Recurrent thoughts about mathematics, science, politics, music, religion, and Recurrent thoughts about mathematics, science, politics, music, religion, and Recurrent thoughts about mathematics, science, politics, music, religion, and Recurrent thoughts about ....
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Fractal Wrongness
My son pointed out the following image to me.
Doesn't that perfectly describe your experience arguing with creationists, intelligent design proponents, crystal healers, holocaust deniers, global warming deniers, and 9/11-truthers?
No. You're lumping together different kinds of falsehoods, and it doesn't look convincing.
Creationists and intelligent design proponents are religious nuts. Crystal healers are frauds or gullible. Holocaust deniers and 911-truthers are conspiracy theorists. Global warming deniers are partly conspiracy theorists, partly gullible sectants; on the other hand, global warning enthusiasts are just as often gullible sectants, although they're rarely conspiracy theorists.
Of all these, global warming deniers are most likely to have reasonable beliefs in their worldview outside the problem domain, followed perhaps by the milder faction of intelligent designers.
But what all these groups share is that, when you probe more deeply into their beliefs, you uncover layer after layer of more incorrect (or at least, unsubstantiated) beliefs.
I had a hard time with Anatoly's "sectants" (sect members?). Loan words gone amok?
The common theme is confirmation bias combined with a desire for a secretive and exclusive truth. There is also a bias structure based on defining ingroup and outgroup (liberal pinkos versus fascist conservatives, etc.; Manichean?) that seems multiresolutional in that it applies across politics, philosophy, science, economics and sociology.
I used to think objectivity was possible, but now I mostly think that recognizing one's one biases is, eh, "approachable."
"sectants" is an errant back-formation from Russian сектанты. I should have said sect members or sectarians, yeah.
I think it's mostly conspiracy theorists who share your theme of confirmation bias and a desire for a secretive and exclusive truth. Do crystal healers care about being secretive and exclusive - that is, do they find any special satisfaction in that? Hell no, they're New Age nuts, they want everyone to believe and share the beautiful energy. What about creationists? Sure, they like to feel victimised - who doesn't these days - but they care about their broad popular support in the US very much.
I don't know, I just feel that all these things are pretty different, and some of them have plenty of adherents who aren't intellectually rotten to the core, so to speak. The interesting question, to me, is mostly "is it possible to be honest (counting refusal to wilfully ignore evidence as part of honestly) and to believe X?". I don't think it's possible in case of Holocaust deniers and 911-truthers, for instance. Global warming deniers - well, that's very different, it's kind of an edge case.
Speaking of cranks (I'm not sure where else to post this), what about those 9/11 nuts given an opportunity to speak by the UW debate society tonight? We shouldn't be giving them even a smidgen of perceived legitimacy.
You didn't mention UFO believers. Although, I suppose that is a much more complex group with many shades of belief and disbelief. And well, it is an immensely ancient and huge universe...
None can deny the holocaust, but none should consider jews as the only ones who have suffered in human history. None can deny "global warming" but none should even think humans have an influence on a system that's been for billion of years, globally cooling (since the Earth is a planet...) and that has been into a cyclic warming and freezing state... As for UFO, none can really give a proof of UFO existence, but that doesn't mean Earth is the only place in the universe where there's life.
Could it be that the "fractally wrong" come in different shades? For example, some form their beliefs through rational and coherent thought processes and some dont. Since rational people have engaged in more self-reflexion in the structuring of their beliefs they must change orientation with respect to their own "wrongness fractal."
The strange loop of conciousness is also self-referential and level jumping?
In my oppinion, who's right and who's wrong is'nt as important as the deep reality all of these oddities point to.
mostly to Anatoly: it's nice to see, that you identify others' thoughts with belief, and mainstream ideas with truth, that's really sad. Maybe that's because you don't know well enough the other side. No one denies Auschwitz, only gas chambers and the like, not 6 million jews were killed, but maybe somewhere around 1. You, gentlemen, shouldn't only realize fundamentalist creationists, there are prominent scientists who say and can prove that evolution has serious problems. The core of evolution is a stupid XIXth century way of thinking, the same as Freud and Marx, it's far too outdated and doesn't even work properly.
The lowest reliable estimate for the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust is Hilberg's 5.1 million. Others estimate as many as 6 million. The evidence of a detailed program to annihilate the Jews is overwhelming, as is the evidence for gas chambers at Auschwitz. Practically the only people who dispute this are anti-Semitic crackpots.
Similarly, evolution is supported by a wide variety of different lines of evidence. Practically the only people who dispute it are religious crackpots.
Why you bring up Freud and Marx is beyond me. Marx was never classified as a scientist. Much of Freud's work was recognized as pseudoscience early on.
I don't know how many Jews might have been killed by Nazis. But I've seen it in a documentary, that maybe 95% of Zyklon-B was used to delouse clothes, and where this was done, the walls are a bit blue because of the gas. No such thing was found in the gas chamber. There are no documentations either, the Russians said that the Germans got rid of them. The documentary was made by a young Jew man, by the way.
Read the works of Heribert-Nilsson, he had been working for 40 years with plant systematics and paleontology, and said that darwinian evolution has not too much connection to reality indeed. Of course it can be proven in some aspects, no one denies that, but it has huge problems too, in my opinion it fails completely when we look at the intricacy of molecular cell biology. Darwin couldn't know that. Scientific theories have to be falsifiable in the first place, and that's important, proof doesn't necessarily mean truth. Lynn Margulis is also a renowned biologist who thinks darwinism is outdated. Or Mae-Wan Ho, or A. Szent-Györgyi. Religious crackpots?
Darwinian evolution was celebrated by Marx, they are very similar ways of thinking.
Your "documentary" was by David Cole, a young man with no historical or chemical training. Later, Cole retracted his claims, as the Holocaust deniers themselves admit (see
My question is, why should you believe such a person instead of reputable historians who have actually studied the Holocaust? It says something about your judgment.
Your claim "There are no documentations either" is a lie; there is extensive documentation as you can see, for example, in my colleague Robert Jan van Pelt's book The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial.
You seem very confused when you discuss evolution, too. Lynn Margulis does not deny evolution; rather, she has put forth some hypotheses (for example, about endosymbiosis) which, if true, add to our understanding of evolution.
You seem to be getting your understanding not from textbooks, but from crackpot works. What accounts for this strange choice?
Maybe you're right about holocaust, I don't know enough about it.
