There are indirect consequences. Believing nonsense forces one to compartmentalise at best and contaminates one's whole epistemology at worst. Many facts I am/was interested in have practically zero direct consequences to my life. Consider the consequences of knowing about
Believing nonsense forces one to compartmentalise at best and contaminates one's whole epistemology at worst.
False dichotomy. Not believing in the truth does not imply believing nonsense. It's always possible to say "meh, I have no idea what to believe and the 5 days it'd take to decide probably aren't worth it" and move on.
(For instance... which do you believe is a better model of the universe, M-theory or loop quantum gravity?)
I hope I'm not breaking any taboos here. It's been a while since I've come onto the discussion section and I admit I'm not too up to date on the topics.
I'm having difficulty responding to someone who is convinced that 7WTC was brought down by controlled demolition on September 11th, 2001. They're referencing the controlled-looking destruction of 7WTC and various other incriminating looking things. Thermite and thermite waste products seem to come up a lot.
Now, I have definitely noticed I'm confused here. While I hold the opinion that the towers went down because of the planes/fires (i.e. the standard explanation) I have difficulty seeing how the falsity of controlled demolition is the slam-dunk folks seem to think it is. Could somebody walk me through this?
[EDIT: About a million edits later, I have finally worked through the problem with my link: I needed it to be in HTML and not in the comment format.]