Creative Speculation

... simply because a demolition by magic silent explosives is so obviously idiotic, not because there is shred of credible evidence for it. Then Jones and Harrit made a complete laughing stock of "truth movement science" with their thermitic paint chip nonsense, since the only thing they proved was that having a PhD doesn't make you a competent scientist. Unfortunately, using thermite for a controlled demolition is just another imaginary technology, perhaps not as idiotic as magic silent explosives but ridiculously implausible and completely unsubstantiated nonetheless. Here's a clue: Gage still talks about explosives when he wants to claim that's the only explanation for the "sudden" onset of collapse and the hurling of beams hundreds of feet, but then switches to thermite when someone points out that magical silent explosives don't exist. When someone points out how improbable it is that you could get thermite to melt through all those columns at the same time (and that he just claimed explosives were the only explanation), he switches to some sort of hybrid hypothesis of both thermite and explosives (both of which must have been oddly fireproof). Since neither one makes any sense whatsoever and neither is supported by any credible evidence, Gage thinks maybe it was both! Gage is the poster boy for "truth movement" self delusion, yet we are continually insulted by the assertion that people who buy his bullshit are possessed with superior reasoning powers and intellectual courage, and that anyone who doesn't fall for it must be afraid of the "truth" or must be in on the cover-up.

> First, any thermate used merely crackles and sizzles.

No, thermite also creates very intense light and huge white clouds of aluminum oxide, neither of which were observed, and more importantly it leaves rather obvious amounts of slag, which was also not observed. In fact, there was no evidence at all of either explosives or thermite found in the debris pile, so conspiracy theorists just assume all the people involved with the cleanup must have been in on the cover-up. In the world of conspiracism, any evidence that supports the "official story" must have have been faked and any evidence that would definitively prove a conspiracy must have been covered up. This is how conspiracy theorists, in attempting to rationalize promoting their paranoid delusions to be religious "truth," work themselves into a position where they are forced to abandon evidence-based reasoning completely and to continually add more and more people to the conspiracy. That's what makes conspiracism an especially pernicious form of bullshit: it slowly robs its victims of the ability to deal with reality on a rational basis. I think there's a reason you can't see this...