BobbyO Posted April 13, 2014 SSR Team Share Posted April 13, 2014 People misperceive movement all the time. That movement out of the corner of your eye is an example. Heat shimmer, glazing on glass andblood pressure changes can all cause your vision to warp. Things that are warping in front of you appear to move. Are you say get that chickens don't regularly dart out in front of cars then ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 13, 2014 Share Posted April 13, 2014 One of the things that is not being discussed is the fact that the very opposite of peoples' fallibility in indentifying things is also true. That being that many people are incredibly good at identifying what to most is very hard to discern, or far away, or blurry, or well camoflaged, or still, or with a very brief period of observation. These people exist as well as those less skilled visual and audio witnesses. I have no way to substantiate this of course, only anecdotal recollections, Being once someone like this, I may be more apt to believe others' and their reports than someone who may not realize what people of capable of using their visual skill on the positive side. . There are, I concede lots of eyewitnesses, whatever the subject of their observation, who are terrible, probably most. But I think there are many who are exceptional eyewitnesses as well. So, to me, the issue of Sasquatch reports is seldom a matter of whether I think the witness is competent in identifying what they saw,, but rather a matter of whether the reporter is truthful, or incapable of making an intelligent statement regarding what they saw. But I start now from the premise that what they describe can exist, which allows for the possibility that the witness can be both truthful and competent. If I did not accept the premise that what people say they saw did not exist, I would be left with only the possibility that the witnesses were either lying, or too incapacitated in whatever way to make an intelligent report, as I consider close range MISidentifications as a result of mental or physical incapacity, not true misidentification. . . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 13, 2014 Share Posted April 13, 2014 as i have followed this thread, the one thing that i find most laughable is that i feel like im being asked to beleive that since halucinations are a medically proven fact, therfore every bigfoot sighting is a halucination. While i respect the people that have and conditions that cause halucinations, not every person on Earth is prone to having them. Cancer is a medically proven fact and many people suffer from it but not everyone has it. I would like to see a study, although i'm sure it doesn't exist, on the number of people that have a sighting and try to rationalize what they saw as something OTHER than a bigfoot and only after they've exhausted all other possibilities do they come to the conclusion of what they saw. This is just an observation, but it seems like skeptics assume all people that have a sighting are going into that encounter with the belief its a bigfoot and therefore could be nothing else. I believe the opposite to be true. I would doubt that Salubrius would have pulled up along side of a 10 foot unknown creature sitting in the road, not knowing what it would be capable of, had he thought it was a bigfoot from the get go. My guess would be that he went through many possibilities before gathering enough information for his ultimate conclusion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThePhaige Posted April 13, 2014 Share Posted April 13, 2014 ^^ I appreciate your post drodrigue and +1ed it, and I too have been following the circularity of this thread. Yours is the logical, reasonable approach I feel. However in my case you may be a little off as just yesterday while walking downtown I had the occasion to pass many people along my travels. Now I say "people" because as I came upon each individual I was quite sure they were all Sasquatch, until I applied a very complex mental algorithm to decipher their true identity as actual human beings. The method I use to employ this algorithm is a firm press of the tongue into the cheek. Seriously some of the explanations people come up with to explain away an encounter are more far fetched than the alleged subject matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
salubrious Posted April 13, 2014 Moderator Share Posted April 13, 2014 as i have followed this thread, the one thing that i find most laughable is that i feel like im being asked to beleive that since halucinations are a medically proven fact, therfore every bigfoot sighting is a halucination. Yes, if I am not mistaken that is called Guilt by Association and is actually a logical fallacy. But I don't think that the above is *exactly* what is being said; rather to consider that hallucination is a possibility. Plussed your post BTW. I would doubt that Salubrius would have pulled up along side of a 10 foot unknown creature sitting in the road, not knowing what it would be capable of, had he thought it was a bigfoot from the get go. My guess would be that he went through many possibilities before gathering enough information for his ultimate conclusion. I really didn't have any choice plus my curiosity got the better of me. There is a certain safety one feels when driving in a large truck whether that safety is real or not and that was in play at the time. But at the same time I was aware that a grizzly could open up the Blazer like a pop can, so I was prepared to stomp the pedal to the floor. After a while of sitting there I just had this odd feeling that maybe I should be down the road rather than find out What Happens Next. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roguefooter Posted April 13, 2014 Share Posted April 13, 2014 (edited) as i have followed this thread, the one thing that i find most laughable is that i feel like im being asked to beleive that since halucinations are a medically proven fact, therfore every bigfoot sighting is a halucination. Clearly you're not following the thread then. How many times does one have to clarify a point to get people to acknowledge something? I'm thinking that it's been repeated so many times that it's become dogma. While i respect the people that have and conditions that cause halucinations, not every person on Earth is prone to having them. Cancer is a medically proven fact and many people suffer from it but not everyone has it. There is a difference between being prone and being capable. All humans are capable. Hallucination is not a disease, it is only one symptom of what could be many things. