How Many Normal (Relatively) Intelligent, Adult, Witnesses Without A Prior Agenda Does It Take To Have Any Provative Weight Towards The Unknown?

[Guest DWA]

[A]t some point a preponderance of legitimate sightings by credible witnesses has to have some weight.

 

Just rereading this first post, I realized that your level of trust in someones word is probably highly influence by those you deal with and go through this life with, and in my case I have been blessed to have been associated with people whom I did and do trust, many with my life. If your life experience is different complete skepticism of everyone may be your modus operandi. My point is, I think you really can trust many  people, I guess.   

 

Coming back to this, to keep us on the OP and because it touches on what WSA just said.

 

We're a social animal.  Look at yourself, just out of the shower, and compare your environmental protection apparatus and weaponry to those of, say, an Amur tiger, and you know, immediately, that our sociability is the only reason we exist.  At some point, our ability to make sense out of our surroundings - not just by our own observation but by using the group as our eyes and ears and protection, in practically every matter of our lives - outstripped our physical evolution, because it was just flat being selected for hand over fist. 

 

It's put us, unfortunately, in a pretty dangerous situation.  Because a lot of us either don't get out much, or rely for much of what we know and think on folks who don't.  (Or do, and don't think about it beyond a certaint point.)  Such are the perils of our increasing specialization, and of science, the main driver of that specialization.  We've become so dependent on proof, and on looking like experts, and on blending in - even as individuality is seeing the greatest variety of outlets that it ever has - that we've forgotten that what got us into, and out of, caves was trusting information fed to the group by its members.

 

That failing is really failing us here.

 

When bigfoot researchers say "the witness's credibility and social standing appeared of the highest order," they're seen as overly credulous and trusting, when really they are exercising skills that became hard-wired in our species because they flat worked, to wit, the skills of assessing what can't be assessed except by what we have come to call - and underrate - as the "gut."

 

It's like we've cut off our antennae.  And replaced them with a set that only works when they want to work, not when we want them to.

 

That's the only metaphor I can come up with when I see people saying, more and more stridently and over and over:

 

This isn't real; if it were we would know; no one has any evidence; we don't trust anyone who has any evidence; so no one has any evidence...

 

So my answer to the OP is:

 

Used to be "one."  And if we'd needed much more, we never would have made it into caves.

Has anyone read this book?

 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Crowds-James-Surowiecki/dp/0385721706

 

I'm going to soon; and I think it may be directly relevant to this thread.  Its premise:  the experts frequently aren't the experts.

[dmaker]

 Sure DWA, great. But the problem is that people construct myths as well. Always have, always will. As a species we are terribly fond of tall tales. You seem unable to divorce myth  from reality simply because of some claim to a suppressed instinct to believe everything our fellow, noble man tells us?  It's lovely how you paint the Bigfoot phenomenon as a some maligned truth that just can't reach the light of day because of all of us mistrusting meanieheads. Because why? Because in the absence of any biological evidence whatsoever that some may actually start to doubt the existence of Bigfoot? Or that the myth itself is buckling under the weight of it's own gaudy construction? It's like some absurd Christmas tree. People keep pinning on their little artifice to the point that you have this tacky construct that can dimension hop, turn invisible, speak any language on the planet, and blast intrepid Bigfoot hunters with its mind. 

 

It's not that I distrust my fellow man on every single thing. I know that is your favorite demonizing tactic for skeptics.  We're all a bunch of close minded, fearful, mistrustful people. We wouldn't even eat candy from our Grandma's because we're so doubtful of our fellow man. Absurd! Complete and utter hog-wash!  

 

It's the complete lack of any concrete evidence for Bigfoot that makes me doubt Bigfoot. It's the ridiculousness of the myth that makes me doubt Bigfoot. I do not find the eye witness reports to reflect honesty in humanity simply because they were reported by our noble fellow humans. People lie all the time. People allow bias to stretch the truth all the time ( and if you think the BFRO is without bias then you are being purposefully blind to that fact). 

[Guest DWA]

Right.  ^^^And that's what I mean.

 

Sgt. Schultz.  Gotta admit, that was pretty good.

[Guest]

Saskeptic, do you place equal probabilities on all of your possible explanations?

Of course not.  For example, I find "lying about seeing bigfoot" vastly more likely than "seeing an actual bigfoot".  You should too.

[Guest DWA]

No we shouldn't.  Why?

