What Is The Statistical Probability That All Sightings Are False?

[indiefoot]

Parnassus,

Glad to see you accept Peter Byrne's judgment on Bigfoot reports.

[Guest]

I'd like to think the truth is important, and that is what is shown, when proof of the creature exists then documented sightings with collaborative evidence can be placed on the graph

There seems to be a few such as yourself who admit evidence only after proof. So odd, so odd indeedy. OK let me see how this plays out in various scenarios....

Ok scenario 1, a courthouse, a trial taking place, person accused of making up a story of encountering a being with lots of hair - defence counsel asks evidence of tracks,witness sightings, aural encounters, precedence of similar situations for thousands of years, second hand reports etc be submitted. Judge says no because it cannot be evidence because the being without hair has not been proved to exist. Prosecution asks to present evidence that there is no evidence submitted. The accused could present nothing to support their story. Result of trial, the accused is charged with making things up and sentenced to long term ridicule.

Ok scenario 2 . Columbus in late 1400's having argument with the queen. He wants to sail off somewhere putting an expensive group of ships in danger of being smashed to peices when falling off the edge of the world just cause, well has has some evidence to prove their is likely a great continent beyond the place people think is the edge of the world. He argues there isnt really an edge of the world so the danger to the ships wont be from that. She says, well these continents cant exist so there isnt any evidence. Shes also pretty concerned about the edge of the world which had been possitively proved to exist due to people not coming back from voyages in its direction. Everyone knew the earth was flat so of course people who journeyed to the edge fell of the edge of the world and that was that. Anyway time goes on and a sort of economic war between Spain and Portugul so she lets Columbus give it a try. He discovers more than he hoped for. He becomes renowned for his discovery of America. Even when people knew the vikings were there long before,as they were not part of authoritative discovery their witness and indeed settlement in America went unnoticed on the charting of history for a very long time. Thing was in all these cases evidence from those who were in the minority was dismissed until the accepted reason or accepted person brought "proof".

Evidence does nothing in retrospect - it is used to understand more, recognise the potential of something. This strange argument presented by a few posters here that they will not accept thousands of witnesses, thousands of years of information concerning the hairy hominid as at least of some import, unless the hairy hominid is proven to exist is all backward and insular thinking.

Edited March 1, 2012 by Encounter

[kitakaze]

I think the statistical probability that all of these alleged sightings of Bigfoot are in fact false is about 99%...

Just as I think the statistical probability that all of these alleged UFO sightings are not in fact aliens visiting Earth is about 99%...

The UFO sightings map does not include sightings for Mexico and Canada. The reason I think those are so extremely similar is that they reflect population and more specifically, the reflect a social construct from within that population. For every person claiming to see Bigfoot, I can show you a person claiming to have been abducted by aliens. These are actual social phenomena and if so many people are claiming to be abducted by aliens, you should approach it in a rational manner. You don't rule that out as an impossibility, but you seriously examine, test, and consider alternative explanations. That can and has been done with the alien abduction phenomena and there are most certainly alternative explanations, one being sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis has in fact almost certainly been at play in a number of Bigfoot encounter claims. I remember Driveroperator of the MABRC being one strong candidate for such with his story of two Bigfoots climbing in the back of his truck at a public campground parking lot while he was paralyzed with fear and heart hammering after having fallen asleep in his truck.

I think in very many circumstances with that UFO sighting map, many of the people legitimately saw a UFO. UFO does not equal alien spacecraft. What they saw in many cases was in fact an unidentified object in the sky which can have a vast array of non-alien explanations. So it is the same with the Bigfoot sightings map, but I think to a lesser extent. I think a great portion of that Mangani map is just vapour. I think a great many of those dots were placed there with little to no serious vetting whatsoever. 1868 newspaper story of armed men searching for a wild man that came screaming out of the bushes at someone in Idaho, boom, dot goes up. I think a great many of those dots come from pure fabrication. I think much of the map has been made to look like Bigfoot sightings are in extreme numbers because of this problem...

Bigfooters want their field to be taken more seriously and will make concerted efforts to show it as such. Bigfooters will want to believe so that a dot can go up their without the proper vetting. What the maker of that map doesn't realize is that they've completely shot themselves in the foot. It's like Daniel Perez of Bigfoot Times suggesting there are hundreds of thousands of Bigfoots out there. Don't you realize what you people are doing? You realize that that map and Perez' claim make Bigfoot more than ever appear to be a social construct. The Bigfooter will counter with well, so what? Who cares about that map? If just one of those dots was really Bigfoot, it doesn't matter. Sorry, you can keep your hypotheticals, because the dots that are up there that are false demand explanation. You have to answer the question why people are claiming to see Bigfoot when they did not and then learn from it.