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003258.htm Notice it says: "In some cases, hallucinations may be normal. For example, hearing the voice of, or briefly seeing, a loved one who has recently died can be a part of the grieving process". So how does one see or hear a dead person outside of the paranormal? Maybe because of the strong desire to want to see or hear them? I don't know, but that's only one circumstance being specified and it's clearly not an abnormal condition. Edited April 13, 2014 by roguefooter 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cotter Posted April 15, 2014 Share Posted April 15, 2014 I know of no animal that would ignore an oncoming vehicle (except my stupid cats). Ant, have you ever driven a vehicle? I can't imagine someone could say that. Most animals have been spotted doing exactly that. Deer, turkeys, dogs, cats (as you mentioned), cows, horses, buffalo, raccoons, possums....the list could go on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 15, 2014 Share Posted April 15, 2014 someone seems to lack real world experiences Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Are you say get that chickens don't regularly dart out in front of cars then ? Darting out in the road and ignoring a vehicle are not the same thing. Many animals run out in the road when a car drives by out of instinctual mechanisms to evade predators. Most prey animals don't actually think about how to evade, they simply allow their instincts to take over. Most instincts cause the movements to follow a pattern not observations. A chicken might turn to the right or to the left without respect to the position of the predator. In a charged situation there is little time to think rationally about where to go, especially for a relatively dimwitted animal. Ant, have you ever driven a vehicle? I can't imagine someone could say that. Most animals have been spotted doing exactly that. Deer, turkeys, dogs, cats (as you mentioned), cows, horses, buffalo, raccoons, possums....the list could go on. Small animals have a closer horizon of interest than larger animals do. This is sometimes also called "flight distance." They do not run away at as far a distance as a larger animal would. Also many animals will run off at a strange angle from predators. This is an instinctive response. It's faster than taking the time to think it through and is quite effective. A thoughtful critter might get eaten while trying to figure out what to do while an instinctive one gets away. Sometimes however, the instinctive one gets caught or run over. Horses and buffalo are tough animals in their own right but they do not ignore vehicles in my experience. Wary eyes are always in motion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest DWA Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 There is only one skeptical contention that makes sense given what skeptics think about the topic: Every single bigfoot sighting is a hallucination or a mistake. How can one argue that something isn't real by saying it's possible that a sighter is wrong? The sighter is and must be wrong, every single time, or the assertion really means nothing. And how about that? The assertion really does mean nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roguefooter Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Skeptics MUST think every single bigfoot sighting is a hallucination or a mistake! Regardless of what they keep saying- I demand it to be so! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LarryP Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 All humans are capable. Hallucination is not a disease, it is only one symptom of what could be many things. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003258.htm Notice it says: "In some cases, hallucinations may be normal. For example, hearing the voice of, or briefly seeing, a loved one who has recently died can be a part of the grieving process". So how does one see or hear a dead person outside of the paranormal? Maybe because of the strong desire to want to see or hear them? I don't know, but that's only one circumstance being specified and it's clearly not an abnormal condition. You seem to be conflicted regarding what constitutes a "paranormal" experience versus a normal experience, regarding hallucinations. FYI- There are also many cases where people thought they must be hallucinating, but then realized that they were not hallucinating. So it works both ways. As you have noted, "it could be many things". And one of the many things is that it really was not a hallucination. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest DWA Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 ^^^This is my point: what IS the point about constantly saying "they could be wrong" when, well, they could NOT be wrong, and one hasn't a shred of evidence pointing to the likelihood that they ALL are? This thread has no point unless "Misidentification" is a likely cause of a universal false positive. It simply isn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JDL Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Skeptics MUST think every single bigfoot sighting is a hallucination or a mistake! Regardless of what they keep saying- I demand it to be so! Actually skeptics must think that every single bigfoot sighting MIGHT be a hallucination or a mistake. A skeptic preserves the possibility that bigfoot may be real and provable. Anyone that maintains that all bigfoot sightings MUST be hallucinations or mistakes is in truth a denialist, not a skeptic. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 (edited) Every single bigfoot sighting is a hallucination or a mistake.That isn't really skepticism, nor is it the skeptical argument. For skepticism, every possibility is on the table until it is eliminated.The possibilities, in no particular order: 1) The witness was being truthful and actually saw a Bigfoot. 2) The witness is being truthful, but didn't actually see a Bigfoot. 3) The witness is being truthful, but hallucinated. 4) The witness is perpetuating a prank or a hoax, whether intentionally or not. 5) The witness is outright lying. There are possibly more possibilities but those are the most obvious, in my opinion. Edited April 18, 2014 by Leftfoot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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