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

[Guest DWA]

Back to the OP:

 

We have

 

(a) all of these sightings; all of these footprints, for which a maker squaring pretty well with the animal people are seeing has been pretty much mathematically calculated by people with directly relevant expertise; and other evidence reported under compelling circumstances, pretty much every kind that an animal can leave.  (And don't give me the Catch-22 of "scientists whose position on the issue can't be taken seriously don't accept it.")

 

Against that we have:

 

( Thousands of people doing something pretty much none of us would do, for motivations that elude most of us?  And doing it all over the continent ...but only in places that ecologists, wildlife biologists and primatologists would consider likely?  Never mind the multi-millions of expertise that are not enough to produce all those super-convincing suits and prints.  If you think that's happening:  take Econ 101.  It's not.

 

Got it.  I pick (.

 

Well:  if one doesn't know much about how the world works, one might.   

(not edited, because the smart-aleck faces next to the silly presumptions were much better than parenthesis-b-parenthesis)

[Cotter]

There ya go again....wrong... I've never seen a Bigfoot....heard some cool stuff but no sighting yet...trying but nothing so far!

 

I'm sorry Cervelo, weekend hiking on groomed trails for a handful of days a year does not qualify as time served.

 

Perhaps I'm wrong and you can take a minute to share your expedition experiences, tactics used, and resources utilized.

[Guest]

. For all of your "oologies" you will always divert others' attention from the one thing  for which you don't have anything close to an adequate explanation.

Why do you fail to acknowledge all the times that I've written that I do not have an explanation for anecdotal accounts?  Can you only engage in these discussions if you make some sort of fictional me and then attempt to skewer it for positions I do not hold?

 

Here's an exercise for you:  Go pick an anecdotal account from the BFRO database and reproduce it here.  Then ask me to explain it.  I can almost guarantee that my response will be along the lines of "I do not know how to explain the account."  If you would like me to provide an itemized list of the competing potential explanations for the account, I can almost guarantee that I will include "saw a real bigfoot" somewhere on that list.  I've done that many times before because I think it's the most appropriate response to an anecdotal report. 

Back to the OP:

Not a single assumption in that post, no sir . . .

[Guest DWA]

...and none underlying anything you're thinking either, he agreed (naively).

[Guest Cervelo]

There ya go again....wrong... I've never seen a Bigfoot....heard some cool stuff but no sighting yet...trying but nothing so far!

I'm sorry Cervelo, weekend hiking on groomed trails for a handful of days a year does not qualify as time served.

Perhaps I'm wrong and you can take a minute to share your expedition experiences, tactics used, and resources utilized.

Really the "woodsman resume" call out your starting to remind me of the TJ and Tracker.

Pound sand my friend

[Guest]

Your attention please for a moment.

 

#1  There have been around a dozen or so posts deleted from this thread this evening,   

 

#2 The back and forth bickering, and personal comments, need to end.. now.

 

#3 If you see a comment made by another poster that you believe breaks forum rules, please report it so that a staff member can deal with it.

 

DO NOT quote it, and respond to it in kind... !

 

The re-posting and quoting of posts that you know are in violation of forum rules is unacceptable. 

 

#4   I'm asking you guy's nicely, to please respect the forum rules.  It seems like we're starting to go through these episodes on a fairly regular basis these days.

We clear things up, and everyone acknowledges that they know / understand what's going on is unacceptable, and yet it keeps happening again and again...

 

It really needs to end.

 

 

Thanks

 

Art

[WSA]

Saskeptic: Good. You've been chary about giving us any insight into how this realization works on you as a man of science, and that has been my point. This is why I am still here, still discussing this. I take you for a very intelligent person with an extreme depth on knowledge and understanding of the natural world, but how this "does not compute" evidence is reconciled by you and others of your training, or not, is THE most intriguing thing to me. Really, the only intriguing thing I find here as someone who can't claim to have had a bona fide encounter. It puts a lie to all the intriguing measurements, data, "ologoies", rationalizations and assorted "truths" that those who might be called opponents of the hypothetical advance in support of their position.