But I have read a lot about evolution (maybe not all crackpottish), and I think it has problems. I don't deny the fact of evolution, but I'm sure that a new theory of evolution would be needed. Can you explain the emergence of information during evoolution for instance? Endosymbiotic theory first faced with hostility, and was accepted after some time, but not that's the point. Lynn M. wrote a book 'Acquiring genomes' in which he mentions the problems. Also Ernst Mayr accepts that these problems exist. A new theory for evolution, not the denial of evolution itself!
I know textbooks. Textbooks have some problems though, they are simplistic, thus a bit false, even if it is not intended to be the case. Reality is always richer, than generally accepted ideas are, therefore the strange choice.
I always wonder, how people like you can tell with such a certainty that someone is a crackpot, without knowing his works. Because it seems to be against the establishment?
Yes, it's clear that you know very little about the Holocaust. So my question is (which you ignore) why do you rely on such unreliable sources? Why do you speak confidently on a subject on which you know nothing?
For example, you speak about Lynn Margulis as if you know her work with confidence; yet you don't even know she is a woman!
You ask, "Can you explain the emergence of information during evoolution for instance?" But even the question demonstrates real ignorance. Information, as it is understood by mathematicians and scientists is easy to generate; all you need is a random process. Since we know that randomness is a big component of evolution (for example, through mutations created by particles), there is simply no problem at all accounting for the information in DNA.
I can tell that people are crackpots if (a) they have little or no training in the areas they comment on (b) they nevertheless comment with confidence (c) their comments betray their ignorance and (d) they refuse to admit they are wrong.
I read David Cole's letter. Sorry about bringing it up. But there's something I still admire in him: he was searching after answers himself. But he was wrong, and caused some harm around him. It seemed good, that's why I watched the film.
When I read through my comment I realized that an 's' is absent, I knew that you will bully this. I know she's a woman. But there are some questions you leave unanswered too. Why must everyone face only fury who want to update the evolutionary theory? No theory lives forever. You have proved many times that I'm stupid, but do you think all the prominent scientists questioning orthodoxy, have gone crazy?
Among the crackpots there are brilliant scientists, even Nobelists, like Brian Josephson and Kary Mullis. Or Peter Duesberg, Rupert Sheldrake, Fritz Popp. Why is a fundamentalist Richard Dawkins more convincing?
Why must everyone face only fury who want to update the evolutionary theory?
Again, you seem quite confused. The theory of evolution gets updated all the time by legitimate scientists. For example, take a look at W. Martin and M. J. Russell. On the origins of cells: A hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells. Philosophical Transactions, Biological Sciences 358 (2003) 59-85. I don't see any fury directed at them.
The only "fury" is directed at dishonest people who make the same false claims about evolution over and over again.
You have proved many times that I'm stupid...
No, I never "proved" this or even implied it. You may be ignorant, but I said nothing about your intelligence. Luckily, there's a remedy for ignorance - do some study. There are lots of good textbooks on evolutionary biology, such as Futuyma. Why not spend a few hours educating yourself, instead of looking silly making ridiculous claims?
Among the crackpots there are brilliant scientists ... Rupert Sheldrake ...
Please, stop it. I just got a new irony meter last week, and now you've gone and busted it.
Since it would seem that you represent the opposite: fractal rightness, please explain Building 7. No, I'm not a 9/11 truther but since you lumped them in and I can't seem to find anyone to explain this (the 9/11 commission report didn't even want to touch it) and you are obviously right at every scale, please do tell.
NIST is a respected and independent board. The explanation they provided is consistent with the evidence. Truthers have to resort to a vast conspiracy to overturn these reasonable findings.
When truther claims of "nanothermite" are verified by non-truthers and independent bodies of chemical experts, let me know. Until then, claims of "nanothermite" are extremely doubtful and certainly unproved.
The components of "nanothermite" - such as aluminum - were readily available in the material of the buildings.
Well, duh, I am familiar with the Harrit et al. paper. But, as I said, this is an article by truthers (e.g., Harrit himself and Steven Jones) and it has not been confirmed by other, non-truther investigators.
There are quite a few other cases too that I find hard to explain away. All the black boxes vaporized, the ruins immediately shipped to China and India, collapsing into the footprint, detonations before collapse recorded as minor EQs. What about these?
Sorry, I'm not going to get in an extended debate about every single aspect of 9/11. Truthers have demonstrated over and over again that nothing will satisfy them.
Read The Looming Tower and you'll see that the accepted explanation has dozens of points of concordance.
You're paranoid. My astrological sign is shown because I didn't care to switch it off when I gave my date of birth. :D
All of you are the same. You feel incredibly superior, you want to feel and advertise how smart so you are, you are making comments that you regard very funny though you try to avoid discussing facts until it's possible, you never give definite answers but answers according to your standards, make ad hominem attacks and straw-man arguments always attacking the weakest points instead of the strongest ones. Your main weapon is arrogance and denial besides that you're echoing your own answers, never supposing that you might be wrong! Not everyone is a moron who has a different view than you have.
I hope you all enjoy your holy mission as a mind-policeman.
Mr. Shallit, I posted the July 18th comment that stirred the pot again. I think it is quite funny that you cited a wikipedia article as a valid source. We are not even allowed to use those on school papers so why in the world would you cite a wiki article? Come on? And it's funny that anyone that is opposed to the accepted explanation of 911 is a "truther" and anyone the is for the accepted explanation is a "non-truther investigator". What is your exact definition of a "non-truther investigator"? Let me guess, someone that agrees with your opinion. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth. Oops there is that ugly truth word again. Damn I guess 1,523 architects and engineers are just a bunch of crackpot idiots who don't know anything about science. Open your mind to another possible explanation! Not saying it has to be a crazy conspiracy but the bullshit that the government and NIST is feeding us isn't the right answer either. Questions are always good and anyone who tries to dismiss or silence them is suspect in my book.
Don't agree with the previous poster 9/11, but I do have a bachelors from Indiana University,a MS from U of Chicago and i'm currently in PHD program at Notre Dame..... I have never in my life had a single prof allow anyone to use a wikipedia article as a valid source! I hope you joking?!?!
"But what all these groups share is that, when you probe more deeply into their beliefs, you uncover layer after layer of more incorrect (or at least, unsubstantiated) beliefs."
How can you call over 1000 architects and engineers and video evidence 'unsubstantiated beliefs'?
An unsubstantiated belief would be an alien ship came down and blew up the world trade centers (THAT would be unsubstantiated belief) no proof, no facts to support the claim.
