What Is The Statistical Probability That All Sightings Are False?

[Guest exnihilo]

The only thing I have a problem with is a blithe categorization of BF witnesses as 'fools, nuts, or liars' by certain skeptics (not necessarily present company). If BF witnesses are to be categorized in this way, it should not involve tiptoeing past the moral weight of such a judgment. And it should rely upon well supported arguments rather than suppositions about a person's character based on the mere fact that they had experiences that violate what others consider to be reasonable.

Edited February 13, 2012 by exnihilo

[JDL]

There is a difference between telling someone you've seen something that they don't believe exists and telling someone they haven't actually seen something you believe not to exist.

[Guest exnihilo]

Exactly.

[Guest]

It’s doubtful all of them are false; assigning a number to the percentage that aren’t false would be difficult if even possible.

Two sets of independent data can cross validate each other, in this case the locations of sightings vs. the amount of rainfall in the sighting area. This has been noted before and even was shown on one of the later Monsterquest episodes. The fact that sighting density increases where the rainfall is higher proves that sighting data are not randomly distributed, and thus should be considered valid data.

So rainfall amounts can help weed out fake or false data, but how would one would apply this practically? Since few sightings come from arid areas anyway…I’m not sure this helps.

[Guest exnihilo]

Maybe higher rainfall leads to depression leads to delusions leads to hallucinations...

[Guest KentuckyApeman]

If only 2% are actual true sightings, that means...

Wait, if only 1% are for real.....

I like to harken back to the old times, when the earth was flat. And it was flat, no doubt.

But then....opps, guess what, it wasn't flat. Now it's spherical. Curse those heritics!

[Guest]

I was 100% with you............

..........right up to this point.

Mike

no Zoo? How about if we pay them? Hey High Hills bigfoot clan, how about you put in an appearance here, one of you, seven days a week and we'll give you all the food you can eat.

How about then?

[Guest Tsiatko]

Sas, I do see your point, and it leads me to the same conclusion I reached the last time we went down this road. The statistical analysis of bigfoot reports cannot be used to prove or disprove the existence of bigfoot as long as the underlying assumptions are in dispute.

The reports are not data, they are "intelligence" reports, much like the reports from a wiretap, they are reports of experiences, subjective not objective, as a boundary, you can say that if one report is true out of the 4000 plus online, then statistics don't matter. Perceptual failure will always be seen by most as the most likely cause of a report, (Hoaxing) Nevertheless, determining the probability of a sighting report's "truth value" is an intelligence type problem, not a science problem. Check with the NSA. They probably have data on the truthfulness of the 4000 plus witnesses right now from facebook alone, that is,... if they cared. You can narrow the problem space by determining that you would need a multi-generational multi person hoaxing group to produce all the reports, because of the span of time and space involved. There are 5 possible causes of sighting reports: 1) Hoaxing, 2) Misidentified animal, 3) perceptual failure, 4) mass halucination, 5) actual sightings of an unknwn animal. The probability of any one sighting report being caused by any one of these causes, needs one to partition the causes into some sort of multinomial expression, I.E., you have to figure out what the probability of a sighting report is for each of these causes in a zero sum game. (all of them together sum to 100%). The overall probability of a sighting report being due to a sighting of an unknown animal, is given by the expression X = number of animals in a defined area, time Y = the number of observers in the same defined area. The probability of a sighting report coming from a given area caused by the sighting of an actual unknown animal is given by X * Y = P But this does not answer your question about the probability of the sighting report being caused by the other 4 possibilities. You can narrow the problem space further by pointing out that the PG film narrows the space to 2 possibilities, 1) it's a hoax (guy in a gorilla suit) or 2) it's an unknown animal, beccause the existence of the PG film makes the possibility of mass halucination of perceptual failure get small for sighting reports in general. So figuring out the probability that it's a hoax is the biggest problem. So how likely is it that all of them are hoaxes is a good question, to which we do not know the answer. We all know there are some hoaxers out there, but how many? How many al-quaida are out there anyhow?

[Guest]

Maybe higher rainfall leads to depression leads to delusions leads to hallucinations...

Even I wouldn't take the hallucination angle that far, but I'll tell you what higher rainfall does correlate with: forests. What's the preferred habitat of bigfoots? Everybody knows this: forests. That could be because they're seeing real bigfoots in those forests or it could be that people have a propensity to think they've seen bigfoots in the forests. Certainly hoaxers are more active in forests, as well as people filming Jack Links commercials.

[Guest]

Questions to the OP or indeed anyone involved in the discussion - do you include in your sighting stats, sightings throughout the ages by indigenous peoples, and those sightings provided through ancient, medieval and classical literature? If not is there a valid reason to discount these? Do you include some leeway for the validity of various world views when considering the notion of what is "real" or "true"?

[Guest exnihilo]

Even I wouldn't take the hallucination angle that far, but I'll tell you what higher rainfall does correlate with: forests. What's the preferred habitat of bigfoots? Everybody knows this: forests. That could be because they're seeing real bigfoots in those forests or it could be that people have a propensity to think they've seen bigfoots in the forests. Certainly hoaxers are more active in forests, as well as people filming Jack Links commercials.

Blame it on Jack Links.

I'm curious though, Saskeptic, whence do you think the alleged hallucinatory nature of forests originates?

[Guest MikeG]

Questions to the OP or indeed anyone involved in the discussion - do you include in your sighting stats, sightings throughout the ages by indigenous peoples, and those sightings provided through ancient, medieval and classical literature? If not is there a valid reason to discount these?

My local village church has some wonderful carved stone griffons at eaves level, some fat little carved angels on the end of the pews, unicorns in the stained glass windows, and a talking snake as part of an oak screen around the tomb of an ancient benefactor. Given the almost universal distribution of these sorts of icons through the mediaeval period, can you tell me how we should seperate out mythology from direct observation when it comes to providing useful data from ancient images?

Mike

[Guest parnassus]

The best witness reports are the ones you get first hand. The ones you get to hear from the person who had the experience. You can see the fear, the confusion, and decide for yourself if they are telling you the truth as they remember it.

Indie:

what makes you think that "fear and confusion" indicate clear thinking? Fear is one of the most frequent causes of eyewitness error.....and confusion? are you serious? you really think "confusion" is a marker for reliability?

Research would suggest that the witness shapes his account to the expectations of the questioner; so first hand questioning by a bigfoot believer will be much more likely to elicit a description of a bigfoot (whatever that is).

Read the work of Barbara Tversky and Elizabeth Loftus.

p.

Edited February 13, 2012 by parnassus

[Guest]

Mike perhaps you might start by understanding deeper contexts of the nature of symbolism , the nature of beliefs and the nature of reality - you might find that you dont need to spend so much time involved in separating these as recognising their intrinsic connection.

[Guest exnihilo]

Fear and confusion (assuming no underlying psychosis or other condition) would be some of the hallmarks of veracity, it seems to me.

BTW, the idea that BF encounters are the product of investigator suggestion... cue rueful laughter.