What Is The Statistical Probability That All Sightings Are False?

February 21, 2012

The real point of my analogy was to illustrate why we don't get a lot (any?) saber-toothed cat reports: there's no infrastructure encouraging reporting of such sightings.

Actually, that infrastructure already exists, it is called "the Internet", and there are reports. These sightings mostly come from Central America. I did come across some from N.A., but they may have just been exaggerated bobcats or pumas with amputated tails (none of them mentioned canines).

Making things a little more crazy, is that Central America was also home to a saber toothed marsupial. So there is question as to whether it is one or the other.

So yes, it is a very neat experiment, but it is already reality.

Even the "chupacabra", which is almost certainly a creation of the imagination, is seen regularly, and every confirmed report of a chupacabra has turned out to be a coyote with bad mange. It is certainly strange, the other way around. The made up chupacabra has been realized as a mangy coyote. The thing is, everyone describes a mangy coyote. They do not see a mangy coyote and embellish it into a chupacabra. They see a mangy coyote, fail to equate it with a coyote, and so call it a chupacabra, but faithfully describe a mangy coyote.

If anything, the chupacabra experiment shows that eye witness accounts are reliable. Not because the witness conclusion; mangy coyote = chupacabra is correct, but because it is self-consistent; mangy coyote = chupacabra = mangy coyote.

February 21, 2012

Actually, Saskeptic, I am slightly interested in how you explain the existence of the false-report generating infrastructure. Why does it exist in the first place?

Do you mean cognitive infrastructure or the infrastructure like websites and investigators who've called for reports?

February 21, 2012

Saskeptic,

Does proving that people lie make everyone liars? Does proving that people make mistakes make everyone mistaken?

No but it does mean that we have to take that possibility into account. Without supporting evidence we just can't say we know.

RayG,

I can only speak to the accuracy of my own sighting, not someone elses. Having seen one myself changes the way I see other reported sightings though. It does not mean I accept them all at face value. I certainly don't dissmiss them all.

Does this apply to Saskeptics argument?

Circular cause and consequence

Circular cause and consequence is a logical fallacy where the consequence of the phenomenon is claimed to be its root cause. This is also known as the the chicken or the egg fallacy.

I had a conversation with a friend once about his boyfriend. He told me that his boyfriend played the guitar, but what I heard was that his boyfriend played the saxaphone. For over a year I thought that he played the sax until they asked me where I got that idea ffrom. I also for the longest time thought I was being abducted by aliens. Nothing anyone said could dissuade me from that. These are two examples of how someone may believe something that isn't true. For me this is due to hallucinations with a biological cause. I can't say I know this to be the case for you but can you reallly say there is absolutely no possibility of hallucination in your case? Remember, I said the same thing.

Saskeptic,

That is a very interesting idea!

You would most certainly get reports. No doubt about it. The fact that we have some people out there whose interpretation of this world and its "reality" is extremely suspect and open to severe question is not in doubt...! At least not to me. However, the fact that "some" people live in a fantasy world does not mean that all of them do. Nor do all people lie or easily misinterpret their surroundings....

For the bigfoot phenomenon all we need is for the people who report to be mislead, hallucinating, or lying not everyone else. How large a portion of society has to "live in a fantasy world" to match the numbers of people who claim experiences?

Back to BF -- There are no know apes save man in the US & Canada so what are all the Sasquatch witnesses seeingâ€¦â€¦well I wonder about that.

Man is already the most sasquatch like primate in north america (and europe, asia, and australia too) and can easily supply the basic stimulation for seeing a bigfoot. Especially if the witness has some knowledge of bigfoot stories to drawn from for inspiration. There isn't a single american who hasn't heard of bigfoot or the abominable snowman. When we see a human walking in the shrubbery in twilight we can easily conjure up a monster. Then there is the propensity for hoaxing. Very underrated in my opinion. All too many people think too few people would find this fun or worthwhile to do in the deep forest with no one else for miles around. But it only requires a few.

February 21, 2012

Do you mean cognitive infrastructure or the infrastructure like websites and investigators who've called for reports?

The people spreading the viral meme of BF, that filters back to the source as reports such as BFRO et al., why do they exist in the first place?

February 21, 2012

^

In general, I suspect that it's because folklore is an important component of cultures all over the world. People have been telling tall tales for various reasons for as long as there have been people.

Specific to bigfoot folklore, I suspect that the reason we have a BFRO is because we had a Roger Patterson. I suspect that the reason we had a Roger Patterson was because we had a Ray Wallace. We had a Ray Wallace because we had Albert Ostman. We had Albert Ostman because he most likely encountered bits of Native American/First Nations folklore either directly or from old-timer miners and trappers, etc.

Why did Native American/First Nations have such folklore? I suspect it's because such folklore was widespread in their ancient ancestors in the Old World. It's entirely possible such stories could be traced all the way back to a time when real Homo sapiens were still encountering H. s. neanderthalensis, but this is more dorm lounge discussion material than anything I can can really engage from an informed and mature understanding. Note there are some who view bigfoot folklore as not at all associated with ancient cultures in the Americas, but rather something made up whole cloth by white folks and clumsily tied to certain traditions among Native Americans and First Nations peoples. Note that such traditions could emerge even without a physical organism serving as the "bigfoot" model being contemporary with H. s. sapiens for many thousands of years.

