From what I can see you have 1) an observed correlation and 2) its not impossible.

So you could say it is a scientific hypothesis. Because, you know, that's how every scientific truth starts. You make an observation and deduce a correlation, as a working hypothesis.
Optionally, you may rule out that the assumed correlation is impossible (most "serious" science such as e.g. pretty much everything in healthcare doesn't even do that), and then you try to find something to harden (or dismiss) your theory. That "something" may be a lot of things, from proof by induction to finding circumstantial evidence, or making a (ideally repeatable) experiment where the numbers suggest that your error probability is below 5%. Or, if the numbers don't show that, you just leave out a few data points until they do. Millions of people live every day of their lives by scientific truth that was generated in this exact way. So... I'm not sure what you're trying to say there.

It is in my opinion a perfectly valid observation and working hypothesis. It's the same kind observation I made some decade or so ago when my then-neighbour was stealing my stuff from the terrace (out of being a jerk, not out of being poor). Three hours after I had bought a lockable box and stored everything small enough to be carried off inside the box, he came yelling at me how dare I suspect him of stealing. Yes, sure, that is no evidence. But funny how he got the idea that I might suspect him when I hadn't even said a word. Same thing with Trump... funny how he knew. I don't know an English word for it, but you know... "Täterwissen".

Sure, it's quite possible that Trump was only hallucinating two months ago and it was sheer coincidence. Ockham's razor would tell you that's just what you can assume. (I'm surprised you didn't invoke Ockham, it would have been a better argument than "no proof" which is easy to turn around: absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence).

But the thing with Ockham's idea is that besides being merely a working strategy, not a law of nature, it's reasonable and it assumes reason or reasonable, normal conditions, or at least that things go their natural (most energy-conservative as a physicist would probably say) and likely way. This is not at all what the world is like at this time. Nothing goes reasonably or in a predictable way. The overwhelming majority of humankind does -- directly or indirectly -- the exact opposite of what makes sense (most of the time), but they don't even do it wrong predictably. Most people are either nutters or are ruled by nutters. Or both.

But until that happens, you cannot just blame anything on the CIA.

Ah, I'm not blaming them. I'm saying it's a possibility, and I'm saying funny how he knew. It could very well have been the KGB staging that attack, too (but Trump knew about it because his agencies knew the plans... espionage, friendly cooperation, or from a Russian friend on the phone... whatever). But since you said "blame", be aware that a police investigator would certainly find the circumstances sufficient to deem them worthy an investigation. Motive, means, opportunity... you know.

Motive? Pretty obvious. For one reason, EU unstable = Make America Great Again, and then of course conflict/war is good for business. Same goes for Russia. EU unstable = more power for Mother Russia. If one thing remains predictable in this world, it's that power, and making money, especially blood money, is a driver. Means and opportunity, I guess these need not be discussed, they're obvious.

Also, there's the similar fact evidence from that case few years ago where a US government agency built a bomb for a nutter (who was too stupid to do it himself) only so they could "catch" him and present him to the public, remember? They've demonstrably done that once (and admitted to it), what makes you think they'd not do it twice? Evidence? No. Enough to say: "Huh, funny..."? Yes.

I mean, be real, it goes both ways, and the dismissers must follow the rules of logic as well. When Trump says something that's nuts, you say it's nuts. OK, fair enough, by all means the statement was nuts. But when it actually turns out true (... oops?), you say it was coincidence. Logic?

Your example of winning the lottery is not that bad, by the way. If you told me some random six numbers today (is it six or seven?), and on whatever-day next week, these exact numbers come up, then sure enough that would be a very strong indicator of you either being insanely, insanely, insanely lucky, or indeed having rigged the drawing, p < 10^-9. Do that kind of thing in a Casino. Tell the dealer the next 5 cards being pulled from the blackjack jack correctly (by mere chance, if you will). Two above-average muscular individuals with below-average kindness will guide you outside, into a closed room, and break your arms.

Jesus, Samoth... 9/11 conspiracies? You've really gone off the deep end...

Ah, it is always easy to laugh at someone else, but I beg you to remember: Almost exactly to the day two months ago, you and everybody else was laughing at Trump who had said "Look what happened in Sweden! Sweden!".

As we all know, nothing happened in Sweden. What an idiot. Except... almost exactly to the day two months later, something did happen. Funny how Trump knew it two months ahead of time. Looks like he is a medium.

