The Blinded Public

[piscator]

Grow up!

I've been trying to grow up for ages, but it just aint happening.

I'm not arguing with you, and I don't intend to offer any bullshit to explain where anybody on those flights 'disappeared'.
I look at the photos and news footage shown at the time, and what I saw (fabricated or not) didn't convince me that any plane managed to navigate a flight path riddled with lamp-posts and road signs, was not intercepted by the anti-aircraft missile systems housed at the most defended building in the United States, and punched through a heavily reinforced wall without leaving any trace of plane wreckage.

That causes me to ask questions.

If you choose not to ask questions, but believe what you are told that's fine. But just because I decide to dig a little deeper doesn't make me stupid.

I ask questions until I arrive at a satisfactory answer that is beyond reasonable doubt - that is my nature and I make no apologies for it. You can brand me a conspiracy theorist if it makes you happy, it makes no difference to me what-so-ever. It is sad to think that we are living in a world where a person is vilified for asking questions.

You place the burden of proof upon me, and yet you offer nothing to convince me otherwise. I wonder where I have heard these kind of arguments before...

You can insult me all you like, I have spent a life-time being insulted, but I will continue to ask questions until I get the undeniable truth - I do so because of the 3000+ people who died that day, not in spite of them. I'm not some ghoul, slavering at the jowls in the hope of catching someone out so that I can puff my chest out and wave my finger saying "I told you so!" I am simply asking questions.

You're idly speculating. Moreover, since you are not in a position to either assess all the data or do anything substantive about whatever you might conclude, you choose to fill in the blanks with aesthetics rather than simply remaining neutral on a subject which you cannot speak. It's entertaining.

[Brian Peacock]

But what if the other fella is packing more?

If you're doing things properly you only need one round, or perhaps a max of three: two to the chest and one to the head...if it's still there when you finish the first two shots.

One should always conserve ammo through good marksmanship and tactics because one never knows when one might need the extra rounds.

Thanks for the tip, but the point wasn't anything to do with firearms technique.

[piscator]

That's right. It was about body armor!

[pErvinalia]

I may never get to be put up against the coffee shop window in your world, as I will be more likely to be killed before that point by another citizen in a gun attack. This is the point you can't seem to get.

The point you can't seem to get is that your paranoid fears of your fellow law-abiding citizens are not sufficient cause to deny others the ability to defend themselves effectively.

It's a simple matter of stats, Seth. You are more likely to be killed by a gun from a fellow citizen than by a terrorist attack. So arguing for more guns for citizens to prevent terrorists attacks is retarded logic.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Grow up!

I've been trying to grow up for ages, but it just aint happening.

I'm not arguing with you, and I don't intend to offer any bullshit to explain where anybody on those flights 'disappeared'.
I look at the photos and news footage shown at the time, and what I saw (fabricated or not) didn't convince me that any plane managed to navigate a flight path riddled with lamp-posts and road signs, was not intercepted by the anti-aircraft missile systems housed at the most defended building in the United States, and punched through a heavily reinforced wall without leaving any trace of plane wreckage.

That causes me to ask questions.

If you choose not to ask questions, but believe what you are told that's fine. But just because I decide to dig a little deeper doesn't make me stupid.

I ask questions until I arrive at a satisfactory answer that is beyond reasonable doubt - that is my nature and I make no apologies for it. You can brand me a conspiracy theorist if it makes you happy, it makes no difference to me what-so-ever. It is sad to think that we are living in a world where a person is vilified for asking questions.

You place the burden of proof upon me, and yet you offer nothing to convince me otherwise. I wonder where I have heard these kind of arguments before...

You can insult me all you like, I have spent a life-time being insulted, but I will continue to ask questions until I get the undeniable truth - I do so because of the 3000+ people who died that day, not in spite of them. I'm not some ghoul, slavering at the jowls in the hope of catching someone out so that I can puff my chest out and wave my finger saying "I told you so!" I am simply asking questions.

