"Let’s not pretend that they don’t exist"

Of course they do.

"There surely exists some ridiculous theories out there, but it seems that these people lump the bat shit crazy ones in with the somewhat reasonable ones."

The problem is that everyone thinks *their* theory is the reasonable one, and everyone else holds the bat shit crazy ones.

"So, what, if any, conspiracies do you believe in and why?"

Depends on your definition. I don't think aliens are visiting the planet. I do believe that the members of the Black Sox fixed the 1919 World Series. The word "conspiracy" is incredibly broad.

"What criteria or evidence needs to be met for you to consider the possibility of the theory?"

Depends on the theory. If someone tells me someone in a red car sideswiped my car, I'm willing to buy that - I have no evidence, but it seems plausible, and they have no vested interest in lying to me. If they tell me a Yeti came by and scraped my car in a way that looks exactly as if someone keyed it, I'm going to have a harder time. Extraordinary Claims require Extraordinary Evidence.

"We are talking about how you accept or dismiss your *suspicions*. "

Depends on the suspicions. I suspect a couple of my coworkers are sleeping together. As it doesn't mean a damn thing to me, I don't really care. If it did, I would be a little more diligent about assembling evidence - positive or negative. The important thing there is not to just ignore facts that don't mesh with my theory - confirmation bias is always a risk when emotions get involved.

"If it acts like a duck, walks like a duck and talks like a duck, but a court of law or some other “trusting” authority tells you it isn’t a duck…what do you suspect it really is? Explain. "

Well, keep in mind that a court of law never proclaims someone "innocent", just "not guilty". So I am willing to accept someone may be "not guilty" in a legal sense because insufficient evidence was presented to a jury showing that the scumball keyed by car, but that doesn't mean I'm going to happily assume he's innocent and the yeti is out to get me.

Generally speaking I shave with Occam's Razor as much as possible when it comes to weird shit. Is it more plausible that there's a conspiracy to do X, or that it's just a bunch of random people being jackasses, and their jackassery combining into a crappier whole?

The thing to keep in mind when you're skeptical is that weird shit *does* happen, and just because someone is a lunatic that doesn't mean they're wrong. *However*, if someone is a lunatic they're going to need to show me some solid proof instead of the voices in their head, because when you get down to it, crazy people usually believe crazy things because they're *crazy*, not because they are hearing the voice of God.

You have just pointed out the one conspiracy I believe to be true. OJ killed his ex-wife and her new boytoy.

Ones commonly accepted as plausible but which I can show evidence why the conspiracy theorist are whack jobs...

9/11 was an inside job and the planes couldn't have toppled the towers cause steel takes much more heat to melt and where was the planes tail at the Pentagon sight...
* The steel only had to weaken which takes a much lower temperature. So that's a stupid bit of "evidence" that ignores basic physics. Likewise, the plane was destroyed on impact with the Pentagon. Like, duh, the tail is part of the plan and collapsed to the ground burning with the rest of it. Stupidity = 9/11 CSers.

Oh so I'm glad you ruled out the moon landing, cause i didn't want have to bitch at those dumbasses.


only theory i can think of that i believe? the ones about scientology and tupac.

tupac isn't dead.

i swear to god he's in jamaica right now

Draugnar, there are many different theories concerning 9-11. Some of them don't include the bat shit crazy ones that you mention...so not ALL 9/11 CSers are stupid.

Speaking of laws of physics, since when does fire burn uniformly enough to cause a catastrophic, demolition style collapse to all load bearing trusses at the same time? Three times in the same day no less? Also despite the presence of black smoke indicative of an oxygen starved (low heat) fire?

A good litmus test for the plane at the pentagon is that LOTS of people saw the plane hit...none of them saw it fly away.

Common sense is the victor here. I, like you, believe the plane hit. So I would represent a variance to the theory. But so long as there is sufficient variance to the theory, it is easier to dismiss. That is called poisoning the well. And its no excuse to not look past the official story.

"Speaking of laws of physics, since when does fire burn uniformly enough to cause a catastrophic, demolition style collapse to all load bearing trusses at the same time? Three times in the same day no less? Also despite the presence of black smoke indicative of an oxygen starved (low heat) fire?"

*sigh*

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html

Nearly every large building has a redundant design that allows for loss of one primary structural member, such as a column. However, when multiple members fail, the shifting loads eventually overstress the adjacent members and the collapse occurs like a row of dominoes falling down.

The perimeter tube design of the WTC was highly redundant. It survived the loss of several exterior columns due to aircraft impact, but the ensuing fire led to other steel failures. Many structural engineers believe that the weak points—the limiting factors on design allowables—were the angle clips that held the floor joists between the columns on the perimeter wall and the core structure (see Figure 5). With a 700 Pa floor design allowable, each floor should have been able to support approximately 1,300 t beyond its own weight. The total weight of each tower was about 500,000 t.