This is what it comes down do, "truth is no less true just because its depressing"
The fact that the overwhelming evidence BLOWS the official story out of the water and that NIST and the US government doesn't want an INDEPENDENT investigation goes to show that the evidence is to DAMNING to touch.
I have found Wikipedia to be as reliable, and certainly more comprehensive, than most encyclopedias. Most professors I know agree with that assessment. A 2005 study in Nature agreed.
How can you call over 1000 architects and engineers and video evidence 'unsubstantiated beliefs'?
Because I can guarantee you that most signators have not spent as much time studying the collapse as the NIST engineers did.
Anti-evolution organizations produce similar lists of scholars denying Darwinism; they have the same lack of credibility.
"Because I can guarantee you that most signators have not spent as much time studying the collapse as the NIST engineers did.
Sorry Jeffery, That statement is a fallacious appeal to authority. Nothing to back it up or "substantiate it" just 'NIST said so, it MUST be true -or- you GUARANTEE it must be true.
Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS_8hJ02TQ0&feature=youtube_gdata_player
"I see - appealing to the NIST engineers is an appeal to authority, but appealing to a list signed by your supposed 1000 people is not."
No, it's not; being that these 1000 people have physics and physical evidence on their side (that's not an blind appeal to authority), while NIST admittedly hasn't even LOOKED at the evidence that has been written about in PEER REVIEWED papers. what is laughable is how the NIST report doesn't stand up to the laws of physics. THAT-IS-HILARIOUS!
NIST admittedly hasn't even LOOKED at the evidence that has been written about in PEER REVIEWED papers.
You mean to say, the NIST report didn't reference papers that were published after the report appeared.
NIST has strong people, but they don't have people that can perform time travel.
As for Jones, professors at his own university who are more qualified (such as those in the Civil Engineering department) have issued statements distancing themselves from his work.
I looked at your wiki page and found the following."Shallit is often criticized (BY WHOM?) for an unwillingness to attempt to see a different point of view than his own. He holds authority to the highest esteem and never questions the elite. His dogmatic viewpoints and staunch loyalty for authority has lead to a meaningless life bound by the shackles of his own mind."... ACCORDING TO ONE OF YOUR PREVIOUS COMMENTS, IT MUST BE TRUE AND VALID SINCE IT'S ON WIKIPEDIA!
Dear Mr. Shallit...I am a member of a on-line forum that deals with motorcycles (ZRXOA.org). Within the forum is a "Back Room" with titles like P&R, STB etc. Members get together electronically and discuss matter like evolution - politics - religion. Some pretty good guys onboard and after a while you glean some understanding of their charachter. In the one-line evolution debate one of the critics of Darwin keeps using the old "show me each stage of morphological change from (insert your animal from the fossil record) to (insert current living animal)". I know it's an old trick from the days of S/C but this guy is pretty good (I would say he is a really good sophist!) at it and as a layman I am at a loss to come up with the appropriate answer, if there is one? I am pretty sure any correct answer to the question will be met by a "show me the changes between the changes" routine. Any sites on-line or suggested reading would be helpful as I keep getting my intellectual ass handed to me.
Briefly: I am not a paleontologist, just a mathematician and computer scientist. You should ask a paleontologist.
That being said, I will note:
Anyone who demands "show me each stage of morphological change from (insert your animal from the fossil record) to (insert current living animal)" is not being serious, because
a- "stage" is not defined: anything you provide will just lead to demands for more "stages"
b- the fossil record is not complete enough to give such a complete record. The chance that any particular organism leaves a fossil is minuscule
c- we do not need "each stage" to conclude that evolution happened; it is a reasonable deduction from the abundant data we do have - any more than I have to produce a list of every kind of transportation that led my grandfather from Vitebsk to Philadelphia in 1912 in order to be sure he did indeed make that journey
d - there are, in fact, excellent examples of evolutionary progressions. See, for example, the list in Roger Cuffey, "Paleontologic evidence and organic evolution", in A. Montagu, ed., Science and Creationism, Oxford University Press.
To Anonymous who clearly doesn't know the facts: scientists should not waste a precious second of their time debating or endlessly reproving what they have proven to deaf ears for the past 100 years: humans are the cause of current global warming. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real, serious, and requires radical action.
Crystal healers and homeopaths and astrologers are scam artists. But, they only hurt a small stupid subset of the human population, who deserved to have their money taken.
I don't agree with 911truthers, because they have not come up with a single unified alternate theory to the government's. But they absolutely deserve to be heard. They are unjustly silenced.
But AGW-deniers have had their way for far too long. They force their pollution and lifestyle and policies onto the rest of us who are fighting to end coal, overpopulation, and factory farming.
AGW-deniers do NOT deserve a single bit of airtime for THEIR dangerous views. They are 1000X worse than those who encourage legalizing sex with children. Even NAMBLA deserves more freedom of speech than AGW-deniers.
IOW you can't address the arguments so you ignore them and instead attack the opponent and the publication the argument is published in. Pretty illogical for a comp. sci. prof. But entertaining to be sure.
It it really was drivel it would be effortless for you to explain why it was drivel. If you couldn't refute it you'd be acting as you are right now. Seems a little suspicious to me.
Crackpots unquestioningly believe things they cannot in any way support. I know you're not a crackpot Jeff so I'd be interested in hearing your explanation as to why the arguments in this article are drivel.
BTW your "arguments" here are not published in a scientific journal. Does that mean they are drivel?
I'm quite aware of the debunking911.com web site. Not a single one of the arguments in my article are addressed on that site. Maybe you'd like to point out one argument that I've apparently missed. Knowing you as I do I know you wouldn't lie or otherwise misrepresent the truth.
Again, your repeated refusal to directly support your seemingly oddly illogical, completely unscientific beliefs with anything but low-brow insults and other sophomoric fallacies is highly suspicious. This is the kind of behavior we see in crackpot religious fundamentalists not scientists. What gives?
I do not lie you simply are not reasoning correctly. The Nano-thermite finding is an observation not one of my arguments. My argument is that the CD theory best explains the WTC 7 fall and that the official theory of WTC 7 is completely unscientific faith-based pseudo-science. You are unable to deal with this real argument so you bizarrely attack minor peripheral issues hoping everyone is too mind-numbingly stupid to notice. You egregiously insult whatever audience you have.
