But more importantly, I believe in four statements:
- Anything that hasn't been disproved is possible.
- While human tendencies and human nature can be predicted with some degree of confidence, they cannot be determined in advance with certainty.
- better said: nobody can say for sure what a human would, could, or did do without seeing it, and nobody can say for sure why humans will, can or do things without asking them.
- Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Sherlock Holmes/Spock
- The simplest answer is usually (keyword: USUALLY) the correct one. Occam's Razor
I have an unhealthy fascination with mysteries. I still review Jon Benet Ramsey information to this day. But Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has fascinated me even more largely because of so many people from various arenas sharing information that, to a degree, is carefully pruned to prove their point, rather than give the factual account. This is true even of Inmarsat and the governments.
Now, maybe you've been in my position: you saw all this stuff and it's still not clear exactly what's going on. So here's the dirt simple.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 left Kuala Lumpur for a redeye flight to Beijing, that should have taken just under 6 hours to complete. Straight arrow north. No curves, no nothing. It never got there.
Data released seems to indicate that the plane turned sharply left and started heading along a totally different flight path, even hitting flight waypoints. Nobody knows why.
Certain transponders and equipment stopped communicating, which made the plane go "dark" - in other words, it'd be like it went into stealth mode. After a point nobody knew where the plane exactly was and it wasn't responding to calls.
Military radar claimed to identify a path that led towards India, Russia, etc. from the last confirmed point. This has been questioned as whether it was accurate or not.
Inmarsat, which is a satellite communication system company, provided data that seemed to show that the plane was still airborne for a long time (thus disproving a crash where the last known point was), and a trajectory of where the plane's last detect point was along two arcs - call them North Arc and South Arc. The deep innards of satellite tech aren't important, but the Marco/Polo example is as good as any: A call is made, a response is provided, on regular intervals. No response, no plane. As long as there's a response, the plane is still in the air somewhere, and a general idea of where can be interpreted. This "game" continued for 6-7 hours after the last known, so you figure a total flight of 7-8 hours.
The plane had just over 8 hours of fuel - thus an assumption the plane ran out of fuel and crashed somewhere shortly thereafter.
So that's the basics that I can parse, and I likely got small semantics wrong, but the gist is, the plane went missing, and based primarily on satellite pings, they started searching in given areas.
But there's been a LOT of theories as to what happened to the plane, from alien abduction to government cover up to terrorist hijacking. I'm not going to bore you going through these theories, plenty have already done so over the past year and a half. My intent is to share an argument that I think many are dismissing, and shouldn't. So let's go through my numbered bullets above.
Anything that hasn't been disproved is possible.
I got a lot of flack on this one, but here's the thing and why this works. Take the Loch Ness Monster.
First detected in the 6th century and continued to be debated for many centuries after. It wasn't until 2003 that a full-scale scan and debunk was done, which effectively disproved the idea of a Loch Ness Monster. However, the 2003 scan does not disprove the possibility that a creature (of some kind) was in Loch Ness and sensationalized as a "monster", especially if said creature was at the time unknown to locals. In other words, it's still possible that there was a Loch Ness Monster at some point, because we can't prove otherwise in the absence of time travel or some other means of detection. It just doesn't matter if there isn't one now.
Now, the catch is, we must be able to disprove it. Time travel is a concept we don't understand, but we assume it's not possible. However we continue to try to do it, thus someone believes it's possible. Should time travel become a possibility (and I fear that day), we can then (dis)prove the Loch Ness Monster once and for all. That dependency keeps both in the realm of a possibility greater than zero, no matter how small.
With MH370, for example, we haven't disproved alien abduction. I know how outright silly it sounds. But realistically we have not disproved extraterrestrials. We're trying, in the form of sending rockets to other galaxies. But that's a lot of ground to cover. So despite it being a minuscule possibility, it's still possible, as it has not been disproved (and won't be until we find the plane, at which point it will have been 100% disproved if it's located on Earth and not affected by elements or damage scientifically unknown to us).
None of the theories put forth about MH370 have been fully disproved, thus I consider all of them possible, with varying degrees of probability based on other factors. It is this that bothers me about some of those who are releasing their opinions: they're ignoring this basic tenet. (There are quite a few sites that speak to this notion, to be fair. I'm targeting the ones that are blatantly ignoring it.)
