roland comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
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Following a suggestion from Cayenne:
Eliezer, I don't understand how you arrived at this conclusion, could you explain the reasoning behind it? Specifically I don't understand why this belief is visibly insane.
I cannot answer for Eliezer, but I can (perhaps) explain why the belief is "visibly insane".
For 3 to be true, too many things to be true. For the non-conspiracy explanation, all that's needed is the (perhaps slightly surprising) fact that the fire caused a specific kind of collapse. Most "truthers" know about as much about physics as me (highschool mechanics, some basics in college). So for a given truther to believe that, the truther needs to assume a high degree of certainty for his or her intuitive physics estimation in the fairly subtle area of civil engineering. In fact, they'd have to have a degree of certainty so high that all the elements in 3 are not enough to sway them the other way. That degree of certainty should be reserved for actual trained civil engineered, and perhaps not even then...