It’s a common situation — there’s a complicated set of circumstances, or series of events, which is challenging to wrap one’s mind around, and for which there seems to be a consensus explanation, despite there being unusual aspects of the thing that defy intuitive understanding.
In this case, as has come up repeatedly in the thread, that generalization holds true. The lack of large and recognizable airplane wreckage seems to defy the intuitive expectation of what’s left over after a crash. The vertical collapse of a compromised skyscraper seems to defy the intuitive perception that things tip over when they fall on their own. And so on.
The key difference between a smart person and a stupid person is how one responds to the confusion one feels when one’s intuition is challenged.
A smart person says, “This thing I’m looking at doesn’t behave the way I would intuitively expect. And yet, there are established experts whose explanations are respected, and many many people who accept those explanations. Therefore, my intuition is probably somehow flawed. I must temporarily set aside my instinctive conclusion until I have educated myself. Oh, I see, an airplane is actually quite fragile, and disintegrates more thoroughly in a high speed impact than I previously understood. Oh, I see, a skyscraper is a vertical gravity-resistance system, and when that system fails, the structure will collapse straight down. I understand now how my intuition led me astray. I have learned something in this experience.”
A stupid person says, “This thing I’m looking at doesn’t behave the way I would intuitively expect. And yet there are established experts whose explanations are respected, and many many people who accept those explanations. I will trust my intuition. I will start with the assumptions that those experts could be wrong or lying and that the generally accepted explanation should be disregarded, at least temporarily, as I continue to investigate the situation.”
This is the basic, basic dividing line between being a successful critical thinker and being an idiot who is susceptible to fabricated realities and self-deception.
Yes, very occasionally, an intuitive belief may turn out to be well-founded, like Alfred Wegener looking at a globe and leaping to the conclusion that because the continental edges fit together, the land masses must be mobile somehow. He was laughed at in his day, but he turned out to be right … much later when actual physical evidence accumulated to support his intuition. This is the thing the stupid person doesn’t understand when holding up examples like the Wegener hypothesis in support of their own flights of fancy: Even though Wegener wound up being correct in the end, it was not wrong for the mainstream to reject him — they were right to do so, at the time, because the claim was extraordinary and had nothing but intuition backing it.
And this, in my view, is why the thread’s guest of honor is getting such a raft of shit. It’s not really about this, in particular, being a tired topic, or about how he’s poorly informed about the specific details surrounding the historical event. It’s about how his approach to the topic betrays a general lack of critical thinking ability, which is anethema to the board’s culture.
Hence, the raft of shit is well deserved and well earned.