I wish I could do a beautiful table with these probabilities, but again, I'm not an advanced math guy, and I couldn't back any of it up with significant data. It'd be totally subjective, and thus useless. I'm just saying we should not ignore any of these scenarios until we have disproved them - which unfortunately for the greater majority of these theories, can't be done until we find the plane.
While human tendencies and human nature can be predicted with some degree of confidence, they cannot be determined in advance with certainty.
Picture this: You're driving on a freeway at midnight. It's a single-lane two direction freeway with no barrier. In the extreme distance you see a pair of lights that appear to be swerving in and out of your lane, headed your way. What's your first instinct? This 'something' will hit you if you don't do something. So you pull off to the side and wait it out.
As the 'something' gets closer you see it's a truck. It stops swerving after a minute and stays in the opposite lane, eventually passing you without incident. Confused, you get back on the road and keep driving.
After a few miles you see that there's something in the road. It looks like debris is scattered throughout the road. There's a clean path through the debris and it zig-zags both lanes.
In that scenario you initially made an assumption that this was some sort of nut driver, drunk or otherwise who was going to hit you because of careless driving, when in reality the other driver was extra alert to a road hazard and took steps to avoid it. But you couldn't have known that, because it was too far away to make that decision. Hindsight then kicks in telling you that your initial assumption was wrong. You might even have been affected by bias telling you that some drunk kid was out late night, rather than remaining neutral until you could verify what was going on.
This is where we see that you simply cannot make a leap about what a human would, could, or did do, without specifically seeing the activity first hand. You can assume, but you must accept that your assumption has a 50% chance of being wrong, and thus, the opposite remains possible.
In MH370, theories have surfaced that imply possible hijacking, suicide, mass murder, etc., all as human motivating factors to explain what happened. The data from satellites and radar have also been criticized as potentially being intentionally faulty and/or outright misleading. These have been criticized by so-called "experts" whose only rebuttal is that these are trained professionals, and that this somehow makes these impossible suggestions. Why?
- Doesn't mean they retained the knowledge. They may have forgotten, had a lapse in judgment, etc. Unless you were on the plane - which of course, is impossible - you can't disprove this as a possibility.
- Doesn't mean they followed the rule book when in the air, whether intentionally or not. Again, the only way to disprove this possibility is for that person to have been on the plane.
- Doesn't mean they were actually trained. You assume they had to have been, you might have even been given data from the airline/satellite/radar company stating they were. But were you in the classroom with that person? Did you see them go through the motions? If not, it remains possible they really weren't trained.
- I know a natural rebuttal to this is, "but they'd get in trouble for falsifying!" to which I would respond that it doesn't matter. Especially because the punishment is extremely light anyway. Said company would just absorbed by another company (see Trans World Airlines fka TWA) with the old C-level execs getting golden parachutes.
In other words, human error, human malfeasance, human oversight, human judgment, are all considerations that can't be ignored. In fact, even after finding the plane, we still can't ever know for certain what happened in the human part of the equation. We can speculate, or even derive from whatever evidence we locate. But in the end, it's still not 100% confirmation.
Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
This one pretty much speaks for itself.
If I threw 5 hammers into a lake, waited 2 weeks, and told someone to go and retrieve them, I can't expect they will find all 5. If they find 6 hammers, I know that at least one of them cannot be mine. But if I look at all 6 and only 3 match the hammers that I threw, there are only a few possibilities:
- I'm lying about not being able to match the other two hammers.
- I'm lying about how many hammers I threw in the lake.
- I forgot which hammers I threw.
- I forgot how many I threw.
- It's not the right lake.
- Two of my hammers were taken from the lake before the search.
Recall my #2 statement above.
We can only disprove possibilities 1 and 2 if someone were there who watched me throw hammers. 5 can be proven if and only if I didn't recognize at least 1 hammer, given possibilities 1 and 3 are disproved (i.e. assuming the hammers were the same, I should be able to identify them). 6 can only be proven if someone saw this happen, given possibilities 2 and 4 are disproved (i.e. I truly did throw 5 hammers).
So we know that 5 and 6 are fundamentally impossible, because it's the right lake (by virtue of me recognizing at least 1 hammer), more hammers were found than the number I threw (which implies that no hammers were removed) and nobody saw anyone take any.