Fine. Nothing wrong with asking questions. But ask the RIGHT questions!

The names of the passengers on that flight are a matter of public record. Has any conspiracy theorist ever asked the family, colleagues and friends of any of them, or anyone else that knew them, what happened? Have they come up with any anomalies that suggest that a single one of them was not on the flight? Any hint of any of them still being alive? Any hint that any of them in the employ of the security forces (or another, "evil" entity) and complicit in a gigantic cover-up? Any smidgen of a hint that the crashed/plane landed elsewhere and they were murdered, paid off, or otherwise extorted into maintaining the fiction that they were dead?

I am not and have never called you stupid! To claim that I am, or did, is a massive strawman! But, against these very real people and their very real grief, you are offering the fact that you are "not convinced" by photos and news footage. Excuse me if I don't find that your (non-expert) interpretation of limited CCTV footage, bolstered by the predictable claims of the usual suspects, convincing in the slightest! Your willingness to believe outlandish claims rather than the accepted version without adequate evidence does not make you stupid. But it may mean that you are guilty of a little confirmation bias when it comes to which evidence you choose to believe. Have you considered that as a possibility?

As for the "burden of proof", I am afraid that that ALWAYS lies with those making claims that go against the established facts! And that is those claiming that no plane hit the Pentagon on 9/11. No conspiracy theory regarding flight 77 holds much more than a single drop of water. There were simply far too many people on board that plane, far too many grieving friends and family, and far too many on-the-ground eye-witnesses to account for in any other way except that it fucking well crashed into the Pentagon!

[pErvinalia]

There was a also cctv footage of it smashing into it. Of course, that was created digitally in a studio somewhere by the Illuminati-LizardPeople Axis.

[Seth]

I may never get to be put up against the coffee shop window in your world, as I will be more likely to be killed before that point by another citizen in a gun attack. This is the point you can't seem to get.

The point you can't seem to get is that your paranoid fears of your fellow law-abiding citizens are not sufficient cause to deny others the ability to defend themselves effectively.

It's a simple matter of stats, Seth. You are more likely to be killed by a gun from a fellow citizen than by a terrorist attack. So arguing for more guns for citizens to prevent terrorists attacks is retarded logic.

If that were the only use for privately-held guns you'd be right. But of course it's not, it's just another in a myriad of reasons why citizens might need to carry arms. Thus you're positing the fallacy of the excluded middle.

Terrorists are just another sort of armed criminals who need to be shot dead. The chances that any one individual will be a victim of such an attack is quite small, but the odds of a person who is a victim of such an attack being the subject of such an attack are one-hundred percent, and the chances of their dying at the hands of said terrorist are orders of magnitude higher than the chances of being killed by your average armed street thug, which makes the applicability of lethal self-defense all the more necessary.

We saw what happens when you send unarmed police officers to deal with armed terrorists didn't we? Why should an otherwise law-abiding citizen be less well-armed than the police?

After all, the "police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence." Sir Robert Peel

[Seth]

Grow up!

I've been trying to grow up for ages, but it just aint happening.

I'm not arguing with you, and I don't intend to offer any bullshit to explain where anybody on those flights 'disappeared'.
I look at the photos and news footage shown at the time, and what I saw (fabricated or not) didn't convince me that any plane managed to navigate a flight path riddled with lamp-posts and road signs, was not intercepted by the anti-aircraft missile systems housed at the most defended building in the United States, and punched through a heavily reinforced wall without leaving any trace of plane wreckage.

Except there was tons of plane wreckage, and tons of building wreckage, and tons of human wreckage, but it was inside the Pentagon, where you can't see it, and the photos of the interior after the attack are classified I expect. You should do a YouTube search on what happens when you smash an aircraft (like a fighter jet) into a solid concrete block at 500 mph.

