particular, a building with a long span floor design (not typical), which was subjected to fires started simultaneously on multiple floors (not typical), the sprinkler systems of which were crippled (not typical), and which did not receive any active fire fighting support (not typical). When you actually research the details and refine your thinking (as NIST, Weidlinger and ARUP have all done) and thereby remove the veil of ignorance from your blind probability, you can adjust that probability accordingly and your "analysis" will fall apart at point one.
A nonsense argument you've stated many times but never actually attempted to make with any rigor. If you actually go through that process, you'll find your analysis falls apart here too.
As has been pointed out to you, WTC7 exhibited classic telltale signs of a pending building collapse, which those who were watching it were trained to recognize, and those who were watching it had just witnessed the two largest buildings in the city collapse from fire, so they were certainly primed to expect it to happen. Again, when you factor reality into your blind probability, your analysis falls apart.
Absolute nonsense. You choose to be ignorant about the actual facts of what happened that day and pretend we cannot look at what actually happened in a rigorous way that takes those facts into account. Your approach is akin to arguing that, because only 0.0001% of the dogs in the world are chihuahuas, its basically impossible that I own a chihuahua and refusing to believe otherwise, even though I can show you my dog's DNA test. You have to realize at some level how preposterous this is. This type of thinking is the opposite of developing a reasoned argument from research.
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LilWabbit
Senior Member
I think we both agree that before 9/11 there were no known priors of tall buildings collapsing primarily due to fire.
What I term as your 'abuse' of the Bayesian logic follows from this established fact. You stumble upon a type of Fallacy of Insufficient Sample (also known as black swan fallacy, faulty generalization, generalization from a particular, etc.). Based on the fact of multiple earlier fires on tall buildings never resulting in a collapse, you conclude these priors strengthen the probability of future fires not causing collapses of tall buildings.
Applied to the historical observation of thousands of white swans and black ravens, the same naive application of Bayesian logic strengthens the probability of a patently false belief, that there are no black swans nor any white ravens. Except that in the case of white swans and black ravens the sample size is far greater than the sample of known fires in tall buildings. And yet even with such a huge sample size your application of Bayesian logic leads to an unreasonable conclusion -- a strengthened probability of a false belief.
From the perspective of scientific reasoning, an observation of zero white ravens up till now, or zero collapses of tall buildings from fires up till 9/11, can indeed be logically consistent with a hypothesis (i.e. 'no white ravens exist', 'WTC 1, 2 and 7 did not collapse due to fire'). However, the hypothesis remains demonstrably false (i.e. white ravens do in fact exist, evidence plausibly accounts for fires causing WTC collapses). This highlights (1) the more nuanced and multivariate character of the actual scientific process as opposed to simplistic metrics sloppily applied to biased samples (i.e. your lay idea of being reasonable and/or scientific). It also demonstrates (2) the problem of both (a) naive generalizations and (b) naive applications of Bayesian reasoning which -- when employed in a manner where other relevant variables aren't factored in -- statistically strengthens false beliefs.
In other words, even on a purely logical basis (leaving for now the factual flaws of your causal analysis on fires and building collapses to other posters on this thread), your reasoning is faulty.
To take our discussion forward instead of backward, the next reasonable thing for you to do is to either (1) demonstrate the errors in this counter-argument, or (2) acknowledge that it demonstrated errors in yours.
The fallacy inherent in this line of reasoning was addressed in the above.
The fallacy inherent in this line of reasoning is identical with 1 and hence also addressed in the above.
The fallacy inherent in this line of reasoning is identical with 1 and 2 and hence was also addressed in the above.
econ41
Senior Member
He shouldn't have even gone that far. He is already "A Bridge Too Far". Each of the 9/11 WTC tower collapses is already a past event that has happened. Whatever the facts for each example they are all certainties written in the historic record. His logic is false as soon as he tries to apply probabilities of less than 1.0 >> certainty.
Not only statisticians. Anyone with a clear understanding of logic. I won't even counter-argue his probabilities because probability-based logic has no legitimacy.
Yes.
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econ41
Senior Member
If you have a black swan it is black no matter how many millions of white swans there may be.
Your one black swan is certainly black.
Yes, it was a prediction... From the same source I linked earlier:
So this anonymous engineer was not only predicting that the building would collapse, but he also got the timing correct in a stunning display of foresight.
Good grief. NIST themselves say three out of your four points here were not meaningful:
https://www.nist.gov/world-trade-center-investigation/study-faqs/wtc-7-investigation Question 12
I'm dying... There were no such things as "classic telltale signs" of a tall building collapsing from fire, as it had literally never happened before! It's like a person who has never experienced or heard of rain looking up at a dark cloud and saying, "Hmm, yes, a classic telltale sign of water falling from the sky soon..." He wouldn't know!
