I wonder . . .
If you didn’t know that the reflection has meaning, wouldn’t you want to?
They’re boxes of beliefs that reflect how you see yourselves. In light of the universal clarity I came across on Titan — I didn’t expect to find people playing that game.
But sure enough, they’re out there:
On the bright side
At first it was a pleasant experience — as I had some enjoyable exchanges with a lovely lady who runs a tight-knit community on Titanic.
She contacted me about this piece and I’ve been impressed by the manner in which she carries herself. She’s kind, courteous, and receptive — but akin to her club, she wants to believe in Rush in ways that simply don’t square with the record.
I don’t want to believe anything about him one way or the other — I’m just connecting the dots on the trail to the truth. However it happened, his behavior was gross negligence.
And that’s a fact:
truth verifiable from experience or observation
She shared a thoughtful piece written by someone seemingly more concerned with the ugliness of those assailing Stockton than how he killed his crew & himself with his ego.
I share those larger concerns about the toxic nature of our nation, but he’s using that to shield himself from the fact that Rush brought it all on himself.
Nowhere to be found in that post is a single argument germane to the matter. And it’s just preposterous to go from “supposed recklessness” straight into “democratizing the abyss and opening a new world to mankind.”
That — is not this:
Deflecting and conflating is protocol for apologists — finding ways to rationalize what cannot be excused away.
That fine lady is a breath of fresh air though, as she’s willing to consider information as it comes her way: Showing civility in her resistance that’s willing to be reduced as she refines what she sees.
That’s as rare as unobtainium on Pandora these days.
Keep that in mind as you criticize those who can’t see what is obvious to you, as I’ve been dealing with the doubt-free for decades — and you still can’t see.
And you get away with it with ease — because you’ve got friends who have no qualms about promoting principles in one breath and abandoning them the next.
Or as I coined it
The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence we have specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, we would expect the belief to be maintained and the believers to attempt to proselyte or to persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.
These five conditions specify the circumstances under which increased proselyting would be expected to follow disconfirmation.
And on that note
Keep this in mind too:
My new friend from the Titanic club thinks we can’t compare Stockton to Holmes. Had she been paying more attention, she’d know I’m not equating them — I’m simply addressing some parallels in behavioral patterns.
To counter my comparison to Holmes, she said all she meant was that Stockton wasn’t a scammer. I never suggested he was. But like Liz and a lot of people today, he had an unhealthy fixation on being a disruptor.
And with that comes a faith-based belief in what he was doing:
A.K.A. Wishful thinking
A ton of that goin’ around
Before condemning the Titan’s pilot, consider his side of the story . . .
As astute observer might question why I called the author of that article delusional but not my new friend. I’ve been thinking about that.
As I’m not used to being treated with such decency, I admit I allowed that to cloud my judgment at first.
It would be hypocritical not to hold her to the same standard.
So yeah, in defending Stockton so far — she’s delusional by definition (along with that guy who wrote that piece she shared).
Right on cue . . .
She didn’t take kindly to my criticism. I don’t care. It was fun while it lasted, but as I told her:
If you wanna bitch about being insulted instead of learning anything about yourself, take a number and get in line.
My mistake on assessing her qualities is at the bedrock of what this is all about:
You have an impression of someone but should adjust in light of new information.
I stand by the bulk of my statements about her, but after repeated excuses and utterly ridiculous rationalizations — it became clear that her resistance to reason runs deeper than I realized.
Back to Titan in a bit . . .
But first, some thoughts on Titanic — and then some:
As I wrote in May:
I watched this digital scan of the Titanic wreckage with fascination — and that would have been the end of it until this bit below. I respect the reporting and the passion of the people behind these efforts.
What I take issue with is a culture that craves detail at the depths of Titanic while issues of world-altering consequence are skated over on the surface.
Everyone wants to endlessly talk about the movie of America — while I’m explaining how the making of the movie is what matters. You proudly refuse to listen and ridicule my efforts to boot — as you’re all busy working on the sequel.
