I’m puzzled over why the comments in this thread are being downvoted, as well. I can’t help the feeling that there’s more “we’ll downvote things that we disagree with” going on in this community than there should be—this is far from the first place where it has looked like that.
I’m puzzled over why the comments in this thread are being downvoted, as well. I can’t help the feeling that there’s more “we’ll downvote things that we disagree with” going on in this community than there should be—this is far from the first place where it has looked like that.
I’m not particularly puzzled (9/11, cultural identity, arguments are soldiers, etc). But I certainly disapprove of downvotes of Jonii’s question in particular. It is the right kind of thing to ask, just so long as the asking is not rhetorical.
Indeed. Jonii wasn’t even expressing support for a conspiracy theory, he was simply asking for clarification. (And even he was expressing support, that wouldn’t by itself be reason for a downvote, for as long as it was well-argued.)
The wrong way to profess a controversial claim is to just assert it or even worse assume it in some other claim. The right way is to give arguments. What is considered correct in the community is very much relevant to how one makes an assertion. The problem isn’t that controversial claims are being made, but the irresponsible way they are being made.
I don’t have an objection to the way PlaidX’s comments have been voted down when they’ve clearly contained faulty reasoning. I do have an objection to people being voted down for making honest questions.
I don’t object to these comments being downvoted: 1234. The first one is unfoundedly dismissive about evidence opposing one’s own argument, the second presents evidence against one’s own argument (even in failed demolitions, buildings don’t actually fall over) and tries to present it as evidence for the argument, and the third claims to provide links to original sources without actually doing so. The fourth is making a bold claim that contradicts scientific research, without really backing up that claim in any way.
I do object to these being downvoted (this list includes some that don’t have a negative karma now, but did before): 123. The first asks an honest question, the second seems to provide a reasonable answer to the question presented, and the third makes a perfectly valid query.
I’m ambivalent on these being downvoted: 12. The first one is made in a tone that is possibly a bit too confident and it does feel like it’s grasping at straws a bit, but then the first two sentences do make a very valid point. The second is implicitly throwing its support behind the conspiracy theory interpretation without backing it up any more, but then it is drawing attention to the fact that the parent was needlessly downvoted. It’s also good to express that some particular question might be important, but at the same time it would again be nice if a better explanation would have been given regarding why it’s important.
On the second list, I agree about the first comment, disagree about the last (the answer to the question as stated should be obvious: improbable a priori, so the valid question needs to be more specific), and partly about the second (the first part of the comment is informative, but the second part talks of black boxes not surviving “conveniently” and speculates on stuff that requires more support and sounds dubious without it (passenger lists).
I wasn’t denying that a video is evidence: “the building collapsed as if imploded” part wasn’t the bit I objecting to. I was objecting to the fact that you admitted there being a study which explained why the building collapsed that way, but then you just said “AFAIK the collapse pattern is not consistent with this claim”, without providing anything to support your claim. If there are trained engineers saying that this collapse pattern does fit one that would be caused by structural damage, then you can’t just say you disagree with them; you need to explain why you’re right and they’re wrong.
I don’t understand how I’d be begging the question or committing the mind projection fallacy in this.
but then you just said “AFAIK the collapse pattern is not consistent with this claim”, without providing anything to support your claim.
Well I understood the video to be supporting my claim. IIRC the study claimed that one central column was damaged and caused the collapse. IMHO this cannot explain how any building can collapse in basically free fall speed. Saying “it collapsed because of fire/structural damage/planes” is a zero information theory that can explain any outcome, therefore it is also unscientific because it cannot be falsified. It is the phlogiston theory of 911.
I don’t understand how I’d be begging the question or committing the mind projection fallacy in this.
The whole issue of the dispute is how to explain the collapse of the buildings. If you say “we have scientific research that explains it” well, you are begging the question. And you are also projecting your mind because all you know is that there is a paper written by some people who claim to provide a scientific explanation of the collapse. That doesn’t mean that the paper really is a scientific explanation. Again, that is exactly the point being disputed.
You could as well say “The 911 commission has scientifically explained it all, no need for further discussion.”
Saying “it collapsed because of fire/structural damage/planes” is a zero information theory that can explain any outcome, therefore it is also unscientific because it cannot be falsified.
Bzzt. The hypotheses are capable of explaining different counterfactual outcomes: if you could repeat the experiment (so to speak) with structural damage but no fire, with fire but no structural damage, or with planes and all their effects but a certainty of no explosives, you might falsify some. In any case, you obviously know that the “official story” includes far deeper theories:
IIRC the study claimed that one central column was damaged and caused the collapse.
Well I understood the video to be supporting my claim. IIRC the study claimed that one central column was damaged and caused the collapse. IMHO this cannot explain how any building can collapse in basically free fall speed
The video shows that the building collapses. You didn’t previously say that it was just one column that was damaged, only that there was “structural damage”. Damage to just one column causing such a collapse does sound a bit counter-intuitive, but then it would be hardly the first thing in physics that would be a bit counter-intuitive. And if you only specify “structural damage”, as you originally did, then it certainly isn’t obvious that structural damage couldn’t cause such a collapse, so the video didn’t support your original claim.