I'm not saying any of this as if I am so ice-hearted skeptic that regards the believers as some bizarre specimen. I am 34 years old. I have been a strong skeptic of Bigfoot for six years. For twenty years prior to that, I was a strong Bigfoot believer. The transition from one to the other was not immediate, but gradual. I strongly believed the PGF as real and very much wanted to even though so many things about it were not right with me and problematic. I diminished those things as much as I could by rationalizing it with what I felt was the strength of the case for Bigfoot. It took applying the best scrutiny I could to come to the place where I could honestly acknowledge that there is absolutely zero reliable evidence for Bigfoot.

The point is I know. I know what it is to be a Bigfooter because I was one. I know how the believer thinks because I was one. I know that central dilemma of "How can all the reports be false?" because I grappled with it at great length. Yes, all the reports can be false. Not only can that be the case, that is actually almost certainly the case. It is impossible that all those dots represent actual Bigfoot encounters, or even some minor portion of them. The reason why is becase if you have a population of large mammals living and breeding today across North America, you will have reliable evidence of it. You will have bodies, you will have clear footage of good provenance, you will have Bigfoot bones in museums. There are fewer than 400 Kermode bears in the wild. They are extremely rare and extremely elusive and live in very remote habitat. We have their bodies and have had them since the were first catalogued in 1905.

This is what the sightings map for a real rare and elusive large mammal looks like.

Real animal...

Social construct...

That would be a map for haunted houses. It's adult roleplay. It's Woods & Wildmen, it's Spacemen & Spaceships, it's Ghouls & Ghosts. We want to believe. These things are fun and exciting to us and it is we who perpetuate the belief in it.

Ghost Hunters...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXCnGlh6Hc4

UFO Hunters...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6x3nGwmRIE Finding Bigfoot...

It's us. Bigfoot is us. We make our boogeymen and they evolve with us. And hey, why not? It's fun, it brings us together, gives us a sense of the mysterious, and kills the mundane.

What I think we are left with is about 1% undefined. I know and have friends personally that claim to have seen Bigfoot. The red glowing eyes my firend Scott Herriott saw are a mystery to me. What truly traumatized John Cartwright when he was a teenager in a hunting stand is a mystery to me. The answer to those mysteries I do not think likely to be real Bigfoots. Scott said glowing, not reflecting, and this was daytime. No apes have glowing eyes. No apes have a tapetum lucidum. I think Scott would have an easier time with the paranormal crowd, but that's part of us too. Bigfooters like paranormal spooky stuff as much as the next guy. Just try asking yourself which Bigfoot believer you know is also an alien visitation or ghost believer as well.

It's us, it's belief culture.

Edited March 1, 2012 by kitakaze

[Guest]

Actually, as well written and presented as your post, to me its actually the argument taken from a fixed view that BF and UFO's dont exist. Its not really looking at those sightings openly and studying them because you start with a belief that they dont exist so they are to you sightings which occure due to a chronic or accute mental disphasia or purposefull hoax. You put UFOs with BF like the monty python skit above, a witch is made of wood, wood floats, a duck floats so the duck and witch are connected thuswise as they must weigh the same. As many people report having deep religious experiences, feeling euphoria during a storm, seeing aura;s, having a foreknowledge someone is about to ring, seeing a squirrel etc - so due to the numbers being perhaps the same as BF and UFO sightings, then perhaps they are all delusional if only for a moment.

You can always say that people are deluding themselves, about absolutely anything if you do not accept their reality or they are a minority. None of that is proof or non proof to me. I dont see the world in such respect in any case, its all mind in the end - just how we experience, how we connect matters. Still I would remind you that not everyone is a believer in the way you say you were. You use that to say you know what believers are thinking or why they think a certain way because you were there. Thing is I doubt I have ever thought the way you propose is a believers focus. I couldnt move from believing to not believing because my belief is not based on something fragile or limiting but on the unlimited. The unlimited remains ever unlimited.

Edited March 1, 2012 by Encounter

[kitakaze]

1) My argument comes from the view that in defiance of that map that shows Bigfoot living across North America that mirrors the UFO and ghost map, there is zero reliable evidence for Bigfoot. There is not one single piece of clear footage with good provenance. The best footage we have has a provenance that sounds like a Rodney Dangerfield joke. We have no matching DNA samples from unknow apes and the claims that it is coming comes from a source with an atrocious background and is currenly engaged in typical Woods & Wildmen cat games. If Melba Ketchum produces verified matching Bigfoot DNA samples, I will physically eat actual crow. We have no bodies nor any portions of one. Again, if Melba Ketchum and her absurd Ray Wallace supporting Bigfoot massacre supporting cohort in Bigfoot DNA scheming David Paulides provide any Bigfoot steak or leg bones, I will again physically eat actual crow.