 

Does the hallucination/folk myth/hoax explanation for all of these reports cut it for you?  Really, that is all I've ever wanted to discuss here. Agendas aside, posturing aside, training and scientific methods aside too. This is one of the greatest unexplained bodies of evidence in the modern world, and I don't think I exaggerate this one little bit. I'm not baiting anyone on this point. I really want to know, and I want us to come together and see if we can just acknowledge this, and agree we are all not nearly as smart as we all might think we are. At least I'm not. Anyone who wants to join me in my confounded ignorance is more than welcome.

[dmaker]

^^ I realize you posed the question to Saskeptic, so not answering for anyone but myself here, but yes I quite firmly believe that all the evidence can be explained by one thing: man. We are making up the stories. We are creating the evidence either deliberately through hoaxing and lying, or mistakenly through misidentifying a common animal or through hallucination, etc. One can assign whatever percentages you want to each of those contributors, but it matters little in the end. In the end we still have no Bigfoot. Never have. Nothing exists that we can pickup and say this came from a Bigfoot-- Alas, poor Squatchy, I knew him well. 

 

And it is precisely this that causes my rift with folks like you and DWA. You two, in particular being the most vocal on this point here, feel that the eye witness reports are saying something else. My personal opinion is that you guys place way too much importance on a bunch of anonymous reports while disdaining the rest of us that don't do the same.  When we examine the same evidence as you two examine and fail to arrive at your conclusion,  we get accused of either not examining it properly or being dishonest or dysfunctional for not arriving at the same conclusion that you two did. And then, ironically, we are called closed minded and summarily dismissed.

 

What I think you really want WSA is stated quite clearly in your post: "I want us to come together and see if we can just acknowledge this, and agree we are all not nearly as smart as we all might think we are..."  You want everyone to think like you and DWA do. You want everyone to be as impressed and compelled by the eye witness reports and other dubious evidence to date and launch a crusade to find Bigfoot. The problem is in my opinion, and I think many others, the evidence is not a good enough casus belli.   

Edited June 19, 2013 by dmaker

[Guest DWA]

That it doesn't strike you in the slightest what an unusual proposition it is that all this adds up to a false positive - and that you don't address the arguments of scientists who disagree with you - is telling.  That's what we're telling you.

 

It's easy to address the mainstream's "arguments."  I can do it very quickly in fact, as they show no engagement with the evidence.  It's like me saying, moon landings, FAKE, and not saying why I think that.

 

There is no more rational approach to take - to anything - than:

 

Here's what the scientists applying their knowledge to the evidence say.

 

Until you show me why I shouldn't think this:

 

Them over you.

[dmaker]

I find it a bit funny that you denounce hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists daily here. Quite vocally in fact. Yet on this one subject (at least) you allow a tiny number of scientists with no consensus, peer review or support to make up your mind for you.  

Edited June 19, 2013 by dmaker

[Guest DWA]

How many hundreds of times do I have to say this?

 

All those hundreds, thousands of scientists need to do one thing to get me to respect what they say.

 

And that's:  give an explanation of how all this is happening that passes muster, and that I can't just pass water on.

 

Until then:  I'm going with the people who are actually addressing it.  The others deserve my disrespect.  Because they forget how science works.  Not good, if you're a scientist.

 

What is "peer review" when the peers all do the Three Monkey routine?  Hmmm?

I have to add the need to tell some people that if you are going to make up your mind for yourself, information is required, otherwise you're just running with scissors.

 

I made up my own bad mind my own bad self...and found scientists agreeing with me.  When that happens...bet it.

 

I do sense your frustration, though.

[Guest Cervelo]

How's that been working for ya?

Until ya got monkey or significant part I'm afraid it will countinue to get the attention the evidence warrants.....which is kinda self evident....to most.

[Guest]

Saskeptic: Good. You've been chary about giving us any insight into how this realization works on you as a man of science, and that has been my point.

 

Really?  From my perspective, I've been blatantly transparent about how this man of science approaches the purported evidence.  I've repeatedly responded to you that I find the anecdotal accounts fascinating, that they inform my ideas about what a hypothetical bigfoot might be and do, but that we cannot do more than that with them because they are anecdotal.  Anyone else here sick and tired of me writing this?

 

 . . .  but how this "does not compute" evidence is reconciled by you and others of your training, or not, is THE most intriguing thing to me.

