But there is another way of looking at these 9/11 conspiracy narratives as parsimony itself. It is a little like using the idea of the Devil to explain everything that goes bad in your life. A conspiracy of this sort can operate as an overall explanation of why the U.S. is so wrong in everything. The "conpirators" have hijacked our country, etc. Thus, Ravi is correct, the "empirical explanation" of how 9/11 happened can only appeal to the "parsimony-challenged." But the "narrative explanation" for the condition of the nation that these conspiracies represent is parsimony made large.
Of course I am pointing to two different levels of "explanation." The first is the level of an explanation for the immediate events we call "9/11" and the second is an explanation for the "condition of the world." On the first level, the "9/11 conpiracy narrative" is a Rube Goldberg contraption. On the second level it is a very simplistic (parsimonious) non-explanatory explanation that provides a narrative for why we have all been so presidentially screwed.
Jerry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20060817/5f758aa9/attachment.htm>