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

[Guest DWA]

 

 

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?

 

Sober, intelligent people don't interpret owls - or anything in North America, of any kind - as a giant bipedal primate.

 

If that is being done there is only one bin in which to place these people.

 

They are fools.

 

They just don't sound like fools to me.

 

It does seem an important bigfoot-skeptic tactic to say of these fools:  these fools are sober, intelligent people!

 

No they aren't.  If they are driving or handling weapons - a lot of accounts there - they are a danger to everything about them.

Edited June 19, 2013 by DWA

[Guest]

dmaker -

 

Doing it with today's equipment isn't good enough.  You have to figure out how to replicate it precisely with what was available when the film was made Oct 20, 1967.   You have to account for fooling Bob Gimlin since he wasn't in on any hoax.  You have to figure out how the hoaxers knew where Bob and Roger would be and how they got set up ahead of them.   You have to find someone able to do that, yet dumb enough to risk Bob's rifle.  That's my yardstick for acceptance of any "proof" of a hoax.

 

MIB

 

In your opinion.

[Guest DWA]

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.

"We need proof before we search for evidence."

 

Yeah, that sounds like an approach.  That approach wouldn't have gotten us into caves, much less out of them.

 

But that is self-evident.

 

To most...

[Guest]

I bet he's already tried that...and knowing what I know about that agency, I wouldn't either.  "Waste of time" is spelled numerous different ways.  Texas Parks and Wildlife knows what is in Texas, and knows that this will never change.

 

IMO there is no such thing as BF and if there was, there is no way BF exists in Texas. And I don't like cupcakes.

[Guest DWA]

 

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?

 

Science has demonstrated - time and time again - what you do with anecdotal evidence.  Anyone sick and tired of me writing that...?

 

 . . .  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.

 

Meditation over.  So.  Why do people think one can do nothing with evidence the worth of which has been demonstrated times beyond counting?

 

 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.

 

It means:  I'm taking thousands of apparently sober eyewitnesses over people who seemingly never tire of (1) ways to call them fools or (2) sitting on their hands.

 

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. 

 

Prove that.  Not that the folk beliefs exist, but that nowhere do they describe real animals that science doesn't know about yet.  And no this is not "proving a negative."  If the animals exist it is because they do.

 

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.

 

Um, they're not that hard for me to figure out.  It's all explainable, and the explanations make sense.  (The big one:  that's not a piece of a bigfoot!  [toss])

 

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.  

 

I doubt people are lying to experience the fun of being made fun of.  I'm skeptical of explanations like that.

 

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.

 

Not like this, they don't.  If I ran to a police car, lights flashing, started pounding on the windows and yelling I WANT ICE CREAM until the cops stepped out and cuffed me, think I could get off with "I thought you were an ice cream truck!  What?"  THAT kind of sober, smart and alert is what we are talking about if these people are wrong.

 

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.

 

I'm skeptical of any 'explanation' that says any of us are going to see a person in a suit and think anything but.   That is, the sober, smart and alert among us.

 

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.   

 

That would have to be pretty much all of them.   Unless they're all lying so they can be made fun of. 

 

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.

 

Not the real world that most of us interact with every day.  In that world, the people you really trust tend not to be fools.

 

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.

 

We could.  How much would you bet on that?  At its heart science is about how to bet.

 

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

 

And there are ways to find out.  Why not employ them?  Adopting a stonewall-negative slant on any efforts to do so ain't helping.  Which is the heart of WSA's point.  Why not actually bring your training to bear on search protocols (speaking of something we were talking about seemingly a year ago)?

 

 

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.

 

When the interpretations aren't backed by an explanation a scientist would buy about how they are happening - i.e., backed with evidence sufficient to throw all evidence into serious doubt - why accept them?  The scientists applying their training to this sure don't. 

 

 

I bet he's already tried that...and knowing what I know about that agency, I wouldn't either.  "Waste of time" is spelled numerous different ways.  Texas Parks and Wildlife knows what is in Texas, and knows that this will never change.

 

IMO there is no such thing as BF and if there was, there is no way BF exists in Texas. And I don't like cupcakes.

 

My people over you.  My people say yes BF does, and they have a lot of evidence backing them up.  Simple as that.

 

I don't think this 'belief' thing is working for you on either end of the spectrum.

[Guest]

 

My people over you.  My people say yes BF does, and they have a lot of evidence backing them up.  Simple as that.

 

 

I don't think this 'belief' thing is working for you on either end of the spectrum.