 

Lying about seeing something you will be ridiculed for lying about saying you saw?  Likely?  Nope, no logical reason.  Sorry, that's how logic operates.

[image of Sgt. Schultz painting himself into a corner cannot be dislodged from mind]

[Guest]

No we shouldn't.  Why?

Because millions of people tell lies every day and no one has ever confirmed the tiniest scrap of a bigfoot?

[WSA]

Welcome back Dmaker. Sounds like a fantastic time, and I know the feeling.  I have no doubt you'll get back out West before too long,  time spent  in the backcountry can really blow the stink off a guy. 

[Guest DWA]

 

No we shouldn't.  Why?

Because millions of people tell lies every day and no one has ever confirmed the tiniest scrap of a bigfoot?

 

 

So, lying exists, and you are therefore a liar?

 

In logical terms, it's the exact same reasoning.

 

"No proof" is, again, the weakest sauce in this discussion.  You're not reading reports and thinking about them if you simply think those people are lying.  It's like WSA and I are always saying:  there is mental software involved in this analysis and it must be user-installed.

(edited because that **** WSA had to go injecting pleasantness into the conversation stream, and sometimes the fix ain't perfect as you see)

Edited June 14, 2013 by DWA

[WSA]

Then there is the "Bewitched" analysis....but I digress. 

 

You and me Saskeptic, are products of our training. You are trained to trust the empirical only, and I swim in the pool of motivations, nuances and proclivities of human nature. Empiricism is of limited use when you are trying to size up the credibility of a witness and all you have is their word to rely on. I think hyper-empiricism is not a very useful tool in vetting most Sasquatch evidence and it has a lot to do with the state of the investigation at this point. Now, if and when somebody brings you that Sasquatch molar, oh yeah, empiricism rules the day. But your ilk is not likely to locate that molar unless it drops at  his/her feet. Does your insistence on hard objective data keeps you from contributing any substantive discussion of ANY evidence? Seems so.

 

Then we have areas where empiricism is very well suited to getting at the truth. Namely, track data. This should be right in your wheelhouse, and I wouldn't have really the first thing of substance to contribute, except, yep, that is one honkin' big foot you got there. So, I'm all ears and eyes on that point. But then, when that evidence confronts you, we get a very weird result. Namely, we get nothing of substance, and the number of times me, DWA and others have pleaded with you and other experts here to take on things like Jeff Meldrum's analysis of the track data on a point by point basis, we've been met with a roaring silence.

 

We know this about ourselves, don't we? How to reconcile those views, how ? How to get you to contribute what is truly needed for this discussion, but which you routinely seem not inclined to every give. And why? You dance right outside the reach of the hard analysis of the evidence, like Ali doing a rope-a-dope. I mean, you don't have to engage, but you obviously will not.  

[Guest Llawgoch]

@Llawgoch:

I offered a scenario where I was asking that someone please provide a case where a hallucination lasted several hours for several people where they saw the same thing.

 

I would take that into serious consideration as an explanation for the particular encounter I am referring.

 

That would be 1 way to begin to disprove the encounter, no?

 

Not at all.  That's just a possibility.

 

We don't need any possibilities apart from 'people are making it up' to provide possible reasons these accounts are untrue.  Providing another, less likely, possibility disproves nothing.

^^^[crickets]...Cotter, I sense avoidance.

 

I'm sorry, being a skeptic, people keep telling me that I'm not supposed to spend  much time on here, so I don't.  I look in once a day or so and will answer questions when I can.  You however are here all the time and answer nothing.

 Because [crickets] bore me, let's play with this.  Scoffermarkers abound.

 

 

First, the hotheaded emotional words ("seized"). 

 

Second, you want me to "actually" tell you what could "hypothetically" be done.  Look, if you don't know how to prove that someone reporting x actually saw y, I'm not sure I can help you.  Safety tip, though:  "actually" prove that the person "actually" saw y.  Don't "hypothetically" do anything.  

 

Furthermore:  my satisfaction is not important.  I am not The Sasquatch Reality Board.  What did the person see?  Ascertain that.

 

It's a scoffermarker par ex when somebody gets all hypothetical and and sets one up as The Sasquatch Reality Board.  I am not the one you are arguing with.  Meldrum and Bindernagel are.  How would you convince them you are right?

 

Finally (yes, the word is "abound" when it takes longer than the post to ID all the scoffermarkers):  don't assess any points against someone for "failing" to answer an irrelevant question.  I have said just what you need to do.  Scoffers beg off when they are asked to actually do something.  Red flag that they haven't done their homework.

