Lobowolf

Let's me guess. Here are some arguments I expect to see: - Just because the Global Climate Coalition didn't believe their own statements doesn't make those statements wrong. - This expose was published in the NYT, a news organization which stands to profit hugely if people believe in global warming. - And so on. I expect one day to see the companies that supported this propaganda argue in court that they are not liable for damages because "everyone knew" that those companies were causing global warming and did nothing to stop it. With respect to the Times, I'd expect to see it noted that the article leads with the 1995 internal memo, and a quotation from "throughout the early 90's" "even as the coalition worked to sway opinion." Notwithstanding that, it's a damning expose', and I think the analogy to the tobacco companies is apt. I'm sure there will be some interesting, amusing, and ultimately hollow attempts at spin.

I wrote the post in question because I wanted to know if PO's comment was central to his position, or an aside. I haven't formed a solid enough opinion of my own to want to persuade others on this particular topic. My own inclination is that "Does it work?" is not a relevant big picture question, i.e. the end does not justify the means. However, particularly as weapons technology improves, I'm not completely certain about that. I think these are all interesting and relevant questions, and that certainly one doesn't have to be right-wing or idiotic to raise the questions. As Alan Dershowitz has demonstrated.

I am not attempting to be a wiseass but can someone explain why the above - when addressing a speculative concept - is a valid consideration but when the topic is thermite use in WTCs destruction the speculative becomes invalid? I really don't see any difference myself - other than the beliefs of the ones asking the questions. I think you're mostly correct, in principle. My own perception is that it's certainly plausible that questionable interrogation techniques could get useful information. Which is not to say that would necessarily justify those techniques. My perception is also that it's extremely implausible that the WTC destruction was any sort of government conspiracy. Your mileage may certainly vary.

As you might expect, I disagree with most of your post. First, the question is extremely useful from the perspective of analytical efficiency; when it's established that there would be opposition even if there was no doubt as to the efficacy, then there's no point in talking about whether or not it's an efficacious technique (which is a less certain question). I also disagree that they "don't occur in real life." Sure, there was no literal "Ticking Bomb" on 9/11, but for all intents and purposes, there was. The plot was planned and set into motion in advance, and it was theoretically possible to thwart it. Discovering the principals, or the specifics of the plan before the planes took off would be, in principle, identical to finding and defusing the "ticking bomb." I also think that the Op-Ed you cited doesn't support your critique of my question. Mr. Soufan goes to great lengths to make the case that the interrogation techniques in question are not useful. That editorial presupposes that the efficacy of the techniques may be a relevant criterion in their evaluation. I was not trying to make a rhetorical point in asking the original question, though. As PassedOut is one of the more rational, nonpartisan WC contributors, I am particularly interested in his opinions on a variety of issues. I was not attempting "to distract people from the facts on the ground," but to get a better understanding of his position. Thanks for answering, PO.

Would it affect your position if you knew the claim to be true? If, say, waterboarding a known terrorist could be known definitively to have prevented something on the scale of 9-11.

90-10, North. 3♥ (hopefully stronger than 4♥) AND serious 3NT AND going beyond game to cue 4♠ with a singleton and no trump cards? I do give a little bit to north for bypassing a keycard ask missing the A, Q, and J of trump and lacking first round control of clubs (although, obviously, this is mitigated by South's presumed assumption about North's hand, i.e. North's bidding like he has enough to cover most if not all of that; nevertheless, 4NT seems more prudent to me than the 5♣ bid).

Boxing, too, has draws. Just 2 cents for my own favorite sport.

OK, QTxx is a stronger holding than Q9xx, and I can see holdings where QTxx will do and Q9xx will not, but is the difference really great enough in your mind to make them your first and fourth choices and to state that you really do not like the fourth choice? The difference between the hands is the slightest of slight, but there's no reason at all to prefer a diamond. It's like preferring QT offsuit to QT suited in hold'em. Why would you?

I think it's close between the club and the heart. I dislike the spade lead, and there's no reason other than dumb luck that the diamond lead would be best, since it's like the club lead but from a worse holding. I'd lead the club, but I think it's close. Club has better chances for dynamic success; heart is less likely to give anything away. On the auction, dummy might have stuff to burn, which is a slight nudge toward the club, which I wanted to lead anyway. If the auction had been something like 1NT-2NT (nat & inv); 3NT, then I'd put more of a premium on not giving away the 9th trick, rather than working to establish the 5th, and I'd lead the heart.

