Great podcast. I think a lot of conspiracy theories cross over between left and right, and the real culprit for this mushy thinking isn’t any particular political perspective, but rather a lack of the basic education in the scientific method that could prevent faulty ideological and/or “common sense” reasoning—a kind of reasoning which is, after all, normal for uneducated humans. (See the book How We Decide for more about that.)

Some false beliefs that are embraced by both Christian Right and New-Age Left homeschoolers: the natural vs chemical logical fallacy and resulting beliefs such as anti-vax, fear of big pharma, unproven “natural” remedies and rejection of proven “chemical” remedies, expensive health foods,  inconvenient eating practices (like all-raw diets), and expensive visits to unqualified “practitioners”. An example of an education fallacy that was embraced by the left, and is usually blamed on the left, but has also been vigorously opposed by a many presumably left-leaning academic linguists, is the Whole Language method of teaching reading (see an article about the linguists’ opposition here: http://www.howtotutor.com/bel/November_1995.pdf). Scientific thinking and skepticism could be promoted by showing the left the parallels between their anti-vax logic and the birthers’ logic, and showing the right the parallels between their birther logic and the whole-language logic.

As Kay pointed out, there is a smidgen of truth in most conspiracy theories—the US government did promote lies about why we were invading Iraq, and pharmaceutical companies do sometimes behave unethically. Skeptics in the media are in a great position to explain, to those of us with less education in science and critical thinking, why a few disturbing truths don’t logically justify being a full-on “truther”.  The interview with Kay was really interesting, but I’d still like to hear less smugness about “nonsense” and more explanation of exactly where, within these conspiracy theories, the logical fallacies lie.

ROFLMAO

So journalists think they are intelligent.  I am so impressed.

Conspiracies are irrelevant!

Whether or not two airliners weighing less than 200 tons with 34 tons of jet fuel can TOTALLY OBLITERATE two skyscraper TWO THOUSAND TIMES their mass in LESS THAN TWO HOURS is a physics and engineering problem.  Since the engineering is mostly applied Newtonian Physics the whole thing is a physics problem.

So is having a table specifying the tons of steel and tons of concrete that were on every level of the towers FROM AN OFFICIAL SOURCE a concept that is TOO DIFFICULT for journalists to understand?  Can Kay find that information in the NIST report?  Skyscrapers do have this peculiar characteristic of having to hold themselves up and withstand the wind.

So 90% of his blather was about psychology and conspiracies and people not trusting AUTHORITY.  But nothing about Grade School Physics that can be demonstrated to 12 year olds.  He just mentioned “evidence” and “scientists” and “peer reviewed”.  So why doesn’t the NCSTAR1 report even mention the total amount of concrete in the towers?  Try finding the total weight of a floor assembly specified anywhere.  Some science.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT4BXIpdIdo

Why doesn’t Kay go to an engineering school and get some experts to demonstrate a self supporting physical model that can be completely collapsed by dropping the top 15% or less onto the rest?

But since it will soon be TEN YEARS this is a very peculiar problem.  Far too many people would have to admit to themselves that they have been STUPID for ten years.  There is a serious psychological problem alright.  The nation that put men on the Moon should be laughed at for the next 1000 years.

9/11 is the Piltdown Man incident of the 21st century.

psik

“Did Denis Robert and I listen to the same podcast? Kay was very critical of the right and somewhat critical of the left conspiracy theorists.”

I agree that the guest didn’t seem biased one way or the other.  Methinks somebody is too sensitive.

bduffy - 26 May 2011 02:25 PM

So apparently anyone who questions the official version of 9/11 is a “Truther” “nut”? That doesn’t seem very fair, when you consider how little evidence there really is for the official story. And as Jack Lewis points out, WT7 is very hard to explain, unless you just “go with it” in an almost faith-based way (isn’t that something we don’t like around here?).

It just seems unfair to me. Why believe the Bush administration’s story? We didn’t trust them on anything else.