Saying “it collapsed because of fire/structural damage/planes” is a zero information theory that can explain any outcome, therefore it is also unscientific because it cannot be falsified.
It can be falsified: by showing that sufficient structural damage couldn’t have been caused by the conditions surrounding the collapse.
The whole issue of the dispute is how to explain the collapse of the buildings. If you say “we have scientific research that explains it” well, you are begging the question. And you are also projecting your mind because all you know is that there is a paper written by some people who claim to provide a scientific explanation of the collapse.
Umm. You were the one who brought up the study, which you said provided an explanation. Not me. If somebody uses the word “study” in such a context, I’m going to assume that it was a scientific one unless there’s reason to assume otherwise.
Sure, the paper might only claim to be scientific, even though it’s actually written by people who don’t understand the science involved, or even by people who are purposefully misleading others. But if you’re going to claim something like that, you need to back it up. You still haven’t provided any evidence for why the study would actually be flawed or unscientific, other than stating that you don’t know how damage to a single column could cause such a collapse. You say the science of the paper is the very thing being disputed, but you haven’t said anything to make people believe that there is a valid dispute in the first place.
Sure, the paper might only claim to be scientific, even though it’s actually written by people who don’t understand the science involved, or even by people who are purposefully misleading others. But if you’re going to claim something like that, you need to back it up.
You say the science of the paper is the very thing being disputed, but you haven’t said anything to make people believe that there is a valid dispute in the first place.
The evidence I have is the video. I’m not a structural engineer but IMHO the collapse of WTC7 as portrayed in the video cannot be explained by the failure of one column. Even more extensive structural damage(within reason) cannot explain it. I claim that it was a controlled demolition. I therefore conclude that report to be unscientific.
Fair enough. But compare this to somebody saying that although they’re no biologist, evolution cannot in their opinion explain how all the different species came to be, and therefore studies saying otherwise are unscientific. To many people, me included, your claim doesn’t sound much more convincing.
please keep in mind that I’m not the only one, there are lots of structural engineers that don’t buy the official story. Unlike your example with evolution I’m providing a very falsifiable alternative theory, not just denying one theory without providing another scientific theory.
Also I would like to refer you to the E.T. Jaynes again he has this great example of the study with the psychic where he reasons similarly as I’m doing now, I don’t remember which chapter it was. I even wanted to write a top-level post about it because it has some very far-reaching conclusions in regard to rationality.
there are lots of structural engineers that don’t buy the official story.
If there are actual experts of the field who agree with you, then that would at least be the sort of admissible evidence I’ve been asking for the last several comments. If you had provided links to such originally, instead of trying to pass the video as evidence by itself, then I would have considered your original comment good enough as to not merit downvoting.
The Jaynes reference isn’t going to be of much use unless you can narrow down its location in the book a bit more, I’m afraid.
About the Jaynes reference, I’ll have to find it again.
You’re probably thinking of Chapter 5 of Logic of Science. If I’m reading him correctly, Jaynes is arguing that while reports of ESP are evidence for ESP, they’re even stronger evidence that the reports are somehow mistaken.
But the thing about ESP is, we already have strong theoretical reasons for thinking that it doesn’t exist. Whereas the prior probability of a secret implosion of WTC7 is very low, and structural engineering is difficult enough that we can’t expect naive physical intuition to be able to tell what really happened from a nine-second YouTube clip.
Before dismissing a study as unscientific, you should be able to point to specific sections of the report and explain why you think they’re mistaken.
If I’m reading him correctly, Jaynes is arguing that while reports of ESP are evidence for ESP, they’re even stronger evidence that the reports are somehow mistaken.
I don’t have my copy of PT:LOS right here, but this doesn’t sound right to me. I would think that your prior probability for the reports being mistaken is greater than your prior for ESP. The reports provide strong evidence for a mistake, and even stronger evidence for ESP, but not strong enough to make ESP look more probable than a mistake.
I’m not a structural engineer but IMHO the collapse of WTC7 as portrayed in the video cannot be explained by the failure of one column.
I’m not a structural engineer either but I can guess why intuition built from the demolition of objects on a scale of several feet cannot apply to a skyscraper.
First, the entire column of the skyscraper should have a lot of inertia—why would it tip horizontally in one direction or another without a significant continued force to do so?
You’re probably underestimating the cohesion of the floors, one to another. Maybe they’re not like layers of cake balanced on toothpicks. Just a few internal structures connecting the floors (like concrete staircases?) make a vertical crumbling fall seem much more reasonable.
*An impact that is strong enough to break a hole in an exterior wall doesn’t just affect that wall, presumably the whole building would be agitated, shaking and wobbling at various sonic and subsonic frequencies. (Thunder during a storm is enough to cause my house to resonate and rattle the mirrors on my wall.)
I’m not saying that I would have predicted that the building would fall vertically rather than tip over. I’m just saying that I would expect that the fall of an enormous building with lots of external and internal structure to be more complex than my intuition could accommodate.
If I was worried about there being a conspiracy, and it was because the fall of this building was nagging at me, what I would do—because I know from experience this is what I do when I worry—is I would go to youtube and google “building collapse” and see if buildings typically fall in ways that I expect, and if there’s a lot of variation, etc. I would see if after watching a few buildings collapse at that scale, if my brain could extract enough information to really feel comfortable one way or another about the likelihood of identifying a ‘false’ collapse..