Maybe, just maybe, he wasn't hallucinating, but he knew about this incident because the CIA are staging these. Only just, he accidentially picked up the wrong page in his calendar, and got the date wrong by two months. Thus, he revealed then-secret information about something that was going to happen, thinking everybody knew already anyway because it had happened.

Unlikely? Maybe. Impossible? Not with what US agencies have done in the past. I'm not saying this is exactly what happened. But I'm saying it is too easy to do away with the possibility just because the idea seems nuts at casual inspection.

Well, I am all for the "evil US" angle in movies... makes for some very powerful and sinister bad guy. And has a ton of cool backstory given all the real (and even more unproven) shitty things done by the US and their agencies during the cold war.

But: we are talking about one of the most random and, pardon my language here, inept administrations in recent US history here. As stupid as Bush junior was as a person, his advisors, while quite warmongers, where not stupid at all. As much as their decisions turned out badly for the middle east, they got a nice profit for all the companies they where involved in, and most probably got a nice little bonus for that (honeywell and whatever where the names of the companies tasked with cleaning up the mess left in iraq).

This administration to date has proven that its not just a slightly goofy President abused by warmongering advisors for their own benefit. It looks like MOST members of the administration not only have screw of some fashion loose (disclaimer: that is personal opinion first and foremost), but they all seem to pull into very different directions, leading to a lot of flip flopping, ill thought throught presidential decrets which then get turned over by the court, and infighting in the administration (which is hardly suprising seeing how this seemed to have been Trumps #1 tactic to keep the power over his company. Divide and Conquer).

Even IF some of the guys in this administration could be able to stage horrible acts like that (and lets face it, they are present in ANY administration, no matter if US or european, no matter if right- or leftwing), the general chaos that seems to be at the heart of Trumps administration so far makes it hard for me to believe he could stage such a terrorist attack WITHOUT the world noticing that it was staged at some point.

Lets not get into how he managed to turn the agencies against him with a lot of ill chosen words even though they are run by rightwing folks as far as I know. Even if the head of the CIA might be in favour of staging terrorist attacks, if Trump would ask him to do so at the moment (and its not something he can ORDER, as it is most probably against the law even for a US agency), he will most probably flat out refuse.

Not in the least because apart from other shortcoming the Trump administration has proven to be unable to cover up their own marks, both in regards to their connections to russia, and how many of their bold words were lies (with Bannon seemingly being just making cash with abusing his political connections like he claimed the Clintons would). As the head of the CIA, or FBI I would be EXTREMLY cautious doing ANYTHING that falls outside of the job description as long as that bunch is in administration. You never know who leaks what to where with them.

So you could say it is a scientific hypothesis. Because, you know, that's how every scientific truth starts. You make an observation and deduce a correlation, as a working hypothesis.

So... I'm not sure what you're trying to say there.

Yeah, you have a theory. And then you need to prove it, otherwise its worthless - thats how reasoning and logic works, you cannot argue around to make something sound plausible, you have to back it up by facts. What could be facts for your theory? Trump admitting that he actually knew the CIA was staging something (not going to happen soon), valid documents being leaked that connect the CIA to said attack AND show evidence of trump being able to know what was going on, reliable insider information (preferably from multiple credible sources) that links the CIA to the recent attack as well as trump to being aware of the attack in advance, ...

What am I trying to say? Stop making pointless assertions that you cannot prove and then complain about why nobody is buying it. The second part especially. Yeah you can have your own theory of what happens, but don't expect people to belive it unless it is proven. I have my own theory of how time works, which could give a different explanation to the phenomenon of quantum uncertainty that does not require quantums disregarding the regular laws of physics. But since I cannot prove it, I don't go around telling people "Thats how time & quantums work! Its not impossible for it to work that way, thereby thats how it is!"

Furthermore and on second though, I have to object to your comparison with scientific reasoning - we are talking about asserting what happened, and not derive a scientific truth. If I let an apple fall a certain distance and measure its speed, I can apply that knowledge to other apples falling. If you convict your neighbour of stealing something from you after you previously accused them, that does not mean that every person you accuse of something is actully guilty; because unlike with scientific events, past events do not follow laws like the laws of nature and are mostly unrelated. Like your example with the neighbour somehow applying to Trump is a classic case of generalization, as well as confirmation bias - nevermind all the times you asserted someone of doing something where you were wrong, your brain will just remember the times where you were right and convince you that thus you have to be right all the time.

funny how he knew

Thats the point - he did not know. He said something, and something happened two months in advance (which is a long time) that remotely matches what he said. There is at most a correlation, and no causality. Refer to my example about the lottery, and educated quessing. You are only asserting that he knew something, which is not given.