 

That's nice, but it seems like you still don't get it when you make statements like this.  Anecdotal accounts are not "does not" compute evidence, they are "can not" compute evidence.  Perhaps if you meditate on the difference a bit you will come to understand me better.

 

 It puts a lie to all the intriguing measurements, data, "ologoies", rationalizations and assorted "truths" that those who might be called opponents of the hypothetical advance in support of their position.

I'm sorry, but i don't know what you mean by this statement.

 

Does the hallucination/folk myth/hoax explanation for all of these reports cut it for you?

The reason we have "bigfoot" is that folk beliefs in wildmen, apemen, etc. are widespread in cultures from all over the world.  It is folklore, but it might ultimately have had its origin in real encounters with real creatures/people.  We know that creatures existed in the past - and we have multiple candidates - that might fit descriptions of some of these folkloric creatures.  The question is, might some creature fitting a "bigfoot" description be extant today?  Right now, the lack of physical remains (recent or even recent fossil) suggests "no".  But the thing that persists is that people keep claiming to see them, so what's going on? This is what fascinates me about the bigfoot phenomenon, more than anything else.  From the anecdotal data, we can't know what's going on, we can only offer speculations like the following:

 

1) Real bigfoots could be cavorting out in the North American woods, right now.  They're out there, it's all true, and for reasons inexplicable to me, we've just never had the opportunity to prove so by collecting a piece of one.

 

2) People are telling fabricated stories as a means to participate in and perpetuate the folktales.  I think the best example of this is the Albert Ostman/Muchulat Harry stories from the early 1900s.  I have no way to prove that these were fabricated stories, of course, and many people find them quite compelling.  To me they are classic, spine-tingling campfire tales.  Today, the folktales can either take the form of wild stories of habituations or matter-of-fact encounters reported to bigfoot researchers.  With our 21st Century sensibilities, a "mundane" story is far more credible than a yarn spun for entertainment value.  

 

3) People misidentify things they've seen in the field and interpret them as bigfoot.  This doesn't have to happen very often to be really effective in spreading belief in bigfoot, because the witnesses are NOT lying and are fully convinced of what they saw.  This doesn't mean that they saw what they thought they saw, and we have abundant information that sane, rational, sober, smart, alert people misidentify things all the time.  I listed for you the other day a number of species that we know have been mistaken for bigfoot, from other humans to owls.

 

4) People can and do don gorilla suits and go off in the woods to prank other people. Again, a witness to an event like this is really compelling as a truthful person, with no interest in "gaining" anything from sharing the encounter, and perhaps really disturbed by it.

 

5) Some people might experience impairments amounting to some kind of hallucination they they are, again, 100% convinced was an actual interaction with an actual bigfoot.   

 

Under #3 - 5 of the above possibilities, you can have completely sane, rational, intelligent, etc., people who will passionately and earnestly tell you that they saw a bigfoot.  This in itself will perpetuate widespread belief in bigfoot because one of the most important ways people come to accept bigfoot as real is through a conversation with someone they really trust who claims an encounter.  The witness is being 100% honest, but still no actual bigfoot was seen.

 

In my opinion, #2 is also hugely important when it comes to filling in a database with lots and lots of anecdotal accounts. 

 

Lastly #1 could be true too, but it does not have to be true to explain the great many anecdotal accounts.  Human nature, human culture, and human experience being what it is, we can have a database of hundreds of bigfoot encounters without a single bigfoot at the root of any one of the stories.

 

Here's the important part:  but we cannot know for sure because the reports are anecdotal.

 

 

I really want to know, and I want us to come together and see if we can just acknowledge this, and agree we are all not nearly as smart as we all might think we are.

dmaker nailed it.  You seem to be incapable of accepting others' interpretations of what you consider to be robust evidence.

[Guest LarryP]

 

3) People misidentify things they've seen in the field and interpret them as bigfoot. This doesn't have to happen very often to be really effective in spreading belief in bigfoot, because the witnesses are NOT lying and are fully convinced of what they saw. This doesn't mean that they saw what they thought they saw, and we have abundant information that sane, rational, sober, smart, alert people misidentify things all the time. I listed for you the other day a number of species that we know have been mistaken for bigfoot, from other humans to owls.

 

 

What happenned to the "They actually saw a Bigfoot" possibility you stated yesterday?

[Drew]

Epic.