As the joists on one or two of the most heavily burned floors gave way and the outer box columns began to bow outward, the floors above them also fell. The floor below (with its 1,300 t design capacity) could not support the roughly 45,000 t of ten floors (or more) above crashing down on these angle clips. This started the domino effect that caused the buildings to collapse within ten seconds, hitting bottom with an estimated speed of 200 km per hour. If it had been free fall, with no restraint, the collapse would have only taken eight seconds and would have impacted at 300 km/h.1 It has been suggested that it was fortunate that the WTC did not tip over onto other buildings surrounding the area. There are several points that should be made. First, the building is not solid; it is 95 percent air and, hence, can implode onto itself. Second, there is no lateral load, even the impact of a speeding aircraft, which is sufficient to move the center of gravity one hundred feet to the side such that it is not within the base footprint of the structure. Third, given the near free-fall collapse, there was insufficient time for portions to attain significant lateral velocity. To summarize all of these points, a 500,000 t structure has too much inertia to fall in any direction other than nearly straight down.

***

When it comes to the battle between some internet dude frothing and a bunch of metallurgists, the latter wins

I didn't want to get into specifics strat, so I will concede this to you...

If you're even going to think of bringing up the "Controlled Demolition" theory, I warn you now I will ask you a bunch of questions you can't answer

"only theory i can think of that i believe? the ones about scientology and tupac.

tupac isn't dead.

i swear to god he's in jamaica right now "

Really? why do you believe that?

"If you're even going to think of bringing up the "Controlled Demolition" theory, I warn you now I will ask you a bunch of questions you can't answer "

Sounds like you are throwing down the gauntlet here. =D lol...Good stuff. I will have to pass though. I believe you, but I will say that I am sure I have just as many unanswerable questions to match yours. I've debated this before with others and it never ends well and it really doesn't get anywhere.

Black smoke is also evidence of certain chemicals used in office furniture and electronic equipment as well as dry wall/sheet rock and other masonry items when they burn. Not everything burning was jet fuel. Go set your office chair on fire and see what it burns at. And as strat points out, it isn't all failing at once. Do you think demolitions experts blow all the supports in the bottom floor of a build ing at once to get it to collapse into it's basement? No, they only need to blow key inner ones to cause an implosion. Key structural elements failed. The result was a collapse of more mass than the next floor down could sustain and the domino effect strat described so well.

We have footage of jet airliners going into the towers the same as eyewitnesses saw the Pentagon crash.

Well, right...I didn't mean to get into specifics.

"I have just as many unanswerable questions to match yours"

And I, quite likely, do not have answers. But I'm going to leave you with this:

Preparing a building for a controlled demolition takes considerable time and effort. The tower walls would have had to be opened on dozens of floors.Thousands of pounds of explosives, fuses and ignition mechanisms would need to be sneaked past security and placed in the towers without the tens of thousands of people working in the World Trade Center noticing.Referring to a conversation with Stuart Vyse, a professor of psychology, an article in the Hartford Advocate asks, "How many hundreds of people would you need to acquire the explosives, plant them in the buildings, arrange for the airplanes to crash [...] and, perhaps most implausibly of all, never breathe a single word of this conspiracy?"

lol...well, what would you think if I told you that there was a day long power down to the WTC in the weeks leading up to 9-11?

And the head of security there was Marvin Bush?

=D

“You have to understand how unprecedented the power down was. To shutdown all of our financial systems, all inter-related and with connections and feeds to may outside vendors and suppliers was a major piece of work. Additionally, the power outage meant that many of the ‘ordinary’ building features were not operating, such as security locks on doors, cameras, lighting, etc.”

—Scott Forbes, former WTC employee


You have to admit that IF true, this would sufficiently satisfy your skepticism concerning this particular subject. Or no?

Power outages just make it more difficult to get the equipment that high up. what did they do, carry it up the 80 flights? Remember, this collapsed from the top down, not like a demolition which collapses on a lower floor and the impact stresses cause the rest. Watch the collapse footage then watch a demolition collapse. They are very different.

I tend to be very very skeptical of conspiracy theories, because I'm a skeptical guy. In all seriousness though. I like to stick to the maxim "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity." A lot of conspiracy theories (particularly government centric ones) would require a lot of people to be in on them, keeping their mouths shut. And not just that, planning and organizing and implementing most of these schemes that people come up with are just beyond the capabilities of government agencies. I mean think about it, a conspiracy that consisted of "break into a building, steal documents, cover it up" ended up being too complicated. So please, lets not give alleged conspirators too much credit here.

No, it would not. It would be a data point that would raise my eyebrow, but it doesn't seem to imply that people left the building.