So if you still wonder what you want to say, aside from "stop trying to draw conclusions and make assertions for causality where there is merely correlation" and "stop making theories that you cannot prove" its this - stop complaining about your constructed theories not being belived unless you can prove them. Christ, its not that hard, is it?

;TL;DR: A friendly reminder that we aren't having this conversation because of your theory in the first place, but because you objected to critisism/dismissal of your theory by critisising people for critisising you, and just bonking on your theory some more. Thats the core of the real issue here. You need to accept that most people will reject your theories if they lack proof, no matter how convinced you are that they are true, and no matter how plausible you think they sound.

Lol lots to respond to.

The points with the Syria attack, I think @Alpheus more or less explained it. I'm not sure about who's saying Hillary would've bombed Syria better (not saying they don't exist, I'm sure they do, just not following news to really know who is), but the point is that if you're going to launch attacks, there should be some rhyme or reason, i.e., some sort of larger strategy. What's the goal here? Do you want to knock Assad out of power? Do you want to just degrade his chemical weapons? Destroy his airpower? Just intimidate him? That's not even remotely clear, nor is the rest of his strategy on the matter.

On the Russia aspect, I'm fairly certain that Trump and Putin are up to something, despite these attacks. The attacks are a great way to distract the media. And look it's successful. All air time is now devoted to the attacks on Syria.

What's interesting is that the alt-Right seems fairly pissed about Trump attacking Syria. They don't like it at all. So maybe it's Trump trying any random thing to see what sticks?

I think we can all agree that Hillary was a bad candidate. She was still far better than Trump though in the sense that, as L. Spiro stated, that we wouldn't have had the circus we've gotten with this administration, coupled with all of its xenophobia, stupid policies, and two unsuccessful Muslim bans on top of the bombing the Middle East idea. Trump has essentially been a human random number generator. With Hillary, I'd say we knew what we were getting. It wasn't great, not saying that at all, but it wasn't the walking one man disaster that Trump has already proven himself to be. No one fawned over Clinton, and yes she was status-quo, but if the choices handed to you are Trump or Clinton...

And I would also say one more thing on the primaries issue: registered Democrats are not all liberals (or people who subscribe to current liberal ideals) in the US. As you stated, you are overgeneralizing just a bit there. We may be going down the road of socialism vs capitalism here, so I think we can end the debate here about Liberalism and Capitalism not being mutually exclusive.

9/11 conspiracies? It's possible!? Sure it's possible. It's also possible that those weren't Arabs in the plane, but actually a super advanced alien race that genetically engineered itself to look like us, infiltrate the Earth, and start wars to destabilize it so that in the near future they can invade and style themselves as benevolent rulers here to save us from ourselves while in reality they steal our resources and make us 'vassals', a kind term for indentured slaves that they will use for manual labor, entertainment, pets, and warfare. All others will be grafted to mind control systems to make them more docile. Prepare yourself for the Tau invasion!

This is also a possible theory. Any number of things are possible. It's a fairly weak argument for anything though.

The points with the Syria attack, I think @Alpheus more or less explained it. I'm not sure about who's saying Hillary would've bombed Syria better (not saying they don't exist, I'm sure they do, just not following news to really know who is), but the point is that if you're going to launch attacks, there should be some rhyme or reason, i.e., some sort of larger strategy. What's the goal here? Do you want to knock Assad out of power? Do you want to just degrade his chemical weapons? Destroy his airpower? Just intimidate him? That's not even remotely clear, nor is the rest of his strategy on the matter.

It's also possible that those weren't Arabs in the plane, but actually a super advanced alien race that genetically engineered itself to look like us, infiltrate the Earth, and start wars to destabilize it so that in the near future they can invade and style themselves as benevolent rulers here to save us from ourselves while in reality they steal our resources and make us 'vassals', a kind term for indentured slaves that they will use for manual labor, entertainment, pets, and warfare. All others will be grafted to mind control systems to make them more docile. Prepare yourself for the Tau invasion!

