Does Crash Of Amrican Airlines Flight Signal End Of Rational Thought Process in U.S.?

This entire series of posts and threads on the loss of the AA flight is an amazing display of 2001 sociology. If we thought the internet was going to change people’s commercial activities but not our core behaviors and underlying thought process, we were certainly wrong.

Many of us have been following the crash aftermath here in FR. This is not an indictment or criticism of any one poster, not will this post attack anyone. It will ask the question, who are these internet people, and what are we all becoming because oft hem. Even more, it is certainly not a criticism of FR itself, JR, etc. He has done great work for America.

There is a certain suspension of rational thought process going on here. People are making, defending and angrily supporting crash theories based on some rumor someone else says a friend told them was heard on the radio. People are angry because others seek to apply basic rules of physics to an argument. Others propose the wildest theories, and defend them ad infinitum. Last year, some poster claimed TW800 was caused by ghosts of a 1948 Navy electronics experiment gone wrong, and other chimed in to agree!

At least eleven mutually exclusive theories as to cause of this week’s accident have been proposed, and if one is determined to be the real cause, the proponents of the other ten will all probably cry "foul" and "government cover-up."

People are accusing the government of fraud and murder because they haven't yet determined the cause of the crash, or grounded the Airbus fleet. Others demand an answer right now, before any laboratory testing is complete. This failure to deliver a verdict before bedtime is taken as further proof of negative government intervention.

This post is certainly NOT directed as criticism at any one person, but rather as an amazed wonderment of what is going on in supposedly Conservative society. Does the anonymity of the internet encourage people to suspend the rational judgment process? Did Clinton and Clintonism so skew American thinking on the issue of government dependency that anytime our government does not give us what we want, and deliver it to us gift wrapped and right now, we begin to have our little internet temper tantrums?

Another amazing observation is how there is little attempt to understand who is posting fact and who is posting mental masturbation stories. In ordinary conversation, there is a constant "reality checking" processing going on in our minds. It seems absent here. If we were down at the Grange Hall, high school homecoming, or even Harvard, we would be using all our senses to help us understand what is going on here. If some person joined the conversation and began to blame the crash on a weight and balance problem or wake turbulence, we might listen for a moment. But when we saw he was 9 years old, wearing adult diapers and had a throazine bottle in his hand, we might tend to discredit his theories! On the net, he will have a brigade of followers within the hour.

Old pilot's ditty: "Fish gota swim, planes gota fly; and sometimes they crash when they try!" Crashes occur, but this one seems to have brought out a demonstration of a change in the way we think.... or don't think. What do these post crash threads say, not about the crash, but about us

Again, certainly not a criticism of anyone, just a wonderment, that with all the technology in the world, have we again become the Clan of Grug, Druhr, Mogor and Allihia arguing by grunting over our cave fire, while the Cave Bear waits in the near distance recovering from his wounds of 1992?

You are right about bad control inputs. At French airshow a few years ago, Airbus with fly-by-wire would not accept "increase thrust" deltas on a touch and go from ILS. Flared A/C into trees at far end of runway. 100 +/- demo riders dead.

I like control cables! Current military fighters are all fly-by-wire so they can "dial-in" ride and stability, but they have ejection seats...

I believe many of the current military fighters are inherently unstable and could not be flown by humans directly at all. The computer translates what the pilot wants to do to whatever it takes to make the plane do it. Good thing MS doesn't write the control programs… ;-)

Congrats, you got NOTHING right in that statement. It was an Aloha Airlines flight, and it was structural failure (which IS what we are talking about) that was the cause, not a bomb.

So much for my imperfect memory (last time I saw the movie based on the actual flight, I tuned in when it was 2/3 over).

My point remains it was poor idea to post picture of the Aloha Airlines plane without labeling it as such and explaining why the post was being made. Some other idiot is likely to come along, look at the huge gapping hole in the side, assume its the American Flight and think well obviously its a terrorist attack, they blew a huge hole in the side of the plane. Things are already muddied enough without tossing in other unidentified airplanes.

Exactly. The instability is built in so as to promote manouverability.

Also creates very rough ride. Had a F-111 media ride at 400kts, 50 feet AGL over West Texas, New Mexico, in the summer (thermal effect.) Lunch did not taste so good the second time!

PS, was all locked-up on auto, sitting on hands. My pucker facter was waaay up. Pilot was calm as ever....

"About 20 years ago, we entered a time when America became fat, dumb and happy. We wanted instant breakfast, fast food, fast cars, quick sex, easy abortions."

and easy quick answers that were supplied by the government just as all the other "entitlements" were. We were and are conditioned to look for, accept and believe anything the government "spins".

You are correct as far as you go but are unable to see that you are one of those who believes "the government line" that they are good and only do thing that are good for us and if there is a problem it is because we are lazy and gulable and abandoned self-reliance which has forced them to take care of us..

Somethings the government does are good, some are bad.

To assume I approve of everything the government is an incorrect assumption. Likewise to condem everything does by government, or any entity, is foolish.

No one or thing is as good as their own PR, nor as bad as their enemies' PR says it is.

A good description of how the "echo chamber" works can be found in Clinton speaks, pundits spin: The Washington Times and the spread of a media myth

Here's an excerpt:

"The propagation of the Washington Times's distorted version of Clinton's speech reveals how pundits, desperate for controversy, can create a "fact" simply by repeating it often enough to make it conventional wisdom. Disreputable reporting that appeals to existing perceptions of political figures is often picked up and repeated by pundits who don't bother to check their facts. When the truth finally comes out, it's too late: the rumor has become established through repetition, and the truth receives little coverage because it is less newsworthy and less politically useful. Pundits who propagate these myths not only abdicate their responsibility to their readers but ultimately reveal themselves as little more than partisan spinners."

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