And after that disaster is predictably delivered — why bother listening to the person who put the writing on the wall — when you can continue to torture the truth on your way to the trilogy?
Despite how extensively the Titanic has been explored — there are still many fundamental questions. The hope is this scan could provide answers. We really don’t understand the character of the collision with the iceberg.
We don’t even know if she hit it along the starboard side as shown in all the movies. She might have grounded on the iceberg — and this photogrammetry model is one of the first major steps to driving the Titanic Story toward evidence-based research and not speculation.
This nation no longer understands the meaning of character — and we’re talking about the character of a collision with an iceberg in 1912? Again, I’m not trying to take anything away from the passion in their purpose (and those who take an interest in it):
But come on . . .
Show some commitment & cohesion in how you carry yourselves when considering issues that challenge your calcified convictions.
And if you’ve got the goods to back up your beliefs — they should be able to survive scrutiny, shouldn’t they?
The sea is taking its toll on the wreck. Microbes are eating away at it and parts are disintegrating. Time is running out to find out what happened on that April night in 1912 when more than a thousand lives were lost. But the scan now freezes the wreck in time and allows experts to pour over every minute detail. The hope is, Titanic May yet give up its secrets.
Historic Travels is a great YouTube channel for Titanic history and analysis. Wouldn’t it be preposterous to tell that guy he’s wrong because of something you saw in the blockbuster?
And yet countless millions pull that stunt on a daily basis in slavish of their agenda — slinging the stupidest shit imaginable without an atom of regard for reason. You talk a good game — then cry foul when called out for failing to follow your own rules.
With the story I have to tell that could turn the tide — my ideas should be welcome in a culture craving critical thinking and integrity.
As stated elsewhere on this site:
I’ve always hated Twitter and when I’m done doing what I gotta do — I’m never goin’ back.
Until then, I’m sending out a certain set of messages looking for intelligent life (fiercely independent thinkers who want to solve problems — not endlessly talk about them).
Think of my signals as a poor man’s SETI:
I’ve got an idea — and it’s got teeth
If you’re not interested in hearing me out and having meaningful conversation — we have nothing to talk about and I wish you well.
If you’re game, please contact me through the site, DM on Twitter, or Anchor.Press.gg@gmail.com — as I no longer respond to Tweets or superficial fragments of any kind.
Sincere and on the merits — anything less and I won’t reply:
Going by the galaxies filled with rock stars of reasoning across the social media universe — I should have no shortage of people eager to examine my idea and discuss how we could improve on it and proceed.
You tell me where those people are — and I’ll gladly send out my signals to them.
it’s all window dressing
- You thirst for critical thinking — as long it doesn’t threaten your interests (or is even perceived as such)
- You follow the facts — so long as they’re going in the direction you desire
- You demand accountability — as long you & yours aren’t being held accountable
- You preach responsibility — as long as it fits the formula that works for you
- You love the idea of talking about ideas — so long as there’s no work involved that would interrupt your incessant Tweeting of your concerns
- And that idea damn sure better be about exposing the enemy — because you sure as hell have no role in who’s to blame — of course!
The shitshow of America has eroded reason beyond recognition — eating away all that was once right and good.
We could do something about that.
But you’re busy
How can you expect anyone to admit when they’re wrong if you won’t? And every time you allow emotion to run roughshod over reason, you further calcify habits at the other end of the spectrum from these:
Rather than assert that all opinions are equal, students in seminar learn to judge opinions on the basis of the reasons given for those opinions.
Nobody ever had to explain that to me. I’m sure you all feel the same:
And yet here we are
Everyone’s wrapped up within their wheelhouse — operating under umbrellas of interests that don’t account for complexities outside of them.
Just picking the “root cause” that works for you doesn’t get it done. You’ve gotta look at interconnected causes across the board.