Omg, now it suddenly make sense. Like, they never found the terrorist bodies inside the towers, did they? And the videos, where the plane seemed to disappear when it entered the towers? Surely those aliens teleported the plane out before it blew up, to save themselves and get a ton of good america people as their slaves. But they can't fool us anymore!

(hurray, now I have my own 9/11 theory, thx for that ;) )

The points with the Syria attack, I think @Alpheus more or less explained it. I'm not sure about who's saying Hillary would've bombed Syria better (not saying they don't exist, I'm sure they do, just not following news to really know who is), but the point is that if you're going to launch attacks, there should be some rhyme or reason, i.e., some sort of larger strategy. What's the goal here? Do you want to knock Assad out of power? Do you want to just degrade his chemical weapons? Destroy his airpower? Just intimidate him? That's not even remotely clear, nor is the rest of his strategy on the matter.

I'll say this : Last time we had a similar situation, Iraq was in the place of Syria, Saddam was in the place of Assad, WMDs was in the place of chemical weapons. The plan was to "get rid" of Saddam and his "WMD"s and "liberate" the Iraqi people.

Well, we never did found out for sure if the WMDs existed. What we do know for sure is we got rid of Saddam(for whom I obviously had no affection, and the same stands for Assad), but somehow situation got even worse for the Iraqi people due to this power vacuum.
ISIS was born, which now controls large areas in Iraq and Syria, and now USA it seems is disengaged from Iraq and...is looking around the globe for other problems to "fix" I guess?

What I'm saying is that maybe it's time for US to stop asking itself "what action should we take" when troubles arise in another sovereign nation. Maybe you shouldn't take any action at all. Who legitimizes you to?

Who says you(by "you" I mean the US) even got the ability and competency to even "fix" problems in other sides of the globe, even assuming your intentions are "pure"?

Who says you even got the commitment to stay in that area and deal with extremely complex problems over a long timespan? You decide
"here's how we're gonna fix this problem", yet you're not affected by any unwanted side-effects if your execution fails
or things don't go as planned. When they do, it's the population of that area that has to stay and deal with an even worse situation(like Iraq).
And all you worry then is about your "exit strategy" from that humanitarian intervention that got rid of the "bad guy", but suddenly
got an ugly unexpected turn which was not predicted by the "experts", and now it's too costly for the US to remain entangled in the situation.

It doesn't matter what "comprehesive plan" or "larger strategy" you present before you intervene. Let's assume a liberal president/congress
decides to intervene, and says "in the case of greater instability caused by our actions, we have a plan to accept
a large amount of refugees from that area". So? Does it mean anything? It's possible that in less than 4 years
another president will be elected that goes "no refugees".

This has happened enough times for people to start thinking that maybe the real major problem here is Americans
saying "we should do something" each time very complicated problems arise in another area of the globe.

This is what I'm saying : Stop asking "what we should do" entirely. Other populations and other nations have agency too.

Honestly, we have a problem of communication here - as someone from a small European country(Greece), I can't get into the mindset
of a citizen who, when he sees trouble in other sides of the globe, asks himself "what should our military do". This is the mindset
of a citizen who thinks his country, due to its outstanding moral fibre apparently, owes it to the world to take the burden of "world police".
It's totally alien to me(since Greece couldn't obviously play that role even if it wanted to), so we kinda have a rift of how we're seeing things here.

Again, don't get me wrong. I'm not in favor of armed interventionist policies. It's what brought us ISIS to begin with. And in almost 80-90% of cases of conflict, there's no need to have armed interventions by a foreign power. I leave 10-20% mainly for things like World War 2, etc. where there is a legitimate threat. You may ask me how to decide what is a legitimate threat, and tbh, not many of us can really answer that question easily, and I don't qualify myself as having an answer to that, but I will say that the last wars had no legitimate threat to anyone. This entire 'War on Terror' is an overreaction. Trillions have been spent, hundreds of thousands of lives lost everywhere, and if the goal was to solve a problem, it hasn't been done. I don't see how any of the recent armed actions and interventions have done any good either.

I agree with L. Spiro that this probably isn't the best way to fight terrorism period, since one cannot bomb an idea into extinction. Ideas can only be fought with other ideas.

What I'm saying is that if the President is gonna decide to lob cruise missiles at a nation, is there at least a plan, or a goal? Let me ask you this, what scares you more? An interventionist policy that clearly states that we are going to do X or an interventionist policy that basically involves randomly lobbing cruise missiles and attacking people at random? The other scary thing is that 3 days before this, Trump's like 'yo Assad can stay in power' and now he's lobbing missiles at the guy. I mean, which is it?