(Seeing what structural engineers have to say about it is not the first thing I would do, because I expect demolition models are like climate models—you have enough free parameters and undetermined assumptions to get out anything you can imagine.)
Kaj, are you serious? When you watch the WTC7 collapse and it’s roof staying basically horizontal during the whole process can you imagine this to happen unless all columns are destroyed at exactly the same time?
Like I said before: Damage to just one column causing such a collapse does sound a bit counter-intuitive, but then it would be hardly the first thing in physics that would be a bit counter-intuitive. If a structural engineer told me that it is possible, I’d believe him, just as I believe scientists when they tell me about the bizarreness that is quantum mechanics. Certainly the prior probability for “physics is sometimes counterintuitive” is far higher than the prior for “there was a conspiracy to cause 9/11″. Also, MatthewB’s explanation sounds quite plausible to me.
But yes, providing these sources earlier would have been good.
what about the structural engineers who say that the collapse had to be due to a controlled demolition? You seem to totally discount that. So what really seems to be going on in your mind and in those of others is that the probability “structural engineers who are on my side are right” is far greater than the probability “structural engineers who are on the other side are right”. Certainly each of us can find authorities to support our view, I was trying to argue from the basic evidence.
what about the structural engineers who say that the collapse had to be due to a controlled demolition? You seem to totally discount that.
For this whole time, I’ve been commenting on whether or not your original comment deserved being downvoted or not, not whether I believe in 9/11 theories in general. I didn’t mention the engineers that support your view, because I was responding to a comment where you implied that seeing the video should by itself convince anyone that something is up and that any report claiming otherwise is unscientific. By itself, meaning “even without the knowledge that there are engineers saying otherwise”. Yes, structural engineers saying that the collapse had to be due to a controlled demolition is pretty strong evidence, far stronger than any intuitive interpretation about a single video—which is why you should have brought them up in the beginning.
(So what is my stance on 9/11 theories in general? Undecided. The issue doesn’t really interest me enough that I’d spend time and energy researching it in the detail required to form a proper opinion. Sorry. :) )
So what is my stance on 9/11 theories in general? Undecided. The issue doesn’t really interest me enough that I’d spend time and energy researching it in the detail required to form a proper opinion.
If all you have is weak evidence, you can only end up “uncertain” if your prior says “uncertain”, that is you expect the building to have been detonated or not about equally, before taking into account the way it collapsed. Which doesn’t sound right. It seems that while evidence is weak, you should remain pretty confident that the building wasn’t detonated.
I have several (well, two) relatively intelligent, mostly rational friends who have studied 9/11 theories in detail and come to the conclusion that there might actually be a conspiracy, so I’m setting my confidence intervals somewhat wide in this matter.
It’s either strong evidence, or privileging the hypothesis. Uncertainty is half-way from disbelief to conviction, it’s not a trivial milestone. If you allow for a likelihood ratio of 10 to go either way from “uncertain”, you are already changing level of belief between 1% and 99%. This is the opposite side of this situation: if you’ve just dropped or introduced a strong piece of evidence (like recalling that you haven’t asked the details of what exactly is being claimed by the presumably reliable source), you can’t be uncertain both before and after that.
I think we might have slightly different definitions for “undecided”. I might consider a subjective belief of .95 for something not having happened as “undecided”, if the associated weight of evidence isn’t large.
Still, upon consideration, you’re right. I’ve revised my estimate from “undecided” to “don’t think there was a (malicious) conspiracy”.
For this whole time, I’ve been commenting on whether or not your original comment deserved being downvoted or not, not whether I believe in 9/11 theories in general.
Well, your comment that started all this exchange was:
The fourth is making a bold claim that contradicts scientific research, without really backing up that claim in any way.
You operate under the assumption that there is a scientific explanation(I assume by that you mean that it is a correct explanation) of the collapse based on structural damage. Further down you write:
So what is my stance on 9/11 theories in general? Undecided. The issue doesn’t really interest me enough that I’d spend time and energy researching it in the detail required to form a proper opinion.
I see a contradiction. You cannot claim to be undecided and at the same time write “The official story is supported by science.”
You operate under the assumption that there is a scientific explanation
Sigh.
I got the assumption that there is a scientific explanation from you saying that there is a study which explains (or at least claims to explain) the collapse. From the context, one could deduce that it was written by people with a science background—presumably, if it was completely unscientific and obviously written by people with no background in engineering, you wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it at all. Therefore it was presumably a scientific study.
When I say “scientific study”, I don’t mean that it would have to be correct. Obviously there is, and has always been, lots of scientific research that is outright wrong. Being scientific doesn’t mean you’re always correct, it means you employ the tools of science and therefore hopefully minimize your chances of being wrong. But if a layman says there is a study and the context implies that the study was made by people trained in the field, then that study has a higher prior probability of being correct than that same layman when he says the same study is wrong (because the layman cannot employ the scientific tools of the field that the experts are trained in). Especially if the layman in question supports his own case only by a video of an implosion and nothing else.
