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Yeah.

You also need to look at the questions asked. Let’s compare two, as an example.

Question 1 - “What caused and contributed to the collapse of WTC 7”

Question 2 - “Could the collapse of WTC 7 be due to a controlled demolition”

There, Question 1 is an honest, open question. It’s seeking answers, without seeking a specific answer.

Question 2 is a conclusion in search of supporting evidence. And if anything suggest that it could have been a controlled demolition? That’s a hard conclusion in the Conspirasphere that it must have been, and couldn’t have been anything else.

Worse, any given report just needs to be wordy enough to confuse The Man In The Street, such as myself. If it’s using technical language, I won’t know whether any conclusions drawn, or claimed, are accurate. To add further confusion, CTs will often cherry pick quotes that support them.

This all helps to legitimise their often bonkers claims.

People should honestly just read the NIST report. I'm not an engineer and after reading the summary alone I understood it. It's honestly really straight forward. The guy who headed the study even pointed out how simple it was in numerous interview; "It's like when you put a jar of pickles under the water to make the lid easier to remove, only the water is jet fuel and the jar of pickles is now collapsing to the ground because the entire structure has been compromised by high heat (summary + minorly sardonic)."

Really. The study into how WTC7 collapsed actually broke new ground in modeling and caused the adoption of a bunch of new safety features for how skyscrappers are built. A big part of why the building went down is that no engineer before 9/11 was really thinking about how thermal expansion could compromise a building.

 LordofHats wrote:
I'm fairly convinced Trutherism (at this point) is predominantly driven by scam artists and hucksters. Trutherism is an entire industry at this point. A tiny fringe industry, but one that much like Scientology has explicitly targeted the top and bottom of the income scale. The top gives it money and is already prone to wanting to cast the government as the villain anyway (because money). The bottom is full of people who don't understand engineering anymore than anyone else and is also already prone to distrusting the government for varieties of reasons. They give the whole thing a thin veneer of legitimacy via appeal of the people fallacy. That might have been a bit different when I was younger and the disaster new, but today I think it's pretty clear the entire thing is just a money making scheme that happens to be politically advantageous for some.

I think the real appeal of conspiracy theories is that it ironically makes people feel safe. Believing the government can put together an airtight ruse to kill thousands of people and justify some war (for example) requires you to believe that the government is so capable and efficient that such an attack is actually impossible - and in contrast this can be preferable to the idea that the chaotic soup of nature, international politics and human fallibility could kill any one of us in a way that is neither foreseeable nor truly meaningful.

Best counter point I can think of for ‘Truthers’?

Why so much planning? Why such spectacle?

Why not a bogus attempt on a President or Senator’s life? Doesn’t even need to be successful. Hell, even the whole ‘ramming speed’ thing needn’t be successful. It simply doesn’t take that level of terror to justify reprisals.

For ‘Them’ (insert blamee of your choice) to ramp it up to that level leaves them nowhere else to go other than a dirty bomb or nuclear attack, which let’s face it is a helluva lot harder to hide any level of complicity.

Slipspace wrote:

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
That's a fair observation and something I completely agree with, I am fairly objective and considered in regards to conspiracy theories, in the sense that I think most are so ridiculous personally...

Some though, like 9/11, and actually JFK, the 'official' truth does not make complete sense.

In regards to my scepticism about tower 7, and it not just being conspiracy theorists and discounting NIST is that you have legit experts in their field like architects and engineers for 9/11 truth going against the findings, with studies funded by them (an issue, I agree) providing counter findings. In addition to this, these findings are research, conducted by universities and passing through ethics boards... If they thought it would be damaging to their reputation, it would not be published, but they have been, meaning the consensus is far apart.

There is legit disagreement in the field on what happened with tower 7. It's not like the world is flat theories where you do not have one single reputable expert arguing it is.

I'm not sure I'd call Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth reputable (even the "experts" tag may not be applicable) and there are serious problem with any supposedly scientific organisation that seems to pre-suppose a conclusion and rather suspiciously keeps getting reports they've funded to back up their conclusions, against the general consensus of the rest of the scientific and engineering community. That aside, I think one thing conspiracy theories try to exploit is that the real world is never as simple and controlled as a scientific experiment and we will legitimately have things we may not be able to explain once we've analysed all the data available. My problem with conspiracy theories is they usually use a "God of the gaps" style argument that says any unaccounted for variable or any outlier is proof of their chosen conspiracy.

In the case of WTC 7 it's highly unlikely we'll ever know precisely what happened because the collapse happened in the real world, not controlled laboratory conditions. All investigations into these kind of events will have gaps in their knowledge and disagreements about the exact details but I've yet to see a credible report or paper that suggests the collapse was due to anything other than the combination of fire and debris damage. It's not enough to point out gaps or errors in an investigation, you also need to provide credible evidence to back up any alternate theory that's put forward. That's often where conspiracy theories fall down, IME.