We don’t have to trust them. WT7 was next to a far larger building that came crashing down, and was on fire at the time. If WT7 hadn’t been at least severely damaged, then you’d have something difficult to explain. Also, if the whole attack was faked just to start a war, there was no benefit to going to the trouble of bringing down WT7. Surely the twin towers were enough to start a war.

ericf - 26 May 2011 09:17 PM

We don’t have to trust them. WT7 was next to a far larger building that came crashing down, and was on fire at the time.

ROFLMAO

What does “next to” mean?

Debris from the collapsing North Tower breached a fuel oil pipe in a room in the north side of the building. (This means the debris had to travel across WTC 6 and Vesey Street—a distance of at least 355 feet—penetrate the outer wall of WTC 6, and smash through about 50 feet of the building, including a concrete masonry wall.)

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/wtc7/index.html

So how fast did this debris have to be traveling?  It had to do a minimum of 27 mph horizontally just to reach WTC7 and that is thrown from the top of WTC1 and hitting WTC7 at the base.  So to hit higher up and penetrate 50 feet of the building it would need much more horizontal velocity.

So that would raise the question of what could give it that velocity?

Can’t unbelievers figure out the obvious physics questions?

psik

I have to agree with psik.

There are a bunch of “conspiracy theories” out there, but WTC7 is a matter of physics.

Those who allow a scientific analysis of its freefall collapse to be clouded by a label of “conspiracy” are no more skeptical than a Christian that hasn’t read the bible and just knows that it’s true.

Let’s look at WTC7 and discard any hypotheses on the basis of evidence and the laws of physics.  Anything less is disingenuous.

BTW - I am not a conspiracy theorist, I am a scientist, and when someone explains to me (including NIST) a viable alternative hypothesis to demolition, capable of causing the vertical freefall collapse of a 50 storey building in NYC, I’ll happily accept it albeit with some embarrassment.  Till then I’ll continue to be a skeptic.

Got any motive for demolishing WTC7?

domokato - 27 May 2011 03:12 PM

Got any motive for demolishing WTC7?

It is just amazing how many people have chosen not to investigate jack shit but will call people conspiracy loonies.  But the motives are still irrelevant to the physics.  People should have been all over this for the PHYSICS NINE YEARS AGO.

Before the attack, SEC investigations of corporate fraud by companies such as Enron and Worldcom were the subject of many news reports—reports that virtually vanished in the wake of the attack.

http://911review.com/attack/wtc/b7.html

More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.

“According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions,” Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion — that’s $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

http://www.citizensforgovernmentaccountability.org/?p=1573

To hell with the motives and the money.

Deal with the PHYSICS!

No matter who did it or why they did it they cannot change PHYSICS!

A big reason why this crap drags on is people focusing on BULLSHIT!

psik

If there was a motive, I might be more inclined to investigate

EDIT: without a motive, your claim that the physics is wrong leads me to suspect your facts or analysis is wrong rather than suspect the building might have been demolished

domokato - 27 May 2011 03:41 PM

If there was a motive, I might be more inclined to investigate

EDIT: without a motive, your claim that the physics is wrong leads me to suspect your facts or analysis is wrong rather than suspect the building might have been demolished

LOL

You need someone to explain to you the characteristics of skyscrapers and what is necessary for them to hold themselves up?  You shouldn’t need to be told the physics is screwy.  Each building was more than 2000 times the mass of the plane and the steel supposed weakened in less than ONE HOUR.  Both of those FACTS should ring alarm bells.

Imagine you had 110 pizzas in boxes.  Suppose each one weighed 4 pounds.  Imagine trying to stack them all up.  That would mean the pizza box on the bottom would have to be strong enough to support

436 pounds.

Obviously no one makes pizza boxes that strong.  But skyscrapers must be designed to hold the weight and then constructed from the bottom up.  WTC 1 & 2 were actually 116 stories.  6 were underground.  Building that big must be constructed up from bedrock so they dug down and built up from there.  So the designers had to figure out how thick the steel had to be on every level in order to be sufficiently strong to support the weight all of the way up.  So the fact that we do not have any Official Source providing us with the tons of steel and tons of concrete that were on every level nearly TEN YEARS after the event is certainly telling.