Plus, you fail to explain all the video of the other aircraft plunging into the World Trade Center and you fail to explain why Occam's Razor does not apply to the Pentagon plane as well, since that is the simplest explanation even if you are not privy to evidence you find compelling.

That causes me to ask questions.

Go find some answers. They are out there, believe me.

If you choose not to ask questions, but believe what you are told that's fine. But just because I decide to dig a little deeper doesn't make me stupid.

It does if you claim to be asking questions when actually you are spouting rhetorical conspiracy-theorist nutjob propaganda, which is what you are actually doing.

I ask questions until I arrive at a satisfactory answer that is beyond reasonable doubt - that is my nature and I make no apologies for it. You can brand me a conspiracy theorist if it makes you happy, it makes no difference to me what-so-ever. It is sad to think that we are living in a world where a person is vilified for asking questions.

All the questions you ask have been answered, long ago, authoritatively, in a carefully documented fashion by professional investigators whose sole job and expertise was to eke out every single fact about the attacks available to forensic science and report it to the Congress.

You place the burden of proof upon me, and yet you offer nothing to convince me otherwise. I wonder where I have heard these kind of arguments before...

We're not placing the burden of proof on you, we're telling you that incontrovertible proof exists by the truckload and has been vetted and verified by experts, so there is no burden of proof.

You can insult me all you like, I have spent a life-time being insulted, but I will continue to ask questions until I get the undeniable truth - I do so because of the 3000+ people who died that day, not in spite of them. I'm not some ghoul, slavering at the jowls in the hope of catching someone out so that I can puff my chest out and wave my finger saying "I told you so!" I am simply asking questions.

You're a conspiracy theorist who is determinedly ignoring the mountains of incontrovertible evidence who is stirring the shit-pot just because you can.

[Seth]

I may never get to be put up against the coffee shop window in your world, as I will be more likely to be killed before that point by another citizen in a gun attack. This is the point you can't seem to get.

The point you can't seem to get is that your paranoid fears of your fellow law-abiding citizens are not sufficient cause to deny others the ability to defend themselves effectively. You're far more likely to be shot and killed by the police than you are an armed citizen. About eleven times more likely in fact, at least here in the US.

Just yesterday a 17 year old girl in a car full of other juvenile girls was shot dead by police because she panicked when they approached the car. She put it in gear and struck one of the officers in the leg, and they opened up on her and killed her.

That's your problem, not ours.

Is it?

[pErvinalia]

I may never get to be put up against the coffee shop window in your world, as I will be more likely to be killed before that point by another citizen in a gun attack. This is the point you can't seem to get.

The point you can't seem to get is that your paranoid fears of your fellow law-abiding citizens are not sufficient cause to deny others the ability to defend themselves effectively.

It's a simple matter of stats, Seth. You are more likely to be killed by a gun from a fellow citizen than by a terrorist attack. So arguing for more guns for citizens to prevent terrorists attacks is retarded logic.

If that were the only use for privately-held guns you'd be right. But of course it's not, it's just another in a myriad of reasons why citizens might need to carry arms. Thus you're positing the fallacy of the excluded middle.

Bullshit. And stop making up more "fallacies". YOU said that the threat of terrorism is a reason to arm more citizens. YOU are wrong. Arming more citizens INCREASES one's chances of dying a violent death.

[Seth]

"Your" meaning it's the US's problem, not Oz or the rest of the civilised world...

Really? What's all this about cops brutalizing citizens in the UK and OZ I keep reading about then?

[Seth]

I may never get to be put up against the coffee shop window in your world, as I will be more likely to be killed before that point by another citizen in a gun attack. This is the point you can't seem to get.

The point you can't seem to get is that your paranoid fears of your fellow law-abiding citizens are not sufficient cause to deny others the ability to defend themselves effectively.

It's a simple matter of stats, Seth. You are more likely to be killed by a gun from a fellow citizen than by a terrorist attack. So arguing for more guns for citizens to prevent terrorists attacks is retarded logic.