Its also weird for someone who watched it happen live. Its never occurred to me to question what happened to the Towers (and the Pentagon) because it happened in real time with overlapping camera views. I saw the gaping hole in the Pentagon with Eyeball Mk1 within days of the event, and living in DC it warped a lot of daily life. When they resumed flights out of Reagan National Airport a year+ later, it was terrifying, since I hadn't heard a plane on that flight path (over my apartment building) since 9/11 itself. So the first one at 6am when I was still asleep was frankly flashback time.

The 'conspiracy' involved assembling the crew to takeover the planes, and is completely within the realm of reality. The fall of the buildings seemed a straightfoward application of physics, both velocity and heat.

I like the southpark take.

The real consiparcy is the invention of conspiracy.

Im paraphrasing:

"After all, who would be scared of us if bunch of people living in caves managed to wreck our biggest city..."

"so we invented the conspiracy so people will think we are all powerful instead and think we are capable of blowing up our own city and faking he whole thing"

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.
It was legit but it was allowed to happen. No detonation needed.

I just read this and I think that's it. We've reached peak conspiracy theory.

To elaborate, this utterly insane idea manages to seamlessly twirl together conspiracy theories about Jews, 5G, covid-19, NWO, and maybe a number of others I've missed.

 LordofHats wrote:
I just read this and I think that's it. We've reached peak conspiracy theory.

To elaborate, this utterly insane idea manages to seamlessly twirl together conspiracy theories about Jews, 5G, covid-19, NWO, and maybe a number of others I've missed.

impressive, well, kinda.

I still find it wierd when the jews get brought up as NWO shadow government cabal, mostly because bringing them on course for such a thing would be like herding cats, considering their immense internal fractures.

The old saying goes, “two Jews, three opinions.”

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The old saying goes, “two Jews, three opinions.”

ha we got the same

bit longer but literally the same

 LordofHats wrote:
People should honestly just read the NIST report. I'm not an engineer and after reading the summary alone I understood it. It's honestly really straight forward. The guy who headed the study even pointed out how simple it was in numerous interview; "It's like when you put a jar of pickles under the water to make the lid easier to remove, only the water is jet fuel and the jar of pickles is now collapsing to the ground because the entire structure has been compromised by high heat (summary + minorly sardonic)."

Really. The study into how WTC7 collapsed actually broke new ground in modeling and caused the adoption of a bunch of new safety features for how skyscrappers are built. A big part of why the building went down is that no engineer before 9/11 was really thinking about how thermal expansion could compromise a building.

...are you suggesting that the architect of the WTC did not consider 'what if a passenger airplane flies into this building?' Such incompetence is far less plausible than a controlled demolition sir.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Argive wrote:
I like the southpark take.

The real consiparcy is the invention of conspiracy.

Im paraphrasing:

"After all, who would be scared of us if bunch of people living in caves managed to wreck our biggest city..."

"so we invented the conspiracy so people will think we are all powerful instead and think we are capable of blowing up our own city and faking he whole thing"

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.
It was legit but it was allowed to happen. No detonation needed.

You like the South Park take... but also disagree with it? You feel that the government knew it was coming and specifically did not stop it? Can you elaborate?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
People should honestly just read the NIST report. I'm not an engineer and after reading the summary alone I understood it. It's honestly really straight forward. The guy who headed the study even pointed out how simple it was in numerous interview; "It's like when you put a jar of pickles under the water to make the lid easier to remove, only the water is jet fuel and the jar of pickles is now collapsing to the ground because the entire structure has been compromised by high heat (summary + minorly sardonic)."

Really. The study into how WTC7 collapsed actually broke new ground in modeling and caused the adoption of a bunch of new safety features for how skyscrappers are built. A big part of why the building went down is that no engineer before 9/11 was really thinking about how thermal expansion could compromise a building.

...are you suggesting that the architect of the WTC did not consider 'what if a passenger airplane flies into this building?' Such incompetence is far less plausible than a controlled demolition sir.

Hilarity aside (I totally agree with your sentiment, I just don't want this to become a gotcha moment for some nutjob), WTC7 wasn't hit by a plane and that's probably why the Truther conspiracy has over the years increasingly centered on it.

