What About Bf That Totally Gets To You?

[hiflier]

19 hours ago, DWA said:

And you have nothing really to contribute to the discussion either; you probably wind up on my Ignore list

 

Not such bad thing. I mean, it certainly SOUNDS like a big threat, but in reality? Nah, small potatoes or no potatoes- take your pick  Waving blue lines like a victory of some kind is......well......not. And PLEASE, no one quote me on this: I have my reasons

Edited June 22, 2017 by hiflier

[dmaker]

3 hours ago, OntarioSquatch said:

if you believe reports aren't falsifiable

That is not a belief. It's a simple fact. No one can logically demonstrate how any single anecdote can be proven correct, or false. It's just not possible. 

[gigantor]

The courts use anecdotes to put people in jail, even kill some. Banks lend hundreds of thousands based on a promise to repay.

 

 

 

[hiflier]

dmaker, what you say is true but older reports did have names, emails, addresses, and phone numbers attached. Doesn't say any of those stories were true but it does lend some strength to them, mistaken identifications or not. At least there could be follow ups done and a lot of those reports were long before the BFRO. Again, doesn't make then falsifiable but does lend at least some credibility to them. Doesn't refute you opinion in the least although it could soften it some if you were willing.

Edited June 23, 2017 by hiflier

[Rockape]

11 minutes ago, hiflier said:

Doesn't refute you opinion in the least although it could soften it some if you were willing.

 

LOL, don't count on it. Dmaker and I are on the same page concerning this except for one main difference, he won't budge one inch on it, that out of all the possibilities regarding sighting reports, those being that they are all lies, hoaxes, misidentifications that there is one more possibility, they they are telling the truth. I leave that possibility open, he doesn't.

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

48 minutes ago, dmaker said:

That is not a belief. It's a simple fact. No one can logically demonstrate how any single anecdote can be proven correct, or false. It's just not possible. 

 

If you believe they don't exist, then by the same token, you'd have to believe that all reports are false. That's where the contradiction is.

 

So the question now is, how did you make the determination of non-existence?

 

 

[dmaker]

Even if I believed all the reports to be true, that still does not make them any more falsifiable. 

 

It's a pretty simple concept. 

 

 

7 minutes ago, OntarioSquatch said:

So the question now is, how did you make the determination of non-existence?

Many things. The sheer number of reports yet no hard evidence.  The lack of evidence where there should be no shortage. An animal of that size with that reported range requires a pretty large breeding population. A population that would leave behind plenty of evidence. The type of evidence that can be tested to proof.

 

How did you determine that aliens created bigfoot? What evidence do you have of that?

Edited June 23, 2017 by dmaker

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

3 minutes ago, dmaker said:

Many things. The sheer number of reports yet no hard evidence.  The lack of evidence where there should be no shortage. An animal of that size with that reported range required a pretty large breeding population. A population that would leave behind plenty of evidence. The type of evidence that can be tested to proof.

 

Fair enough I guess. The only major problem is that you don't seem to want to grasp the fact that by making the determination of non-existence, you've falsified all reports. It's unfair to the proponents you're debating with.

 

[dmaker]

3 minutes ago, OntarioSquatch said:

you've falsified all reports.

No, I have not. Nothing can falsify a report. Falsify means prove it wrong, with absolute certainty. That can never be done. 

 

I don't think you are understanding the concept properly, but I don't know how to make it any more clear. 

 

Bigfoot could be proven tomorrow, body on a slab, proven. Logically, you could still have 10,000 false reports. 

Edited June 23, 2017 by dmaker

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

If you're uncertain about whether or not any report is true, then you'd have be uncertain about whether or Sasquatch are real. It makes no sense that one would be uncertain about just the former. The contradiction here is overwhelming.

 

Anyway, by nature of the scientific method, theories in science can't ever actually be proven; there's always an element of uncertainty and skepticism. You don't have to be certain of any theory; it just needs to be testable and hold up well enough. In this case, your theory is that Sasquatch aren't real.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 23, 2017 by OntarioSquatch

[hiflier]

Dmaker, with all due respect, you do not believe in BF's existence. So, even though the reports are not falsifiable, you think they are just out and out false in that they do not in any way represent an account of a true and real Sasquatch no matter what the witness claims. Is this accurate?