Let's cut the petty BS shall we. I want to debate for real. I want to talk science not dissect your inane BS. You are too frightened to deal with real issues. Instead you cowardly hide behind sophomoric insults, amateurish diversion and logical fallacy.
BTW why the blatant hypocrisy. None of the crackpot ravings on debunking911.com site are published in a scientific journal. The nanothermite paper is. Yet you mindlessly reject the paper and uncritically accept the ravings as true. You "argue" that my article is rubbish because it's not published in a scientific pub but neither is debunking911.com claptrap. This is a glaring logical contradiction that is most unbecoming of an alleged comp. sci. prof.
Now that I've caught you in a lie about thermite, how about answering my question: why did you publish your loony drivel in a foreign policy "journal"?
I'm ignoring your question because it's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. It is also meant as a crude diversionary device because you lack the basic reasoning abilities and the academic integrity to respond to the actual main argument.
Your position is one of faith. You steadfastly believe in it but cannot support it in any way. That's why you must resort to these crude tricks instead of actual debate or logical reasoning.
You pronounce that I write "loony drivel" but yet refuse to deal with the main point of the article. You refuse to explain how the CD hypothesis is not more scientific than the crackpot official NIST hypothesis for the WTC 7 fall. You don't even explain how the official crackpot NIST hypothesis is in any way scientific. You just assume it is without question like any crackpot cultist.
In actuality those who write "loony drivel" make unsupported and unsupportable pronouncements as you consistently do.
Only raving loonies with no training in engineering would claim that a NIST report by certified engineers is "crackpot".
Still no answer why you submitted your crackpot drivel to a foreign policy "journal".
I've been a scientist with published papers for 38 years. Even at age 16, I knew that I shouldn't submit a mathematics paper to a chemistry journal.
I'll make you a deal: you provide a single reason for your choice, and if I find it plausible, I'll address your crackpot "paper" and show why it is nonsense.
The NIST WTC 7 study is indeed crackpot lunacy as my article clearly shows. Any study whose experiments do not model reality, whose observations falsify the study's hypothesis, that explained no facts at all and had experimenters that refused to release their data for replication purposes would be branded as crackpot lunacy and never be published. You however support such a hypothesis, the crackpot NIST WTC 7 theory. This is equivalent to choosing flat earth theory over round Earth theory, Earth-centric orbiting solar system over sun-centric orbiting solar system, or creationism over evolution.
You won't engage me because you cannot as is clearly evident by the absurd line of argument coming from you so far.
Your ridiculous demand that I explain why my article about an event that shaped US foreign policy for the last 10 years was published in FPJ is a fallacy that I have pointed out before. An argument's merit stands by itself and has no bearing on where it is published.
BTW a smart person could pick out why the article was published in FPJ by reading the above. So I guess you'll finally stop bellowing irrational pronouncements and start talking science? Crackpots spout fallacies. Scientists talk science.
Scientists do indeed talk science in foreign policy publications if the massively destructive foreign policy is based on a purportedly scientific theory that actually has absolutely no scientific basis whatsoever.
Crackpots strongly believe in their loony positions without being able to defend them. You steadfastly refuse to defend your beliefs about 9/11. What are we to conclude?
Having ready Michael Fullerton's article, Jeffrey, I do think you could have attempted to address the argument he made there. It really does look like you're doing everything you can to avoid his substantive case in this thread: I'm afraid you appear unable to do so.
I'm completely uninterested in truthers' crackpot theories about controlled demolition. What interests me is *why* they construct such bizarre and unsupported arguments, and *why* others find them convincing despite their silly antics, such as publishing papers about engineering in foreign policy journals.
Truthers are dying out. Nobody takes them seriously anymore.
Tim, perhaps Jeff will be able to directly respond to my latest article which deals with elementary school-level science concepts. I guess high school-level physics is too much to handle for some.
Wow... I know I'm late to the party. Fullerton's reemergence on reddit and neurologica has him trending as the dumbest person on the internet right now. I've spent some time this week reading your drivel Michael, and you are in a class of moron by yourself: you are a nuclear powered mutant crank.
Your science illiteracy and incompetence with logic are atypical even for truthers. You're also an internet bully and ass.
No. You're lumping together different kinds of falsehoods, and it doesn't look convincing.
ReplyDeleteCreationists and intelligent design proponents are religious nuts. Crystal healers are frauds or gullible. Holocaust deniers and 911-truthers are conspiracy theorists. Global warming deniers are partly conspiracy theorists, partly gullible sectants; on the other hand, global warning enthusiasts are just as often gullible sectants, although they're rarely conspiracy theorists.
Of all these, global warming deniers are most likely to have reasonable beliefs in their worldview outside the problem domain, followed perhaps by the milder faction of intelligent designers.
you sound like a zionist jew
DeleteBut what all these groups share is that, when you probe more deeply into their beliefs, you uncover layer after layer of more incorrect (or at least, unsubstantiated) beliefs.
ReplyDeleteAt least, that's been my experience.
I had a hard time with Anatoly's "sectants" (sect members?). Loan words gone amok?
ReplyDeleteThe common theme is confirmation bias combined with a desire for a secretive and exclusive truth. There is also a bias structure based on defining ingroup and outgroup (liberal pinkos versus fascist conservatives, etc.; Manichean?) that seems multiresolutional in that it applies across politics, philosophy, science, economics and sociology.
I used to think objectivity was possible, but now I mostly think that recognizing one's one biases is, eh, "approachable."
"sectants" is an errant back-formation from Russian сектанты. I should have said sect members or sectarians, yeah.
ReplyDeleteI think it's mostly conspiracy theorists who share your theme of confirmation bias and a desire for a secretive and exclusive truth. Do crystal healers care about being secretive and exclusive - that is, do they find any special satisfaction in that? Hell no, they're New Age nuts, they want everyone to believe and share the beautiful energy. What about creationists? Sure, they like to feel victimised - who doesn't these days - but they care about their broad popular support in the US very much.
I don't know, I just feel that all these things are pretty different, and some of them have plenty of adherents who aren't intellectually rotten to the core, so to speak. The interesting question, to me, is mostly "is it possible to be honest (counting refusal to wilfully ignore evidence as part of honestly) and to believe X?". I don't think it's possible in case of Holocaust deniers and 911-truthers, for instance. Global warming deniers - well, that's very different, it's kind of an edge case.
Does this poster come in post-card format?
