Originally Posted By: sinij
Originally Posted By: Kaotic
I only alleged that NIST did not do a thorough job in their report and that that sort of slip-shod work is typical of a government bureaucracy. That's it.


And we all agreed on that part, but please note topic did not die there.

Originally Posted By: sinij
After watching video I concluded: a) Government report was half-assed b) National response was botched due to understandably being unprepared for something like 9/11


Above is quote of my saying exactly this in that other thread.

So what did we not address? We did not address "controlled demolition" and "building 7" claims from the video.

Now please tell me how can you make "controlled demolition" claim and NOT make it some sort of a conspiracy? Buildings don't "controlled demolition" on their own. This is the point where one would cross from healthy skepticism into conspiracy theory.


Considering AlQ had bombed WTC buildings before with explosives... the idea that they might possibly try again except try harder to target vulnerable areas of a building did not strike me as a particularly conspiratorial idea.

Given the chaos of the day, and the fact that the NIST report was slipshod it seems entirely plausible that such a bombing could have occurred and not made its way into the public record.

I consider "conspiracy theory" in this case to be speculation that Bush and Co. intentionally destroyed the WTC buildings. Not speculation on how or why the criminals generally known to have masterminded the events of that day in the first place might have gotten away with more than we originally thought, where there are holes in the official account.

In any case, it was completely a hypothetical to demonstrate the effects of cultural cognition (to borrow that Australian psych paper term) on how people assimilate and judge information. Some elements here seem to have missed the point, and decided that proving X or Y was what "really happened" was the point of that thread.

The random speculation was just that - idle speculation to prove that engaging in such type of idle speculation can trigger an extreme emotional response from people who have been told that any such speculation is a sign of a malfunctioning mind and needs to be quashed right away.

From the extreme lengths some elements went to assault me on that thread, you would think I had been trying to make some particular controversial assertion regarding what "really" happened... instead of conversationally engaging in idle speculation of what "theoretically might" have happened given our lack of concrete info.

The fact that even idle discussion of the event, in the same manner we might discuss any other topic elicits such strong emotional reactions from people is what is important here and the phenomena I was trying to demonstrate - which I did with the help of the (oddly and unexpectedly) the left-wing faction on this this forum.

The irony is that I engineered the topic with the idea that I would probably end up debating the right wing faction on the forum. I had been debating the left wing for quite some time and felt like a change of pace, so I phished around for a new controversial topic that I thought I could make a general point with. A topic that I thought would elicit strong reactions from all segments.

However as it turned out, the right wing faction around here seemed to understand pretty early at least what I was trying to do and generally passed on the topic and did not "take the bait" so to speak. So it fell to the left wing faction to swoop in and get in a tizzy over the fact that someone had the temerity to discuss the topic in public. And thus the point was made.

For who could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him? - John Locke (2nd Treatise, sect 57)