I see a contradiction. You cannot claim to be undecided and at the same time write “The official story is supported by science.”
The official story seems to be supported by a scientific study, but I do not have the expertise to determine whether the science in that study is actually correct.
What are you sorry about?
The fact that you seem to have spent some effort digging up material in an effort to convince me of the conspiracy point of view, but I probably won’t give most of it the attention it might deserve.
I think this makes it fairly obvious that I don’t believe it to be correct. Of course you can say “well it was presumably a study by experts so it has a high probability of being correct.” But wouldn’t that be begging the question again, since the official story is precisely what is under dispute?
presumably, if it was completely unscientific and obviously written by people with no background in engineering, you wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it at all. Therefore it was presumably a scientific study.
Well, maybe you should question your assumptions here.
You then wrote:
The fourth is making a bold claim that contradicts scientific research,
And this is where I took objection.
The fact that you seem to have spent some effort digging up material in an effort to convince me of the conspiracy point of view, but I probably won’t give most of it the attention it might deserve.
From a previous comment of yours:
that would at least be the sort of admissible evidence I’ve been asking for the last several comments.
Ok here I was assuming that you really wanted to take a closer look at the evidence.
And well, I didn’t just do it for you, but also for others reading this thread, and from the amount of downvotes there seem to be a few.
Even if you are not a structural engineer and in spite of physics often being counterintuitive, from the way this building collapses, can you tell me which columns where blown up in what order? Now consider the video of the WTC7 collapse.
I’m not a structural engineer but IMHO the collapse of WTC7 as portrayed in the video cannot be explained by the failure of one column.
I’m not a structural engineer either but I can guess why intuition built from the breakage of objects on a scale of several feet, as we more typically encounter, cannot apply to the demolition of a skyscraper.
First, the entire column of the skyscraper should have a lot of inertia—why would it tip horizontally in one direction or another without a significant continued force to do so?
You’re probably underestimating the cohesion of the floors, one to another. Maybe they’re not like layers of cake balanced on toothpicks. Just a few internal structures connecting the floors (like concrete staircases?) make a vertical crumbling fall seem much more reasonable.
An impact that is strong enough to break a hole in an exterior wall doesn’t just affect that wall, presumably the whole building would be agitated, shaking and wobbling at various sonic and supersonic frequencies. (Thunder during a storm is enough to cause my house to resonate and rattle the mirrors on my wall.)
I’m not saying that I would have predicted that the building would fall vertically rather than tip over. I’m just saying that I would expect that the fall of an enormous building with lots of external and internal structure to be more complex than my intuition could accommodate.
If I was worried about there being a conspiracy, and it was because the fall of this building was nagging at me, what I would do—because I know from experience this is what I do when I worry—is I would go to youtube and google “building collapse” and see if buildings typically fall in ways that I expect, and if there’s a lot of variation, etc. I would see if after watching a few buildings collapse at that scale, if my brain could extract enough information to really feel comfortable one way or another about the likelihood of identifying a ‘false’ collapse..
(Seeing what structural engineers have to say about it is not the first thing I would do, because I expect demolition models are like climate models—you have enough free parameters and undetermined assumptions to get out anything.)
When I first started back to school in 2006, I was studying Engineering. I was in a materials class when they did strength testing of various materials. I remember the noise that the breaking I-Beam made when it snapped. It did not just go “Ping” like many people think, but rather sounded like a combination of an explosion and a breaking mirror (a BIG mirror).
We had a short discussion at this point about 9/11 and the reported “explosions” hear within the building. The professor asked what those noises might have been (nodding at the tiny I-Beam we had just broken and mentioning that the I-Beams in the WTC where hundreds of times larger).
It did not take us long to get the clue that the “explosions” hear were large structural members breaking under incredible strain, and that the stored up energy in these members was then released further along the member’s length (so, you get this recursively adding structural failure that generates louder and louder “BANGs” as the buildings falls).
The pancaking of the floors is just a part of that process. Also, as you mention below… The fire did not need to melt anything, all it needed to do was to remove just enough strength from one portion of the building to have that fail, and have the other supporting redundant members have just enough strength sapped from them as well to begin a catastrophic failure. If the fire did melt things (as is possible when you have a hot firing burning in an oxygen deprived environment, it will heap up to huge temperature and then if a hole were to suddenly appear that allowed in oxygen. It will act like a blowtorch—we got to do this in class too) then that would just make the failure all the more spectacular...
I’m not deleting this previous comment, but someone over my shoulder tells me they just read about this in Physics for Future Presidents by Richard Muller.
Accordingly, what happened was that the burning gasoline in the plane melted the metal support structure on one of the floors, so that one floor collapsed onto another (like the melting of a cake layer). When the first floor collapsed, this caused a domino effect as the lower floors failed structurally one after another.
So the building fell due to fire rather than the impact of the plane. I am told this is consistent with the time scale of the building collapse.
In any case, I’m not deleting my previous comment with all speculations because it still goes to show; the dynamical system of the building and the plane was too complex to guess what was going on.
This is bad. You know you lack the expertise, and you have an intuitively reached conclusion. In which cases should you believe your own intuition, and to what degree? Only so far as you expect the intuition to compute answers corresponding to reality. Not being trained at understanding such structures makes your intuition even more unreliable than intuition of a trained person, and trained people could also do at least a back-of-the-envelope calculation to calibrate their intuition.
