Hahaha, I think it is funny that every comment against the 9/11 orthodoxy is voted down while every comment in favor of it is voted up, is it possible that the audience is a bit biased here?
But on to your point.
First I think the example is a bit misleading because in the reader’s mental model a grenade will cause death in a manner similar with the firing of bullets. Not so in the case of 9/11, for all that is known, a building sustaining some amount of structural damage and fire will not collapse the way WTC7 did, which is why from the start you should place a higher probability on explosives being involved.
But back to your example:
A man is dead after a grenade exploded in his vicinity. His wounds are consistent with bullet wounds which usually look different that shrapnel wounds. Now, what killed the man, was it the grenade or bullets(he could have been fired at when the grenade went off). One way to distinguish the causes of death would be to examine the body for bullets or shrapnel. We might find one or the other or even both. If you only find shrapnel you falsify the hypothesis of death-by-gun, if on the other hand you only find bullets it’s the other hypothesis that is falsified.
I assume you accept that the buildings collapsed in a manner consistent with the use of explosives. This already nullifies one argument that was repeated several times here on LW, that the prior for explosives is too low to even be seriously considered. Now this is of course not enough to prove that it were explosives and here is where additional evidence has to come in like:
can structural damage(e.g. as happened in 9/11 to WTC7) and fire explain a collapse in almost free fall speed? No
were there eye-witness testimonies of explosions? Yes, lots of them.
is there evidence for explosives in the rubble/dust? Yes. As a side note, NIST didn’t even bother to look for this evidence:
“12. Did the NIST investigation look for evidence of the WTC towers being brought down by controlled demolition? Was the steel tested for explosives or thermite residues? The combination of thermite and sulfur (called thermate) “slices through steel like a hot knife through butter.”
NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.”
It is not appropriate merely to ‘work forwards from the evidence’ without acknowledging this fact.
The fact that a grenade went off is part of the evidence.
I assume you accept that the buildings collapsed in a manner consistent with the use of explosives.
Yes, to the extent of my limited knowledge of the issue. Part of my problem judging the evidence (and I think this affects many people) is that I feel like a doctor who has seen lots of gunshot wounds but no shrapnel wounds. I have seen many videos of buildings collapsing due to a controlled demolition and to the best of my layman’s ability to judge they look similar to the 9/11 footage. I have never seen any other footage of a building being hit by a large jet airliner with a full fuel load.
Hahaha, I think it is funny that every comment against the 9/11 orthodoxy is voted down while every comment in favor of it is voted up, is it possible that the audience is a bit biased here?
But on to your point.
First I think the example is a bit misleading because in the reader’s mental model a grenade will cause death in a manner similar with the firing of bullets. Not so in the case of 9/11, for all that is known, a building sustaining some amount of structural damage and fire will not collapse the way WTC7 did, which is why from the start you should place a higher probability on explosives being involved.
But back to your example: A man is dead after a grenade exploded in his vicinity. His wounds are consistent with bullet wounds which usually look different that shrapnel wounds. Now, what killed the man, was it the grenade or bullets(he could have been fired at when the grenade went off). One way to distinguish the causes of death would be to examine the body for bullets or shrapnel. We might find one or the other or even both. If you only find shrapnel you falsify the hypothesis of death-by-gun, if on the other hand you only find bullets it’s the other hypothesis that is falsified.
I assume you accept that the buildings collapsed in a manner consistent with the use of explosives. This already nullifies one argument that was repeated several times here on LW, that the prior for explosives is too low to even be seriously considered. Now this is of course not enough to prove that it were explosives and here is where additional evidence has to come in like:
can structural damage(e.g. as happened in 9/11 to WTC7) and fire explain a collapse in almost free fall speed? No
were there eye-witness testimonies of explosions? Yes, lots of them.
is there evidence for explosives in the rubble/dust? Yes. As a side note, NIST didn’t even bother to look for this evidence:
http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm
“12. Did the NIST investigation look for evidence of the WTC towers being brought down by controlled demolition? Was the steel tested for explosives or thermite residues? The combination of thermite and sulfur (called thermate) “slices through steel like a hot knife through butter.”
NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.”
The fact that a grenade went off is part of the evidence.
Yes, to the extent of my limited knowledge of the issue. Part of my problem judging the evidence (and I think this affects many people) is that I feel like a doctor who has seen lots of gunshot wounds but no shrapnel wounds. I have seen many videos of buildings collapsing due to a controlled demolition and to the best of my layman’s ability to judge they look similar to the 9/11 footage. I have never seen any other footage of a building being hit by a large jet airliner with a full fuel load.