4 ms·

"It imploded right away" explains everything. "It imploded later" requires at least two failures, first of power/comms, and THEN of the structure itself. Occa

"It imploded right away" explains everything. "It imploded later" requires at least two failures, first of power/comms, and THEN of the structure itself. Occam's Razor

pwthornton 3y ago
And in this case, the sub had systems for resurfacing even if power was lost (including automatically after a set amount of time). It's highly improbable that it was astray for days before it imploded. The only way this could have happened is if it somehow got stuck on part of the Titanic wreckage and was unable to free itself.
adventured 3y ago
Your occam is incorrectly structured. Power/comms is irrelevant to the equation in question, imploding, and doesn't add. It imploded later requires only one failure (the structural failure), just as the relatively short time duration option requires only one failure. Right away is also a later event. We have no way of knowing what its structural true condition was in terms of whether it was more likely to make it a very short duration or something more like a day.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  As others have pointed out, there were multiple, redundant failsafes on the ballasts which would have led an intact sub to surface even if the crew were incapacitated or dead.
- aqme28 3y ago
  You're completely ignoring that the comms went out. All we know is that comms went out early, and debris was found later. What single failure would cause both of those pieces of evidence?
  - oefnak 3y ago
    You're right, I think, but we also know that several ships heard sounds after the communication loss. You'd also need to account for that with your theory.
    - dboreham 3y ago
      One ping only.
marginalia_nu 3y ago
> Occam's Razor is only good as a heuristic for finding which hypothesis to test first. It's basically a scientist's "where there's smoke there's fire".
- EA-3167 3y ago
  Or in this case, where there's a debris field...
PepperdineG 3y ago
No, it doesn't as it would depend on the root cause of the implosion, like whether or not it crashed hitting the bottom then imploded or imploded partially descended from it's target depth. Slamming into the ocean floor would point to other things than the structure itself being the root cause.
SirMaster 3y ago
How does it explain why the support boat heard no implosion while listening for the 15 min pings? Wouldn't an implosion be really loud?
- 0x0203 3y ago
  Loud is relative. You wouldn't hear it standing on deck of the support ship. And the hydrophones they were using for communications and pings were possibly (likely?) passed into an FFT, band-pass filtered to look for the expected frequencies of pings, and triggered on a signal spike in that range. I doubt they had somebody just listening to a straight up amplified signal straight from the hydrophones. Even if they did, someone unfamiliar with what they were hearing might not recognize it as an implosion event and attribute it to something else. And given the apparent attitude and methodology of the whole operation, it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't bother making recordings of the raw data. So it's entirely possible they wouldn't hear/notice an implosion event. As for the banging sounds heard days later, there are a thousand possible sources of those, especially with a dozen or more other vessels on the scene. Anything from a buoy with a loose part clanking away, to some waves breaking and clapping on the surface, to a whale slapping its tail, to extraneous noise from one of the search vessels or its equipment, to other sources of sea life making a racket. It's a bit like trying to listen for the buzzing of a bee in a basketball stadium with a game going on. Any signal you get is far more likely to be something else, but when you have literally no better options, every signal, no matter how unlikely, is worth investigating. Then they report they investigated and found nothing, and in a bit of target fixation, people assume it must have been people in the sub. Understandable, but it's not necessarily the most likely/logical conclusion.
- ak_111 3y ago
  Exactly this, "imploded straightaway" doesn't explain no implosion registered AND probable banging noise heard a few days later, so it doesn't explain everything. "Lost then imploded" explains both by adding only a small extra assumption so by occam's razor is strictly superior to imploded straightaway as far as I can see.
  - tapland 3y ago

"It imploded right away" explains everything. "It imploded later" requires at least two failures, first of power/comms, and THEN of the structure itself. Occam's Razor

pwthornton 3y ago

And in this case, the sub had systems for resurfacing even if power was lost (including automatically after a set amount of time). It's highly improbable that it was astray for days before it imploded. The only way this could have happened is if it somehow got stuck on part of the Titanic wreckage and was unable to free itself.

adventured 3y ago

Your occam is incorrectly structured. Power/comms is irrelevant to the equation in question, imploding, and doesn't add. It imploded later requires only one failure (the structural failure), just as the relatively short time duration option requires only one failure. Right away is also a later event. We have no way of knowing what its structural true condition was in terms of whether it was more likely to make it a very short duration or something more like a day.

EA-3167 3y ago
As others have pointed out, there were multiple, redundant failsafes on the ballasts which would have led an intact sub to surface even if the crew were incapacitated or dead.
aqme28 3y ago
You're completely ignoring that the comms went out. All we know is that comms went out early, and debris was found later. What single failure would cause both of those pieces of evidence?
- oefnak 3y ago
  You're right, I think, but we also know that several ships heard sounds after the communication loss. You'd also need to account for that with your theory.
  - dboreham 3y ago
    One ping only.

marginalia_nu 3y ago

> Occam's Razor is only good as a heuristic for finding which hypothesis to test first. It's basically a scientist's "where there's smoke there's fire".

EA-3167 3y ago
Or in this case, where there's a debris field...

PepperdineG 3y ago

No, it doesn't as it would depend on the root cause of the implosion, like whether or not it crashed hitting the bottom then imploded or imploded partially descended from it's target depth. Slamming into the ocean floor would point to other things than the structure itself being the root cause.

SirMaster 3y ago

How does it explain why the support boat heard no implosion while listening for the 15 min pings? Wouldn't an implosion be really loud?

0x0203 3y ago
Loud is relative. You wouldn't hear it standing on deck of the support ship. And the hydrophones they were using for communications and pings were possibly (likely?) passed into an FFT, band-pass filtered to look for the expected frequencies of pings, and triggered on a signal spike in that range. I doubt they had somebody just listening to a straight up amplified signal straight from the hydrophones. Even if they did, someone unfamiliar with what they were hearing might not recognize it as an implosion event and attribute it to something else. And given the apparent attitude and methodology of the whole operation, it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't bother making recordings of the raw data. So it's entirely possible they wouldn't hear/notice an implosion event. As for the banging sounds heard days later, there are a thousand possible sources of those, especially with a dozen or more other vessels on the scene. Anything from a buoy with a loose part clanking away, to some waves breaking and clapping on the surface, to a whale slapping its tail, to extraneous noise from one of the search vessels or its equipment, to other sources of sea life making a racket. It's a bit like trying to listen for the buzzing of a bee in a basketball stadium with a game going on. Any signal you get is far more likely to be something else, but when you have literally no better options, every signal, no matter how unlikely, is worth investigating. Then they report they investigated and found nothing, and in a bit of target fixation, people assume it must have been people in the sub. Understandable, but it's not necessarily the most likely/logical conclusion.
ak_111 3y ago
Exactly this, "imploded straightaway" doesn't explain no implosion registered AND probable banging noise heard a few days later, so it doesn't explain everything. "Lost then imploded" explains both by adding only a small extra assumption so by occam's razor is strictly superior to imploded straightaway as far as I can see.
- tapland 3y ago