Also, it's unfortunate that these experts of yours did not recognise these "telltale signs" in WTC 2, a building that was far more gravely damaged than WTC 7. If they had known the building was a lost cause, they could have just evacuated and many lives would have been saved. The same thing in Tehran with the Plasco tower, did those firefighters also miss these obvious, telltale signs? Is the Tehran fire department incompetent in your view? Or do buildings sometimes exhibit these obvious signs, and sometimes they just collapse without any warning? Maybe you should book a flight to Iran so you can give them a lecture about these signs.
As for the "signs" themselves, you guys keep mostly citing these supposed noises and a bulge. I guess the only thing that needs to be said about them is to ask: Can a burning building make noises, and then not collapse? Can a burning building bulge at some point, from thermal expansion or whatever, and then not collapse? If the answer to those questions is yes, and it is, then how are they signs of collapse? Like are you saying that One Meridian was dead silent and did not bulge or warp as its steel frame expanded from the heat? That only happens when burning buildings are about to collapse? Or are you saying that sure, burning buildings probably make all sorts of noises, but WTC 7 was making particularly collapse-y noises?
In order to gain respect follow the Posting Guidelines. You haven't. In this thread alone you have Gish Galluped, been off topic, asserted from incredulity, asserted without evidence, not provided background to provided links and others.
LilWabbit
Senior Member
Yes. Universal generalizations are a b*tch because it takes just one counterexample to bring even the grandest of them crashing down.
Not only is it the obvious case in logic that a finite sequence of white swan observations, no matter how numerous, does not logically imply that future swan observations be white. But, in fact, having observed n white swans, it logically follows from k successive applications of the rule of succession that the probability the next k swans are also white approaches zero as the succession tends to infinity.
This argument, however, is premised on infinite succession which we, simply, don't know whether or not it's applicable to the real world. Probability distributions tend to be helpful when they're based on simple and frequent events generating a wealth of empirical data to work on. The more complex, infrequent and erratic the event, the less does it lend itself to straightforward statistical metrics. Which should be the main lesson for the 9/11 truther appealing to the reasoning of priors.
benthamitemetric
Senior Member
It shows he understands the first principles at play while you will not even acknowledge them.
Per NIST, those three points were not meaningful dissimilarities only to four other significant reference fires, but of course they were meaningful to why WTC7 collapsed as compared to any other building. Read the NIST report, wherein the collapse model accounts for those factors in its effective calculation of the probability of collapse. Or are you claiming that your probability analysis is based only on a sample size of five (WTC7 + the four references cited by NIST)? In which case, that's fine but it just means the correct question to be asking then is "Were there differences between WTC7 and those four referenced buildings that would explain why WTC7 collapsed?" (And the answer to that is yes.)
The real problem, of course, is that you are not dealing with your fundamental logical error in employing your probability analysis at all here. @LilWabbit walked through that in even more depth than I did. Do you understand the error?
Yes, those telltale signs include creaking noises and bulging, as has been demonstrated to you with sources that pre-date 2001. This was no secret to firefighters and something firefighters were taught to look for in any building fire as their lives depend upon it. And you're trying to have it both ways--saying that you're surprised firefighters risked their lives in the case of the towers but thereafter became inexplicably risk averse in the case of WTC7. In reality, isn't it obvious what happened to explain their sudden change their assessment re the chance of collapse? Is it really surprising that the two most catastrophic building collapse events in world history would affect the way the firefighters who had just witnessed them assess the risk of other collapses? And I've shown you several times that Chief Daniel Nigro has expressly explained this.
I'll drop these specific debate-re-WTC7-on-the-merits points there. I think they do go to show how you are just arguing from incredulity on this point. To get past this, it might be a good exercise for you to switch roles and try to write the best argument you could for why a firefighter or engineer on scene might have thought WTC7 could collapse. Or, if that's too much of a stretch, maybe image you were a firefighter on scene and you just heard Daniel Nigro say that he thought WTC7 was going to collapse--what would you say to him at that moment to convince him that would be impossible?
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Mendel
Senior Member.
Yes. And then you ignore all of that and say the collapse was not predictable, putting your own incredulity (and nothing else) against the expert whom it is inconvenient for you to believe, even though he did predict the collapse.
This is the opposite of research.
deirdre
Senior Member.
that's called an educated guess.
Landru says we cant indulge you with all this off topic chat though. so....you answer the title question without the 9/11 emotional component.
"How much research would a bigfoot researcher have to do to get any respect on a science site?" I'm not being snarky, I am honestly curious what your answer would be.
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