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of cranks (I'm not sure where else to post this), what about those 9/11 nuts given an opportunity to speak by the UW debate society tonight? We shouldn't be giving them even a smidgen of perceived legitimacy.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't mention UFO believers. Although, I suppose that is a much more complex group with many shades of belief and disbelief. And well, it is an immensely ancient and huge universe...
ReplyDeleteYou can get these pictures at http://despair.com/
ReplyDeleteTo Anatoly Vorobey :
ReplyDeleteNone can deny the holocaust, but none should consider jews as the only ones who have suffered in human history. None can deny "global warming" but none should even think humans have an influence on a system that's been for billion of years, globally cooling (since the Earth is a planet...) and that has been into a cyclic warming and freezing state... As for UFO, none can really give a proof of UFO existence, but that doesn't mean Earth is the only place in the universe where there's life.
Could it be that the "fractally wrong" come in different shades? For example, some form their beliefs through rational and coherent thought processes and some dont. Since rational people have engaged in more self-reflexion in the structuring of their beliefs they must change orientation with respect to their own "wrongness fractal."
ReplyDeleteThe strange loop of conciousness is also self-referential and level jumping?
In my oppinion, who's right and who's wrong is'nt as important as the deep reality all of these oddities point to.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletemostly to Anatoly:
ReplyDeleteit's nice to see, that you identify others' thoughts with belief, and mainstream ideas with truth, that's really sad. Maybe that's because you don't know well enough the other side. No one denies Auschwitz, only gas chambers and the like, not 6 million jews were killed, but maybe somewhere around 1. You, gentlemen, shouldn't only realize fundamentalist creationists, there are prominent scientists who say and can prove that evolution has serious problems. The core of evolution is a stupid XIXth century way of thinking, the same as Freud and Marx, it's far too outdated and doesn't even work properly.
The lowest reliable estimate for the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust is Hilberg's 5.1 million. Others estimate as many as 6 million. The evidence of a detailed program to annihilate the Jews is overwhelming, as is the evidence for gas chambers at Auschwitz. Practically the only people who dispute this are anti-Semitic crackpots.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, evolution is supported by a wide variety of different lines of evidence. Practically the only people who dispute it are religious crackpots.
Why you bring up Freud and Marx is beyond me. Marx was never classified as a scientist. Much of Freud's work was recognized as pseudoscience early on.
Dear Jeffrey,
ReplyDeleteI don't know how many Jews might have been killed by Nazis. But I've seen it in a documentary, that maybe 95% of Zyklon-B was used to delouse clothes, and where this was done, the walls are a bit blue because of the gas. No such thing was found in the gas chamber. There are no documentations either, the Russians said that the Germans got rid of them. The documentary was made by a young Jew man, by the way.
Read the works of Heribert-Nilsson, he had been working for 40 years with plant systematics and paleontology, and said that darwinian evolution has not too much connection to reality indeed. Of course it can be proven in some aspects, no one denies that, but it has huge problems too, in my opinion it fails completely when we look at the intricacy of molecular cell biology. Darwin couldn't know that.
Scientific theories have to be falsifiable in the first place, and that's important, proof doesn't necessarily mean truth.
Lynn Margulis is also a renowned biologist who thinks darwinism is outdated. Or Mae-Wan Ho, or A. Szent-Györgyi. Religious crackpots?
Darwinian evolution was celebrated by Marx, they are very similar ways of thinking.
Your "documentary" was by David Cole, a young man with no historical or chemical training. Later, Cole retracted his claims, as the Holocaust deniers themselves admit (see
ReplyDeletehttp://www.zundelsite.org/english/zgrams/zg1998/zg9802/980210.html .)
My question is, why should you believe such a person instead of reputable historians who have actually studied the Holocaust? It says something about your judgment.
Your claim "There are no documentations either" is a lie; there is extensive documentation as you can see, for example, in my colleague Robert Jan van Pelt's book The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial.
You seem very confused when you discuss evolution, too. Lynn Margulis does not deny evolution; rather, she has put forth some hypotheses (for example, about endosymbiosis) which, if true, add to our understanding of evolution.
You seem to be getting your understanding not from textbooks, but from crackpot works. What accounts for this strange choice?
Maybe you're right about holocaust, I don't know enough about it.
ReplyDeleteBut I have read a lot about evolution (maybe not all crackpottish), and I think it has problems. I don't deny the fact of evolution, but I'm sure that a new theory of evolution would be needed. Can you explain the emergence of information during evoolution for instance?
Endosymbiotic theory first faced with hostility, and was accepted after some time, but not that's the point. Lynn M. wrote a book 'Acquiring genomes' in which he mentions the problems. Also Ernst Mayr accepts that these problems exist.
A new theory for evolution, not the denial of evolution itself!
I know textbooks. Textbooks have some problems though, they are simplistic, thus a bit false, even if it is not intended to be the case. Reality is always richer, than generally accepted ideas are, therefore the strange choice.
I always wonder, how people like you can tell with such a certainty that someone is a crackpot, without knowing his works. Because it seems to be against the establishment?
Yes, it's clear that you know very little about the Holocaust. So my question is (which you ignore) why do you rely on such unreliable sources? Why do you speak confidently on a subject on which you know nothing?
ReplyDeleteFor example, you speak about Lynn Margulis as if you know her work with confidence; yet you don't even know she is a woman!
You ask, "Can you explain the emergence of information during evoolution for instance?" But even the question demonstrates real ignorance. Information, as it is understood by mathematicians and scientists is easy to generate; all you need is a random process. Since we know that randomness is a big component of evolution (for example, through mutations created by particles), there is simply no problem at all accounting for the information in DNA.
I can tell that people are crackpots if (a) they have little or no training in the areas they comment on (b) they nevertheless comment with confidence (c) their comments betray their ignorance and (d) they refuse to admit they are wrong.
I read David Cole's letter. Sorry about bringing it up. But there's something I still admire in him: he was searching after answers himself. But he was wrong, and caused some harm around him. It seemed good, that's why I watched the film.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read through my comment I realized that an 's' is absent, I knew that you will bully this. I know she's a woman.
But there are some questions you leave unanswered too. Why must everyone face only fury who want to update the evolutionary theory? No theory lives forever. You have proved many times that I'm stupid, but do you think all the prominent scientists questioning orthodoxy, have gone crazy?
Among the crackpots there are brilliant scientists, even Nobelists, like Brian Josephson and Kary Mullis. Or Peter Duesberg, Rupert Sheldrake, Fritz Popp. Why is a fundamentalist Richard Dawkins more convincing?
Why must everyone face only fury who want to update the evolutionary theory?
