Quote from man:
dear dpt
you quoted NIST:
"Seven major factors led to the collapses of WTC 1 and WTC 2;
[...]
twice? within an hour?
Why not twice? Two planes did hit the buildings within less than an
hour. Twice seems no less likely than once, given that two planes did actually
hit.
and some hours later due to
other "seven major factors" building seven? you as
a scientist have no single cell of doubt about these
accumulation of coincidences?
Why do you say coincidences? All the factors are quite conceivable, given that
two planes did hit the buildings.
That it happened twice would not raise any doubt in my mind, if the mechanism
looks possible. What would raise doubt is if the mechanism is definitively
shown to be impossible, or the facts are definitively shown to be other than
as reported.
Once two towers went down in a relatively uncontrolled fashion, it doesn't
seem remarkable to me, either, that other nearby buildings could have been
badly damaged, enough to cause subsequent collapse.
I suspect that the collapse mechanism for building 7 could be closely related
to that for the towers. I can see that some of the necessary conditions may be
there: structural damage due to falling debris, as well as fire. But of
course, there's no official story as yet, about building 7.
If the basic mechanism works, and all of the necessary conditions for it to
work are present, then it will happen each and every time.
If it doesn't work, or some of the conditions are absent it's a different
matter.
But in any case, whatever the mechanism was for the collapse of building 7,
it's certainly reasonable to suppose that it was related to that for the
collapse of 1 and 2.
i must concede that
i still do ...
Fair enough. Doubt, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. I don't have
complete certainty about all details of the collapse, but I find the proposed
mechanism fairly convincing given my understanding. So I see the
`coincidences' more as an inevitable progression, following from the nature of
the impacts and fire.
if i had to call for for occam i would think he said, "if
it looks like controlled demolition take that as the
assumption and prove the opposite".
(i know i am abusing old will'em and that it looks like
planes did it and so forth, nevertheless i think the
demolition route was never really considered seriously.)
Everybody abuses William of Ockham
He said not to multiply entities beyond what is necessary. Most people forget
the escape clause ... if the entities are necessary, you are allowed to
multiply them.
The whole question in applying the razor is to determine when it is necessary
to multiplty entities. One case in which you are allowed to is a case in which
the entities are clearly actually present.
That it could have been a controlled demolition was certainly at least
considered. It may be fair to say that it wasn't considered very
seriously: I'm not going to argue with your opinion on that. It may be fair to
say that there are flaws in the NIST study, I won't argue with that
either. It's a matter of opinion.
Supporting evidence for the controlled demolition theory in the form of trace
amounts of explosives, that I would expect should be pretty easy to find, is
simply missing.
The most I've seen so far is reports of unidentified molten materials and hot
steel, found days after the collapse, at ground zero, rumours about sulphates,
and statements about `evaporated steel.'
Now it can be claimed that all of that evidence was covered up, or spirited
away to China or some such. But that really does require multiplying entities:
that's why this is called a conspiracy theory.
As a general rule, conspiracy theories become more unlikely to be true, as the
number of required conspirators becomes larger.
Personally, I think that this would have to be a very large conspiracy, so large that it strains credulity.
That's where I begin to think that it's likely correct to apply the razor. Does it mean I have
complete certainty about what happened?
Certainly not. I'll remain open to hearing new evidence that might prove convincing.
