You know Jake, I’ll give you this. I watched the video (though am confused how this supports anything you’ve said) and thought this explanation sounded a bit weak too.
But the thing you continue to blindly look past is, shooting down his theory doesn’t prove levitation. Levitating proves levitation. I read a great debate in Time magazine once about proof of the existence of God. A noted scientist and a noted christian leader were given a chance to offer their evidence. The scientist talked about the age of the earth, evolution, etc as expected. The religious leader then began to try to discredit the age of the earth, evolution, etc offering up not one single piece of evidence for the existence of God.
You are doing the same thing here. To offer any credible reason to believe a CT, there needs to be some sort of proof. Shooting holes in the WC isn’t that proof. You’ve been asked repeatedly: Can you offer any proof that there was a conspiracy? Uncle’s opinions don’t count.
Its sounds like a nice dictionary decision, but in reality when it comes to Conspiracy, science, or paranormal things the dictionary description of ‘skeptic’ is not specific enough.
Truzzi’s skepticism was bordering on useless. His and his followers were a namby-pamby go-nowhere skepticism that refused to even confront outright frauds and charlatans. It replaced the actual act of trying to break things down via the scientific method with a over-gentle ‘oh myabe not…but who knows?’ attitude.
It failed miserably. Truzzi was a founding member of CSICOP, yet I cannot find one thing he actually worked on debunking. Instead he became the adoptee of the woowoo crowd. A convenient token ‘skeptic’ to refer to try and deflect legitimate criticism (Truzzi’s essay on Pseudo-Skepticism is almost always abused by the believer set - being invoked the moment anyone doubts the most ludicrous of theories). In the end Truzzi was happily befriended by the con-artist Uri Geller and stood by him when Geller decided to sue anyone who doubted his powers. If that’s someone’s idea of a good skeptic, then Quisling must be great example of a governor to them as well.
So what’s a skeptic to do once he thoroughly looks into something, and find there’s a mountain of evidence for one point of view, and zero evidence for the other? Is he still supposed to sit in the middle, saying “ya know, maybe our entire ideas about physics are completely wrong, and people actually do levitate, although we have no evidence other than old unverifiable stories, and modern yogis who levitate by hopping around. But if anyone says levitation actually occurs, I won’t challenge him for evidence, because, you know, I must always suspend judgment.”
Wouldn’t it be much more honest to look at the evidence with an open mind, then if it warrants, come to a tentative conclusion? That’s where we are now. Unless there’s evidence we haven’t seen, I know which way it points.
Brian, I don’t know, you don’t know and Shameless Joe does not know absolutely for sure. Joe is a qualified literary investigator. In that area I would put great weight on his professional opinion, but in matters like this he is a blowhard.
Now, with levitation, Bigfoot, Loch Ness, ghosts, I consider them to be extremely unlikely to the point of non-existence, such as the flat earth theory. That is my only my opinion. Because of that I don’t even waste time on them. If something comes up, let me know.
Now, on the other hand, I give UFOs a much greater probability simply because of the tens and several hundred thousands of sightings, many of which by highly qualified commercial, military pilots, radar men, air traffic controllers, etc.
Now, I give conspiracies a much greater probability than that because there have been many throughout history that are real, tangible and have been proven; MKULTA, Tuskegee Airmen, etc.
As far as JFK is concerned, here is the problem I have with it:
On the one hand you have the Warren Commission vs the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (you’re going to say the HSCA has been debunked, but that debunk was debunked, then that debunking of the debunking has been debunked, blah, blah, blah. But that is contrasted with Criticism of Secret Service being strangely lax with security, especially in light of Adlai Stevenson being attacked the month before, criticism that the WC didn’t investigate the conspiracy angle from jump street.
You will always believe the Official Story right from the get go and you will subconsciously seek that which fits or reject that that doesn’t fit you reality model. It doesn’t matter which one it is: American frigate blown up that triggered Spanish/American war, Vince Foster, Marylin Monroe, jfk, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, 911, Pearl Harbor, etc. Now here’s the kicker: things like these that have already been exposed that you will, by default, acknowledge only because you have to.
• MKULTRA
• Tuskegee Airmen
• Radiation exposure of soldiers
• Chicago prisoners injected with malaria
• Atomic Energy Commission administering intravenous of radioactive substances
• Numerous other plutonium human experiments
• 1950 - 1953) The U.S. Army releases chemical clouds over six American and Canadian cities.
• U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of Bacillus globigii bacteria from ships over the San Francisco shoreline.
• 1953 - 1957) Eleven patients at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston are injected with uranium as part of the Manhattan Project
• (1956 - 1957) U.S. Army covert biological weapons researchers release mosquitoes infected with yellow fever and dengue fever over Savannah, Ga
• The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) drops radioactive materials over Point Hope, Alaska, home to the Inupiats, in a field test known under the codename “Project Chariot”
• And on and on and on…
Now these have already been brought to light, but before they were exposed, if somebody came to you and said they thought there was a conspiracy and gave a few reasons, you would roll you eyes back in your head and immediately try to disprove and debunk. It’s only after the fact that you will acknowledge the conspiracy.
