What Is The Statistical Probability That All Sightings Are False?

[Guest]

I think indiefoot's point concerning emotions is extremely valid and important. The emotion of a witness points to their having been effected in some way through experience. Lie detectors work on comparisons of emotive levels. It is true there are those who have in fact learned the art of affecting emotion - and they have done this in realisation that people judge a witnessess story in their personal emotion. A psychopath can affect emotion but at some point it is easy to see them break their focus, as their need to control the person listening is more important then the story they are telling. In all it would be a lack of emotional expression or clear emotional signs that would lead one to question the report a BF sighter was giving. As you say none of this confirms the sighting was what others might call a BF - still emotion is an extremely vital key in critical evaluation of a sighters report.

[Guest MikeG]

Having some trouble.......

Edited February 14, 2012 by MikeG

[Guest]

Mike I did not say there was something wrong with your childhood or society you were brought up in. I did not say that you alone have root assumptions. I did not say I dont have root assumptions - I do and spend much time looking into them. I did not say I believe Griffins exist (though yes I am fully open to their existance).

I did say that your statements about reality are in fact beliefs and not facts and explained why.

Still, I am fine with you putting me on your ignore list - perhaps your ignore list reflects and confirms what I said about barricading ones senses from the influences of lateral and alternate thought.

Edited February 14, 2012 by Encounter

[Guest MikeG]

Mike, its interesting that in the past you have seemed to say that you are objective and dont have any presuppositions in BF research - yet you seem awash with presuppositions and things already invalidated in your mind.

Whereas your mind is free to wander free as a bird, unconstrained by the inconvenience of fact.........

I mentioned previously the concept of root assumptions concerning reality. Rood assumptions are assumptions one has about existance unquestioned - that they so strongly believe they no longer recognise it is a belief not a fact.

I presume you are entirely free of assumptions of any description, root or otherwise.

One then experiences their everyday world reflected to a great extent by those root assumptions. You feel your example of griffins is good because you take it for granted that these must be mythology and for you mythology is not something bespeaking reality. In fact an open mind might say Griffins could well have been a reality in the way you experience reality and also a part of mythology.

No, Griffins have never existed. Fact. No Griffin has ever fed or bred or breathed. You're making stuff up, and playing with words.

Your concepts of reality are presumptions, not fact Mike, nor are they in any way actually objective. You were brought up in a society with certain beliefs and you accept a good part of such beliefs as actual, factual, true.

How dare you presume to know what sort of society I was brought up in! You haven&'t the first idea, actually. As it happens, I wasn't brought up in any single society, or culture. I also reject entirely the basic tenants of a number of them, thank you very much.

Some question much more deeply and it is only ever such questioners who have come to move society from root assumptions quite detrimental.

Some people make stuff up, and dress it up as thinking more deeply. Some people will believe anything other than that for which there is evidence. People who move society on are not often people who make stuff up.

I have said it all before but the world being flat was a root assumption,

the earth being centre of the universe was a root assumption,

black people being less intelligent than whites was a root assumption,

time being linear is a root assumption,

All straw men. All disproved by scientists, not by people who believe in the existence of griffins.

you cant change the past is a root assumption, griffins not being real is a root assumption,

Both entirely true

men being more logical than women is a root assumption

Not where I come from it isn't. Not in my experience it isn't. No-one I know thinks this.

women being more intuitive than men is a root assumption,

Not where I come from it isn't. Not in my experience it isn't. No-one I know thinks this.

youll catch a cold if you dont put clothes on is a root assumption

Not where I come from it isn't. Not in my experience it isn't. No-one I know thinks this.

western science is more knowledgable than indigenous understandings of our cosmology is a root assumption

What does this actually mean? It's makey-uppy stuff. "Indigenous understanding of our cosmology" Presumably this is giving some sort of higher creedence to origin stories of people who just believed what their parents told them, above what can be seen and measured? Without any evidence to back these stories up, of course. Please feel free to enlighten me, but it would really help if you could be a bit more precise than normal with your language.

the idea the only acceptable witnesses of BF are scientists gathering data is a root assumption

What does"acceptable witness" mean? Acceptable to whom?

Those who questioned root assumptions have brought the west out of practices of slavery (to some extent), got politicians to recognise the destruction humans have been creating on earths environment, have gotten women the vote, have recognised black or white skin is not a measure of intelligence and have for many people awakened an understanding that one being is not superior to another. But this all falls on barricaded ears

All good stuff, and I've no problem with any of that, but what has that got to do with the price of eggs? Scientists, BTW, were the first to spot all of the global environmental issues.

If by "barricaded ears" you are being perjorative, and suggesting that I have a closed mind and fixed attitude about the actuality..........can you possibly explain to me how that differs from you? Your actuality is increasingly bizarre the more you try and explain it (normally by omission.......ie you tell us what it isn';t, rather than what it is), and you are apparently so deeply wedded to it that you have to drop it in to every other paragraph. Your ideology isn't something you will waver from in the face of evidence.........which looks pretty closed-minded to me. Therein lies the difference between us.........produce the evidence for me and I will change my view on any subject you care to mention. But if I ask you for evidence that griffins exist, you simply tell me it's something wrong with my childhood.......

I shall read your reply with interest, then, to save the rest of the forum from the tedium of scrolling through pages of irresistable meets immovable, I shall put you on my ignore list.

Mike

Edited February 14, 2012 by MikeG

[Guest]

Just to add to the post above, Mikes post to which I just replied has now dissapeared.

[Guest MikeG]

Still, I am fine with you putting me on your ignore list - perhaps your ignore list reflects and confirms what I said about barricading ones senses from the influences of lateral and alternate thought.

Or, as I explained, saving everyone else the tedium of watching oil and water try to mix. Cheerio.