One should learn to doubt oneself more: our minds are nothing but faulty calculators, but are the only means for general intelligence we have, so we should study the user manual carefully, and implement workarounds for known bugs.
I’m puzzled over why the comments in this thread are being downvoted, as well. I can’t help the feeling that there’s more “we’ll downvote things that we disagree with” going on in this community than there should be—this is far from the first place where it has looked like that.
I’m not particularly puzzled (9/11, cultural identity, arguments are soldiers, etc). But I certainly disapprove of downvotes of Jonii’s question in particular. It is the right kind of thing to ask, just so long as the asking is not rhetorical.
Indeed. Jonii wasn’t even expressing support for a conspiracy theory, he was simply asking for clarification. (And even he was expressing support, that wouldn’t by itself be reason for a downvote, for as long as it was well-argued.)
The wrong way to profess a controversial claim is to just assert it or even worse assume it in some other claim. The right way is to give arguments. What is considered correct in the community is very much relevant to how one makes an assertion. The problem isn’t that controversial claims are being made, but the irresponsible way they are being made.
I don’t have an objection to the way PlaidX’s comments have been voted down when they’ve clearly contained faulty reasoning. I do have an objection to people being voted down for making honest questions.
We’d have to move to specific examples.
I don’t object to these comments being downvoted: 1 2 3 4. The first one is unfoundedly dismissive about evidence opposing one’s own argument, the second presents evidence against one’s own argument (even in failed demolitions, buildings don’t actually fall over) and tries to present it as evidence for the argument, and the third claims to provide links to original sources without actually doing so. The fourth is making a bold claim that contradicts scientific research, without really backing up that claim in any way.
I do object to these being downvoted (this list includes some that don’t have a negative karma now, but did before): 1 2 3. The first asks an honest question, the second seems to provide a reasonable answer to the question presented, and the third makes a perfectly valid query.
I’m ambivalent on these being downvoted: 1 2. The first one is made in a tone that is possibly a bit too confident and it does feel like it’s grasping at straws a bit, but then the first two sentences do make a very valid point. The second is implicitly throwing its support behind the conspiracy theory interpretation without backing it up any more, but then it is drawing attention to the fact that the parent was needlessly downvoted. It’s also good to express that some particular question might be important, but at the same time it would again be nice if a better explanation would have been given regarding why it’s important.
On the second list, I agree about the first comment, disagree about the last (the answer to the question as stated should be obvious: improbable a priori, so the valid question needs to be more specific), and partly about the second (the first part of the comment is informative, but the second part talks of black boxes not surviving “conveniently” and speculates on stuff that requires more support and sounds dubious without it (passenger lists).
Kaj, I agree with your general sentiment but disagree with your specific opinion on my comment:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1kj/the_911_metatruther_conspiracy_theory/1cy6
You are
begging the question
committing the mind projection fallacy
denying the fact that a video is evidence
I wasn’t denying that a video is evidence: “the building collapsed as if imploded” part wasn’t the bit I objecting to. I was objecting to the fact that you admitted there being a study which explained why the building collapsed that way, but then you just said “AFAIK the collapse pattern is not consistent with this claim”, without providing anything to support your claim. If there are trained engineers saying that this collapse pattern does fit one that would be caused by structural damage, then you can’t just say you disagree with them; you need to explain why you’re right and they’re wrong.
I don’t understand how I’d be begging the question or committing the mind projection fallacy in this.
Well I understood the video to be supporting my claim. IIRC the study claimed that one central column was damaged and caused the collapse. IMHO this cannot explain how any building can collapse in basically free fall speed. Saying “it collapsed because of fire/structural damage/planes” is a zero information theory that can explain any outcome, therefore it is also unscientific because it cannot be falsified. It is the phlogiston theory of 911.
The whole issue of the dispute is how to explain the collapse of the buildings. If you say “we have scientific research that explains it” well, you are begging the question. And you are also projecting your mind because all you know is that there is a paper written by some people who claim to provide a scientific explanation of the collapse. That doesn’t mean that the paper really is a scientific explanation. Again, that is exactly the point being disputed.
You could as well say “The 911 commission has scientifically explained it all, no need for further discussion.”
Bzzt. The hypotheses are capable of explaining different counterfactual outcomes: if you could repeat the experiment (so to speak) with structural damage but no fire, with fire but no structural damage, or with planes and all their effects but a certainty of no explosives, you might falsify some. In any case, you obviously know that the “official story” includes far deeper theories:
The video shows that the building collapses. You didn’t previously say that it was just one column that was damaged, only that there was “structural damage”. Damage to just one column causing such a collapse does sound a bit counter-intuitive, but then it would be hardly the first thing in physics that would be a bit counter-intuitive. And if you only specify “structural damage”, as you originally did, then it certainly isn’t obvious that structural damage couldn’t cause such a collapse, so the video didn’t support your original claim.
It can be falsified: by showing that sufficient structural damage couldn’t have been caused by the conditions surrounding the collapse.