ReplyDeleteAgain, you seem quite confused. The theory of evolution gets updated all the time by legitimate scientists. For example, take a look at W. Martin and M. J. Russell. On the origins of cells: A hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells. Philosophical Transactions, Biological Sciences 358 (2003) 59-85. I don't see any fury directed at them.
The only "fury" is directed at dishonest people who make the same false claims about evolution over and over again.
You have proved many times that I'm stupid...
No, I never "proved" this or even implied it. You may be ignorant, but I said nothing about your intelligence. Luckily, there's a remedy for ignorance - do some study. There are lots of good textbooks on evolutionary biology, such as Futuyma. Why not spend a few hours educating yourself, instead of looking silly making ridiculous claims?
Among the crackpots there are brilliant scientists ... Rupert Sheldrake ...
Please, stop it. I just got a new irony meter last week, and now you've gone and busted it.
I think the ultimate sign of ignorance is the upfront and wholesale discounting of other people's beliefs.
ReplyDeleteThe last thing I shall say is: Anthony Flew.
Since it would seem that you represent the opposite: fractal rightness, please explain Building 7. No, I'm not a 9/11 truther but since you lumped them in and I can't seem to find anyone to explain this (the 9/11 commission report didn't even want to touch it) and you are obviously right at every scale, please do tell.
ReplyDeleteGo read
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_World_Trade_Center
and then learn how to google.
It's remarkable how you believe absolutely everything you're told, Mr. Shallit.
ReplyDeleteNIST is a respected and independent board. The explanation they provided is consistent with the evidence. Truthers have to resort to a vast conspiracy to overturn these reasonable findings.
ReplyDeleteWhy was nanothermite found in the dust then?
ReplyDeleteWhen truther claims of "nanothermite" are verified by non-truthers and independent bodies of chemical experts, let me know. Until then, claims of "nanothermite" are extremely doubtful and certainly unproved.
ReplyDeleteThe components of "nanothermite" - such as aluminum - were readily available in the material of the buildings.
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ.htm?TOCPJ/2009/000000
ReplyDeleteWell, duh, I am familiar with the Harrit et al. paper. But, as I said, this is an article by truthers (e.g., Harrit himself and Steven Jones) and it has not been confirmed by other, non-truther investigators.
ReplyDeleteLet me know when it is.
There are quite a few other cases too that I find hard to explain away. All the black boxes vaporized, the ruins immediately shipped to China and India, collapsing into the footprint, detonations before collapse recorded as minor EQs. What about these?
ReplyDeletedonker:
ReplyDeleteSorry, I'm not going to get in an extended debate about every single aspect of 9/11. Truthers have demonstrated over and over again that nothing will satisfy them.
Read The Looming Tower and you'll see that the accepted explanation has dozens of points of concordance.
That's quite a poor argument, sir.
ReplyDeleteRead 119 questions about 911 and you'll see that there are dozens of points without concordance.
The NIST report is a joke.
Calling a report by distinguished independent professionals "a joke" is a joke.
ReplyDeleteI take it you have not read The Looming Tower?
Donker: your arguments would carry more weight if you weren't a Saggitarius.
ReplyDeleteAre you serious?
ReplyDeleteIn a sense I'm serious: it's difficult to give your arguments weight because you engage in astrology on your blog profile.
ReplyDeleteIn a sense I'm not serious: I'm making fun of you for doing so. :)
http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=376
You're paranoid. My astrological sign is shown because I didn't care to switch it off when I gave my date of birth. :D
ReplyDeleteAll of you are the same. You feel incredibly superior, you want to feel and advertise how smart so you are, you are making comments that you regard very funny though you try to avoid discussing facts until it's possible, you never give definite answers but answers according to your standards, make ad hominem attacks and straw-man arguments always attacking the weakest points instead of the strongest ones. Your main weapon is arrogance and denial besides that you're echoing your own answers, never supposing that you might be wrong! Not everyone is a moron who has a different view than you have.
I hope you all enjoy your holy mission as a mind-policeman.
Donker:
ReplyDeleteI realize English isn't your native language, but really, look up the word "paranoid" so you can see how silly your claim is.
Mr. Shallit, I posted the July 18th comment that stirred the pot again. I think it is quite funny that you cited a wikipedia article as a valid source. We are not even allowed to use those on school papers so why in the world would you cite a wiki article? Come on? And it's funny that anyone that is opposed to the accepted explanation of 911 is a "truther" and anyone the is for the accepted explanation is a "non-truther investigator". What is your exact definition of a "non-truther investigator"? Let me guess, someone that agrees with your opinion. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth. Oops there is that ugly truth word again. Damn I guess 1,523 architects and engineers are just a bunch of crackpot idiots who don't know anything about science. Open your mind to another possible explanation! Not saying it has to be a crazy conspiracy but the bullshit that the government and NIST is feeding us isn't the right answer either. Questions are always good and anyone who tries to dismiss or silence them is suspect in my book.
ReplyDeleteWe are not even allowed to use those on school papers so why in the world would you cite a wiki article?
ReplyDeleteI think you should try a different school.
Don't agree with the previous poster 9/11, but I do have a bachelors from Indiana University,a MS from U of Chicago and i'm currently in PHD program at Notre Dame..... I have never in my life had a single prof allow anyone to use a wikipedia article as a valid source! I hope you joking?!?!
ReplyDeleteJeffrey,
ReplyDelete"But what all these groups share is that, when you probe more deeply into their beliefs, you uncover layer after layer of more incorrect (or at least, unsubstantiated) beliefs."
How can you call over 1000 architects and engineers and video evidence 'unsubstantiated beliefs'?
An unsubstantiated belief would be an alien ship came down and blew up the world trade centers (THAT would be unsubstantiated belief) no proof, no facts to support the claim.
This is what it comes down do, "truth is no less true just because its depressing"
The fact that the overwhelming evidence BLOWS the official story out of the water and that NIST and the US government doesn't want an INDEPENDENT investigation goes to show that the evidence is to DAMNING to touch.
I have found Wikipedia to be as reliable, and certainly more comprehensive, than most encyclopedias. Most professors I know agree with that assessment. A 2005 study in Nature agreed.
ReplyDeleteHow can you call over 1000 architects and engineers and video evidence 'unsubstantiated beliefs'?
Because I can guarantee you that most signators have not spent as much time studying the collapse as the NIST engineers did.
Anti-evolution organizations produce similar lists of scholars denying Darwinism; they have the same lack of credibility.