[dmaker]

27 minutes ago, OntarioSquatch said:

 

If you're uncertain about whether or not any report is true

 

You still either don't get it, or you choose to talk around it. The point I am making is one of simple logic. No one can be certain of any anecdote. Pure and simple. 

24 minutes ago, hiflier said:

Dmaker, with all due respect, you do not believe in BF's existence. So, even though the reports are not falsifiable, you think they are just out and out false in that they do not in any way represent an account of a true and real Sasquatch no matter what the witness claims. Is this accurate?

True, but that is beside the point that I am making. OS seems reluctant to acknowledge that no report can be proven true, or false. That is the only point that I am making. How I feel about bigfoot, unicorns, the tooth fairy, or the price of tea in China has zero impact on the simple point that I am trying to get him to understand or acknowledge. 

 

But, more to your point. No, at this point I believe the reports and all the other evidence can be explained without the need for bigfoot to be real.  But, what does that have to do with the simple fact that anecdotes are not falsifiable? That fact cannot be changed by how I, or you, or anyone, feels about bigfoot's existence. The fact that they are not falsifiable is the reason they have little value as evidence. They can never prove anything. Given a total lack of any compelling hard evidence, I will provisionally conclude that bigfoot is likely a social construct. The anecdotes really don't have anything at all, one way or the other, to do with my position. To rely so strongly on the unfalsifiable, such as anecdotes, is the hallmark of pseudoscience. 

 

If some decent hard evidence were to be put forth, I might change my position. But the current reports, or ten thousand more, are not going to budge my needle one bit. 

 

 

Edited June 23, 2017 by dmaker

[Martin]

I know you weren't asking me Hiflier but....

 

The number of reports from places that Bigfoot clearly doesn't exist leads me to believe that mass hallucination, mis-identfication and fabrication account for most reports. This combined with the lack of supporting evidence ( tracks, hair, photos and dna etc) point to a tragically flawed database controlled mostly by the BFRO. 

 

BTW....They guys here seem to be doing a good job sorting the reports and I enjoy the sorting that is posted from time to time.

 

 

 

[hiflier]

6 minutes ago, dmaker said:

But, more to your point. No, at this point I believe the reports and all the other evidence can be explained without the need for bigfoot to be real.  But, what does that have to do with the simple fact that anecdotes are not falsifiable? That fact cannot be changed by how I, or you, or anyone, feels about bigfoot's existence.

 

It only has to do with clarification of the definition of 'falsifiable' for those who are not clear on the point. It's why I worded my post the way I did. And thanks for speaking to that clarity.

[dmaker]

Thanks. I hope the point is firmly made. Any scientific claim has to falsifiable. It has to have the ability to be proven wrong, or it gets, rightfully, dismissed. It's the dragon in the garage thing. If I cannot prove your claim wrong, then that means that I cannot test it. If it cannot be tested, then what utility does it offer the scientific method? None.

 

That is not to say that it has no value at all. It could be used as an indicator of where to start looking for testable evidence, but in of itself, it is not something the scientific method can test. And in the absence of testable evidence, anecdotes should never be used to prop up a claim. That mistake is something that I see proponents, incorrectly, do very often. This is probably the most significant disconnect I see with proponents and science. That and the subsequent personal umbrage taken when anecdotes are dismissed as valid evidence of existence. 

 

The larger claim, bigfoot exists, is certainly testable. It has not, historically, held up well under scientific testing and scrutiny at this point. Any testable evidence has either disproven the original presumption (for example, this hair came from an unclassified primate), or yielded ambiguous, unprovable results. 

 

For those that believe bigfoot is, or may be, real, then the anecdotes have some value as, perhaps, indicators of where to look, or potential behavior patterns, etc. But that is a shaky foundation since there is no way to validate a single one out of the thousands. In other words, welcome to the snipe hunt.

 

But as scientific evidence, that which can be tested for truth, they hold no value at all.

 

 

Edited June 23, 2017 by dmaker