We know possibility 3 is improbable (remotely possible) by the fact that I was able to identify at least 1 hammer. We can consider it impossible (not possible at all) if all hammers were the same.
We know possibility 4 is impossible if I was able to determine that 1 out of 6 couldn't be mine.
Given that, it can only mean I'm lying somewhere. Either I threw more than 5 hammers, less than 5 hammers, or I recognized a different number than I threw. It seems improbable (especially if people don't consider me a liar), but it can only be the case if all others are impossible, based on all other known facts.
What makes this tricky is getting to a point that the rest is rendered impossible. This is where the #1 statement above comes into play.
With MH370, we can't rule out a situation where pilot and/or co-pilot killed the other and then set a course to oblivion. We can't rule out a situation where a plane was flown to a covert base in the Indian Ocean and somehow prevented from communication, with pieces of the plane creatively placed to divert suspicion. We can't rule out that another Boeing 777 was actually lost but just never reported by Boeing or other airlines. And we certainly can't rule out the so-called "false flag" scenario.
The reason we can't rule these out is because, while these scenarios are highly improbable, we've nearly eliminated all other scenarios as impossible.
The simplest answer is usually (keyword: USUALLY) the correct one.
Which brings me to the most controversial of them all.
Given statement #3's conclusion, what else is there to consider? Well, that the plane crashed. We don't know why, but that seems to be the simplest answer, right? Problem is we can't prove - or disprove - this. A plane part found on Reunion Island gives us hints, but the problem is a mysterious one: the single piece of evidence that would definitively tie the part to the plane...a stamped plate with a serial number...was missing. I find that mighty strange - and convenient.
The other mysterious factor is that the plane continued to fly for an additional 6-7 hours. Or more apropos, the plane continued moving within the satellite range for an additional 6-7 hours. This time delta has caused people to dismiss the notion of a suicide hijacking, because they assume that anyone who would want to kill a bunch of people on the plane would just crash it into the water or into a mountain. In truth I agree with this logic. But that conclusion doesn't disprove the alternatives, either.
That the transponders and recorders were cut off, led people to assume intent (i.e. hijacking/suicide), or some other sort of event happening on the plane. But that these happened so early in the flight seems to debunk these theories, especially if the plane kept going for so long thereafter.
That the plane apparently climbed to 45,000 feet (well outside of its upper range, a key factor) led people to assume intent (i.e. depressurization to kill everyone) or an event such as a fire. But that the plane then went quickly back down to just under 25,000 feet and continued happily (?) on for so long seems to debunk these theories.
That the plane's flight path and altitude changed at all seems to debunk the theory that everyone was knocked out, at least at that time. Autopilot, to my knowledge, cannot adjust altitude without pilot intervention (for example, to commence landing procedure), but would just head to the programmed destination. That destination can of course be changed, but again, to my knowledge, that would require pilot intervention.
If the plane wasn't heading for any airport, it would seem to imply that autopilot was disengaged after a fashion. Again, that's assuming it wasn't heading for an airport, which is unverified, of course, but the data seems to point that way at least on the surface.
If the pilot and/or co-pilot were trying to head back due to some sort of disaster, there were at least 4 airports I can count that would seem to have been better alternatives than the known flight path. Additionally, one would assume that either would have contacted air traffic control (intent) to inform them of the situation.
I express one concern:
Stop speaking in absolutes, and remain objective about possibilities - even remote possibilities - until those possibilities have been 100% disproved.
I know some people are just quick to ridicule those conspiracy theorists that think the passengers of MH370 were beamed up to some ship and have been getting probed for the past year and a half. I know it's fun to make fun of people who swear the plane must have landed at Diego Garcia. I know it makes you feel good to debunk suggestions by throwing a bunch of random numbers and charts at people designed to prove why you're right and they're wrong.
Grown ups should be equipped with enough maturity to accept the four statements I started this post with, as I have accepted them. Once they are accepted, learn how to address each one in an orderly fashion.
If you asked me, I would say that everything points to something between the pilot and co-pilot that resulted in a ghost plane situation. But I'm not qualified to give any evidence to back that up. I can only say that I'm open-minded about the possibility that one of the two human beings reacted to something, something that cost nearly 240 people their lives. When the plane is found we likely still won't know whether I was right or wrong for sure. But we can hopefully quiet those with superiority complexes.