"Because I can guarantee you that most signators have not spent as much time studying the collapse as the NIST engineers did.
ReplyDeleteSorry Jeffery,
That statement is a fallacious appeal to authority. Nothing to back it up or "substantiate it" just 'NIST said so, it MUST be true -or- you GUARANTEE it must be true.
Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS_8hJ02TQ0&feature=youtube_gdata_player
That statement is a fallacious appeal to authority.
ReplyDeleteI see - appealing to the NIST engineers is an appeal to authority, but appealing to a list signed by your supposed 1000 people is not.
Don't make me laugh.
Have you even read the NIST report?
"I see - appealing to the NIST engineers is an appeal to authority, but appealing to a list signed by your supposed 1000 people is not."
ReplyDeleteNo, it's not; being that these 1000 people have physics and physical evidence on their side (that's not an blind appeal to authority), while NIST admittedly hasn't even LOOKED at the evidence that has been written about in PEER REVIEWED papers.
what is laughable is how the NIST report doesn't stand up to the laws of physics. THAT-IS-HILARIOUS!
http://knol.google.com/k/nist-wtc-7-9-11-theory-violates-the-laws-of-physics#
Have YOU even read the NIST report?
Here is a wiki-reference for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones
oh yeah, steven jones is Peer reviewed
NIST admittedly hasn't even LOOKED at the evidence that has been written about in PEER REVIEWED papers.
ReplyDeleteYou mean to say, the NIST report didn't reference papers that were published after the report appeared.
NIST has strong people, but they don't have people that can perform time travel.
As for Jones, professors at his own university who are more qualified (such as those in the Civil Engineering department) have issued statements distancing themselves from his work.
Jones is the Michael Behe of 9/11 studies.
I looked at your wiki page and found the following."Shallit is often criticized (BY WHOM?) for an unwillingness to attempt to see a different point of view than his own. He holds authority to the highest esteem and never questions the elite. His dogmatic viewpoints and staunch loyalty for authority has lead to a meaningless life bound by the shackles of his own mind."... ACCORDING TO ONE OF YOUR PREVIOUS COMMENTS, IT MUST BE TRUE AND VALID SINCE IT'S ON WIKIPEDIA!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: I guess you're the kind of moron who thinks that when someone says "The earth is round" they mean it is exactly like a cue ball.
ReplyDeleteWhat a sad existence you must lead.
Dear Mr. Shallit...I am a member of a on-line forum that deals with motorcycles (ZRXOA.org). Within the forum is a "Back Room" with titles like P&R, STB etc. Members get together electronically and discuss matter like evolution - politics - religion. Some pretty good guys onboard and after a while you glean some understanding of their charachter. In the one-line evolution debate one of the critics of Darwin keeps using the old "show me each stage of morphological change from (insert your animal from the fossil record) to (insert current living animal)". I know it's an old trick from the days of S/C but this guy is pretty good (I would say he is a really good sophist!) at it and as a layman I am at a loss to come up with the appropriate answer, if there is one? I am pretty sure any correct answer to the question will be met by a "show me the changes between the changes" routine. Any sites on-line or suggested reading would be helpful as I keep getting my intellectual ass handed to me.
ReplyDeleteDave H.:
ReplyDeleteBriefly: I am not a paleontologist, just a mathematician and computer scientist. You should ask a paleontologist.
That being said, I will note:
Anyone who demands "show me each stage of morphological change from (insert your animal from the fossil record) to (insert current living animal)" is not being serious, because
a- "stage" is not defined: anything you provide will just lead to demands for more "stages"
b- the fossil record is not complete enough to give such a complete record. The chance that any particular organism leaves a fossil is minuscule
c- we do not need "each stage" to conclude that evolution happened; it is a reasonable deduction from the abundant data we do have - any more than I have to produce a list of every kind of transportation that led my grandfather from Vitebsk to Philadelphia in 1912 in order to be sure he did indeed make that journey
d - there are, in fact, excellent examples of evolutionary progressions. See, for example, the list in Roger Cuffey, "Paleontologic evidence and organic evolution", in A. Montagu, ed., Science and Creationism, Oxford University Press.
To Anonymous who clearly doesn't know the facts: scientists should not waste a precious second of their time debating or endlessly reproving what they have proven to deaf ears for the past 100 years: humans are the cause of current global warming. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real, serious, and requires radical action.
ReplyDeleteCrystal healers and homeopaths and astrologers are scam artists. But, they only hurt a small stupid subset of the human population, who deserved to have their money taken.
I don't agree with 911truthers, because they have not come up with a single unified alternate theory to the government's. But they absolutely deserve to be heard. They are unjustly silenced.
But AGW-deniers have had their way for far too long. They force their pollution and lifestyle and policies onto the rest of us who are fighting to end coal, overpopulation, and factory farming.
AGW-deniers do NOT deserve a single bit of airtime for THEIR dangerous views. They are 1000X worse than those who encourage legalizing sex with children. Even NAMBLA deserves more freedom of speech than AGW-deniers.
Mr. Shallit do you see anything wrong with the high school level science principles covered in this article:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/02/14/a-scientific-theory-of-the-wtc-7-collapse/
If no then you need to retract your comments about 9/11 researchers. If yes let's debate.
Michael:
ReplyDeleteRight, because the most reliable place to publish a scientific theory about engineering problems is always an online journal about "foreign policy".
Sheesh. You truthers provide endless entertainment.
IOW you can't address the arguments so you ignore them and instead attack the opponent and the publication the argument is published in. Pretty illogical for a comp. sci. prof. But entertaining to be sure.
ReplyDeleteNo explanation of why you chose such an inappropriate venue.
ReplyDeleteI know the real reason: because no appropriate journal would publish such drivel.
It it really was drivel it would be effortless for you to explain why it was drivel. If you couldn't refute it you'd be acting as you are right now. Seems a little suspicious to me.
ReplyDeleteCrackpots unquestioningly believe things they cannot in any way support. I know you're not a crackpot Jeff so I'd be interested in hearing your explanation as to why the arguments in this article are drivel.
BTW your "arguments" here are not published in a scientific journal. Does that mean they are drivel?
Still no explanation of why you chose to publish your silly nonsense in a political science "journal".
ReplyDeleteYour refusal to answer is noted.
Your arguments have been debunked over and over again. Go read http://www.debunking911.com/ and come back when you understand how silly you are.