I play the first auction 9-11ish with both minors, and the second auction natural. (Max-ish balanced-ish passed hand with stuff in the unbid suits, in a perfect world).

Maybe you don't even do it, but I think that's a terrible thing to do. I equate it to discarding a card of the same color as the suit declarer is playing in hopes he won't notice you showed out, which is something lots of people love to do and I think is horribly unethical. I understand it's difficult or even impossible to judge intent, but everyone has to be able to live with themselves. Why would someone want to win because they played a psychological trick on their opponent's speech of vision rather than because they played well? Let me preface by saying that I'm willing to reconsider my position on this, and I do practice active ethics. Having said that, my belief is and has been (and I haven't considered this a close call, but maybe I've been wrong) that 1) It's not unethical; and 2) It's not "rather than" playing well; it's an example of playing well. Essentially, I don't see it as any different than falsecarding. If the layout were the same, but my hands were reversed, such that I had, say, a good 10 and 2 in my hand, and nobody else had any cards in the suit, I'd lead the 10 if I wanted my LHO to ruff, and the 2 if I wanted him to pitch. Similarly, I imagine everyone with QJT9 in the closed hand leads the Q to induce a cover, and the 9 to avoid one. In good faith, I do think it's the same situation, in principle. But maybe I've been missing an ethical problem here. I'd be interested in other perspectives.

Inducing psychological errors is an interesting line of study, though. For example, here's one that is extremely reliable in club games - Let's say a suit is divided: 5 (dummy) - 2 (me, as declarer) - 3 -3, and I've played two rounds and ruffed a third, leaving two winners in dummy. If I don't want RHO to ruff, for strategic reasons (maybe I want to pitch two losers and he has a trump winner, so I don't mind him ruffing the 5th one, but it would be bad if he ruffed the 4th), calling "small club" seems to get even above-average club players to pitch on the 4th one, even if they're the 10 and the 9. I don't know if it means they think I don't know it's good, or what. Conversely, if I want to INDUCE a ruff, calling "top club" works, even when they're the 3 and the 2. Things that make you go Hmmm.

They probably got him before it could be updated.

On the whole, do you find leading liberal writers markedly more rational and reasonable?

You have to draw one to the 8-6 if the 2♠ bidder stands pat.

The first question is, "What are the logical bids available to responder, assuming that he thought that opener knew that he had a natural, invitational hand in spades, and then bid 4♣?"

Since the explanations are internally inconsistent (i.e. south's explaining his own call 2 different ways), I think it's reasonable to draw inferences from the players' actions and at least look beyond the calls and explanations. 4♣ was purportedly Gerber, in which case 4♠ let declarer know that his side had all the aces (all the keycards and the queen of trump, in fact), yet declarer, upon receiving that response, bids 4NT, which he explained at one point as a sign-off. I'm definitely inferring that somewhere between 4♣ and 4NT, south received and acted on some UI, himself, whether it was the tempo of the 4♠ bid, or some facial expression. 4♣ may have been Gerber, but somewhere before the auction came back around, he got the (unauthorized) impression that 4♠ certainly wasn't. That's not to say that it led to damage, per se. You're allowed to land on your feet. But there's more going on than the tank before 4♣. I'd not the UI-laden call that needs extreme scrutiny, it's the UI-laden misexplanation.

Just on the subject of conspiratorial plausibility, if I were a nefarious government agency in charge of all the secret evil stuff, and I had the capability to bring down the Twin Towers with a controlled demolition, and for some reason, I thought it was a great idea to do so... Never in a million years would I institute a plan that involved or relied upon multiple successful hijackings. Just off the top of my head: 1) It would dramatically increase the chances that it wouldn't work. 2) It would necessarily involve more people. 3) It might leave traces of nanothermite that would provide fuel (no pun intended) for conspiracy theorists to say, "Hey! If it was just planes, then why is there this nanothermite!" 4) There's a much better way that eliminates problems 1-3: I'd just drop the towers, send in my investigators, and use manufactured evidence to "show" that my predesignated patsies had done it. There was already one attempt to bring down the Towers the old-fashioned way; this time, they were successful. Found nanothermite? Yup, that's what they used. WTP? With respect to the example of the guy who falls over dead in the restaurant, I think it's a lot more like someone walks up to a guy at a restaurant in front of hundreds of witnesses (I'd say thousands, but that would be one hell of a big restaurant), shoots the guy in the head, then shoots himself in the head. Then 5 people at surrounding tables send tissue samples to a coroner who determines that there are trace amounts of arsenic in the guy's (not the shooter, the other guy) blood. Well, ok.