Based on the Government’s sordid, pathological behaviour in the past, they have shown that if it suits their agenda they wouldn’t hesitate to do a JFK type thing. That and there are too many versions that conflict with each other is why I take an agnostic stance.
I don’t believe I’ve ever said that Oswald wasn’t the shooter. Why did you ask me that? Whether I am aware of a theory of Oswald not being the shooter, I don’t know if I’ve ever personally heard one. I’m sure they’re out their. You would know much better than having debated the subject extensively.
As for shoes
CSIOPtic is the James Randi style of pseudoskepticesm that is practiced by pseudoskeptics. CSIOPS or CSI are practioners of this style. From what I’ve seen on this and on other skeptical type threads, this site would be included. I don’t know if you personally have ever used the terms woo/CTer/True Believer/nutter/idiot in a pejorative way, but this site is rife with it. A classical example is this thread. It started out with me stating that that vid ‘stuck in my craw’ and aroused suspicions with my SS uncle. Just a simple statement that didn’t say anything about whether there was a conspiracy or whether Oswald acted alone or if he wasn’t the shooter or not. Now the majority of the thread is all about me, and daring to utter blasphemy. This is what’s typical about CSIOPtic web sites, almost immediately the person gets rat packed – standard tactic – by anywhere from three to six people all at once who try to stomp out the voice of dissention.
I haven’t been to his website in at least a year.
I gather you don’t like these people, but every example you provide has them behaving far more rationally than you. It doesn’t matter if you think they’re arrogant or narrow-minded or whatever, because all I care about is if you can prove they are wrong. Hard evidence of a second shooter or hard evidence of human levitation will do so nicely. if you want to challenge a statement by John Doe, I genuinely don’t care if you have a personal hatred for John Doe that burns with the intensity of a thousand suns or indeed if John Doe is biggest jerk in human history and fully deserves your hatred. Challenge his facts, if you can.
Paraphrasing you:
“I genuinely don’t care if you have a personal hatred for woo, CTers/True Beliverst hat burns with the intensity of a thousand suns or indeed if woo/CTers/True Beiliever are the biggest biggest jerks in human history and fully deserves your hatred.” Come on, Brian, I’m just dishing back out to this site exactly what it dishes out to the woo/CTers. I am using disrespectful, ad hominem type attacks that exactly mimic and reflect what is put out by CSIOPtics. If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out.
As for challenging the facts, I did with Shameless Joe and the levitation. I pointed out that his plausible explanation was as unlikely as actual levitation. You can see visually that no athlete on the face of the earth now or then could possibly do what he posits.
It’s a Forced Plausible that stretches the boundaries of feasibility to the breaking point and beyond. He said something to the effect that historical were not consistent or extensive, or something like that. Cool the guy specializes in that kind of thing. I believe he also said something to the effect that maybe it was religious bliss and people see what they want to see – just like Shameless Joe – Cool, that’s a decent explanation. But he should have stopped at that point and said something to the effect that we don’t really know for sure, HOWEVER, based on their being no demonstrable evidence to date, it is extremely dubious that he levitated. The problem with CSIOPtics is this: ""There are some members of the skeptics’ groups who believe they know the right answer prior to inquiry. They appear not to be interested suspending judgment and belief system but only in promoting their own particular belief structure and cohesion” That’s pseudoskepticism.
PlainJain;11426817]You know Jake, I’ll give you this. I watched the video (though am confused how this supports anything you’ve said) and thought this explanation sounded a bit weak too.
Didn’t say anything about proving levitation was real, that’s a straw man.
Never said there was a conspiracy. I’ve been straw manned to death. I said it “stuck in my craw” and that my uncle that is was highly irregular and suspicious.
To not consider a conspiracy is foolish. The HSCA concluded that Oswald was the lone shooter. But they also consider the conspiracy a possibility that should have been investigated much more fully than it was. And also because of Kennedy’s conflicts with the CIA and his controversial stance on the Viet Nam war. And also based on the govts. sordid history of showing no moral compunction and a depraved indifference to human rights, crimes against humanity and crimes against the constitution:
• MKULTRA
• Tuskegee Airmen
• Radiation exposure of soldiers
• Chicago prisoners injected with malaria
• Atomic Energy Commission administering intravenous of radioactive substances
• Numerous other plutonium human experiments
• 1950 - 1953) The U.S. Army releases chemical clouds over six American and Canadian cities.
• U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of Bacillus globigii bacteria from ships over the San Francisco shoreline.
• 1953 - 1957) Eleven patients at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston are injected with uranium as part of the Manhattan Project
• (1956 - 1957) U.S. Army covert biological weapons researchers release mosquitoes infected with yellow fever and dengue fever over Savannah, Ga
• The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) drops radioactive materials over Point Hope, Alaska, home to the Inupiats, in a field test known under the codename “Project Chariot”
• And on and on and on…
These are more than ample reasons to consider the possibility of a conspiracy. But even without those, when you have an assassination of a president you must consider the possibility of a conspiracy. The HSCA’s main bitch about that is that they thought that the FBI’s and the WC’s investigation in that was flawed and inadequate.