 

 

I disagree. You don't have any more info on the BF mystery than I do. The difference is, I became a skeptic after many years as a believer (oh the shame of admitting that again). I, unlike you, no longer believe people are seeing BF because I'm pretty darn confident that BF does not exist. You can go round and round with circular arguments all day, but you have not moved your cause forward one inch. And I personally don't care if you want to bathe yourself in eyewitness accounts, but they say more about the nature of people than they do about BF. People lie, especially on the Internet. People lie pretty easy online, and about a lot more than apparent BF encounters. I'd wager that if you took a good look at the history of BF encounters, you would see an evolution of the characteristics people throw into their stories. There is a heck of a lot more wood knocking and rock throwing then there used to be, and a lot less smell. 

 

And someone mentioned earlier about field work. That is a load of bunk. If BF existed as people claim it does, some large, breeding, travelling, eating, hairy bipedal primate, living on the edges of our civilization...BF fieldwork would not be a requirement to get a photo or piece of video. I never spent much time doing BF 'fieldwork' when I was a proponent, but I'll bet I spend more time in the backcountry than 99% of the people who claim to be looking for BF...and I have never seen squat...nor have any of my backcountry companions...and we're not just rolling along logging roads like most so called 'experienced hunters' do. And I have a cousin who is a hunting guide in BC, in prime BF habitat (if it existed) and he spends his days looking for all manner of animal sign, glassing valleys, travelling of horse and on foot, sleeping on ridges...and he has never seen squat, nor have any of his guiding compatriots. And he isn't only out there during hunting season either.

 

Sure neither of these examples will mean squat to a proponent. But to me, they speak volumes. Especially when added to the additional long list for reasons I have to know BF is a myth. And I will be out there again tonight, although admittedly on logging roads looking for photo ops...but I won't see BF, but maybe a bear or two...er..because they exist, and I saw one last night.

 

Peace

Edited June 19, 2013 by summitwalker

[Guest DWA]

Well, actually, I don't think I'm making the circular arguments.

 

As an example of what I am seeing here, this is my game plan for haunting UFO sites.  These are the posts.

 

"So.  All these objects and no aliens yet?  That is because there are all kinds of causes for funny lights in the sky."

 

"So.  All this waiting for Alien Astronauts getting old for you yet?"

 

"Do you guys ever get tired of your obvious misinterpretations of aircraft; fireworks; birds; etc.?"
 

"How long are you gonna wait for one of these lights to ask you to take it to your leader LOL?"

 

"Long time to be looking at funny lights in the sky and no aliens yet, eh?"

 

"SCIENCE.  FICTION.  Which of those two words do you not get?"

 

I think I could only recycle that list once or twice, though, on one UFO site, before I got tired of it.

 

But some people here have truly incredible stamina...and others of us have something interesting to talk about.

[dmaker]

 

 

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?

 

I believe that was 1) Larry

[Guest]

Well, actually, I don't think I'm making the circular arguments.

 

As an example of what I am seeing here, this is my game plan for haunting UFO sites.  These are the posts.

 

"So.  All these objects and no aliens yet?  That is because there are all kinds of causes for funny lights in the sky."

 

"So.  All this waiting for Alien Astronauts getting old for you yet?"

 

"Do you guys ever get tired of your obvious misinterpretations of aircraft; fireworks; birds; etc.?"

 

"How long are you gonna wait for one of these lights to ask you to take it to your leader LOL?"

 

"Long time to be looking at funny lights in the sky and no aliens yet, eh?"

 

"SCIENCE.  FICTION.  Which of those two words do you not get?"

 

I think I could only recycle that list once or twice, though, on one UFO site, before I got tired of it.

 

But some people here have truly incredible stamina...and others of us have something interesting to talk about.

 

On the UFO thing, I am not so skeptical...because I have seen something and I am convinced I cannot explain what it was.  I suppose, you could say, this is hypocritical because it is an eyewitness account and I should be held to the same standard as I hold anyone who claims to see BF...and you'd be right to say so. But hey, I never said my position was perfect or unassailable.

 

And I should also mention, that the cousin I referred to above, does in fact claim to have seen BF, but in his teens and before his adult career as a hunting guide (hunting near Hedley BC). I never said he did not believe in BF, only that as a guide he hasn't seen anything and it is his interest in the BF mystery that makes him look for sign, and ask around among the people he associates with in his field.

 

Peace

Edited June 19, 2013 by summitwalker

[Guest DWA]

Well I might hold out the possibility that my cousin's right, were I you.

[Guest]

Well I might hold out the possibility that my cousin's right, were I you.

