Entry #138: Richard Gage
Richard Gage is one of the main people behind the 911 troofer movement and the founder of AE911truth.org (note: visits not recommended) and Architects and Enginers for 9/11 truth. Architect (not engineer or explosives expert, contrary to widely held belief) Gage is currently touring the US and Canada and making a lot of noise with unsubstantiated claims and misleading “evidence”. As expected he believes that a mysterious conspiracy was behind the 9/11 attacks and that it was secret operatives who planted the “explosives.” He is careful not to explicitly implicate the government and CIA, but conversational implicature abound. For a general debunking of various claims, see here. His basic point, however, is an argument from ignorance: how could people living in cages in Afghanistan possibly have brought down the pillars of freedom in the civilized world (kinda the way people in the 5th century failed to believe that Alaric sacked Rome)? (tip: no one claims Afghan cavemen brought down WTC).
If engaged in debate, Gage is a frequent user of the Gish gallop and snowing (very effective - since his opponent cannot possibly be an expert on everything, it is relatively easy to find a question he or she will be unable to answer then and there).
How do you end up as Richard Gage? Well, one point he repeatedly makes is pretty revealing. He claims that he loves the scientific method, but doesn’t understand it. According to Gage we must collect data before we decide on a hypothesis to test. Which is, of course, the very recipe for confirmation bias (if you collect data you are already collecting data with respect to some hypothesis, in Gage’s case he collects data in favor of his conspiracy theory before he officially puts forward his hypothesis).
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Diagnosis: The king himself of confirmation bias, snowing, double standards of evidence and selective use of evidence. He seems to have a pretty wide influence, being one of the main people behind a relatively significant, though delusional, conspiracy movement.