February 21, 2012

I don't have to agree with you to know that that is a good answer.

February 21, 2012

I completely concur.....only I doubt that this is the explanation for this subject. I think this sort of thing is behind all sorts of superstitions and myths. If you told a British or German villager in the middle ages, or many an African villager now, that there was/is no such thing as a witch or magic you would be laughed out of town. Folklore becomes self-reinforcing, and a whole belief system builds up around it. It is how it is because that's how it was for your parents. It takes a big step for someone to break that chain, and so it seldom gets broken.

The thing is, I find it pretty hard to envisage that Dr Ketchum isn't going to publish what she says she is going to publish, and that isn't the only reason I have a hard time imagining that sasquatch falls into the same category as UFOs, witches and Tokolosh.

Mike

Edited February 21, 2012 by MikeG

February 22, 2012

Certainly some hallucinated. Some are lied about it, and continue to do so, but not everyone, not by a long shot. So there must be something there, something worthy of investigation, hopefully capture and display in a zoo!!

Oh, I hope not. That would be so sad. Run free, Bigfoot.

February 22, 2012

I had a conversation with a friend once about his boyfriend. He told me that his boyfriend played the guitar, but what I heard was that his boyfriend played the saxaphone. For over a year I thought that he played the sax until they asked me where I got that idea ffrom. I also for the longest time thought I was being abducted by aliens. Nothing anyone said could dissuade me from that. These are two examples of how someone may believe something that isn't true. For me this is due to hallucinations with a biological cause. I can't say I know this to be the case for you but can you reallly say there is absolutely no possibility of hallucination in your case? Remember, I said the same thing.

I saw a BF at about thirty feet when I was a kid of around nine or ten, 1961-62. I'd never heard of BF. After looking at it for several seconds I ran around to the front door of the house and ran inside screaming that I had seen a great big man covered with hair. We were at my parents best friends house which was rural Kansas. The man who lived there was a Deputy Sheriff and his response was to grab and load his service revolver and he and my dad went out back looking for it. His comment was "I don't know what it is but I think it's been sleeping in the barn".

If the sighting had not been taken seriously by the adults that were there I don't know what my answer to your question would be. As it is I have known since then that there was something behind the stories.

February 23, 2012

And that's the thing right there. People have been seeing bigfoots, shooting at bigfoots, being chased off by bigfoots, etc. since long before sasquatch or bigfoot were even commonly known. How can anyone use the template of Patty before Patty? Sure, they could be making the whole thing up, but there are also journal entries and newspaper articles and the like written long before Patty.

So the question is, if the giant, hairy man is some sort of "race memory", then what is the thing we are remembering? If it is a giant, hairy man, then how did it get there without actually having been a giant, hairy man? Memories, even "race memories", are called memories for a reason.

Just look at the pantheons of pagan gods. Every ancient race had bird gods, snake gods, and crocodilian gods, or the same but monsters. Why? Because those things are everywhere. So why do so many races have the giant, hairy man god? Perhaps because those things are everywhere? Meanwhile, the more imaginative gods and monsters, which seem to have no basis in anything but dreams, tend to be unique to the civilization. Three headed dog of Hell, unique to Mediterranean, must be imaginary. Giant, hairy man god, present world wide, must be real.

February 23, 2012

I suspect the template for "Patty" was William Roe's bigfoot. William Roe's account came decades after Muchalat Harry's and Albert Ostman's very similar stories, after the tallest of tall tales in Ape Canyon, and after probably several dozen from the 18th and 19th centuries that our friend Tirademan is so good at collecting and sharing. Bigfoot mythology was alive and well generations before Roger Patterson, all of which leads to this point: "So the question is, if the giant, hairy man is some sort of "race memory", then what is the thing we are remembering?"

I already suggested Neanderthals as one explanation; for all we know, there might even be cultural "memories" of ancient interactions with the last of the Homo erectus. Over time and through the filters of different cultures, such long-gone beings might have morphed in multiple ways, sometimes attaining great size, sometimes getting seriously hairy and apelike, sometimes capable of speech and wearing clothes, sometimes possessing magical powers, sometimes piloting UFOs . . .

In the global phenomenon of some kind of hairy wild man folklore, there are three possibilities: (1) Such beliefs are ancient in our species, and they have spread worldwide where our species has dispersed, (2) such beliefs are a predictable result of human psychology - so they'll show up pretty much anywhere people live - but they have no specific, literal antecedent, and (3) people all over the world really are encountering a panoply of hairy wild men, not a single specimen of which has actually been proven to exist.

To me, options 1 and 2 are far more likely than option 3. Option 2 is the most likely but option 1 is really cool to consider, so it's a favorite of mine. Of all 3, I'd love more than anything for option 3 to be the case, and I would cheer as loudly as anyone if that was ever determined.

February 23, 2012

aj and other folks,

you have a fundamental misunderstanding of mathematical probability. You are mixing together wishful thinkinng, circular reasoning, confusion with common word usage, and inappropriate use of frequentist probability. Using red font doesn't change that.

