The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #99931   Message #1999442
Posted By: Bill D
17-Mar-07 - 09:29 AM
Thread Name: BS: mass hysteria/ shared delusions
Subject: RE: BS: mass hysteria/ shared delusions
"You're interpreting the available information in the way that you find most convincing. "

What you don't seem to comprehend, LH, is that there are formal, objective ways to analyze and interpret information.

Your statements about 'everyone doing the same thing, and being subjective' feel more like looking for a built-in excuse to continue BEING personally subjective, so you don't have to feel constrained by the rigors of sorting out GOOD information from dubious conjecture, hearsay, and wishful thinking.

   There's a large difference between having an 'open mind' in order to consider all relevant data, and treating ALL data as relevant, in spite of evidence and reason to the contrary. And often, when someone has 'bought into' an analysis from one set of data, they emotionally begin ignoring conflicting or additional data.

An example...when that attack on 9/11 hit the Pentagon, there were claims that "it wasn't a plane"...because the security camera saw the explosion, but had NO images of a plane. Once that, and similar 'explanations' were circulated on the internet, it became very difficult to get all those folks to go bake and READ the explanation that the security camera was not taking continuous video, but only a frame every couple of seconds, so that the plane passed by BETWEEN frames! Such an easy explanation, but to this day there are people who will tell you that since it "couldn't have been a plane, it must have been....X...Y...Z"...and the wild guesses proliferate! (Never mind the many eyewitnesses who saw the plane approach, or the pieces of plane found.)

There are many aspects to this process of examining evidence and ferreting out the best explanation possible...some involve collecting all the evidence possible, some involve sorting the useful evidence from extraneous stuff that just happened to be contiguous in space & time, and some involve the VERY tricky bit of relating the various facts in a coherent and logical way.

If you read my critiques carefully, you will see that most of them are NOT saying that *I* know all the answers, but instead, suggesting that I see problems with *others* answers...either regarding the data itself, or the logic in making claims about what the data shows.

*I* am not qualified to 'do' complex analysis of disaster photos and debris, but I DO have some training in recognizing faulty logic and careless assembling of information. This is why I know that there ARE more ways to explain "puffs of smoke" than positing a wildly complex theory of 'controlled demolition explosions'.......and those other explanations are available from those who, unlike me (or you!) ARE qualified to explain exactly why a building can behave like WTC7 did.

   Again...there are those who MAKE claims...(or repeat the claims of others)...and those who try to evaluate claims. I am 'almost' always in the camp of the evaluators, because that's where my (limited) expertise lies.