690: Semicontrolled Demolition
| Semicontrolled Demolition |
 Title text: I believe the truth always lies halfway between the most extreme claims. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Please include the reason why this explanation is incomplete, like this: {{incomplete|reason}}If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. |
The World Trade Center towers were destroyed on September 11, 2001. (Using American date notation, that's 9/11.) The attack allegedly was supposed to be two simultaneous planes colliding with both the north and south towers. What ended up happening was that plane 1 hit the north tower at 8:46 am, and the second plane hit the south tower a little less than 20 minutes later. In the investigation following many questions were raised that didn't seem to get a satisfactory answer for several months if not years. Many people, calling themselves 9/11 Truthers, began to claim that the whole thing was a government conspiracy, in what has come to be known as the "controlled demolition plot" (referenced by the title of this comic) positing that the towers were brought down by demolition charges.
Randall proposes a compromise theory to make all people happy. Since we don't have independent video shots of a plane manned by terrorists flying into the north tower (as the attack had surprised everyone), that was a government conspiracy. It just so happened that the government decided to demolish the north tower on the same day that terrorists had set to demolish the south tower.
The title text is a statement of the Golden Mean fallacy. In the context of the cartoon (where one of the "most extreme claims" is a fanciful conspiracy theory and the other is a sober fact-based conclusion) the flaw in this sort of argument is obvious.
Transcript
- [Cueball is holding up a pointer to a screen with an image of the World Trade Center towers mid-disaster.]
- Cueball: Based on my analysis, I believe the government faked the plane crash and demolished the WTC north tower with explosives.
- Cueball: The south tower, in a simultaneous but unrelated plot, was brought down by actual terrorists.
- The 9/11 truthers responded poorly to my compromise theory.
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Sorry haven't posted before so probably doing this in the wrong way. The description says there's no video footage of the first plane, but there's a video taken of firefighters checking man hole covers who caught it. It's on you tube, but I didn't think it was right to post the link.
Edit: on second look I see a link has been put to second impact, so no reason not to post link to first:
[[1]]
86.150.177.79 09:58, 5 April 2013 (UTC) Bob
- Thanks for your input, and you're right! I corrected that in the explanation.
- You only "did this in the wrong way" in that you should have edited directly the explanation
. As on most wikis, the general motto here is Be bold: don't hesitate, just do it! - Thanks again - Cos (talk) 10:30, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Is it just me or is the bottom part of it blanked out for everyone? http://xkcd.com/690/ 203.104.11.12 12:26, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
- It seems as if it is censored. 203.104.11.11 05:52, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Unless an incomplete shows a specific lack, and I can't find one myself, I will delete the incomplete tag. Anonymous. 00:27, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
Why was mention of the firefighter video removed/reverted and it states again that “there is no video of a plane flying into the north tower”? STEN (talk) 12:45, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
Wouldn't the most extreme claim be that the entire collapse of the towers was faked? ...as in, they're still there, but with help from Copperfield, They hid it from everyone and created the whole media storm to distract from blah blah blah? Brettpeirce (talk) 20:48, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Even if the truth does always lie between the two extremes, how do we know it wasn't the South Tower that was the inside job? Then Cueball would be twice as wrong as the MSM (who were right about the North Tower) or the truthers (who were right about the South Tower). Promethean (talk) 23:21, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
Could the "between the two extremes" mean that the event actually happened mid-air, between the two towers? This, of course wouldn't make sense.--GuB (talk) 12:59, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