I'm quite aware of the debunking911.com web site. Not a single one of the arguments in my article are addressed on that site. Maybe you'd like to point out one argument that I've apparently missed. Knowing you as I do I know you wouldn't lie or otherwise misrepresent the truth.
ReplyDeleteAgain, your repeated refusal to directly support your seemingly oddly illogical, completely unscientific beliefs with anything but low-brow insults and other sophomoric fallacies is highly suspicious. This is the kind of behavior we see in crackpot religious fundamentalists not scientists. What gives?
You lie. You mention nanothermite, and that is discussed and debunked on the site.
ReplyDeleteYou still haven't explained why your submitted your "science" to a political journal. I'm still waiting.
I do not lie you simply are not reasoning correctly. The Nano-thermite finding is an observation not one of my arguments. My argument is that the CD theory best explains the WTC 7 fall and that the official theory of WTC 7 is completely unscientific faith-based pseudo-science. You are unable to deal with this real argument so you bizarrely attack minor peripheral issues hoping everyone is too mind-numbingly stupid to notice. You egregiously insult whatever audience you have.
ReplyDeleteLet's cut the petty BS shall we. I want to debate for real. I want to talk science not dissect your inane BS. You are too frightened to deal with real issues. Instead you cowardly hide behind sophomoric insults, amateurish diversion and logical fallacy.
BTW why the blatant hypocrisy. None of the crackpot ravings on debunking911.com site are published in a scientific journal. The nanothermite paper is. Yet you mindlessly reject the paper and uncritically accept the ravings as true. You "argue" that my article is rubbish because it's not published in a scientific pub but neither is debunking911.com claptrap. This is a glaring logical contradiction that is most unbecoming of an alleged comp. sci. prof.
Now that I've caught you in a lie about thermite, how about answering my question: why did you publish your loony drivel in a foreign policy "journal"?
ReplyDeleteI'm ignoring your question because it's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. It is also meant as a crude diversionary device because you lack the basic reasoning abilities and the academic integrity to respond to the actual main argument.
ReplyDeleteYour position is one of faith. You steadfastly believe in it but cannot support it in any way. That's why you must resort to these crude tricks instead of actual debate or logical reasoning.
You pronounce that I write "loony drivel" but yet refuse to deal with the main point of the article. You refuse to explain how the CD hypothesis is not more scientific than the crackpot official NIST hypothesis for the WTC 7 fall. You don't even explain how the official crackpot NIST hypothesis is in any way scientific. You just assume it is without question like any crackpot cultist.
In actuality those who write "loony drivel" make unsupported and unsupportable pronouncements as you consistently do.
Only raving loonies with no training in engineering would claim that a NIST report by certified engineers is "crackpot".
ReplyDeleteStill no answer why you submitted your crackpot drivel to a foreign policy "journal".
I've been a scientist with published papers for 38 years. Even at age 16, I knew that I shouldn't submit a mathematics paper to a chemistry journal.
I'll make you a deal: you provide a single reason for your choice, and if I find it plausible, I'll address your crackpot "paper" and show why it is nonsense.
Is "Because they are the only ones that would publish it" a plausible reason?
ReplyDelete8^)
"alleged comp. sci. prof."
ReplyDeleteSo all of a sudden, Jeffrey Shallit's job title is in question?
Bizarre.
The NIST WTC 7 study is indeed crackpot lunacy as my article clearly shows. Any study whose experiments do not model reality, whose observations falsify the study's hypothesis, that explained no facts at all and had experimenters that refused to release their data for replication purposes would be branded as crackpot lunacy and never be published. You however support such a hypothesis, the crackpot NIST WTC 7 theory. This is equivalent to choosing flat earth theory over round Earth theory, Earth-centric orbiting solar system over sun-centric orbiting solar system, or creationism over evolution.
ReplyDeleteYou won't engage me because you cannot as is clearly evident by the absurd line of argument coming from you so far.
Your ridiculous demand that I explain why my article about an event that shaped US foreign policy for the last 10 years was published in FPJ is a fallacy that I have pointed out before. An argument's merit stands by itself and has no bearing on where it is published.
BTW a smart person could pick out why the article was published in FPJ by reading the above. So I guess you'll finally stop bellowing irrational pronouncements and start talking science? Crackpots spout fallacies. Scientists talk science.
The NIST WTC 7 study is indeed crackpot lunacy as my article clearly shows.
ReplyDeleteKeep the lunacy coming, I'm having fun.
Scientists talk science.
They don't talk about it in foreign policy "journals".
Scientists do indeed talk science in foreign policy publications if the massively destructive foreign policy is based on a purportedly scientific theory that actually has absolutely no scientific basis whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteCrackpots strongly believe in their loony positions without being able to defend them. You steadfastly refuse to defend your beliefs about 9/11. What are we to conclude?
Oh, do tell me!
ReplyDeleteWhere can I find these other scientific theories published in foreign policy "journals"?
Was the theory of relativity published there? How about the structure of DNA? Or the discovery of quasars?
Please, loons all over the world want your precious advice.
Mr. Shallit- enjoy your sad little life being a bigot.
ReplyDeleteI do indeed, Tryna, and thanks for your sincere best wishes.
ReplyDeleteHaving ready Michael Fullerton's article, Jeffrey, I do think you could have attempted to address the argument he made there. It really does look like you're doing everything you can to avoid his substantive case in this thread: I'm afraid you appear unable to do so.
ReplyDeleteI'm completely uninterested in truthers' crackpot theories about controlled demolition. What interests me is *why* they construct such bizarre and unsupported arguments, and *why* others find them convincing despite their silly antics, such as publishing papers about engineering in foreign policy journals.
ReplyDeleteTruthers are dying out. Nobody takes them seriously anymore.
Tim, perhaps Jeff will be able to directly respond to my latest article which deals with elementary school-level science concepts. I guess high school-level physics is too much to handle for some.
ReplyDelete9/11 Pseudo-Science: A US Foreign Policy Built on Fraud
Wow... I know I'm late to the party. Fullerton's reemergence on reddit and neurologica has him trending as the dumbest person on the internet right now. I've spent some time this week reading your drivel Michael, and you are in a class of moron by yourself: you are a nuclear powered mutant crank.
ReplyDeleteYour science illiteracy and incompetence with logic are atypical even for truthers. You're also an internet bully and ass.
Dear Unknown:
ReplyDeleteNo anti-semitic comments are permitted here, especially when they are punctuated abysmally like yours. This is your first and last warning.