Could you post your contrarian position? That is a confirmation of my previous statement. Why do you assume that one has to have a "contrary position?" The scientific method dictates to reserve judgment, that is, not form any conclusion --- contrary or any other --- unless there is a substantial evidence. Conspiracy theories, to the contrary, violate this principle. As I mentioned earlier, the fact that something is possible and plausible is insufficient. Once can advance any hypothesis he wants, but a theory should pass through more stringent tests. That is the difference.
Your tacit assumption that there must be a contrary position, illustrates that very pattern of thinking.
I would like to read your views. As of now, your view seems to be the simple, unsubstantiated, negative of mine. To the contrary, I have stated that I have a very positive view: I do not say very often that someone has a good mind because I do not very often encounter such minds. My view may be indeed simple and unsubstantiated, but not negative, thus.
"If someone had a motive and means, he didn't do it". Set me straight. Very easily: I have never said that. What I did say was, "If someone had a motive and means, he did it." This form of arguments is what unites all conspiracy theories.
Here as before, you (i) assume that there are only two possibilities, (ii) formulate the negation of my statement, (iii) challenge me to prove it to substantiate my disagreement with your conclusion. The problem with this line of thought is at the beginning: attribution of effect to a cause is generally multi-valued. It is the logic we use that is two-valued, not attribution. This is a subtle mistake that many, even intelligent, people make.
If only you put your clearly good mind and this much work into a worthy cause...Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I'll determine what is "a worthy cause" on my own without checking first with the Worthy Cause Police.
That I value your cause differently from you does not make me a policemen --- the two-valued world model is in action again.
For theory-building, one of the implications of an earlier mentioned criterion of reserving judgment, is not to proceed to further tiers of the theory until the preceding one is firmly in place. This is what I meant by the “if only” remark: you have done a great deal of thinking about details that (i) cannot even be established, and (ii) are inconsequential.
It is undisputable that our government wants certainty: we want to know whether bin Laden is alive. Form here, quite simply, our government hopes but G-d decides. They may have decided to kill him in combat of put him through a tribunal (both have merits), but he may have died in one of the bombing. The details, such whether it was early into the war or yesterday in Tora Bora, are inconsequential. They open, what is more, a can of worms, such as whether our government tells us everything we need or want to know; whether this is proper, etc. None of which is well founded or constructive.
In sum, most of what you attempt to analyze is explainable by very parsimoniously (Occam’s razor) UNLESS you ascribe to the actors some sub-surface, inconspicuous motives. Observe that you have done this repeatedly even in communications with me.
But I stopped at your statement: "...UNLESS you ascribe to the actors some sub-surface, inconspicuous motives."
I said that right up front in the first paragraph and that assertion continues throughout. Sheesh. Just read it.
Please don't try to analyze my intentions anymore, you have missed nearly all of them. Instead, put forth your own ideas or analyze the data with examples. For instance, your high school lesson on logic: "For theory-building, one of the implications of an earlier mentioned criterion of reserving judgment, is not to proceed to further tiers of the theory until the preceding one is firmly in place. This is what I meant by the “if only” remark: you have done a great deal of thinking about details that (i) cannot even be established, and (ii) are inconsequential."
That is why assumptions and the substantiation for assumptions are necessary. These let everyone else who actually reads the piece carefully to understand the thread of logic.
Now cite examples.