I was on Facebook the other day and a kid from my high school posted a note entitled “9/11,” where he posed a question:
“Can anyone convince me that 9/11 was not orchestrated by the corrupt US government in their ultimate goal to drive the United States into a police state?”
His note had one reply:
“Honestly no one can”
To be honest, at first, the question was almost offensive. Does anyone really believe that our government is capable and willing to orchestrate the biggest terrorist attack in history upon its own country?
I went on to do a little research and it turns out more than 1 out of 3 Americans believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy. < http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll>
Also during my research, I came across a very popular “Youtube” video that points out all of the inconsistencies that suggest that 9/11 was orchestrated by our US government entitled “Loose Change.” The video really is fascinating. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E3oIbO0AWE>
However, after spending about 30 minutes researching the “conspiracy,” I came to a solution. “Confirmation bias,” a term I learned it from Professor Crow, my Social Psychology teacher.
Skepdic.com defines confirmation bias as “a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs.” <http://skepdic.com/confirmbias.html>
Confirmation bias suggests that some people WANT to believe that 9/11 is a conspiracy; therefore, they seek out information that is consistent with that belief (e.g. the fact that steel melts at a higher temperature than jet fuel burns.) and ignore the information that contradicts their belief. (e.g. the fact that Osama Bin Laden admitted responsibility.)
The 9/11-conspiracy topic is fascinating to me, and I challenge anyone to show me evidence that 9/11 was indeed orchestrated. I am open to new information. However, my current stance on the issue is that there our government had nothing to do with 9/11.
Thoughts?
2 comments:
Living so close to New York City, I am very interested in the topic of 9/11. I think you provided an interesting view on the conspiracy, one many people don't often think about. By reading your stance, readers can learn a new perspective. I really enjoyed the post, and plan to watch the YouTube video.
It's amazing that so many people can go so far around the bend in order to find "evidence" of such a far-fetched notion. I guess we have been duped often enough (such as the WMD argument for attacking Iraq) to justify healthy skepticism, but these people are beyond skeptical; they are paranoid. What is most interesting in your post is the discussion of the "confirmation bias" theory from your sociology class. Do you think everybody to some extent wants to block out what challenges their own views? Are we all guilty of this?
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