Guest DWA Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 Nor has the community acquired the collective wisdom yet to stop saying, after every new discovery, "Now, the whole picture is...." This may be the most important reason scientists are gobsmacked by new finds: the incorrect assumptions based on incomplete data made after the previous finds.
dmaker Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 ^^ DWA, you make this claim often. Could you please provide some examples of when science has said " Now, the whole picture is..." after a new discovery?
Guest DWA Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 (edited) How many would you want? THEY DO IT ALL THE TIME. Paleoanthropology is only the most salient example. I just expect folks to be read up on this stuff. But I really don't like doing all the research around here. Tell you what, you show me how my most prominent example, paleoanthropology, *doesn't* do it. Better yet (and here I am doing all the work again): Go over to this thread. Read the OP. Tell me why this Dr. Meyer guy is "a bit lost here" when no intelligent person thinking about it should be, a single bit. http://bigfootforums.com/index.php/topic/43961-the-oldest-dna-evidence-yet-of-humans-with-an-interesting-twist/ Edited December 23, 2013 by DWA
dmaker Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 Sorry, nice try but I'm not going to make your point for you. You made the claim, you should also be prepared to back it up and illustrate it if you want people to take it seriously.
coffee2go Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 So your a skeptic? My answer is not one word. No, I am not a skeptic. I believe in the possibility of the existence of bigfoot. I (unfortunately) do not "know" they exist due to lack of first hand experience. As I mentioned previously, I try to keep an open mind and do not say the world is flat simply because I have not been into space to see that it is not.
Guest DWA Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 (edited) Sorry, nice try but I'm not going to make your point for you. OK, *that's* not a revealing answer har har har! You made the claim, you should also be prepared to back it up and illustrate it if you want people to take it seriously. Oh. So when I ILLUSTRATE IT, you can't be bothered to read it. Not to worry, people take my copiously backed up and illustrated claims quite seriously here on the [points for emphasis] Bigfoot Forums. This is why I lump your opinion in with those of all those scientists you believe in whose opinions I can't take seriously because they are clearly uninformed. Show me something I can take seriously and I will. Until then, I'll think what the evidence - not people who aren't paying attention to it - tells me to think. Why is it that you think your claim isn't taken seriously here, when you never do what you're asking others to do? Edited December 23, 2013 by DWA
dmaker Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 So...you can't backup your claim then? Yes, I did read the link. I've read it several times since it was first published. I know what I think about it. I was interested in what you think about it and how you think it supports your claim. Specifically of how it illustrates that after every new discovery science makes the proclamation that you claimed. If, instead, of providing support for your claim you somehow wish to turn it back onto me,well that is your choice. Don't expect too many people to not see through that though.
dmaker Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 DWA, I know what I think about it, I was more interested in what you think about the article. I have read it several times since it was published. You provided a link, but nothing beyond that. That is shoddy support for your claim. You claim science does a certain thing after EVERY new discovery. I am simply asking you to provide numerous examples. There must be plenty since you claim this happens after EVERY new discovery. Instead you provide a link to an article but fail to explain why you think it supports your claim. If you are unable, or unwilling, to backup your claim that is fine, but don't turn it around on me.
Guest DWA Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 The article backs it up. All one has to do is read it, and think about it. What excuse is there for a scientist to describe himself as "lost" after a find, if it isn't that his entire world has been run through a salad tosser by a rather routine find?
dmaker Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 Why do you call this a routine find? Further, I don't actually agree that the article, at all, backs up your claim. I don't feel it supports your claim in this single instance, much less where you state that after EVERY new discovery science proclaims a full picture. Is that the best you can do to support your claim? A link to one article, with one comment about a single discovery? An article that does not even bear out your claim in the first place? And this, this is supposed to be evidence of a position that science takes, according to you, after EVERY new discovery? Sorry, but I didn't realize that EVERY only meant once..and not well supported in that one.
Guest DWA Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 Naaah, it's just this: every single time they find something, scientists just go "now the whole picture looks like THIS." This time, they can't do that, so they're "lost." You wouldn't get "lost" if all you did was, OK, this is interesting. But let's not go rearranging what we know yet. (I'm experimenting; I didn't even read dmaker's post. I don't think it's necessary.)
dmaker Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 Pretending to skip over posts that you can't respond to properly is pretty transparent.
Guest DWA Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 Right! Now you're getting it. First it's Neandertal preceded us; then it's well, we existed at the same time but we drove them out; then it's whoa wait a minute we NASTIED with these guys but it....whoa WAIT A MINUTE WE ALL HAVE THEIR DNA...then it's WAIT A MINUTE MINOR VARIATIONS IN BONE STRUCTURE DON'T MEAN SEPARATE SPECIES (kinda, duhhhhh, like us, but they didn't understand that).... ...but you're coming along, it's good to see.