Probabiity in its mathematical sense (frequentist or evidential) has to be grounded in numbers. Show me the numbers that cause you to assign a nonzero probability to each report. You can't. do it..

you are saying nothing more than you believe that some reports are true. Mathematical probability is not just your belief. You can't multiply belief x belief and come out with mathematical probability. You just come out with belief squared, so to speak.

There are two things that we can numerically say about reports: one is that no report has ever been validated with a body or body part. zero for, let's say, 20,000. A statistician doesn't look at that and think that the next report will be a validated report.

The other thing is that some reports that have been proven, objectively, to be false. I think most of those have been omitted from databases (that is a crime against science and statistics). But I think we have to admit there are some. (Peter Byrne said it was the majority). So all we know is that some reports are false and some are undetermined. We don't know of any true positives, no reports have been proven accurate. Those are the only numbers we have regarding accuracy. So from a mathematical standpoint, it is certainly possible that they are all inaccurate.

It is only by your belief that you can assign a greater than zero probability. You're just plucking it out of the air. That's fine, but you are in error if you try to make it mathematical using frequentist probability. The only way make that in any way mathematical is to use evidential probability. And by that, the likelihood that they are all inaccurate becomes greater with every report that is shown to be false. There may be, in this setting, a way of dealing with indeterminate reports statistically, but I'm not a statistician.

I am done with this. If you don't have the background to get it, I can't give it to you.

p.

I know I'm jumping back in here after a long weekend and travel without having fully caught up on this thread, but mulling it over while driving a couple of thousand miles I've come to the following conclusions regarding the response to reports by those who have not had first hand encounters.

Some look at the reports and judge that bigfoot must exist. In response skeptics say, "But you can't prove that. You simply want to believe that the reports are true so you do."

Some look at the reports and judge that bigfoot does not exist (because there is no type specimen to back up the reports or any other reason). In response it is fair to say, "But you can't prove that they do not exist. Because you cannot prove that they do not exist, your judgement that they do not is no less a belief on your part than is the belief of others that they do exist."

At this point I think it is a waste of time to get frustrated by skeptics. They believe what they want to believe no less than anyone else believes what they want to believe.

The demand for proof isn't unusual. Look at the peer review process for any journal. You've got to prove it before you can publish it, and it applies universally to any new scientific claim.

So the advocate's and the skeptic's position share one thing in common. They are both beliefs without proof. The dominant belief within the larger public or scientific community is no less a belief without proof.

And the skeptic's treatment of claims regarding bigfoot are no different than claims regarding any other "new" discovery. They are consistent in that they demand proof before accepting the claim. They want to have the evidence submitted for peer review and accepted first. Even then they will challenge evidence that has been peer-reviewed until they are satisfied. The only incontrovertible proof is a type specimen for second-hand examination, or the individual first-hand experience of an unmistakeable face-to face encounter.

Gotta ask Saskeptic, Parnassus, and other skeptics, though. If any of you were out in the woods this weekend and a bigfoot stepped out of the woods directly in front of you where you could get as close a look at it as you'd like, then performed some series of physical acts that convinced you personally beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was, in fact, a bigfoot; would you, now personally convinced that they do exist, (Edited to add: but lacking physical evidence), submit a public report?

Edited February 23, 2012 by JDL

February 23, 2012

Without wanting to get anywhere near making personal comments, I believe that Saskeptic and Parnassus represent two entirely different strands of scepticism. (Sorry, BTW, but I'm reverting to the English spelling of sceptic from now on). On one hand there is the laudable "show me the evidence" analytical approach, and on the other there is a "complete denial of the possiblity" approach. Without speaking for them, I believe that in your scenario Saskeptic and others of his ilk would be perfectly able to change instantly to the "convinced" side of the fence, and nothing he has written previously could be held up as hypocritical or indefensible in the light of his conversion. I'm not so sure I would be able to say that of Parn and the strand of scepticism that he represents.

Mike

February 23, 2012

. . . would you, now personally convinced that they do exist, (Edited to add: but lacking physical evidence), submit a public report?

Of course, but I wouldn't expect anyone to believe me unless I had that physical evidence - and I'd be highly skeptical of my own memory of those events without such evidence. There's nothing to exempt me from having a vivid hallucination/temporary brain malfunction like my Bald Eagle/Turkey Vulture colleague just because I am aware that such events can occur.

You may have missed this, but I shared my own "not sure" encounter several months ago.

^I think you're being unfair to parnassus, Mike. His style may be a bit more confrontational than mine, but in my experience he'd be just as likely to change his tune given new and convincing evidence as I would be, and at this point, he's no more a "denier" of bigfoot than I am.

February 23, 2012

Well, that may be true. You've been here longer than me! It isn't the impression I've built up..........but I am trying to keep this broader than personal, as we are supposed to discuss the argument rather than the arguer. I think it fair to say that there is a strand of scepticism that is denialist virtually come-what-may, and if I have mis-placed Parn in that category then I of course apologise.

I don't suppose you've got a link to this not-sure encounter of yours?

Mike

Edited February 23, 2012 by MikeG

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