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SKEPTIC_MOLE

                                             July 6, 2009


                                                  AN_INCONTINENT_TRUTH

    About a "9/11 truth" debunking article
    from back in 2006, written by a Phil Molé    
    for skeptic.com:

               http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/06-09-11

               "9/11 Conspiracy Theories:
               The 9/11 Truth Movement in Perspective"
               September 11th, 2006

      Overall, this is a strong article:
      it deals with a lot of the claims
      of the truthies in a reasonably
      fair way, but demonstrates their
      lack of evidence and weak grasp or
      reality...

      But I think it gets weak whenever
      it engages in hypotheticals...

      For example:

          "There's also the problem that, as even the
          9/11 Truth Movement admits, prepping a building
          for demolition takes considerable time and
          effort. Usually a building targeted for
          demolition has been abandoned for considerable
          time and partially gutted to allow explosives
          intimate contact with the structure of the
          building. But since all of the WTC buildings
          were occupied right up to 9/11, how did the
          government gain access to wire 3 towers for
          complete demolition without anyone noticing?
          Imagine trying to sneak wires and bombs into
          buildings while thousands of people are working
          in offices, riding the elevators and milling
          about in the halls -- that scenario is unlikely
          in the extreme."

     Actually, I would imagine that the white-collar crowd
     would continually charge past workers in overalls,
     all but ignoring what they were doing.

     And I would imagine that if you primarily needed to
     work in maintenance crawl spaces, the job would get
     even eaiser.

     What would be much harder than concealing these activites
     from the tenants of the building would be concealing them
     from other people working there... effectively this invokes
     a conspiracy of janitors and maintenance crew, all of whom
     need to look the other way while the explosives are planted.

     "The government told me to shut up or else" only goes so
     far... not only does that have to work, the people giving
     you the shut-up order have to *believe* that it's going
     to work.

                                                            TOO_MANY_ACTORS

I've seen this general pattern in
play in other "conspiracy"
discussions.  When they get to the
hypothetical arguments ("but why
would they--"; "is it plausible
that--") they lose the thread.

      MOTIVATIONAL_BIND


The strongest counter-arguments are
the ones that are weakest emotionally:

  This explanation may be possible, but
  other things are possible also.

  There are a few peculiar anomolies
  here, but they don't work as evidence
  for the proposed scenarios.


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