And this
Is where my Clear the Clutter framework comes in:
To the uneducated, abstract ideas are unfamiliar; so is the detachment that is necessary to discover a truth out of one’s own knowledge and mental effort. The uneducated person views life in an intensely personal way — he knows only what he sees, hears or touches and what he is told by friends. As the unknown sage puts it, “Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.”
But more than ever
Even the most educated minds act in an uneducated manner in service of their interests — and do catastrophic damage by doing so.
It astounds me that some of the most brilliant minds in the world seem incapable of correlating how “unrelated” issues impact one another. The most harmful pollution on the planet is noise — narrative that drowns out sensible discussion.
You could blame those who amplify that deafening noise with delight — or be smart by not doing dumb things that drive the narrative in the first place.
It’s like committing unforced errors in tennis then blaming your opponent for capitalizing on them. In politics, they’re often cheating the system in the process (and I’ve got plenty to say about that).
But when you put stupidity on a silver platter, what do you expect in a culture that doesn’t play by the rules?
You could cry foul — or realize how you shouldn’t have made the mistake from the start.
Learning
Pursuing aims in ways that predictably damage your cause is bad enough. But once the outcome becomes clear, it’s beyond belief that you refuse to reflect on your methods.
Even if you’re right and have the best of intentions: If you’re not smart in making your moves, you can exponentially worsen the problem you’re addressing — along with seemingly unrelated ones.
And already have — again and again . . .
Like many alternatives, however, it was psychologically impossible. Character is fate, as the Greeks believed. Germans were schooled in winning objectives by force, unschooled in adjustment. They could not bring themselves to forgo aggrandizement even at the risk of defeat.
— Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly
on that note
DNA
How Fitting for this Folly!
I can’t believe how cavalier that CEO was with baseline safety concerns. The way he so flippantly looked at risk just astounds me:
You know, at some point, safety just is a pure waste. I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed,” Rush told journalist David Pogue. “At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk/reward question. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.
And token titles of “mission specialists” for tourists — smacks of a lack of seriousness all by itself.
Incredibly, the more you look, the worse in gets:
A 2019 blog post from OceanGate made a similar argument, asserting that ‘bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation,’ while touting the vessel’s ‘real-time hull health monitoring’ system for being able to determine ‘if the hull is compromised well before situations become life-threatening.
Exponentially unbelievable!
It boggles the mind that “rapid innovation” would ever be discussed in the context of a craft requiring the highest demands of structural integrity and safety.
And the hits just keep on comin’ . . .
A lot of that goin’ around
Many students resist having their beliefs questioned by invoking the claim that “Everyone is entitled to his own belief” or “All opinions are equal.” The corollary notion is that therefore no justifications for beliefs are necessary. The difficulty with this perspective is that it implies that all disagreements concerning beliefs are personal disagreements or slights.
If there exist reasons for one’s opinions, then a difference of opinions becomes an opportunity for understanding how someone else’s reasoning leads them to a different opinion. If, on the other hand, if there are no reasons for opinions, students are more likely to take differences of opinion as insults or as injuries to their self-esteem.
Rather than assert than all opinions are equal, students in seminar learn to judge opinions on the basis of the reasons given for those opinions.
— The Habit of Thought
As for the passengers
As much as I feel for them, people do more research on Amazon reviews than these poor souls apparently did on this toy — and the reckless history behind the outfit that built it.
My aim isn’t to mock them — but to paint a larger picture about how our society brazenly ignores even the most obvious of concerns when passions and pride are at the helm of all you see:
Torturing the truth to look away from a mountain of evidence — all in glorious service of shortsighted interests.
Wars have started that way
And about that writing on the wall . . .
The rotor speed required to separate uranium isotopes doesn’t care who’s president, and when it comes to ascertaining the truth, neither do I.
In order to maintain such speeds, the material properties of centrifuges are as critical as it gets. You don’t need to interview a world-renowned nuclear scientist to figure that out — but I like to be thorough.
To claim that Iraq WMD wasn’t a lie
Should be like saying we didn’t land on the moon.