Wiki:
"fellow CSICOP cofounder Paul Kurtz dubbed him, “the skeptic’s skeptic.” He is credited with originating the oft-used phrase “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”
Nothing’s wrong with coming to a tenative conclusion, but it must be within the realm of plausiblity. Shameless Joe’s was not within that realm. He should have just said that because of "no evidence other than old unverifiable stories, and perhaps it was religious believe heavily infused with superstition. Instead, he comes up with a ludicrious Forced Plausible™ to avoid having to say that it might possibly be true although highly dubious.
“one who is looking or inquiring for what is true”. It doesn’t say anything in their about never arriving at a tenative solution. CSIOPtic style is already having your mind made up beforehand and seeing how you can disprove it. CSIOPtic style skepticism is skepticism’s evil twin.
Joe should have left it at “old unverifiable stories” heavily laden with religious bliss, blind faith and superstitious belief. What Joe did was a Forced Plausible™ which stretches the boundaries of plausibility to the breaking point and beyond. He should stick to being an an historical document consultant.
I really would like to know the source of that. Truzzi might have resembled that remark once, but In the last 25 years of his life? I think he demonstrated anything but that remark.
So the best that he can be credited with is an update of Hume’s essay from the 18th century? Weak.
It is not an ad hominem to point out why being a ‘Truzzi Skeptic’ is a poor choice.
Jake, there’s a reason people are willing to believe some of these examples of government conspiracies and malfeasance.
Can you guess what that is? And can you guess what these examples have that the Kennedy conspiracies lack?
You complain that we don’t even consider the possibility of a conspiracy in the Kennedy case. But that’s, you know, wrong. There’s a difference between not considering the possibility of a conspiracy, and considering the possibility of a conspiracy and then rejecting it.
That is my position, and it is the position of all the other right-thinking folks in this thread. Maybe there was a conspiracy. But we have no evidence of one. There is plenty of evidence that Oswald was the lone shooter, and none that he wasn’t. There is plenty of evidence that Oswald was a nut, and since there is no evidence that anyone helped him, it is justified to assert that he was a lone nut.
However, just because I have reached the conclusion that Oswald was a lone nut, that doesn’t mean you can’t change my mind. But since I’ve been around the block on this a few times, you probably won’t change my mind by trotting out evidence that I’ve already considered. You’re going to have to do more. Evidence that security was lax around Kennedy isn’t new evidence. Security was lax because lax security happened all the time in that era, and nobody ever noticed, because most times nobody ever tried to take a shot at the president.
To give an analogy, suppose you find that someone had a fatal car crash, and then find they weren’t wearing a seat belt. They disregarded proper procedure and ended up dead. Suspicious, no? Why did they disregard proper procedure on the one day that it mattered? Except, it turns out this person regularly drove without a seat belt. And if they had been wearing a seat belt we wouldn’t even be talking about it because the accident wouldn’t have been fatal.
So of course security was lax, if it wasn’t lax Kennedy wouldn’t have wound up dead. That’s a tautology.
Exactly. This is the reason that alternative explanations of the JFK murder, the WTC/Pentagon attacks, and Pearl Harbor are now relegated to Conspiracy Theory. There are niggling details that don’t appear to make sense regarding every major event in the world. None of those niggling details has provided a reasonable cause to believe any of the CT efforts.
(And your whole Nickell hijack is nothing more than an extended ad hominem in which you attempt to claim that, since one guy who has claimed to be a skeptic from time to time is as wacky as a CT proponent, then anything proposed by anyone claiming to be a skeptic can be dismissed.)
Even your list of government conspiracies contains several events that were never part of a government conspiracy: the Tuskeegee syphilis study that was not a “government” test except in the loosest sense and which was never a conspiracy; the globigii bacteria release that was only kept secret to prevent potential enemies from discovering the results, given that globigii bacteria is a pretty benign bug. (Some of your examples are those of unethical, perhaps even criminal behavior, but you are so desprate to show how eevuulll the government might be that you are willing to throw in any claim, regardless how weak.)
Will you please, please try to acquire even a slight understanding of the terms you are copying from somewhere else? The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of African-American fliers during WWII. The Tuskegee Experiment involved using black people as experimental subjects by not treating them for venereal disease to see what would happen. These are different things.
See! Proof that there was a conspiracy! They have confused jakesteele regarding the actual event!
(Besides. How do you know that the Tuskegee Airmen were not part of a vast conspiracy to show that blacks were competent humans. Maybe that was the conspiracy to which he alludes.)
Is anyone here doing that, or are you just wanting to rant about your perception of others? People here for the most part have considered all this evidence, then when you bring it out as if it’s something we haven’t seen before, we understandably aren’t swayed by it. But what we have done, is to explain why we’ve rejected it, when this has happened.
It seems that you’ve gone from talking about the actual event, to ranting about the personalities of people who aren’t even posting here. If you ask me, that’s a pretty good indicator of the kind of evidence you have.