 

Sure, we have discussed it often. He knows of my interest but he doesn't know I have become a skeptic. He is quite adamant about what they saw (he was with another), and when he retells the story, of course I have to reconsider my stance...especially because we are close and I doubt very much he would lie to me, or shy away from telling me he was not telling me true after all this time.

[Cotter]

@Sask:

 

You said: "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."

 

THIS is where my proponent-ness comes from (is that even a word?).

 

There is no way, no how there were 2 people mis-ID'ing an animal for several hours at close range.  THEN, continuing to mis-IDing said animal after it stood up on 2 feet, and walked across an opening in front of them in daylight.  These men were both armed, and could have dispatched the animal, they chose not to.

 

I've asked before for someone to please provide an example of a multiple hour, multiple person, IDENTICAL hallucination.  Maybe it happens, I don't know, hence I've asked for some sort of account of this occurring.

 

You have a great argument, and I agree with 99% of it, I however think that the 1% I disagree with you on is where you are mistaken. 

 

@dmaker - do anecdotal accounts gain any weight when they are NOT anonymous?

[Guest]

 

Well I might hold out the possibility that my cousin's right, were I you.

 

Sure, we have discussed it often. He knows of my interest but he doesn't know I have become a skeptic. He is quite adamant about what they saw (he was with another), and when he retells the story, of course I have to reconsider my stance...especially because we are close and I doubt very much he would lie to me, or shy away from telling me he was not telling me true after all this time.

 

 

My cousin's experience aside. One of the problems I have with eye witness accounts stems from experience. Back in my BF interest peak, I had a friend of a friend approach me because he knew of my interest. He had a story he wanted to relay to me so I listened. Without remembering all the details, he was out with friends for a weekend on what he referred to as a 'bushwhacking' weekend. Their thing was to drive out to the bush on some logging road and randomly park their vehicle, put on their packs, and just plow through the bush and find a place to set up camp for the weekend (actually sounds like a decent way to spend a weekend...but I digress). His claim was they saw what they thought was BF. At the time he seemed very detailed in his recounting of the experience. At that time I had been in communication with an actual BF researcher who was living in Calgary at the time (I have seen him post here), so I asked if I could relay the story and pass on their contact info because said investigator may be interested in contacting them. With their approval I did just that. Problem was, when they were contacted they totally denied the story and pretended to not know what the guy was referring too. When I found this out, well of course I looked like a chump (even bigger than I am today). When I asked them why they had done so they again denied the story to me, all the while having been totally passionate and convincing of the story in the first place. Go figure.

[dmaker]

@dmaker - do anecdotal accounts gain any weight when they are NOT anonymous?

Technically speaking, no. They may resonate with the listener as true more often, but that does not change it into scientific evidence that can be used to prove something.

 

If a report includes the identity of the witness, that report would have more value in the sense that it can be followed up on with interviews, and the sighting location can be examined, etc.  But in the end it is still just an anecdotal report. 

Edited June 19, 2013 by dmaker

[Guest]

 

 

Science has demonstrated - time and time again - what you do with anecdotal evidence. 

 

I know.  Most recently, that was me (on behalf of "science") explaining yet again what we can do with anecdotal accounts. 

 

 

 

Meditation over.  So.  Why do people think one can do nothing with evidence the worth of which has been demonstrated times beyond counting?

 

There you go again.  It's that you can do "nothing" with anecdotal evidence, it's that there are limits to what one can do with it.  Here's an example of something we can do with a pattern of what sound like compelling bigfoot reports:  go look for bigfoots in the mountains of southeastern Oklahoma.  Okay, let's try that.  (Oh yeah . . . ) 

 

Here's something we can't do with anecdotal accounts because there are competing explanations for every single one of them: publish the definitive paper that describes "bigfoot" as a species new to science.

 

So unless and until we have a piece of a bigfoot . . .

 

It means:  I'm taking thousands of apparently sober eyewitnesses over people who seemingly never tire of (1) ways to call them fools or (2) sitting on their hands.

 

Um, you're the one who seems to be calling alleged eyewitnesses fools here.  I'm not sure why, though.

 

 

 

Prove that.  Not that the folk beliefs exist, but that nowhere do they describe real animals that science doesn't know about yet.  And no this is not "proving a negative."  If the animals exist it is because they do.

 

Do you see that my VERY NEXT SENTENCE (actually, my next THREE sentences) alludes to the possibility of folklore with an origin in real bigfoots?  If you do see that, then you are trolling, plain and simple.  If you don't see that, then please look again and read my posts more carefully in the future.