As I wrote and produced the most exhaustive documentary ever done on WMD, I would know. And David Albright (the physicist who wrote extensively on the tubes — would know even better):
I defy you to find a single instance of anyone on the Right even attempting to make an argument on the dimensions, material, and quantity of the tubes.
You’ll be lucky to find them mentioned at all.
You think it’s just a coincidence that all the “arguments” on the Right just happen to follow the same pattern (conveniently leaving out the marquee claim on a mushroom cloud)?
That — all by itself, speaks volumes:
To anyone who thinks world-altering wars are more important than whining about websites that expose painfully obvious lies, anyway.
In addition to interviewing world-renowned nuclear scientist, Dr. Houston Wood, I also corresponded with David Albright and Colin Powell’s chief of intelligence at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Greg Thielmann said the following in 2013:
It will be up to Iraqis to debate whether their country now has a brighter future than it otherwise would have had without foreign invasion and occupation in the first decade of the new century. But it is uniquely incumbent on Americans to understand who and what were responsible for an enterprise that proved so costly in terms of U.S. lives lost, money spent, international reputation tarnished, and a campaign against al Qaeda diverted.
America just casually moved on
I didn’t — as I knew then what few know now:
The immeasurable value in the willingness to be wrong, understanding why, and looking to learn from it. And that not doing so — increasingly compounds the consequences of no accountability.
PKIA’s second article on the subject is a 2-minute read at 752 words — not one of which addresses the tubes that took us to war. And yet this mountain of information below was publicly available before he wrote that article:
How do you reconcile that?
You can’t believe everything you read!
Stirring defense
Speaking of INR
Powell’s very own intelligence bureau — that he conveniently ignored. INR stuck to its old-fashioned ways by agreeing with DOE (ya know, the actual experts).
You introduce statements and arguments of people who aren’t PKIA
As this story is also
About the behavior of the echo chamber around PKIA — it’s kinda necessary to include other people to properly illustrate the problem.
And I wouldn’t mind explaining everything — if you thought about anything.
If I came into this cold — I’d know on the doc image alone that PKIA has no chance. If you don’t know that by now, I don’t know what to tell ya.
You think that poppycock of PKIA’s gets better from here? Trust me, I’m just warming up. And by the way — I suggest you start putting some faith in people who have integrity instead of buying it from those who sell it.
PKIA is worshipped as some kind of saint-like Sherlock Holmes:
Never mind he flagrantly ignored undeniable evidence to peddle partisan hackery on the biggest and most costly lie in modern history.
And lo and behold
He has a habit of toeing the party line: All of which flies in the face of the principles upon which he’s put on a pedestal.
But who needs scruples when you’ve got an army of apologists to absolve you of anything that doesn’t comply with the PKIA Program.
Not the tiniest trace of reasoning can be found in anything I’ve come across in decades of dealing with the doubt-free on WMD. And of all those I’ve challenged — their knowledge combined could fit into a thimble with space to spare.
And truth be told
The people on who landed on right side of this issue — most of ’em don’t know jack either.
And in a country delighting in deriding the egregious lack of expertise & safety driving that sub to the bottom (not to mention complaining about the cost of search & rescue efforts):
What do we have in store for the only person on the planet who told this story in full — a $2.2 trillion fiasco for the ages (that poisons political discourse and butchers debate to this day) . . .
Speaking of the moon
I’d suggest heading on back to that backwater school, Purdue, for a little more indoctrination, er, I mean education.
“BACKWATER SCHOOL“
To call the Cradle of Astronauts “backwater” is award-worthy for asinine statements.
The “arguments” of “Expert” By Association — taking cue from his kin on Rolodex of Ridicule:
- “You use words like honor, courage and commitment as punch lines at liberal cocktail parties” — ripping off A Few Good Men and thinking I wouldn’t notice
- The “Get help!” routine
- “Academia”
- “I’ve stood on the wall — have you?” — Jesus, why not toss in “You weep for Santiago” while you’re at it?
