The ones on the fence are stupid too just for entertaining the possibility it could be true. Beneath me. Fuck them.
I find the truthers to be less offensive than the recreational grievers, the despair wallowers, and the claimers of perpetual victimhood. Yeah the truthers are as dumb as a sack of hammers. But they’re not really hurting anyone, unlike those who capitalized on 9/11 as an excuse to start pointless and perpetual wars.
Just point and laugh at them. They’re not going to change their minds, so you might as well get some entertainment value out of them.
I think Eat 'N Park has the best pies, hands down.
Some of them can be. But it can also be useful to engage the one’s that can’t be too:
- To change the minds of less-committed onlookers
- To give relief and comfort to onlookers who share your view and wish someone would stick up for it
- To set an example of “sharing one’s opinion even if it’s controversial,” a valuable norm to reinforce even if you don’t change anyone’s mind on that particular issue
- To set an example of “polite and reasonable argumentation,” again a valuable norm in its own right
Maybe, but one of the appeals CTs have to fence-sitters is that you get to act like you know more than the average person with very little effort. By crushing the CTers utterly and remorselesly we can demonstrate to all that that little reward isn’t that great and will make you look like an ass.
I’m trying to keep this shit from spreading, I think the effort worked pretty well. as 9/11 conspiracies really are in the dregs right now.
I find it very disheartening to see from this thread and the poll how few of us appreciate the importance of what we do here. I was never an active CTer, but I grew up assuming there were major discrepancies in the official accounts of the JFK assassination and “things we would never know” about what really happened. The SDMB disabused me of that notion.
I’ve significantly moderated my views on gun control thanks to the SDMB, another topic people often complain it is futile to debate.
And I’ve changed my position on religion TWICE! When I went to college, I discovered that there were thoughtful, intelligent, rational people in the Religious Studies department who were believers. I became first, briefly, a Buddhist, and then an ardent Christian. Late SDMB poster Polycarp was a major influence on my thinking at that time, but the SDMB as a whole was a constant drumbeat for me, reminding me both that beliefs have consequences and that they need evidence. I ended up going to graduate school in theology, which probably would have killed any God-belief no matter what, but I think the SDMB played a major role as well during that time, as I noticed myself agreeing with the nontheists more than my fellow theists in the God-debate threads. Eventually I dropped out of grad school, abandoned my plans to become a pastor, and am now active in a local atheist group.
I’ve been here my entire adult life, and the debates here have had a huge impact on my life and my beliefs. The idea that we’d all be better spending our time discussing (or even eating) pie is one of the saddest and wrongest notions I can imagine.
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You’re the the exception. Look what happens in threads where we debate things like government supplied health care, which the evidence strongly supports. Certain posters never change their views and are not willing to even consider the facts. (the primary one being that ‘free market’ health care only means a damn if you are so wealthy you can actually pay for it, which is about 0.1% of America. For everyone else, we have to deal with death panels in the form of insurance companies)
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No one here has anything serious to say about the WTC collapses. A plane hit the building. After a fire, the buildings came down. Thousands of witnesses, dozens of camera angles, the event happened twice, the contractors who constructed the buildings have written books explaining why they think they failed. Maybe the precise sequence of collapse is a little off - maybe it was actually some weld on some joint that failed, not the bolts that the official theory supports, but it doesn’t make a difference in the end. That issue was dead.
With JFK, maybe someone else paid Oswald to do it or goaded him or something. Very little evidence but it fits within the evidence that we do have. The evidence we do have excludes a second shooter and other theories, and in any case, the basic sequence of events is well established…
Or catch the wind.
I’m not trying to be ignorant, but can someone explain to me what a “9/11 Truther” is?
Maybe I’m the exception, or maybe others just haven’t posted about it. I’ve been here over 18 years and I’ve told that story maybe twice before, if that. I never had a “You’ve changed my mind and here’s how” thread.
Rationality is all about being willing to change your mind in the face of evidence. This is a whole community of rationalists. If most of us haven’t had our minds changed here about something, what would that say?
Can’t wait until tomorrow to find out? 
the morons that believe the government either knew about the plan or blew up the buildings themselves to start the mid east wars …
theres hours long videos out there about it
I bolded the part that always makes me laugh.
I mean, they’re so crafty and g-man that they can pull off the whole blow-up-the-buildings caper without leaving a shred of evidence because they need an excuse to invade Iraq… but they can’t name the right villain?
It’s Osama bin Laden, except they really meant Saddam Hussein, so then they had to spend a bunch of time and effort to conflate these two baddies into one villain so they could turn their attention from Afghanistan to Iraq…
Whut? No one would invade Afghanistan if they could avoid it. Not even Bush.
Honestly I doubt any of the 911 kooks will show up, or even people asking about the 911 CT stuff. We get an almost annual JFK thread around November because the media is behind the idea of a JFK conspriacy so like clockwork the History Channel will show ‘The Men Who Killed JFK’ and few will notice the disclaimers they have now where they say 'BTW, this was shown to be complete bullshit".
With 911 the media is decidedly unsympathetic so they don’t even bother covering any 911 protests that happen, and almost none happen. None of the handful fo remaining 9/11 truther groups are bother to schedule any protests at ground zero or elsewhere. ANy truthers with energy long ago abandoned the movement, so what is left is a pathetic core of hard cases who would rather yell ‘Sheeple!’ at people online and feel smug than actually do anything constructive…not that there is much they can do that is constructive to a delusional movement.
I looked back brielf and I couldn’t even find a recent truther thread. Most recent one I could locate was in 2014.
I attended a town hall meeting some years ago with my Congressman, Peter DeFazio. It was during the time when Democrats were trying to explain how Obamacare would work and why it was an improvement (pre-vote). The venue was packed. DeFazio was handling it well, explaining clearly and fielding lots of questions.
There was an unruly bunch of fellows sitting behind me who kept shouting out, “Building 7!! Building 7!!” during DeFazio’s presentation. I was so embarrassed for them, and it was in that moment that I actualized just how astray we were getting as a country with the CTs. I also wondered why any decent person like DeFazio would take the job, having to put up with crap like that all the time.
You cannot reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. Consider it free advertising that they are a little unhinged, and move on.
This is coming from someone who has questions about exactly what happened that horrific day, and why, but I don’t care to waste my time with Truthers.
I envy you your ignorance with regards to these people.