 

Come on.  I am not arguing with you.  But if you had an argument, I might.

 

 

My position in 99% of cases where they say they had a clear sight of a Bigfoot is that they are making it up.  In cases where they have fleeting glimpses of blobs, how am I supposed to know what they saw?  I wasn't there.  However, this isn't the point.

 

'To your satisfaction' is the point, because I am not trying to or not trying to establish the existence of Bigfoot.  I am trying to see what your position, where you claim all eyewitness reports must be disproved, actually means.  I understand people believing Bigfoot exists, what I can't abide is the illogicality and inconsistency of your arguments.

[Guest DWA]

You don't understand the evidence, that much is clear.  There are almost no questions here I haven't answered on that, and that's the purpose of being here.

 

And it does get tiresome hearing this "me-duna-unistan-yaEngish" response to cogent, consistent, logical arguments.

 

Oh.  I see I've already exceeded your time allotment.  Have a good day.

[Cotter]

@Llag:  You just choose to believe that 99% of the folks that have had clear sightings are making it up?  How did you come to that conclusion?  Additionally, that 1% that didn't make it up, well....there you have your bona fide sighting.

 

Of the 3 people that I've had an opportunity to sit down and discuss their sightings with.  1 of them had mis-ID'd a trout fisherman (yes, I was able to do diligent investigation to determine this, took some luck, I admit, but I got there), 1 of them didn't even want to discuss it with me b/c of the amount of ridicule he had suffered after the sighting originally (why would he make this up, so he can be ridiculed?), the last person, after his sighting spent large amounts of time and money to try and convince the BLM and Fish and Game of their existence, then eventually gave up.

 

The latter 2 were clear sightings within 100 feet, the first about 125 yards.  In my examples, why do you think someone would make these up?

[Guest DWA]

Then there is the "Bewitched" analysis....but I digress. 

 

You and me Saskeptic, are products of our training. You are trained to trust the empirical only, and I swim in the pool of motivations, nuances and proclivities of human nature. Empiricism is of limited use when you are trying to size up the credibility of a witness and all you have is their word to rely on. I think hyper-empiricism is not a very useful tool in vetting most Sasquatch evidence and it has a lot to do with the state of the investigation at this point. Now, if and when somebody brings you that Sasquatch molar, oh yeah, empiricism rules the day. But your ilk is not likely to locate that molar unless it drops at  his/her feet. Does your insistence on hard objective data keeps you from contributing any substantive discussion of ANY evidence? Seems so.

 

Then we have areas where empiricism is very well suited to getting at the truth. Namely, track data. This should be right in your wheelhouse, and I wouldn't have really the first thing of substance to contribute, except, yep, that is one honkin' big foot you got there. So, I'm all ears and eyes on that point. But then, when that evidence confronts you, we get a very weird result. Namely, we get nothing of substance, and the number of times me, DWA and others have pleaded with you and other experts here to take on things like Jeff Meldrum's analysis of the track data on a point by point basis, we've been met with a roaring silence.

 

We know this about ourselves, don't we? How to reconcile those views, how ? How to get you to contribute what is truly needed for this discussion, but which you routinely seem not inclined to every give. And why? You dance right outside the reach of the hard analysis of the evidence, like Ali doing a rope-a-dope. I mean, you don't have to engage, but you obviously will not.  

NO.  FREAKIN'.  KIDDING.

 

It will forever be beyond me that thousands of people know the bigfoot skeptics are wrong; scientists making clear and cogent use of science show them they aren't coming to grips with the evidence; and we slice them and dice them every which way...

 

...and still (and still) [AND STILL!!!!!!!!!!!] nothing but...WSA, you said it.

 

Sgt. Schultz, report for duty!

 

If Saskeptic is really as immersed in the evidence as he claims....well, I can only say I am not personally aware of a more significant waste of time.

[Guest]

Empiricism is of limited use when you are trying to size up the credibility of a witness and all you have is their word to rely on.

 

But I'm not using empiricism to assess the credibility of any one alleged witness.  I can't, for the reasons you explain.  In contrast, I absolutely do find many alleged witness encounters highly compelling.  They are what informs my opinion of what a thing like a bigfoot could be, more so than any other part of bigfootery.  I remain interested in the phenomenon precisely because of the anecdotal accounts. 

