This article is a deliberate meta-troll. To be successful I need your trolling cooperation. Now hear me out.
In The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You Eliezer talks about asognostics, who have one of their arm paralyzed, and what's most interesting are in absolute denial of this - in spite of overwhelming evidence that their arm is paralyzed they will just come with new and new rationalizations proving it's not.
Doesn't it sound like someone else we know? Yes, religious people! In spite of heaps of empirical evidence against existence of their particular flavour of the supernatural, internal inconsistency of their beliefs, and perfectly plausible alternative explanations being well known, something between 90% and 98% of humans believe in the supernatural world, and is in a state of absolute denial not too dissimilar to one of asognostics. Perhaps as many as billions of people in history have even been willing to die for their absurd beliefs.
We are mostly atheists here - we happen not to share this particular delusion. But please consider an outside view for a moment - how likely is it that unlike almost everyone else we don't have any other such delusions, for which we're in absolute denial of truth in spite of mounting heaps of evidence?
If the delusion is of the kind that all of us share it, we won't be able to find it without building an AI. We might have some of those - it's not too unlikely as we're a small and self-selected group.
What I want you to do is try to trigger absolute denial macro in your fellow rationalists! Is there anything that you consider proven beyond any possibility of doubt by both empirical evidence and pure logic, and yet saying it triggers automatic stream of rationalizations in other people? Yes, I pretty much ask you to troll, but it's a good kind of trolling, and I cannot think of any other way to find our delusions.
I really wish I could link to xkcd and leave. I really do.
*deep breath*
Okay. Let me take it point by point.
Point 0 - Three may keep a Secret, if two of them are dead.
In order for your claims to be true, hundreds of people would have to be involved. First, everyone involved in setting up the controlled demolition (no easy task) has to plan, prepare, and execute the task. Second, every witness has to be found and suppressed. Third, everyone in the chain of command to plan, order, and fund the project has to keep mum. Fourth, everyone whose job it is to monitor activities like this has to be kept quiet.
Now, all of this is supposed to be accomplished by the schlobs who couldn't even hide the faking of evidence that Saddam Hussein had WMDs?
Point 1 - Building implosions don't look like that
You argue that they could.
Sure. And computers could be built using balanced ternary notation. But to do so with the skill that is brought to the standard method would require a tremendous amount of work to avoid error - work which plays again into Point 0.
Besides, several groups have analyzed the collapses after the event and found them consistent with the mainstream narrative. Requiring that these analyses be false means either inducting them into the conspiracy (Point 0), designing the collapse so effectively that it appears to be due to the obvious factors (see Point 2), or - probably - both.
Point 2 - How could you plan in advance the exact point of impact?
You say that they intentionally detonated the explosives near the point of impact. This implies that there are explosives near the point of impact. This implies - unless you think they knew the point of impact - there are explosives throughout the building. Besides immensely complicating the task of setting these explosives (see Point 0), this would either require that the explosives be left over at the crash site and need quiet disposal (see Point 0) or that they all be detonated during the collapse (which would be very loud - and the sound of these explosions are not reported by witnesses*).
* Thank you, NIST, for pointing out this argument in the video review of your WTC 7 analysis.
I don't expect to convince you. You have your opinion, and opinions are never wrong. But engineering is done with numbers - and every human being who has brought numbers to the table has confirmed the simple, obvious story of events.
Honestly, I'd love to believe I was imagining things and that it happened the way they said it did. The alternative is truly frightening and disheartening -- but I can't convince myself that it isn't a more accurate description of reality, based on the available evidence.
I could answer each of your arguments, but that's not the point of this thread; the point was to answer the original request for something which I "consider proven beyond any possibility of doubt by both empirical evidence and pure logic, and yet saying it triggers automatic stream of... (read more)