As Anthony Hall says, Michael Shermer isn’t a real economics professor – he just plays one on TV. But that doesn’t mean he’s always wrong. In a recent Scientific American article, Shermer gives us many reasons to think that the Official Conspiracy Theory of 9/11 is “likely to be untrue.” Below is Shermer’s list of the characteristics of probably-untrue conspiracy theories. My comments are in italics.
4. Similarly, the conspiracy involves large numbers of people who would all need to keep silent about their secrets. The more people involved, the less realistic it becomes.
To sum up: Many, though not all, of Shermer’s points are at least partially valid. But they must be applied evenhandedly to all theories about any given historical event. And it should be added that if a crime is complex, or required the keeping of secrets, it should probably be attributed to those organizations that specialize in complex operations and the keeping of secrets.
A good article, Kevin!
My two pennoth is:
1 If this guy Shermer is really not who he appears to be, as Anthony Hall appears to have discovered, we should put some energy into exposing him publicly.
2 Beware the joining the dots argument, though you have used it excellently here to your own advantage. I'm continually meeting people within the 9/11 truth movement who maintain all you have to do is to join the dots. This argument is used prominently by David Icke, the New Age British prophet who was uncannily perceptive about 9/11 from 2001 onwards and is highly influential in some parts of the 9/11 truth movement. He advances many other theories such as that we are all controlled by an elite class who are decended from extraterrestial reptilians. These people may be identified by their "blood lines" and include the Bush family and the Windsor-Mountbatten families. Sometimes, Icke maintains, you can see them morph from human into reptilian form. Icke also uses the analogy of "joining the dots" in order to determine the truth of what is going on. But if you think of those children's puzzles where you have to take a pencil to join the dots and it creates a picture of something, it is important that the dots be joined in the prescribed order. Join them in the wrong order and you get the wrong image. Of course the original puzzle numbers the dots so that you know in which order to join them. But in real life the dots are not numbered and there are many different ways in which they may be joined. So it is conceivable that David Icke is wrong has joined the dots in the wrong order and we are not controlled by a race of shape-shifting reptilians.
Noel, I agree that David Icke could very well be wrong about the shape-shifting reptilians. (Understatement alert!) But he did get 9/11 right very early on, and he seems to have a lot of good points on many important and neglected issues. So Icke exemplifies some of the benefits as well as the drawbacks of connect-the-dots thinking, which can be done badly, but can also be done well. It's a lot like intuition and holistic thinking, which are very important cognitive abilities that complement the linear logic of left-hemisphere-dominated hyper-literate thought. Schlain's The Alphabet Versus the Goddess is a provocative, hyper-dot-connecting historical interpretation of linear-versus-holistic cognitive styles.
Debunking… hum hum is it on his CV ? cause he forgot to mention it again
Netanyahu explained in the book he wrote 5 years before the september 2001 attacks… bowling effect will bring down three of the major buildings …. 'bowling effect'… in french… 2 pour le prix de 3… see these zio-elites are the upper cream of the Human race, we need to give them credit, aren't we?
Agreed Kevin. David Icke does say a lot of good things.
Noel
Excellent post, Thanks Kevin, I hope your okay with me taking the liberty of cut and pasting your blog post here and placing it on our community Edmonton 911 blog …My readers are following this story too… cheers Doug.
http://911truthedmonton.blogspot.com/
Notice how Shermer misquotes Hall (uses the word "economy" when the word was "academy") and then adds a "sic" notation, since the misquote does not make sense.
What a no-class act this guy is.
I mourn so deeply for Science (capital-S); it has been so horribly corrupted by the state and the corporations.
David Icke is right about a lot of things as I have read most of his books, but I think he may have been duped by the shape-shifting reptilians story. By who? Multiple disinformation specialists in the intelligence agencies who set him up with false information to discredit him. They are all around us as deep cover assets.
For those of you that don’t think that there is no such thing as aliens, you need to wake up. There have been reptilians living amongst us for thousands of years, and there’s countless evidence to prove it. This video does a pretty good job of giving you a rough idea of what the Draconians are and how long they’ve been here. Their disguises utilize technology that is much more advanced than the technology that is available to the general public (which is usually 50 to 100 years behind what the human elite organizations such as DARPA have), but it is still not infallible. There have been many instances caught on tape when the moving features of their face (mouth and eyes) have a slight lag time to recalibrate to the sudden change in movement. Hence the appearances of reptilian eyes or tongues for split seconds. One of my buddies who also (happens to be quite adept in regards to the reptilians and what they’re all about) was filming a city council meeting for ventura county when he caught something like this. He posted some of the pictures at his website (they’re at Anxiety.org if you want to check them out) although the quality isn’t as good as the one shot by the news network.