It's also possible that those weren't Arabs in the plane, but actually a super advanced alien race that genetically engineered itself to look like us, infiltrate the Earth, and start wars to destabilize it so that in the near future they can invade and style themselves as benevolent rulers here to save us from ourselves while in reality they steal our resources and make us 'vassals', a kind term for indentured slaves that they will use for manual labor, entertainment, pets, and warfare. All others will be grafted to mind control systems to make them more docile. Prepare yourself for the Tau invasion!

Omg, now it suddenly make sense. Like, they never found the terrorist bodies inside the towers, did they? And the videos, where the plane seemed to disappear when it entered the towers? Surely those aliens teleported the plane out before it blew up, to save themselves and get a ton of good america people as their slaves. But they can't fool us anymore!

(hurray, now I have my own 9/11 theory, thx for that ;) )

I've been playing way too much Stellaris recently, and that's legit one of the things you can do as an advanced civilization. You can order some guys to infiltrate a 'primitive' planet, genetically engineered to look like the race there, and have them prep the planet for annexation so that they yield more willingly. :P

I've been playing way too much Stellaris recently, and that's legit one of the things you can do as an advanced civilization. You can order some guys to infiltrate a 'primitive' planet, genetically engineered to look like the race there, and have them prep the planet for annexation so that they yield more willingly.

Kyle Odom accused a priest of being a shapeshifting alien from mars in disguise as a human to enslave the human race using special technology that made it impossible for normal humans to tell if he was an alien, then shot him 6 times with a .45 handgun, including once in the head point blank.

The priest survived the shooting and was back to work giving sermons 2 days after it, and Kyle's attorney isn't trying to get the case thrown out because of insanity incompetence.

Makes you wonder what the odds are for a normal human to survive something like that, compared to a shapeshifting alien from mars.

I've been playing way too much Stellaris recently, and that's legit one of the things you can do as an advanced civilization. You can order some guys to infiltrate a 'primitive' planet, genetically engineered to look like the race there, and have them prep the planet for annexation so that they yield more willingly.

Kyle Odom accused a priest of being a shapeshifting alien from mars in disguise as a human to enslave the human race using special technology that made it impossible for normal humans to tell if he was an alien, then shot him 6 times with a .45 handgun, including once in the head point blank.

The priest survived the shooting and was back to work giving sermons 2 days after it, and Kyle's attorney isn't trying to get the case thrown out because of insanity incompetence.

Makes you wonder what the odds are for a normal human to survive something like that, compared to a shapeshifting alien from mars.

Because we know that shooting took place and wasn't just fabricated by some "media outlet", and then just respun by the mass of incompetent media shills out there?

And we also know that there were 6 hits for sure? And not just 6 near misses? And that one shot hit the head point blank and was not just a flesh wound?

Occam's razor gives me this ranking, in order of decreasing odds: Man surviving such a shooting > Shapeshifting alien from Mars disguising as a Priest > The Press for once telling only the truth, not inflating a story to make it look more spectacular or at least getting their facts wrong by accident.

Honestly, we have a problem of communication here - as someone from a small European country(Greece), I can't get into the mindset of a citizen who, when he sees trouble in other sides of the globe, asks himself "what should our military do". This is the mindset of a citizen who thinks his country, due to its outstanding moral fibre apparently, owes it to the world to take the burden of "world police". It's totally alien to me(since Greece couldn't obviously play that role even if it wanted to), so we kinda have a rift of how we're seeing things here.

Don't get this wrong, but the part in emphasis made me laugh. That's a statement from someone living in a small EU country having a military budget rivalling the largest, and being high up in the top-ten worldwide on weapon imports. A country which, despite being bankrupt, and after having cut down by the creditors, proportionally still spends twice as much of its national economic output for military than the average European country. No offense. :lol:

Back to serious: This is the exact reason why "you should care". Almost half of the weapons you import is Made With Pride in the USA^TM (and about 25% is Made in Germany, let's not forget that). So, yeah, you need to keep this up, you even need to get involved a lot more in conflicts of sorts. Maybe some peace mission in central Africa or such. It's good for the economy. Our economy, that is.

Did I mention war was about money? I might have forgotten mentioning it before.