2) My view that Bigfoot does not exist and there is no reliable evidence will immediately change when we get any of the above. That's the very nature of skepticism. You don't deny what is real. You just don't accept what is not established as real and you question it. All of those things above are available for every large mammal catalogued in North America. To show that map as serious and to suggest Bigfoot lives across North America is a claim more extreme then visitation by aliens.

3) The association between the UFO phenomenon and the Bigfoot phenomenon as shown by their respective sightings map has no assymetrical association. In fact, many of your Bigfoot believer peers have made the leap to directly associate them...

Alien visitation and Bigfoot sit upon the same fortean belief shelf, but the sad fact for Bigfoot is that the evidence for UFO's far outweighs Bigfoot and in fact gives the poor monkey a clobbering. If UFO believers and Bigfoot believers had a Civil War recreation and met on the battle field with collections of their various evidence claims to fling at each other, Bigfoot believers would be routed in red bloody murder. A large portion of the Bigfooters wouldn't know what to do with themselves since they are also UFO believers. Strong Bigfoot believers could march steadfastly in armed with their 45 year old PGF only to induce yawns in the UFO guys as they fire off a volley of videos taken from this week. They can hit you with a videos from only two months ago of a single event from multiple angles with not just multiple witness, but thousands in which in each video the UFO is doing the exact same movements shown from various angles...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VWmf-TDg4o&feature=related

You'll be standing there with the PGF like a hobo and utterly unable to compete with your UFO enthusiast counterparts. And for all that, both of you will still be very much a part of social construct. As amazing as those UFO videos are, they still have mundane explanations outside of alien visitation. Can you think of one?

4) I welcome you to specify the rock upon which you base your belief. If it is an encounter claim, I always am interested in specific claims of Bigfoot evidence. I can even trade you what I thought was my encounter when I was a believer. I may not believe in Bigfoot, but I do enjoy examining the evidence for it and do not think it's impossible for Bigfoot to be real. There's always for me that 1% chance that I could be wrong.

[Guest]

Im not into the PGF film actually, when I first saw it it looked fake, still does though I am open to being completely wrong. I have had encounters and call them by a name that people can identify but what they are is a very open matter to me. The descriptor for the footprints I saw when noone was around to hoax them and when I didnt even know about yowies as such, fit what people call yowie prints or BF. The descriptor for the thing running through rough terrain in a national park up to my house, up a steep gully humans have to very slowy negotiate and not at all on a dark night without a light, onto my verandah, into my house eventually letting out a massive roar/growl when, fits yowie type encounters in its name sake.

I have seen UFOs too but not at the same time as seing a yowie or hearing one. One UFO sighting happened just pre dawn, three hours later when I drove into town to get a newspaper the colour of what I saw was on the front page. As the colour had been so unusual my seeing the colour on the front page of the newspaper grabbed my attention immediately. It had been photographed and looked close to what I saw but what i saw was bigger than the sun and that colour before the sun came up. When the sun came up they were both there but for some reason I just took it in my stride like, oh there are two suns today. I did actually loose three hours. So when I say I went to get the newspaper three hours later I actually had gone back inside to get coffee (I had put the kettle on before dawn ) looked out again and saw the real sun had come up so now two spheres one bigger and morone/purple/crimson and one bright in the east as it is usually. I looked for a while and then the other was gone. Kettle still boiling but hours later. I made the coffee and went to get the newspaper and now it was 8.30. The newspaper story showed the picuture of the UFO and UFO's seen over (not saying the area for the moment) .... Masses of people had seen it and not all in a crowd, not knowing each other not having some way of spreading the news across some hundreds of kilometres of sighting as it moved because the sighting was not long before the newpaper went to print.

Still those who dont believe could say that there was a spontanious and same mass hallucination over hundreds of kilometres if they wished. Do you know what, I am fine with that. In a sense just about everything is a mass hallucination. You just havent asked enough questions about the nature of reality to extend your argument about BF and UFO phenonemon to all phenonemon.

Edited March 1, 2012 by Encounter

[kitakaze]

Wow. Touché, Encounter. Touché.

I am pretty hard to surprise, and I did not see that coming.

Bigfoot (Yowie) home invasion. UFO sighting. Lost time. I mean no offence, but I can almost hear the collective groans coming from more orthodox believers right now. I say that because I know from personal experience from when I was a believer, if someone got into UFO's or Bigfoots coming into houses, I would want to distance myself from fringe claims.

For the record, I want you to know I absolutely adore it when Bigfoot believers think Patty looks fake. I want you to understand and I apologize for their behaviour in advance, but when I quote you in future as being an example of a Bigfoot believer that thinks Patty looks fake, your fellow believers are going to toss you right under the bus by pointing out your home invasion and UFO story like as if you might be a bit screwy. I think you're not screwy at all. You seem quite articulate and intelligent. Just I know intransigent PGF believers too well and know how they will react to your low opinion of Patty.