 

(1) It is folklore, but it might ultimately have had its origin in real encounters with real creatures/people.  (2) We know that creatures existed in the past - and we have multiple candidates - that might fit descriptions of some of these folkloric creatures.  (3) The question is, might some creature fitting a "bigfoot" description be extant today?

 

 

I doubt people are lying to experience the fun of being made fun of.  I'm skeptical of explanations like that.

 

Why do you assume that people participate in spinning folkloric yarns so that they can be ridiculed?  Yes, some people might ridicule them, but other people will laud them.  It's simply a matter of what group of people you'd like to court.  Why do you assume that the laud isn't worth the ridicule?  Case in point, count the number of people here on the BFF who've commented that they think Ostman concocted his story whole cloth and the number of people who've indicated that his is one of the "best" or "most believable" encounters.  We even had a thread on this a while back with a poll so you can get some real numbers if you like.  For every naysayer like me, there are plenty of other folks with no doubt about the veracity of Ostman's story.

 

Or take someone reporting a more mundane encounter, like witness to a bigfoot road crossing.  What would anyone who wasn't there and didn't have the experience have to "make fun of" the witness about?  I might not believe based on the story that the witness saw an actual bigfoot, but there's nothing to ridicule the witness about for what s/he's convinced s/he saw.  On the flipside, our witness gains stature in the bigfoot community, graduating to "knower" status, which is the source of much admiration around here as you might have noticed.

 

3) People misidentify  . . .

 

Not like this, they don't.  If I ran to a police car, lights flashing, started pounding on the windows and yelling I WANT ICE CREAM until the cops stepped out and cuffed me, think I could get off with "I thought you were an ice cream truck!  What?"  THAT kind of sober, smart and alert is what we are talking about if these people are wrong.

 

What are you talking about?  I didn't write anything about police cars and ice cream trucks.  I'm talking about legitimate misidentifcations.  We know about some of them; for others, we'll never know.  For example, from Coltman and Davis (2008):

 

"In July 2005, nine residents of Teslin, Yukon, witnessed through a kitchen window a large bipedal animal moving through the brush. The next morning, they collected a tuft of coarse, dark hair and also observed a footprint measuring 43 cm in length and 11.5 cm in width."

 

NINE people saw a big, hairy animal they were convinced was bipedal.  They found a 17" footprint and collected what they were convinced was a tuft of hair from the beast.   The result of DNA analysis on the hair?

 

"The top 58 matches were from B. bison, all with 99–100% sequence identity."

 

So nine people mistook a bison for a bigfoot.

 

 

I'm skeptical of any 'explanation' that says any of us are going to see a person in a suit and think anything but.   That is, the sober, smart and alert among us.

 

Right, I keep forgetting that you're a "skeptic".  Are you saying that all the folks here who think "Patty" was a real bigfoot are neither sober, nor smart, nor alert?

 

 

 

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.   

 

That would have to be pretty much all of them.   Unless they're all lying so they can be made fun of. 

 

So you're unwilling to consider that misidentification, lying, or hoaxing play any role in the accumulation of anecdotal accounts, I'm willing to consider that real bigfoots could be the source of some of the accounts, and you accuse me of being closed-minded?   Got it.

 

 

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.

 

Not the real world that most of us interact with every day.  In that world, the people you really trust tend not to be fools.

 

Since when is someone a "fool" for misidentifying something out in the woods?  You don't have to be a fool, just a human to commit such an error.

 

 

We could.  How much would you bet on that? 

I have already bet my limit on bigfoot:  I'm in for a trip to Palmer, Alaska and a prime rib dinner should a real bigfoot show up in my lifetime.

 

 

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

 

And there are ways to find out. 

Really, Perry Mason?  Do tell. 

 

There is no way, no how there were 2 people mis-ID'ing an animal for several hours at close range.   . . .

Again, this doesn't sound at all like a hallucination, Cotter.

 

I assume that you are just as "no way, no how" convinced that the witnesses weren't lying about this encounter, that you're equally convinced they weren't hoaxed, that you're equally convinced they didn't mistake a human (say a hunter in a ghillie suit), etc. When you eliminate all those other possibilities, you are left with the inevitable conclusion:  bigfoot is real.  The problem is that those other possibilities might be eliminated to your satisfaction, but not to mine.  So we're back to what sounds like a cool story, with no way to know for sure what (if anything) these witnesses experienced with a piece of the thing they claim to have witnessed.

 

Too bad, too.  If these guys could've done me the favor of shooting the bigfoot, I could be tucking in to some Alaskan prime rib about now.