It's also wrong. And this is a a pro-conspiracy site:
http://911review.com/errors/wtc/forbes.html

As for Marvin Bush, he was on the *Board of Directors* of the agency in charge of WTC security, not exactly the guy on the ground. That would be this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._O%27Neill

Who died in the attacks. And probably would have kinda noticed shenanigans. Unless you're implying he was either an idiot or knowingly assisted in the deaths of thousands, including his own.

@ Draugnar - It's not impossible to carry it. But I ask...is it possible to create a top-down collapse? Just because demos utilize bottom up, are we suggesting that the reverse is impossible?

@Mafialligator - I could argue that it's much easier to keep secret than you might think..I will have to find and cite the reasons...however concerning your last line, let's also not give the alleged terrorists who lived in caves too much credit either. If we are to use this as our litmus test, what is more probable...that a bunch of dudes who lived in caves carried this out or a government with loads of resources, money and motivation to start a war carried this out?

Given only this, I tend to believe the latter. Keep in mind, the US had been in negotiation with the Taliban in early 2001 to establish a oil pipeline through their country. The Taliban told our government to F off.

And let me reiterate...I am not trying to convince anyone here or state any theory as fact. I only want to explore our suspicions.

And I'd like to thank you for completely hosing my productivity today. It's a friggin conspiracy, that's what this is!

LOL...touche! You hosed my productivity yesterday so...nya! :p

Its weird how everybody things the government is absolutely incompetent to do anything, except when it comes to performing false flag operations, or killing grandma, or blowing away a photogenic President in Dallas.

Weird, right?

@Jack - I think incompetence is a good tool to mask theft. Not unlike the pick-pocketer who will "accidentally" run into you while stealing your wallet.

things = thinks.

Also, as Strat has pointed out, you've been spouting a lot of things that you use to imply these things, but without having much in the way of actual proof.

Yes, the big bad people are out to get you. They're tracking your every move, and that hard morsel in your steak last night was a tracking system that moved from your small intestine into your blood, where it retains the ability to cause a massive stroke if you ever actually threaten the Man's Plan.

@Darwyn - of course it is possible if the explosives are set near the top. The problem with your theory is that it requires the explosives and detonators and all the wiring to have been carried upo then rigged in offices where people worked without those people working and without elevatros because the power was out. And even if everyone was at home due to the power outage, they would have noticed ripped off dry wall with explosives attached to support beams when they came back in. The outage was the week before, not the day of.

And finally, they would have to have been set on or near the floors that were hit or it would have been obvious from the footage that the collapse didn't start at or near the impact floors. The "pilots" weren't so skilled that they could have aimed the airliners to within that precise an impact. And even if they could, the impact and resulting fire would have stood a good chance of damaging the detonators or the wiring connecting everything so that it would have had a high probability of failure either not all of them going off or even none going off because the detonators were damaged.

It just isn't a feasible theory if you know anything at all about demolitions (I wasn't a computer geek in the Corps).

Jack - read my intro to this thread please.

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I am trying to find out how people form their opinions given conflicting evidence...it so happens that conspiratorial examples have been brought forward, which was inevitable. I am trying to avoid getting into specifics.

So thank you for demonstrating your intellectual laziness by equating any deviation from main stream belief into hysterical paranoia.

This thread is not for you. I ask that you please stay out if you are going to continue to mock alternative viewpoints.

Darwyn, I'm just going to toss this out here, because I seriously don't grok something.

If you're implying that the Big Bad Bush blew the towers down, why add the needless complication of rigging the towers when plowing two jet airplanes were more that sufficient for the job? Why bother? This isn't a single B-25 with less than a thousand gallons of gas hitting the Empire State Building, these were 767s with 16000 gallons+

You'd think if there were going to go to all this trouble they'd have run a couple of computer models to see what would happen if they nailed the buildings - and of course if they *didn't* nail the buildings, random detonations would kinda be a non-good thing from a conspiracy angle.

"I am trying to find out how people form their opinions given conflicting evidence..."

I'm also intellectually lazy. Given evidence that doesn't smell right, I see who has done the research to debunk it, and mindlessly parrot what they say... after checking to see if there is a rebuttal from the pro-wacky camp

" pro-wacky camp"

Strat +1!

Ok, Draug, you make some good points. I can't say that I can address them with any conviction, however, if you look at this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec5npXUR3KI

Seems like it would be fairly easy to wrap around a support column and place a remote detonator to it. But, I dont really know.

This also brings up the issue of explosions being heard prior to collapse. And just as no one saw the plane fly away from the pentagon, no one can attribute the multitude of these sounds as part of the collapse.

@ strat - if two planes were sufficient to bring them down, why didn't they come down upon impact? The official story says it was fire.