I think what was interesting for me was this part...

"When the sun came up they were both there but for some reason I just took it in my stride like, oh there are two suns today. I did actually loose three hours."

I know had I walked outside to see two suns or two moons, I would be slightly confused to say the least. I wonder, why did it seem like nothing to you?

Also, the newspaper article about the mass UFO sighting - would you be able to link to an online version of it? What was the name of the newspaper? I can look for you, if you like.

[Guest]

No problems, Im already ditched for my views. I didnt know home invasion was seen as any more incredible than meetings in the bush. i was living in a national park at the time and in a place where there had been a history with yowie sightings so anyone investigating would by all accounts not find it hard to believe. UFO, well, you are the one who discussed aliens and UFO's I didnt. UFO means unidentified flying object and this was that. I dont know if aliens were in it. I lost time as I said but only noticed it after I got back from getting the newpaper. The front page said if you have sighted this call UFO researcher so and so and when discussing it and accounting for my time i realised that three hours had skipped somewhere and the kettle (an electric switch off kettle) had somehow been going all that time. Also after watching it for sometime when I went to go back in the house the colour of everything seemed different and I had trouble just walking up the gentle slope to the door on kitchen side of house. Still I didnt think there were aliens involved in all of that and no I didnt and dont take drugs.

As to being one who thinks the PG film looks fake, well I dont think that is so amazing. There are people who just go out to live life and experience things before learning of videos or books on what they experience. I didnt see the PG film until 2009 and the in house encounter was around 2002. The footprint I first saw was in the early 80's in Australia near a river outside of Bathurst NSW no human around except me nearly double my foot size human foot really but with four toes and extra extra large. I only learnt that it was yowie from some aboriginal aquaintances at the college I was studying at during the time. If people denegrate me as I think it possible the PG film fake (and again I remind you I am open to being really wrong on this, it just looks it to me so) while being a believer in BF/yowie from experience and from open mindedness then perhaps such people have not had any mind opening encounter in nature, only through films and books. You say you were a believer and then not but it seems you are more one who is dismayed that there is not enough proof for you when you had hoped it to be true. Perhaps you need to redefine your concept of possibility, reality, consciousness and encounter. Forget the PG Film, forget that there are indeed hoaxers and those there for the money, just go out to the bush by yourself and stop looking so hard, then it may come to you.

Edited March 1, 2012 by Encounter

[kitakaze]

Encounter, I am not dismayed in the slightest about the notion Bigfoot not being real. It would be cool if it was, but the world is full of awesome real things without it and it is still tons of fun as a myth. Two questions if I may and I know this is a derail, but I would be remiss if I didn't ask...

1) So what happened when the Yowie walked in your house and started screaming?

2) What was the approximated date and name of the newspaper with the article about your UFO?

[Guest]

Answer 1, Please go to the international sightings area and read it, sighting in approximately 2002 northern NSW

. Should be easy to find. Not going over it again for you here.

Answer 2. You can PM me with a promise not to discuss the area I talk about and I will give you approximate date and the name of the newspaper.

Edited March 1, 2012 by Encounter

[kitakaze]

Thanks you for the link. I will have a look. You have my word now any information you PM me will not be shared outside of that PM between you and I only.

[Guest RayG]

...three hours later I actually had gone back inside to get coffee (I had put the kettle on before dawn ) ...Kettle still boiling but hours later.

...i realised that three hours had skipped somewhere and the kettle (an electric switch off kettle) had somehow been going all that time.

The skeptic in me thinks this seems illogical. If the kettle had been going all that time, it should have run dry long before three hours passed.

How did you determine that three hours had passed?

RayG

[Guest CT Seeker]

^{I have a quick question: Why are there BF non-believers on this site? Don't you have better things to do with your time than battle people who do believe in the subject? Seriously. I'd like to know what kind of personality it takes to NOT believe in something and spend so much time on it.}

And folks, I would try to not get drawn into a discussion about UFO's when discussing BF. I would ask the skeptics (If you are going to waste more of your time here talking about something you don't believe in) to answer all of Jeff Meldrum's research where he has acquired scores/hundreds of footprint casts which depict dermal ridges and mid-tarsal breaks. Also let us know, while you are here banging your drum, why we should give your skepticism more credence than we do Jane Goodall's belief in their existence? Thanks in advance.

[Guest MikeG]

CTS.........It is one of the fundamentals of this forum that all views are respected, and that sceptics are equally as welcome as so-called believers (both words I loath). Check out the rules.

Mike

[Guest CT Seeker]

I think that's a fine guideline. Why would a skeptic want to be a part of a website that they don't believe in?

Edited March 1, 2012 by slabdog