Skeptic Project

This guy has yet to make a coherent argument in his various posts on the Facebook wall and discussion board. He's angry about something but never says exactly what he thinks we've done wrong.

Seems like a Truther but is carefully avoiding saying anything that would directly reveal it.

Thoughts?

I'm guessing that he's an overly sensitive truther who gets irritated when Edward throws his opinion or wit into the articles.

I noticed this guy last night when I joined the FB group. I couldn't quite figure him out, either. Seems to me the most recent post he made sounds like a sub-argument of Muertos' third canned TZM response. It's my understanding that you guys focus on Zeitgeist and its debunking. To me, it almost sounds as if he's trying to say, "Well, if you're going to debunk Zeitgeist, you have to debunk every other crazy ass site out there."

Joe Lowes sounds way more nuts when I can read what he's trying to say.

You can see his notes on his facebook profile and he makes this very problematic claim, which I have always been bothered by:

he believes 9/11 was an inside job, and those who don't think so clearly believe that their government is above corruption. See, just because I don't think 9/11 was an inside job doesnt mean I think the government is pure and good. Indeed, there are many rational and real criticisms to make- and people have made them! Noam Chomsky has done so in relation to the foreign policy of this country, Jeffery Sachs has done it with the economic policies, and indeed we have seen government officials exposed for corruption (Blago come, Spitzer, etc etc). There is a difference between being critical of a government and making stuff up. The opposite of being a 9/11 truther is NOT believing in a pure and good government. Instead it is being rational and constructive about criticism

I have also repeatedly engaged his "philosophical points" which he claims he doesnt have. He supports a bastardized version of Socratic-skepticism where all theories are demanding of equal treatment. What he has not seemed to recognize is that

1) that the "we know nothing" tenant falls into the problem of the hermeneutic cycle and thus is not functional. If we know nothing (or are uncertain of something) then we cannot be aware of that. This problem was recognized by thinkers after Montaigne and has been shown to pose a very serious limitation to this train of thought

2) There is a great danger is wasting time chasing false roots to real problems- which Conspiracy theories are. Instead of dealing with REAL government corruption and problems, Conspiracy Theories force the supporters to sit by and speculate on something that is not only illogical, but improbable. His position is that we can never know if a CT is right or not, so we should treat them with seriousness. However, that involves ignoring and diluting out the complexities of the situation.

and

3) That our bias invalidates our information. He claims that all we do is debunk and not analyze. However, that clearly demonstrates a poor understanding of how science works. The work is to deliberately try to prove the theory wrong- and if it stands then it is a good theory. his problem is that we paint all Cters are crazy people- but he overlooks that what this site does is show how the CTs we deal with are illogical, and how people continue to repeat it.

Look at the debates we've had and youll see that we have gotten into this over and over, and yet there is no recognition that these are problems on his part.

I've got no tolerance for sock puppets on Facebook. If you're gonna use it, use your real name.

Just my opinion.

I wrote a blog on the argument John Smith makes implicitly in one of his posts

http://falknerslegend.tumblr.com/post/719856021/the-fallacy-of-extremes</p>

Read if you are interested.

Nice read, Falkner.

Muertos, while they would like to convince us, it is not their main priority. That, of course, is a desire to claim responsibility for attention. They want to take part in grinding gears and poking sticks in their enemy's spokes.

Here, John Smith posted this on Facebook

http://911blogger.com/node/10025</p>

This is the "studying" that "John Smith" does

Matt, why did your Facebook self die?

What were you trolling?

Haha

So I saw the "Ron Paul" response first and thought that was an answer to me. Then I saw the real reason. Sorry you got ban hammered.

Also

are YOU John Smith?!

Nah, I lost interest in Facebook.

"Ron Paul has some good ideas."

TROLL

Yea I was just teasing Matt.

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