If that were the only use for privately-held guns you'd be right. But of course it's not, it's just another in a myriad of reasons why citizens might need to carry arms. Thus you're positing the fallacy of the excluded middle.

Bullshit. And stop making up more "fallacies".

False dilemma
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Fallacy of the excluded middle)

A false dilemma (also called black-and-white thinking, bifurcation, denying a conjunct, the either–or fallacy, false dichotomy, fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses, the fallacy of false choice, the fallacy of the false alternative, or the fallacy of the excluded middle) is a type of informal fallacy that involves a situation in which only limited alternatives are considered, when in fact there is at least one additional option. The opposite of this fallacy is argument to moderation.

The options may be a position that is between two extremes (such as when there are shades of grey) or may be completely different alternatives. Phrasing that implies two options (dilemma, dichotomy, black-and-white) may be replaced with other number-based nouns, such as a "false trilemma" if something is reduced to only three options.

False dilemma can arise intentionally, when fallacy is used in an attempt to force a choice (such as, in some contexts, the assertion that "if you are not with us, you are against us"). This fallacy also can arise simply by accidental omission of additional options rather than by deliberate deception. Additionally, it can be the result of habitual, patterned, black-and-white and/or intensely political/politicized thinking whereby a model of binary (or polar) opposites is assigned or imposed to whatever regarded object/context, almost automatically--a process that may ignore both complexity and alternatives to more extreme juxtaposed archetypes; binary opposition is explored extensively in critical theory.

Some philosophers and scholars believe that "unless a distinction can be made rigorous and precise it isn't really a distinction."[1] An exception is analytic philosopher John Searle, who called it an incorrect assumption that produces false dichotomies.[2] Searle insists that "it is a condition of the adequacy of a precise theory of an indeterminate phenomenon that it should precisely characterize that phenomenon as indeterminate; and a distinction is no less a distinction for allowing for a family of related, marginal, diverging cases."[2] Similarly, when two options are presented, they often are, although not always, two extreme points on some spectrum of possibilities; this may lend credence to the larger argument by giving the impression that the options are mutually exclusive of each other, even though they need not be.[citation needed] Furthermore, the options in false dichotomies typically are presented as being collectively exhaustive, in which case the fallacy may be overcome, or at least weakened, by considering other possibilities, or perhaps by considering a whole spectrum of possibilities, as in fuzzy logic.

YOU said that the threat of terrorism is a reason to arm more citizens.

Of course it is, as Israel recognizes when it allows its citizens to carry handguns and machine guns.

YOU are wrong. Arming more citizens INCREASES one's chances of dying a violent death.

Now you're positing the Blind Groper's Fallacy, which is when you ignore the incontrovertible evidence that an increase in the number of armed citizens in the US has coincided with a substantial decrease in the chances of dying a violent death.

[pErvinalia]

Lol. Compare US stats to the rest of the world. US has the highest gun crime in the developed world. Stick those stats up your anus. Given we were talking about Australia, you are wrong, as usual. If you increased citizen gun ownership in Australia you would get more gun crime. Hence arming Australian's to address the minute threat of terrorism is retarded.

[JimC]

"Your" meaning it's the US's problem, not Oz or the rest of the civilised world...

Really? What's all this about cops brutalizing citizens in the UK and OZ I keep reading about then?

There will always be some issues, sure. But cops in the US have to expect that almost anybody they pull over will be armed with a gun, so I can make allowances for them being trigger happy. Not so here, in 99% of cases.

[Ian]

About the Pentagon theory... I know people who were there that day, and I've heard their stories. Yes, it was an airplane. Sheesh.

There's no doubt that planes hit the twin towers, right? So if they were made to crash as part of a sinister insider plot, why would the plotters opt for risking the sight of a missile flying right over DC instead of another plane?

REs, conspiracy theories like this are just plain stupid. There's no polite way to say it. Please tell me you don't really believe them.