Umm. You were the one who brought up the study, which you said provided an explanation. Not me. If somebody uses the word “study” in such a context, I’m going to assume that it was a scientific one unless there’s reason to assume otherwise.
Sure, the paper might only claim to be scientific, even though it’s actually written by people who don’t understand the science involved, or even by people who are purposefully misleading others. But if you’re going to claim something like that, you need to back it up. You still haven’t provided any evidence for why the study would actually be flawed or unscientific, other than stating that you don’t know how damage to a single column could cause such a collapse. You say the science of the paper is the very thing being disputed, but you haven’t said anything to make people believe that there is a valid dispute in the first place.
No, I don’t because I just stated a universal true fact that applies to all scientific studies. Btw, it is not an original idea of mine, but I got it from E. T. Jaynes Probability Theory: The Logic Of Science.
You are begging the question again.
Do you, or do you not have, any evidence for why we should believe that the report is unscientific?
The evidence I have is the video. I’m not a structural engineer but IMHO the collapse of WTC7 as portrayed in the video cannot be explained by the failure of one column. Even more extensive structural damage(within reason) cannot explain it. I claim that it was a controlled demolition. I therefore conclude that report to be unscientific.
Fair enough. But compare this to somebody saying that although they’re no biologist, evolution cannot in their opinion explain how all the different species came to be, and therefore studies saying otherwise are unscientific. To many people, me included, your claim doesn’t sound much more convincing.
Vladimir, Kaj,
please keep in mind that I’m not the only one, there are lots of structural engineers that don’t buy the official story. Unlike your example with evolution I’m providing a very falsifiable alternative theory, not just denying one theory without providing another scientific theory.
Also I would like to refer you to the E.T. Jaynes again he has this great example of the study with the psychic where he reasons similarly as I’m doing now, I don’t remember which chapter it was. I even wanted to write a top-level post about it because it has some very far-reaching conclusions in regard to rationality.
If there are actual experts of the field who agree with you, then that would at least be the sort of admissible evidence I’ve been asking for the last several comments. If you had provided links to such originally, instead of trying to pass the video as evidence by itself, then I would have considered your original comment good enough as to not merit downvoting.
The Jaynes reference isn’t going to be of much use unless you can narrow down its location in the book a bit more, I’m afraid.
Kaj, are you serious? When you watch the WTC7 collapse and it’s roof staying basically horizontal during the whole process can you imagine this to happen unless all columns are destroyed at exactly the same time? At least from my physical understanding of this world there is something very wrong with the official explanation.
But, I’ve taken some time to google up some videos for you:
Richard Gage Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth Alex Jones NIST Report Welding Engineer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2IVgrnb80I
Eyes Wide Shut: Gross Negligence with NIST Denial of Molten Metal on 9/11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs_ogSbQFbM
MIT engineer Jeff King: WTC was demolished on Airplane Day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiRIdlb88tg
9/11 Blueprint for Truth presented by Architect Richard Gage, AIA(this is a 2 hours presentation): http://video.google.com.br/videoplay?docid=-8182697765360042032#
Nine Scientists Find Active Nano-thermite in 9/11 WTC Dust—April 6, 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT5IOD17gN8
About the Jaynes reference, I’ll have to find it again.
I see that the downvote squad has been active, oh well. ;)
You’re probably thinking of Chapter 5 of Logic of Science. If I’m reading him correctly, Jaynes is arguing that while reports of ESP are evidence for ESP, they’re even stronger evidence that the reports are somehow mistaken.
But the thing about ESP is, we already have strong theoretical reasons for thinking that it doesn’t exist. Whereas the prior probability of a secret implosion of WTC7 is very low, and structural engineering is difficult enough that we can’t expect naive physical intuition to be able to tell what really happened from a nine-second YouTube clip.
Before dismissing a study as unscientific, you should be able to point to specific sections of the report and explain why you think they’re mistaken.
I don’t have my copy of PT:LOS right here, but this doesn’t sound right to me. I would think that your prior probability for the reports being mistaken is greater than your prior for ESP. The reports provide strong evidence for a mistake, and even stronger evidence for ESP, but not strong enough to make ESP look more probable than a mistake.
I’m not a structural engineer either but I can guess why intuition built from the demolition of objects on a scale of several feet cannot apply to a skyscraper.
First, the entire column of the skyscraper should have a lot of inertia—why would it tip horizontally in one direction or another without a significant continued force to do so?
You’re probably underestimating the cohesion of the floors, one to another. Maybe they’re not like layers of cake balanced on toothpicks. Just a few internal structures connecting the floors (like concrete staircases?) make a vertical crumbling fall seem much more reasonable.
*An impact that is strong enough to break a hole in an exterior wall doesn’t just affect that wall, presumably the whole building would be agitated, shaking and wobbling at various sonic and subsonic frequencies. (Thunder during a storm is enough to cause my house to resonate and rattle the mirrors on my wall.)
I’m not saying that I would have predicted that the building would fall vertically rather than tip over. I’m just saying that I would expect that the fall of an enormous building with lots of external and internal structure to be more complex than my intuition could accommodate.
