Comments on: Logical Fallacy Thursday

By: poatrick phillips

poatrick phillips — Sun, 10 May 2009 04:56:21 +0000

consider that you even have members of the Bush administration, before sep 11, saying that a new 9/11 event would actually be a good thing because how else are the American people going to accept the new wars they want. You have Colonal Chavez who blew the whistle on the Alex Jones show after coming across the plans for 9/11 on the desk of his generals. I´d suggest reading David Ray Griffin´s reply to popular mechanics, in his book Debunking 9/11 Debunking, where he takes on the issues that you mentioned in detail.

By: poatrick phillips

poatrick phillips — Sun, 10 May 2009 04:53:38 +0000

Griffin and others have not ignored the NIST report. In fact, Griffin has written massively on the final NIST report, albeit published after your logical fallacy thursday. Contrary to what you say, there is now an army of engineers, phsyicists and architects who are advacing the idea that 911 was an inside job, many of them Europeans, where advancing such theories are less risky and where one can do so within the support of their universities. Griffin has written books on the philosophy of science and I don´t think it´s so good for you to just take potshots. If you knew more about the 9/11 truth movement, you might be able to offer a less sophmoric approach to refutation.

By: wytworm

wytworm — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:22:09 +0000

A theory is a testable model: “Hey that looks like a controlled demolition. What else would have to have occurred for that to have happened? Ok, on the other hand we did see a plane hit it. There must be some supporting cases where we can see verifiable evidence supporting the behavior of the buildings under those conditions. ”

So on the one hand even superficially, we have demolition experts seeing something that they say looks like a demolition. On the other hand, we have the builders and designers of the World Trade Center testifying that they built the towers to withstand the impact of several air liners. Couple it with the fact that this is an unprecedented occurrence — no one really knows.

I looked at that PM article when it came out — set off the crap meter right away.

I am not a truther , nor am I a believer in the company line. The only pieces I am sure about is that the towers are gone, and no one has advanced a provable testable model for what happened. Ergo, I am skeptical. Even a casual observation of the players on both sides would suggests that there are more people on the company line side that have profited from the disaster than on the truther side.

By: mikhailovich

mikhailovich — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:55:52 +0000

Complete explanations exist for what happened on 9/11 apart from any conspiracy conjecture. Read this: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html
“Truthers” rely on statements like “it looked like a controlled demolition” (which isn’t entirely accurate) instead of providing verifiable evidence for an actual “conspiracy.”

A hypothesis is an initial idea. A theory is what a hypothesis becomes when it has survived experimental testing.

By: wytworm

wytworm — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 22:25:19 +0000

How are you not guilty of the same fallacy in your blog? Are you not starting from a predetermined conclusion and filling in the blanks backwards?

What is the difference between starting with a theory about what happened and examining evidence and what you are describing? Is a theory not just hazarding a guess at what happened and stacking evidence against it?

What does it mean if one is to observe the following:

Steel frame structures have not before collapsed due to fire.

Buildings collapsing due to demolition collapse in a very characteristic way.

The towers collapse demonstrate this characteristic

Ergo: The towers were demolished

Lets put it another way: What evidence have you amassed that leads you to be able to assert the methodology of the 911 Truthers as a whole? Was it interviews? Peer review?