Mike

[Guest exnihilo]

Please consider the absolute number of people in America who sometimes lie for amusement or attention, are subject to hallucinations, are alcoholics, don't know how to identify wildlife, have poor eyesight, who are easily panicked or persuaded or suggestible, or sometimes make mistakes in the dark or unfamiliar circumstances, or are pranked by others. I have, and think you will find it FAR exceeds the number of bigfoot "reporters". Furthermore, your best friends, neighbors, relations and respected others all fall in these categories. And so, wadr, do you.

To get to the issue of probability theory:

wadr, your examples show you don't understand probability theory. This is not physical aka frequency probabiity, like throwing dice or flipping coins where random events occur with a certain known probability. Your mathematical model does not apply. It cannot be used. You can't put a square peg in a round hole.

Let me describe something that would be closer to the way the problem would be approached using evidential probability theory (the math is completely different): you are given a box with a billion balls in it, and told that there are some white balls, and there might be red balls but there might not. You are told that the balls have been mixed and shaken and thoroughly randomized. You are told to blindly pull out balls one at a time and after each ball, to estimate the chances that the next ball will be red, or that a red one will ever come out. The first one you pull out is white, and after you pull out 50, then 100, then 1000, and you find no red balls, what are you thinking? Do you think that the odds are getting better that there are some red balls in there? or do you think the chances are getting smaller with each white ball? After 500,000 white balls, what are you thinking? after 5 million? after 50 million white balls and no red ones? after 500 million?

Evidential probability theory tells us, and I'm sure you would agree, that (since you weren't guaranteed that there were any red balls) with each ball that comes out white, the chances decrease that there are any colored balls in the box. Now everyone will say, you don't know for absolute sure that there aren't any red balls until you pull out the very last of the billion balls? True, and that is what I would say also. The possibility will always remain that there is a red ball, until the supply of balls runs out, but it gets smaller and smaller as the flow of white balls continues.

That isn't a perfect description of the bigfoot sightings issue, I realize, but I hope it illustrates the idea of evidential probability. If that is helpful, good, if not, study up on probability theory for a more rigorous treatment of the subject. But please, don't use the dice rolling stuff any more. It is just not applicable.

p.

Forgive me for quoting this post a third time, but it seems like the ne plus ultra of mendacity to me. Pointing out that the absolute number of capricious pranksters, weak-minded nincompoops, and myopic dullards to be in excess of the aggregate number of BF witnesses is not only insulting, it is irrelevant to a probabilistic calculus and also ironic, considering the supercilious lecture on the elements of probability theory that followed. The case made is similar to explaining a room full of dead people with the remark: 'according to the laws of probability, all of the oxygen molecules in the room might congregate on the ceiling for a half an hour, thus smothering all of the occupants.' Nowhere do I see an attempt to consider the probabilities that only defective persons report BF experiences -- though presumably they are not so defective as to fail to deceive their (apparently also booberiffic) questioners.

Really though, what percent of the population are composed of these defective savants, and to what exponent of incidents must we carry this percentage before we see that the odds are perhaps more stacked against this self-satisfying (for the skeptic) state of affairs than against the existence of a hard-to-apprehend hominin? Or, in any case, is a protracted prank slash series of sincere misidentifications slash group delusion a reasonably explicative model of a phenomenon as reported, as consistent, and as longstanding as BF?

Edited February 14, 2012 by exnihilo

[Guest]

Deleted my post so as not to retraumatise

Edited February 14, 2012 by Encounter

[Guest]

Take THIS as a root assumption:

Stay on topic, cut out the personal gibes and be civil to one another or this thread will be closed for a cooling off period and/or warning levels adjusted.

[Guest MikeG]

But I thought you believed in multi-directional time flows?

Just for the record, I deleted my post 62 because I couldn't get it to do the quotes properly, then it wouldn't edit properly, then it left weird symbols all over the post.

I pasted it into post 64 immediately, but in the meantime you had responded to the original......which is perfectly fair enough.

I don't believe that anything has happened to post 65.

Mike

[indiefoot]

1) telling the truth as remembered does not make what one remembers the truth

That's the reason I use the wording. I wasn't there so I cannot confirm what they saw.

2) liars, or as most people know them "actors," are actually quite skilled at conveying emotion about things that did not actually happen.

And they are as widespread and active as people with wooden stompers strapped on their shoes.

Thus, while an emotional witness should not be dismissed out of hand, there is nothing about being emotional or seeming believable that makes the witness' story factually accurate.

Tell that to parnassus or better yet tell Barbara Tversky and Elizabeth Loftus. Actually I didn't say an "emotional witness", what I wrote was.

You can see the fear, the confusion, and decide for yourself if they are telling you the truth as they remember it.

They can be calm and rational and you can still see the reactions that they had at the time. Then you can do what........ ta-da....

decide for yourself if they are telling you the truth as they remember it.

Doesn't make it true it means you have chosen to believe their account.

P.S. Do Barbara Tversky and Elizabeth Loftus use big words, cause that always makes me sleepy.

[Guest krakatoa]

This is profoundly troubling.

I was told there would be no math on this forum.

[Guest Bipedal Ape]

For now the probability of all sightings being false is 100%. If the species is ever scientifically confirmed then we can reevaluate.

[Guest exnihilo]

That post is raising a few red flags.

[Guest]

For now the probability of all sightings being false is 100%. If the species is ever scientifically confirmed then we can reevaluate.

As I've said before, it's existance has only been in doubt in modern times since Euro's colonized North America It's recognized in other countries who don't seem to have the problem we do in needing a specimen. In fact given the directive in the 50's from our embassy on a trek to find the Yeti on orders I believe from Nepal not to kill one, or the Army's placing them on a training manuel I'd say your whistling dixie on this one.