If I was worried about there being a conspiracy, and it was because the fall of this building was nagging at me, what I would do—because I know from experience this is what I do when I worry—is I would go to youtube and google “building collapse” and see if buildings typically fall in ways that I expect, and if there’s a lot of variation, etc. I would see if after watching a few buildings collapse at that scale, if my brain could extract enough information to really feel comfortable one way or another about the likelihood of identifying a ‘false’ collapse..
(Seeing what structural engineers have to say about it is not the first thing I would do, because I expect demolition models are like climate models—you have enough free parameters and undetermined assumptions to get out anything you can imagine.)
Like I said before: Damage to just one column causing such a collapse does sound a bit counter-intuitive, but then it would be hardly the first thing in physics that would be a bit counter-intuitive. If a structural engineer told me that it is possible, I’d believe him, just as I believe scientists when they tell me about the bizarreness that is quantum mechanics. Certainly the prior probability for “physics is sometimes counterintuitive” is far higher than the prior for “there was a conspiracy to cause 9/11″. Also, MatthewB’s explanation sounds quite plausible to me.
But yes, providing these sources earlier would have been good.
Kaj,
what about the structural engineers who say that the collapse had to be due to a controlled demolition? You seem to totally discount that. So what really seems to be going on in your mind and in those of others is that the probability “structural engineers who are on my side are right” is far greater than the probability “structural engineers who are on the other side are right”. Certainly each of us can find authorities to support our view, I was trying to argue from the basic evidence.
The key is that we are just operating under different basic assumptions: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1kj/the_911_metatruther_conspiracy_theory/1d3k
For this whole time, I’ve been commenting on whether or not your original comment deserved being downvoted or not, not whether I believe in 9/11 theories in general. I didn’t mention the engineers that support your view, because I was responding to a comment where you implied that seeing the video should by itself convince anyone that something is up and that any report claiming otherwise is unscientific. By itself, meaning “even without the knowledge that there are engineers saying otherwise”. Yes, structural engineers saying that the collapse had to be due to a controlled demolition is pretty strong evidence, far stronger than any intuitive interpretation about a single video—which is why you should have brought them up in the beginning.
(So what is my stance on 9/11 theories in general? Undecided. The issue doesn’t really interest me enough that I’d spend time and energy researching it in the detail required to form a proper opinion. Sorry. :) )
If all you have is weak evidence, you can only end up “uncertain” if your prior says “uncertain”, that is you expect the building to have been detonated or not about equally, before taking into account the way it collapsed. Which doesn’t sound right. It seems that while evidence is weak, you should remain pretty confident that the building wasn’t detonated.
I have several (well, two) relatively intelligent, mostly rational friends who have studied 9/11 theories in detail and come to the conclusion that there might actually be a conspiracy, so I’m setting my confidence intervals somewhat wide in this matter.
blinks
Of the “explosive in building” sort, or the “deliberately ignored intelligence” sort?
Anyone here willing to give a prior for the deliberately ignored intelligence sort of conspiracy?
I think “explosive in the building” sort, though I haven’t asked for the exact details.
It’s either strong evidence, or privileging the hypothesis. Uncertainty is half-way from disbelief to conviction, it’s not a trivial milestone. If you allow for a likelihood ratio of 10 to go either way from “uncertain”, you are already changing level of belief between 1% and 99%. This is the opposite side of this situation: if you’ve just dropped or introduced a strong piece of evidence (like recalling that you haven’t asked the details of what exactly is being claimed by the presumably reliable source), you can’t be uncertain both before and after that.
I think we might have slightly different definitions for “undecided”. I might consider a subjective belief of .95 for something not having happened as “undecided”, if the associated weight of evidence isn’t large.
Still, upon consideration, you’re right. I’ve revised my estimate from “undecided” to “don’t think there was a (malicious) conspiracy”.
Right. So if you expect further investigation to change your belief (you can’t know which way), you say it’s undecided.
That’s a pretty good way of describing it, yes.
Well, your comment that started all this exchange was:
You operate under the assumption that there is a scientific explanation(I assume by that you mean that it is a correct explanation) of the collapse based on structural damage. Further down you write:
I see a contradiction. You cannot claim to be undecided and at the same time write “The official story is supported by science.”
What are you sorry about?
Sigh.
I got the assumption that there is a scientific explanation from you saying that there is a study which explains (or at least claims to explain) the collapse. From the context, one could deduce that it was written by people with a science background—presumably, if it was completely unscientific and obviously written by people with no background in engineering, you wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it at all. Therefore it was presumably a scientific study.
When I say “scientific study”, I don’t mean that it would have to be correct. Obviously there is, and has always been, lots of scientific research that is outright wrong. Being scientific doesn’t mean you’re always correct, it means you employ the tools of science and therefore hopefully minimize your chances of being wrong. But if a layman says there is a study and the context implies that the study was made by people trained in the field, then that study has a higher prior probability of being correct than that same layman when he says the same study is wrong (because the layman cannot employ the scientific tools of the field that the experts are trained in). Especially if the layman in question supports his own case only by a video of an implosion and nothing else.
The official story seems to be supported by a scientific study, but I do not have the expertise to determine whether the science in that study is actually correct.
The fact that you seem to have spent some effort digging up material in an effort to convince me of the conspiracy point of view, but I probably won’t give most of it the attention it might deserve.
