Working Through the Controlled Demolition Conspiracy

Wikipedia seems like a much better starting point than asking Less Wrong.

A few points:

• The standard explanation is, and should be the default explanation: given that we know that there were planes that crashed into the towers, we know that OBL had "declared war on" and attacked the US previously, that the attackers had previous ties to Al-Qaeda, among their other extremely well known and studied background info, etc, we have more than enough info to establish that there was in fact a successful Al-Qaeda plot to attack the WTC, in essentially the known manner.

• There is therefore no need to suppose a government plot.

• So the conspiracy theorists are starting with exceedingly weak priors for their case; they also have no persuasive/effective evidence in their case's favor. I don't really feel any need to list every possible argument against the standard case and their flaws, but see eg here or here.

From my experience, conspiracy theorists are like everyone else epistemologically except they have different motivations: most people want to believe the world is just, while conspiracy theorists want to believe the world is sinister. Like with most people, you have to watch out for motivated skepticism or what skeptics call anomaly hunting.

To guard against that, you'll have to find a way to make their evidence clearly defined and inescapable. I recommend having them write down all the evidence for their belief that 9/11 was blah blah and then weight it. Here's an example:

• 7WTC blah blah is 60% of the support for my belief that 9/11 blah blah
• Nanothermite blah blah 15%
• Blah blah holograms 5%

Ask them what percentage of that evidence is sufficient for their belief, and then just take the paper and research it. Come back another day and discuss your findings dialectically.

If you're looking for information resources, here's some mixed quality ones from my bookmarks:

• http://www.skeptic.com/searchresults.html?cx=018011741860882051434%3Aalihtmnfi_m&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&q=9%2F11&sa=search+skeptic.com&siteurl=www.skeptic.com%2Feskeptic%2F08-11-12%2F
• http://theness.com/neurologicablog/?s=9%2F11
• http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/akrna/i_am_a_debunker_of_911_conspiracy_theories_ama/
• http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/
• http://forums.randi.org/local_links.php?catid=18
• https://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies/
• http://www.dalimunthe.com/2010/03/top-ten-photos-911-conspiracy-nuts-hate.html
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1wQ2BJsgx0

Downvoted for failing to check google/wikipedia first.

I suppose if you really wanted to get into it, you could go read an engineering review of what happened.

First I did a search and found the word PHYSICS is not on this page. Now it is.

The Laws of Physics do not give a damn about CONSPIRACIES and they do not give a damn about people who do not understand grade school Newtonian Physics. Of course they don't give a damn about people who do understand Newtonian Physics either. Physics is indifferent! That is all this 9/11 business is, PHYSICS. It is not Einsteinian Physics. It is not Quantum Physics. Actually WTC7 is not even very interesting. But it was 300 feet wide. Watch the roof line come down and see how close to perfectly horizontal it remains from start of collapse to finish.

Then explain how a fire could cause such a high degree of perfection? The Physics dictates that mass is going to accelerate due to gravity at a specific rate. So for the roof to start coming down in line and stay in line they would have to give way at the same time. Most people say within a 1/10th of a second. So how many supports were there across 300 feet that all gave way within a 1/10th of a second? How could fire do that? High precision fire. LOL

What you need to think about is what consequence any of this has to your life. The reality is, like the moon landing, it means absolutely nothing to the decisions you'll be making whether it's real or not. Like holocaust denial, the only reason people make one claim rather than another is to be seen as a certain type of person.