But that the citizens of the nation that put men on the Moon don’t understand enough grade school physics to ask the obvious question speaks volumes for the so called educational system.  But then our so called journalists choose to focus on CONSPIRACY THEORISTS.  Definitely and interesting culture we have here.

Then there is the problem of the energy required to collapse each level of the core all of the way down even though they got stronger and heavier.  So I have provided and demonstrated the physics with a model that anyone can duplicate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT4BXIpdIdo

Of course there is the psychological problem of people admitting they have believed nonsense for TEN YEARS.  The trouble with that is that physics is incapable of giving a damn about anybodies’ psychological nonsense.  Of course a reasonably decent movie was done about it years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQLCYR9iROs

psik

psikeyhackr - 27 May 2011 05:05 PM

domokato - 27 May 2011 03:41 PM

If there was a motive, I might be more inclined to investigate

EDIT: without a motive, your claim that the physics is wrong leads me to suspect your facts or analysis is wrong rather than suspect the building might have been demolished

LOL

You need someone to explain to you the characteristics of skyscrapers and what is necessary for them to hold themselves up?  You shouldn’t need to be told the physics is screwy.  Each building was more than 2000 times the mass of the plane and the steel supposed weakened in less than ONE HOUR.  Both of those FACTS should ring alarm bells.

Hmmm…changing topics away from WTC7?

I can’t tell if you’re just trying to bait me into an argument, but your logic as it stands here is clearly flawed. It wasn’t the planes alone that brought the buildings down; there was also a raging fire due to the burning jet fuel. Saying that the buildings couldn’t have been brought down by the mass of such small planes is an extremely weak argument..

domokato - 27 May 2011 06:03 PM

Hmmm…changing topics away from WTC7?

I can’t tell if you’re just trying to bait me into an argument, but your logic as it stands here is clearly flawed. It wasn’t the planes alone that brought the buildings down; there was also a raging fire due to the burning jet fuel. Saying that the buildings couldn’t have been brought down by the mass of such small planes is an extremely weak argument..

I thought the topic was neurotic conspiracy theorists.

LOL

But if the physics dictates that it is IMPOSSIBLE for the skyscrapers to have collapsed from the reported causes then who is neurotic?

Are you saying that physics worked differently on WTC7 than it did on WTC 1 & 2?

Actually I think WTC7 is so obviously a demolition that it is boring.  The obvious give away is how the roof line came down so simultaneously and remained so straight all of the way across the building.  How could damage from the “collapse” of WTC1 create such ideal behavior?  How could fire do it?  It’s ridiculous to think such random phenomenon could cause such a precise result.

At least airliners smashing into skyscrapers is interesting.

OH yeah jet fuel.  Sometimes known as kerosene.  There were 34 tons of it.  FEMA says about 50% of it was used up in the initial explosion.  But how much mass are we talking about in the vicinity of the impact?  They never tell us how much a complete floor assembly weighed.  But it is easy to compute the weight of a concrete floor slab on the basis of dimensions and density.  One concrete slab outside the core weighed 600 tons.  How much all of the trusses and corrugated pans weighed I have never seen.  I am guessing around 200 tons.  There were 236 perimeter columns and 47 core columns.  But we are completely missing data on the horizontal beams in the core.

Now with each level 12 feet tall that means there were 564 feet of vertical steel in the core on each level.  But the cores were 86 feet by 136 feet.  Now the columns were not in an evenly spaced 6 by 8 grid with one missing.  I have never seen the layout of the horizontal beams specified.  But the length of horizontal steel should be about 8 * 86 + 6 * 136 or 1504 feet of steel.  Much more than double the length of vertical steel.  So how are we supposed to analyze whatever happened when we don’t even know the tons of steel on each level inside the core?

That is part of the absurdity of this business.  Steven Jones and Richard Gage don’t even ask relevant questions to help resolve this issue.  Everybody is supposed to be focused on emotional bullshit like conspiracy theories and controlled demolition which would have to be some kind of conspiracy.