WTC7 did get hit by debris and caught fire. And yes, it was not common in architectural engineering (or at least wasn't at the time) to account for fires burning on multiple floors so hot that they caused the building superstructure to expand and lose stiffness resulting in the collapse of the interior pylons and complete compromise of the building. It actually is maybe kind of an 'out of place and time' moment for some. These days computers and computer simulations are taken for granted and it probably seems utterly bizarre that buildings like the World Trade Center were ever constructed and designed without taking all the variables into account. But the first WTC7 building was originally built 1987 when advanced computer modeling was still new. Engineers were among the first fields to embrace computers but back then they were used to speed up basic elements of design, not advanced simulations for potential fringe case disaster scenarios. The building was never designed to account for the question 'will a big fire cause it to collapse'. It's kind of Titanic moment in a way. It was probably taken for granted that a sufficient sprinkler system would combat any fire before it could possible engulf extensive parts of the structure and compromise its basic construction. No one in 1987 was testing "what if planes are flown into another nearby building and debris hits our building when it collapses spreading fires across multiple floors.' Ironically, things like getting hit by debris were taken into account, which is why WTC7 was able to endure exterior damage without collapse but gave way to the effect of thermal expansion.

Well thank you for those extra tidbits of information good sir.

Another one of my favorites is 'jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel' as if steel completely retains all structural integrity at any temperature right up until it hits melting.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well thank you for those extra tidbits of information good sir.

Another one of my favorites is 'jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel' as if there is some binary temperature point where steel goes from completely solid to molten.

Also, jet fuel might not but who knows what temperature the chemicals they use for chemtrails burn at. /sarcasm

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/966/

Also you don't have to melt steel to make it weak, as this (rather irate) smith shows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzF1KySHmUA

Not to mention quality of the steel, Technology used for welding /riveting, Skill of labour etc.

Alot of variations which could've Lead to weakpoints.

 Overread wrote:
Also you don't have to melt steel to make it weak, as this (rather irate) smith shows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzF1KySHmUA

Yeah, that's my point. And everyone generally knows that, so the 'ignorance excuse' does not even work for that particular line of reasoning.

Because the head of a major Police Union has apparently made the news for having a Q-Anon mug in his office and I now have a bug up my ass about it.

Needless to say Q-Anon is bs, but it's particularly dumb because you can find on a simple google search how bs it is. Namely that 'Q' probably didn't have Q clearance and seemingly had no idea what Q clearance is. It's a department of energy clearance and is predominantly handed out to civilian personnel with knowledge of nuclear secrets. Someone with Q access would have no special knowledge of government policy or broader government secrets. It's equivalent to a TS clearance (handed out by the DoD), but simply having clearance doesn't entail having access to information. You can literally find this information with a google search.

I can only assume Q got the idea of claiming to have Q clearance from an episode of Archer. Q (the original anyway, there's a whole other conspiracy theory about who the 'new' one is) was an obvious troll, yet an entire group has sprung up that is apparently incapable of noticing.

There are 2 Q's ?

Actually the whole Q annon thing allways fascinated me in a bizarre way, it goes back into that deepstate debacle with an awefull lot of people supposedly beeing part of a conspiracy..

An awefull lot of potential leaks so to speak. It doesn't make a lick of sense from the outside.

Not Online!!! wrote:
There are 2 Q's ?

It's generally thought hat the Q who posts on 8Chan today is not the same person who first posted on 4Chan in 2017.

EDIT: There's a bit of a conspiracy about the conspiracy theory that the owner of 8Chan has coopted the Q identity but it only has circumstantial evidence to support it.

Circumstantial evidence is more than most conspiracy theories have these days.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Circumstantial evidence is more than most conspiracy theories have these days.

Wellp, if it ain't the truth...

Rearing it's ugly head in a thread about smokes and mirros.

This just in, Dakka user 'Not Online!!' has claimed the entire Q-Anon conspiracy is truth! As seen in this actual quote:

"...the truth ... in a thread"

But did the lizard people make him say it!?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
This just in, Dakka user 'Not Online!!' has claimed the entire Q-Anon conspiracy is truth! As seen in this actual quote:

"...the truth ... in a thread"

But did the lizard people make him say it!?

I am the lizard people/s

No i meant the circumstancial evidence beeing more then most conspiracy theories nowadays have

I know, I was just poking fun at conspiracy news

Wellp

Too late in the Night and no coffee insight....

Not Online!!! wrote:
There are 2 Q's ?

There will only ever be one Q - and his name is John de Lancie.

Whole bundle of "but why?" on display in Hyde park today https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/19/anti-face-mask-protesters-take-london-streets-wont-tracked-poisoned-13010504/

Ok, so. The sign about not being masked, poisoned and whatever nonsense end with a question?
'This will not by my new normal?'

Shouldn't that be a full stop or an exclamation point?

---
Ugh, I poke fun, otherwise I have to deal with the sheer stupidity.

GoatboyBeta wrote:
Whole bundle of "but why?" on display in Hyde park today https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/19/anti-face-mask-protesters-take-london-streets-wont-tracked-poisoned-13010504/

Metro apparently doesn't like me using an ad-blocker - I really need the ad-blocker people to step up their game and implement an ad-blocker-blocker-blocker, as this is annoying.