That's not the critique. The critique is of your earlier post asking if I had scientific credentials that surpasses those of the authors. Should only the scientists have opinions? Whatever position you hold, there are scientists more qualified than you on the other side.

We all important presuppositions into our assessments of proffered evidence, including presuppositions that are not scientific. For example, when it was pointed out that the article you referenced was published in a journal of questionable evidentiary value, you introduce the idea that perhaps more reputable journals wouldn't touch it because of its subject matter, not its scientific merit. This presupposition is imported to bolster the claims made by the authors of the article. Nothing wrong with that. The science, according to the links provided by Vuroth, and also according to one of your earlier posts, is inconclusive. And I'm certainly not going to learn enough about the science to know more than the authors about it. I certainly know enough to know that there are scientists making contradictory claims about the Towers' demise. By logical necessity, some people who know a lot more than I do about the science of the question are flat-out incorrect or lying. It's interesting that you brought up admissible courtroom evidence. In courtrooms, scientists make claims regularly about their expert opinions and tests they've run and what they conclude must have happened. But ultimately, those questions are decided by a jury of non-scientists, who are deemed competent to adjudge their credibility and the plausibility of their claims. You can find a Ph.D.'s to tell you that X could not have happened, and another to tell you that X must have happened. And "X" either happened, or it didn't; so if 2 layman listen to them, and believe different experts, then one of the laymen is right, and one of the Ph.D.'s is wrong. It's like the joke about the (insert ethnic minority here) found dead with 12 gunshot wounds in his back and the (insert stereotypically racist county here) coroner calls it a suicide. He's the M.D.; do we have to believe him? It wouldn't take that long to find a physicist who'll tell you that the collapse of the towers is entirely consistent with the airplanes hitting them and the burning jet fuel, and it wouldn't take that long to find one who'll tell you that it's inconsistent. Does that make us unqualified to hold an opinion, because whichever guy we disagree with knows more about the science than we do? Of course not.

Certainly not from a scientific perspective; however, apparently there are those with scientific credentials who are not entirely convinced (see Vuroth's link earlier in this thread). They lead with the same thing that occurred to me. The starting point was, "Five guys sent in some material and said it was dust from 9-11," which they found questionable. But let's not try to keep a straight face and pretend that this is an abstract question; it's clearly a preliminary to "something other than the crashing of the airplanes and the burning jet fuel brought down the towers."

This is exactly the sense in which I am using the word "argument."

No, you just store it in there gradually and have a guy waiting 'round the clock get it burning when a plane hits the building. Wait, or is theory also that a plane didn't hit the building? This question and answer is irrelevant. There is only one question to consider: are these 7 people right? Did they truly find real evidence of nano-thermite it the dust from the collapse of the WTC towers? Yes or No. If not, then there is nothing to discuss. But if the answer is yes, then we have to determine from whence it came and for what purpose it was there. It's actually not irrelevant; it's just a different argument. I could bring someone forward to testify, disputedly and controversially, that he found Legos on Neptune, and you could use that testimonial evidence to build a case that people have been on Neptune (and, of course, we all know what the next step is for everyone who believes the findings of this article; it's surely not an end to itself). Conversely, though, you could use the premise that it's a ridiculous notion that anyone has ever been on Neptune to call into question the validity of any evidence that Legos were found there.

Best I can come up with, in Devil's Advocate mode, would be that "they" found out about the plot, figured it would be a great idea (because it would provide an excuse to go to war?), nobody involved took any action to thwart it or expose it (you'd probably have to assume that some people would have, and were killed by "them"; it seems less likely that every single person who knew about it was on board), all materials needed to ensure that the towers would go down in the event that the planes hit the towers but didn't demolish them were smuggled, then "they" all sat back and hoped that the hijackers pulled it off. I'd score that about a 1/2 in the MSC, only if it were an open game in a club where there's always that one guy who does something insane. Theories that ignore the fact that, well, planes were intentionally crashed score a -5. Hijackers committed to a cause involving the harming of Americans and American interests took over planes and crashed them, thereby causing all apparent resulting damage = 12.

How can possibly waste any time on that? It was Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and maybe one or two others. Michael Moore 'documentary' coming soon.