kitakaze Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 From a thread called "What is the statistical probability all these sightings are false?"... I think the statistical probability that all of these alleged sightings of Bigfoot are in fact false is about 99%...Just as I think the statistical probability that all of these alleged UFO sightings are not in fact aliens visiting Earth is about 99%...The UFO sightings map does not include sightings for Mexico and Canada. The reason I think those are so extremely similar is that they reflect population and more specifically, the reflect a social construct from within that population. For every person claiming to see Bigfoot, I can show you a person claiming to have been abducted by aliens. These are actual social phenomena and if so many people are claiming to be abducted by aliens, you should approach it in a rational manner. You don't rule that out as an impossibility, but you seriously examine, test, and consider alternative explanations. That can and has been done with the alien abduction phenomena and there are most certainly alternative explanations, one being sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis has in fact almost certainly been at play in a number of Bigfoot encounter claims. I remember Driveroperator of the MABRC being one strong candidate for such with his story of two Bigfoots climbing in the back of his truck at a public campground parking lot while he was paralyzed with fear and heart hammering after having fallen asleep in his truck.I think in very many circumstances with that UFO sighting map, many of the people legitimately saw a UFO. UFO does not equal alien spacecraft. What they saw in many cases was in fact an unidentified object in the sky which can have a vast array of non-alien explanations. So it is the same with the Bigfoot sightings map, but I think to a lesser extent. I think a great portion of that Mangani map is just vapour. I think a great many of those dots were placed there with little to no serious vetting whatsoever. 1868 newspaper story of armed men searching for a wild man that came screaming out of the bushes at someone in Idaho, boom, dot goes up. I think a great many of those dots come from pure fabrication. I think much of the map has been made to look like Bigfoot sightings are in extreme numbers because of this problem...Bigfooters want their field to be taken more seriously and will make concerted efforts to show it as such. Bigfooters will want to believe so that a dot can go up there without the proper vetting. What the maker of that map doesn't realize is that they've completely shot themselves in the foot. It's like Daniel Perez of Bigfoot Times suggesting there are hundreds of thousands of Bigfoots out there. Don't you realize what you people are doing? You realize that that map and Perez' claim make Bigfoot more than ever appear to be a social construct. The Bigfooter will counter with well, so what? Who cares about that map? If just one of those dots was really Bigfoot, it doesn't matter. Sorry, you can keep your hypotheticals, because the dots that are up there that are false demand explanation. You have to answer the question why people are claiming to see Bigfoot when they did not and then learn from it.I'm not saying any of this as if I am so ice-hearted skeptic that regards the believers as some bizarre specimen. I am 34 years old. I have been a strong skeptic of Bigfoot for six years. For twenty years prior to that, I was a strong Bigfoot believer. The transition from one to the other was not immediate, but gradual. I strongly believed the PGF as real and very much wanted to even though so many things about it were not right with me and problematic. I diminished those things as much as I could by rationalizing it with what I felt was the strength of the case for Bigfoot. It took applying the best scrutiny I could to come to the place where I could honestly acknowledge that there is absolutely zero reliable evidence for Bigfoot.The point is I know. I know what it is to be a Bigfooter because I was one. I know how the believer thinks because I was one. I know that central dilemma of "How can all the reports be false?" because I grappled with it at great length. Yes, all the reports can be false. Not only can that be the case, that is actually almost certainly the case. It is impossible that all those dots represent actual Bigfoot encounters, or even some minor portion of them. The reason why is becase if you have a population of large mammals living and breeding today across North America, you will have reliable evidence of it. You will have bodies, you will have clear footage of good provenance, you will have Bigfoot bones in museums. There are fewer than 400 Kermode bears in the wild. They are extremely rare and extremely elusive and live in very remote habitat. We have their bodies and have had them since the were first catalogued in 1905.This is what the sightings map for a real rare and elusive large mammal looks like.Real animal...Social construct...That would be a map for haunted houses. It's adult roleplay. It's Woods & Wildmen, it's Spacemen & Spaceships, it's Ghouls & Ghosts. We want to believe. These things are fun and exciting to us and it is we who perpetuate the belief in it.Ghost Hunters...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXCnGlh6Hc4UFO Hunters...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6x3nGwmRIE Finding Bigfoot... It's us. Bigfoot is us. We make our boogeymen and they evolve with us. And hey, why not? It's fun, it brings us together, gives us a sense of the mysterious, and kills the mundane.What I think we are left with is about 1% undefined. I know and have friends personally that claim to have seen Bigfoot. The red glowing eyes my firend Scott Herriott saw are a mystery to me. What truly traumatized John Cartwright when he was a teenager in a hunting stand is a mystery to me. The answer to those mysteries I do not think likely to be real Bigfoots. Scott said glowing, not reflecting, and this was daytime. No apes have glowing eyes. No apes have a tapetum lucidum. I think Scott would have an easier time with the paranormal crowd, but that's part of us too. Bigfooters like paranormal spooky stuff as much as the next guy. Just try asking yourself which Bigfoot believer you know is also an alien visitation or ghost believer as well.It's us, it's belief culture. 1
dmaker Posted December 23, 2013 Posted December 23, 2013 (edited) @DWA So, you are saying that because science adapts when it receives new evidence that changes previously thought conclusions, that this is somehow a flaw? I thought you were against rigid, unbending science? But then you now illustrate an example where new evidence was used to further our understanding of something. You are not being very consistent. But it's good to see that you recognize the flexibility of science at least. You're coming along... Wasn't Meldrum mistaken about the mid tarsal break? Edited December 23, 2013 by dmaker
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