What does any of THAT have to do with the price of tea in China — or THIS?
Out of 31 tubes in subsequent testing, only one was successfully spun to 90,000 RPM for 65 minutes — which the C.I.A. seized on as evidence in their favor.
One D.O.E. analyst offered a superb analogy of that contorted conclusion: “Running your car up to 6,500 RPM briefly does not prove that you can run your car at 6,500 RPM cross country. It just doesn’t. Your car’s not going to make it.”
In an industry where fractions of a millimeter matter, these guys were playing horseshoes with centrifuge physics . . .
— Richard W. Memmer: Act II
Or Not . . .
Snowflake, Libtard, Libturd, Cupcake, Bush hater, Bush basher, Bush Derangement Syndrome, TDS, Demon-crat, Democrat Party
Stirring Defense
Anything Goes for apologists trying to preserve what they perceive. I know their Rolodex of Ridicule rabbit-hole routine — all too well:
And Now for the Weather
Whether or not you want to engage in this conversation is your prerogative, but at the very least — you could get out of the way. Alas, this culture loves to have its cake and eat it too:
Participating in debate by delighting in rapid-fire ridicule.
You were in my way then as you’re in my way now. And what entirely escapes you — is that you’re in your own way.
Look around!
You think the end justifies the means — I say your means make damn sure it will never end. I took a look-see for what others have said along those lines.
Mine’s minor league compared to this:
If I were inclined to go down to Titanic, the only company I’d consider is one that DEMANDED to be certified in every possible way. Just having the CEO go down with ya doesn’t get it done.
And that’s precisely the same standard I hold on the truth. I want leaders who demand the best from themselves and those around them.
This nation has no such notion
At the core of why my efforts don’t compute — is that my mission is not driven by changing your values, but rather the manner in which you pursue them. Just follow your instincts and look at everything like you are on Titan (political crap aside):
And we can get our house in order and have the kind of conversation this country’s never had.
Speaking of instincts . . .
Paul-Henri Nargeolet (“Titanic’s greatest explorer”) — served in the French Navy for 25 years and had been down there 40 times.
He didn’t follow his instincts — and now he’s down there forever. Why on earth would a guy like that go down in such a contraption?
James Cameron was friends with him for over 20 years — and when he talked about him in an interview (and how Cameron had expressed concerns about another person working on an experimental design with carbon fiber):
It was clear that there’s no way in hell Cameron would go down in such a thing.
So if he wouldn’t do it (and the entire community of submersibles questioned this design): Why would “Titanic’s greatest explorer” even consider it?
Speaking of Cameron:
Here we are again. And at the same place. Now there’s one wreck lying next to the other wreck for the same damn reason.
A lot of that goin’ around too
To see the character of the government and the country so sported with, exposed to so indelible a blot, puts my heart to the torture. . . . Or what is it that thus torments me at a circumstance so calmly viewed by almost everybody else? Am I a fool, a romantic Quixote, or is there a constitutional defect in the American mind?
Were it not for yourself and a few others, I . . . would say . . . there is something in our climate which belittles every animal, human or brute. . . . I disclose to you without reserve the state of my mind. It is discontented and gloomy in the extreme. I consider the cause of good government as having been put to an issue and the verdict against it.
You have an opportunity to do something about that, right here, right now — and chances are, you’ll never even know it. You have no new ideas of your own — and what’s worse, you won’t listen to anyone who does.
You’re so glued to your goddamn politics that problem solving doesn’t even compute.
And it shows!
It is as though with some people — those who most avidly embrace the “we are right” view — have minds that are closed from the very get-go, and they are entirely incapable of opening them, even just a crack.
There is no curiosity in them. There are no questions in their minds. There are no “what ifs?” or “maybes.”
— Laura Knight-Jadczyk
With that attitude
Just how concerned for the country could you be? . . .
One Voice Became Two 