 

But your ilk is not likely to locate that molar unless it drops at  his/her feet.

 

Why do you think that?  Are you somehow unaware of the fields of paleontology and archaeology?  You do realize that there are people whose entire careers are built on the identification of bone fragments dug from sediments, right?  Perhaps you also don't realize that the number one thing I do when I have a chance to go "squatching" myself is scour streambeds for bones.

 

 

Does your insistence on hard objective data keeps you from contributing any substantive discussion of ANY evidence? Seems so.

 

Hardly.  I've been here for years participating in discussions of anecdotal accounts, footprints, videos, audio files, photographs, elk lays, mangy bears, bigfoots in freezers, DNA, fossil hominids, wildlife discoveries, peer review, a certain piece of film from Bluff Creek, CA . . . Do you actually think that you and DWA are introducing material here that I haven't already hashed over with those who came before you?  Look up "Huntster" in the canon of bigfootery on the Internet.  You guys are junior varsity in comparison.

 

 . . . But then, when that evidence confronts you, we get a very weird result. Namely, we get nothing of substance, and the number of times me, DWA and others have pleaded with you and other experts here to take on things like Jeff Meldrum's analysis of the track data on a point by point basis, we've been met with a roaring silence.

 

What "number of times" have you "pleaded" with me to provide such an analysis?  Good Lord, have you any idea how many pages I've written here about things like Fahrenbach's "track distribution analysis"?  It's pretty rich for you with less than 400 posts to presume to know the contents of my more than 4,000.

 

If you want to start a footprint thread, go for it.  Here's a primer:  We know that people have often hoaxed bigfoot prints.  We know that Meldrum includes some known hoaxed prints in his database.  We know that a lynchpin of his ichnotaxon paper were prints from . . . wait for it . . . Patty in the PGF.  We know that Meldrum himself is not quite so confident in his analysis of those prints that he's even attempted a legitimate publication.  We know that no matter how knowledgeable he is in the area of primate foot anatomy and evolution (and I'm not even junior varsity in comparison), he is still capable of being wrong.  So sure, start a new footprint thread. 

 

We know this about ourselves, don't we? How to reconcile those views, how ? How to get you to contribute what is truly needed for this discussion, but which you routinely seem not inclined to every give. And why? You dance right outside the reach of the hard analysis of the evidence, like Ali doing a rope-a-dope. I mean, you don't have to engage, but you obviously will not.  

 

I can't tell if you're baiting me or you don't read my posts or you're just really obtuse. 

Edited June 14, 2013 by Saskeptic

[Guest Llawgoch]

@Llag:  You just choose to believe that 99% of the folks that have had clear sightings are making it up?  How did you come to that conclusion?  Additionally, that 1% that didn't make it up, well....there you have your bona fide sighting.

 

Of the 3 people that I've had an opportunity to sit down and discuss their sightings with.  1 of them had mis-ID'd a trout fisherman (yes, I was able to do diligent investigation to determine this, took some luck, I admit, but I got there), 1 of them didn't even want to discuss it with me b/c of the amount of ridicule he had suffered after the sighting originally (why would he make this up, so he can be ridiculed?), the last person, after his sighting spent large amounts of time and money to try and convince the BLM and Fish and Game of their existence, then eventually gave up.

 

The latter 2 were clear sightings within 100 feet, the first about 125 yards.  In my examples, why do you think someone would make these up?

 

Without knowing the people or the circumstances of the encounter it is impossible to say.  What is clear is that people do makes things up (or convince themselves of them).

 

If you have met those people and formed the impressions that they are honest and reliable, I can see how that would colour your view.  I however have not met them.  I have said before that knowing one person you trust who has told you that they have no doubt they have seen a Bigfoot is a good reason to keep your options open on it.  Hundreds of anonymous accounts on the internet, not so.

You don't understand the evidence, that much is clear.  There are almost no questions here I haven't answered on that, and that's the purpose of being here.

 

And it does get tiresome hearing this "me-duna-unistan-yaEngish" response to cogent, consistent, logical arguments.

 

Oh.  I see I've already exceeded your time allotment.  Have a good day.

 

 I understand what you say.  You say the same thing often enough, usually in response to questions that don't ask about it.   You haven't answered the question of what can be done to disprove eyewitness accounts that took place in secluded areas and left no evidence.  Please do, then I'll stop asking.

Edited June 14, 2013 by Llawgoch