01-10-2013, 12:01 PM
People like connecting dots. It always them to extract meaning and in some cases intent from disparate bits of seemingly not related observances.
The Greeks looked to the sky, called them the heavens, where they believed their gods lived and connected the stars into cartoon like depictions of their gods we know of as the zodiac. The connected dots (stars) which had no relationship to one another, and certainly were not images of gods. Astronomers explained how the stars are positioned in 3 dimensions. Astrologers never explained how the position of the stars... can have an impact on a human popping out of the birth canal at some geographic location on the earth at some specific time. Their psychology would be fixed by the stars.
Detectives connect dots we think of as evidence to lead them to the explanation of who committed a crime. We've seen many innocent people convicted of crimes they did not commit by selective and misreading of evidence *dots*. The conviction was driven by ideology or a need to solve the crime and dispose of an open case, or make an example for the public. Dots were connected with an agenda.
All explanations, true or false connect dots. It's a matter of the dots chosen and the dots ignored which determine the explanation. The explanation that emerges from the dots Ryan connects appears to have logic... connections appear logical between the dots he chooses. But the official story also connects dots it chooses to tell the story. Both, or would it be all connect-the-dot type explanations are prone to a bias and agenda of the dot connector.
Ryan is attempting to address who did, as who could have done, who would have benefited from, who was in a position to execute 9/11 and of course cover their tracks and issue an apparent coherent cover story. While the connections between Ryan's targets may be there (aren't the same characters always connected in what is the *old boys networks*?). But are the connections which he sees part of the conspiracy he believes? Why is Ryan's connected dots correct and the OCT's not? Perhaps they are both wrong or a little right and a little wrong?
Are we seeing emergence:
With 9/11 we have emergence on many levels... the physical destruction result emerges from the complexity of the processes - mechanical and chemical.. we have the political which would be the conspiracy to engineer, execute and perhaps cover up the actual events of 9/11. And of course we have the post 9/11 activities which emerge as policies and responses.
There is little doubt in my mind that Ryan has a "Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations). A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people's conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.
Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in political and organizational contexts."
Objectivity is a concept more than a practice. It's virtually impossible to view events without a political perspective or agenda... and connect the dots, ignore the dots, make up the dots to produce a view which coincides with one's political beliefs/agenda.
Ryan's work is predictable because of his bias... he's an advocate. But he likes to present himself as an objective observer/researcher and scientist.
His work needs to be taken with a grain of salt... as does anyone with a strong confirmation bias.
The Greeks looked to the sky, called them the heavens, where they believed their gods lived and connected the stars into cartoon like depictions of their gods we know of as the zodiac. The connected dots (stars) which had no relationship to one another, and certainly were not images of gods. Astronomers explained how the stars are positioned in 3 dimensions. Astrologers never explained how the position of the stars... can have an impact on a human popping out of the birth canal at some geographic location on the earth at some specific time. Their psychology would be fixed by the stars.
Detectives connect dots we think of as evidence to lead them to the explanation of who committed a crime. We've seen many innocent people convicted of crimes they did not commit by selective and misreading of evidence *dots*. The conviction was driven by ideology or a need to solve the crime and dispose of an open case, or make an example for the public. Dots were connected with an agenda.
All explanations, true or false connect dots. It's a matter of the dots chosen and the dots ignored which determine the explanation. The explanation that emerges from the dots Ryan connects appears to have logic... connections appear logical between the dots he chooses. But the official story also connects dots it chooses to tell the story. Both, or would it be all connect-the-dot type explanations are prone to a bias and agenda of the dot connector.
Ryan is attempting to address who did, as who could have done, who would have benefited from, who was in a position to execute 9/11 and of course cover their tracks and issue an apparent coherent cover story. While the connections between Ryan's targets may be there (aren't the same characters always connected in what is the *old boys networks*?). But are the connections which he sees part of the conspiracy he believes? Why is Ryan's connected dots correct and the OCT's not? Perhaps they are both wrong or a little right and a little wrong?
Are we seeing emergence:
"In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems.:
With 9/11 we have emergence on many levels... the physical destruction result emerges from the complexity of the processes - mechanical and chemical.. we have the political which would be the conspiracy to engineer, execute and perhaps cover up the actual events of 9/11. And of course we have the post 9/11 activities which emerge as policies and responses.
There is little doubt in my mind that Ryan has a "Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations). A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people's conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.
Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in political and organizational contexts."
Objectivity is a concept more than a practice. It's virtually impossible to view events without a political perspective or agenda... and connect the dots, ignore the dots, make up the dots to produce a view which coincides with one's political beliefs/agenda.
Ryan's work is predictable because of his bias... he's an advocate. But he likes to present himself as an objective observer/researcher and scientist.
His work needs to be taken with a grain of salt... as does anyone with a strong confirmation bias.