But physics is incapable of caring about human motivations.  An airliner is an inanimate object and so is a skyscraper.  So if airliners could cause the complete destruction of the buildings in so little time then physicists should be able to thoroughly explain it with complete data on the towers.  So why haven’t most been asking about the distribution of steel down the buildings for nearly TEN YEARS?  Why isn’t it obvious to grade school kids that the data is important?  Where is the SCIENTIFIC CURIOSITY of these supposed SCIENTISTS?

The distribution of the mass of steel is important for THREE REASONS:

#1 .  Analyzing the airliner impacts.  The NIST provides empirical data indicating the south tower deflected only 15 inches due to the impact.  They provide a graph based on a digital camera showing the deflection and four minutes of oscillation.  The distribution of mass of steel and concrete had to affect that. The supposed SCIENTIFIC simulation created by Purdue does not have the core columns moving which they had to do according to empirical data from the NIST.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UvPWny_PBc

#2.  The south tower came down 54 minutes after impact and yet there had to be enough steel on the 81st level to support another 29 stories but we are not told how many tons of steel were there.  So how did enough steel weaken enough for collapse to begin in that little time?

#3.  A top down collapse means the falling upper portion must accelerate the stationary mass below while simultaneously destroying the supports underneath which held that mass for 28 years and due to Newton’s 3rd law the bottom of the falling mass must be crushed simultaneously thereby destroying itself while absorbing its own kinetic energy to perform that destruction.  So it should slow down so how did all of this happen in less than 18 seconds.

I have two different models to demonstrate two phases of the event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0kUICwO93Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT4BXIpdIdo

Sorry, I am not going to try to do the fire thing.

psik

Wow some complete nutters here…

1) No plausible motive for demolishing the WTC7.

2) There was an INTERNAL collapse that was underway before the external structure collapsed. It didn’t collapse all at once.

3) The building was on fire ALL DAY and firefighters are quoted plenty of times talking about how dangerous the building looked. It was “leaning” and “creaking” could be heard before it fell. They recognized this and evacuated the area.

4) There are no demolition sounds. Ever been to a demolition? Ever watched one on youtube? The BOOMS aren’t just loud… they can be heard for miles and no such blast event was heard at any point on 9/11 by the hundreds of news teams and amateur footage.

5) Do you have any idea how much work goes into demolishing a building? For a building of that size it would take months. It certainly couldn’t be done under the nose of thousands of office workers and security and couldn’t be done in just a few hours either.

6) Absolutely no evidence of demolition materials in the pile despite teams at the scene with professional experience in demolitions.

edit - Ahhh… psikeyhackr I remember you from Sciforums.. you are coo-coo.

Psik’s nonsense theories about 9/11 have been demolished on this forum more times than there are days in the year. Just FYI.

dougsmith - 28 May 2011 05:45 AM

Psik’s nonsense theories about 9/11 have been demolished on this forum more times than there are days in the year. Just FYI.

The people on this forum just avoid the physics and claim to have won and escape into psychological bullshit just like Jonathan Kay is doing.  I don’t have any theories and have never proposed any.  I don’t give a damn who did it or why.  All I talk about is the physics of the supposed cause of the destruction.  The theories are just a diversion into the weeds of psychological bullshit.

He ridicules the so called Truthers but the NIST doesn’t even specify the total amount of concrete in the towers.

I point out that we don’t have data on the horizontal beams in the core and dougsmith says nothing about that just claims I have been demolished before. 

Where is doug’s physical model that can completely collapse?  Where is anybody’s physical model that can completely collapse?  Why don’t you provide a link to my previous demolitions doug?  I’ll have to find one and add the link later.  The rational scientific atheists haven’t resolved a grade school physics problem in TEN YEARS.  Do they submit to the psychological authority of government like the religious do to religious authority?  Do not the Laws of Physics not give a damn about either one? 

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/9953/

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/3464/P300/

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psik