Sigh. I’ll start by quoting myself again:
I think this makes it fairly obvious that I don’t believe it to be correct. Of course you can say “well it was presumably a study by experts so it has a high probability of being correct.” But wouldn’t that be begging the question again, since the official story is precisely what is under dispute?
Well, maybe you should question your assumptions here.
You then wrote:
And this is where I took objection.
From a previous comment of yours:
Ok here I was assuming that you really wanted to take a closer look at the evidence.
And well, I didn’t just do it for you, but also for others reading this thread, and from the amount of downvotes there seem to be a few.
I have a feeling this discussion isn’t going anywhere. Probably easier to let it be.
I think we have finally come to an agreement. LOL
:)
Just to make it clearer what I’m thinking of, here is a video of a real controlled demolition(scroll forward to the 1 min mark): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRaNwPGcQcM
Even if you are not a structural engineer and in spite of physics often being counterintuitive, from the way this building collapses, can you tell me which columns where blown up in what order? Now consider the video of the WTC7 collapse.
I’m not a structural engineer either but I can guess why intuition built from the breakage of objects on a scale of several feet, as we more typically encounter, cannot apply to the demolition of a skyscraper.
First, the entire column of the skyscraper should have a lot of inertia—why would it tip horizontally in one direction or another without a significant continued force to do so?
You’re probably underestimating the cohesion of the floors, one to another. Maybe they’re not like layers of cake balanced on toothpicks. Just a few internal structures connecting the floors (like concrete staircases?) make a vertical crumbling fall seem much more reasonable.
An impact that is strong enough to break a hole in an exterior wall doesn’t just affect that wall, presumably the whole building would be agitated, shaking and wobbling at various sonic and supersonic frequencies. (Thunder during a storm is enough to cause my house to resonate and rattle the mirrors on my wall.)
I’m not saying that I would have predicted that the building would fall vertically rather than tip over. I’m just saying that I would expect that the fall of an enormous building with lots of external and internal structure to be more complex than my intuition could accommodate.
If I was worried about there being a conspiracy, and it was because the fall of this building was nagging at me, what I would do—because I know from experience this is what I do when I worry—is I would go to youtube and google “building collapse” and see if buildings typically fall in ways that I expect, and if there’s a lot of variation, etc. I would see if after watching a few buildings collapse at that scale, if my brain could extract enough information to really feel comfortable one way or another about the likelihood of identifying a ‘false’ collapse..
(Seeing what structural engineers have to say about it is not the first thing I would do, because I expect demolition models are like climate models—you have enough free parameters and undetermined assumptions to get out anything.)
When I first started back to school in 2006, I was studying Engineering. I was in a materials class when they did strength testing of various materials. I remember the noise that the breaking I-Beam made when it snapped. It did not just go “Ping” like many people think, but rather sounded like a combination of an explosion and a breaking mirror (a BIG mirror).
We had a short discussion at this point about 9/11 and the reported “explosions” hear within the building. The professor asked what those noises might have been (nodding at the tiny I-Beam we had just broken and mentioning that the I-Beams in the WTC where hundreds of times larger).
It did not take us long to get the clue that the “explosions” hear were large structural members breaking under incredible strain, and that the stored up energy in these members was then released further along the member’s length (so, you get this recursively adding structural failure that generates louder and louder “BANGs” as the buildings falls).
The pancaking of the floors is just a part of that process. Also, as you mention below… The fire did not need to melt anything, all it needed to do was to remove just enough strength from one portion of the building to have that fail, and have the other supporting redundant members have just enough strength sapped from them as well to begin a catastrophic failure. If the fire did melt things (as is possible when you have a hot firing burning in an oxygen deprived environment, it will heap up to huge temperature and then if a hole were to suddenly appear that allowed in oxygen. It will act like a blowtorch—we got to do this in class too) then that would just make the failure all the more spectacular...
I’ll shut up now...
I’m not deleting this previous comment, but someone over my shoulder tells me they just read about this in Physics for Future Presidents by Richard Muller.
Accordingly, what happened was that the burning gasoline in the plane melted the metal support structure on one of the floors, so that one floor collapsed onto another (like the melting of a cake layer). When the first floor collapsed, this caused a domino effect as the lower floors failed structurally one after another.
So the building fell due to fire rather than the impact of the plane. I am told this is consistent with the time scale of the building collapse.
In any case, I’m not deleting my previous comment with all speculations because it still goes to show; the dynamical system of the building and the plane was too complex to guess what was going on.
Well, in this thread we are discussing the collapse of WTC7 which was not hit by any plane.
This is bad. You know you lack the expertise, and you have an intuitively reached conclusion. In which cases should you believe your own intuition, and to what degree? Only so far as you expect the intuition to compute answers corresponding to reality. Not being trained at understanding such structures makes your intuition even more unreliable than intuition of a trained person, and trained people could also do at least a back-of-the-envelope calculation to calibrate their intuition.
One should learn to doubt oneself more: our minds are nothing but faulty calculators, but are the only means for general intelligence we have, so we should study the user manual carefully, and implement workarounds for known bugs.
See my reply to Kaj: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1kj/the_911_metatruther_conspiracy_theory/1d4f
People are being downvoted for their contrarian view, how ironic.