dmaker Posted June 23, 2017 Posted June 23, 2017 43 minutes ago, WSA said: One is all that has ever been required to blow the entire skeptic thesis out of the water and to smithereens. Shouldn't be that hard then, right? 1 out of thousands? 36 minutes ago, DWA said: both are scientifically demonstrable Go ahead and do so, then. 1
WSA Posted June 23, 2017 Posted June 23, 2017 So, there are some probabilities of occurrences so vanishingly remote, their lack of occurrence approaches that of a certainty. Thus it is with misidentifications. (Aaaaand done)
Guest DWA Posted June 23, 2017 Posted June 23, 2017 I'm tempted to say that, if misidentification is one of the primary reasons for sasquatch reportage, the following activities should be herewith banned: 1. Shaving 2. Driving, in fact, operating any vehicle that operates faster than walking speed 3. Weapons (of any kind) 4. Running (with or without scissors) 5. I think you are getting the idea...
SWWASAS Posted June 23, 2017 BFF Patron Posted June 23, 2017 (edited) DWA You have lot more faith in humans than I do. The stories of hunters mistaking and shooting cows and even people for deer abound. I know a couple of near sighted women who are so vain, they refuse to wear glasses and basically cannot identify what something is beyond a dozen yards where everything is a blur. Whoever makes a sighting needs to be vetted for it to have any credibility. I was in Wyoming looking for elk with an older couple. They were amazed at what I was seeing. My eyes are just 20 20 at this point but theirs are obviously much worse. Edited June 23, 2017 by SWWASAS
Guest DWA Posted June 23, 2017 Posted June 23, 2017 (edited) I disagree for two reasons: 1. The sightings that produce almost all the encounter literature are not of the type "I fired at a sound/brief glimpse," which is how virtually all shootings you describe occur. 2. Even a prolonged what-is-that? - say, the case of you and your stump - frequently if not always results in a resolution of the identity of the thing seen, on the spot, no further analysis required. I've turned numerous leaves/stumps/trees into animals...then switched 'em right back, and done there. It has long been tossed at the wall by skeptics that bigfoot sightings are of the type above. They clearly are not; the accounts leave little doubt that the witness had ample time to resolve what the witness was looking at. It really does no good to vet encounter reports beyond the extent already done by researchers. In fact, the only vetting that should be done now is *by skeptics themselves,* to prove beyond doubt that the witness saw something else. The skeptics have uniformly declined. I wonder why. Edited June 23, 2017 by DWA
WSA Posted June 23, 2017 Posted June 23, 2017 (And yet, and yet...hunters correctly identify and kill hundreds of thousands of ungulates each year) I say again: If your probabilities of Sasquatch existing depends on thousands of humans being 100% consistent in their misidentification, and never-ever getting that wrong (err...right), you are basing a conclusion on something that occurs very, very rarely....up to a point of approaching a virtual certainty this cannot be true. I've long felt skepticism on this topic owes more to miscalculating and misapprehending probabilities than any other factor you could name. 1
SWWASAS Posted June 23, 2017 BFF Patron Posted June 23, 2017 (edited) Most sighting reports are people driving cars who see something out of their peripheral vision, often at dusk or dark. Rarely do they get more than a brief glimpse which as you point out is the problem with misidentifying hunters. BF in most cases makes sure they don't get a good view for very long. I would think that BFRO investigators, who are really the only ones investigating, check out the vision of those who report sightings. I know I would. That can be done with simple questions. The near sighted women I mention do not tell anyone they are visually impaired. It crops it when you point out a deer and they cannot see what you are talking about. The skeptics have the most problem with close face to face encounters. At that point they have to resort to questioning sanity to explain away the sighting. Vetting a skeptic is problematic. While they will question your abilities to assess anything, for the most part they would never reveal their shortcomings. Certainly the only way for skeptics to vet witnesses is for them to get out from behind their computers and go into the field. That effort is not something they are likely to do. Edited June 23, 2017 by SWWASAS
WSA Posted June 23, 2017 Posted June 23, 2017 No, really Randy, they don't have to do that. All they have to do is take a shave with Occam. I don't have to vet witness statements in the field to come to make my predictions. One accurate report equals 100% certainty for existence. Absent a unified, 100% accurate and infallible combination of hoaxes and mistaken identity (.000001 % probability of THAT....not a scientific conclusion, but probably a good working prediction) you make the case for Sasquatch, going away.
Guest DWA Posted June 23, 2017 Posted June 23, 2017 (edited) 26 minutes ago, SWWASAS said: Most sighting reports are people driving cars who see something out of their peripheral vision, often at dusk or dark. Rarely do they get more than a brief glimpse which as you point out is the problem with misidentifying hunters. BF in most cases makes sure they don't get a good view for very long. It is very possible - I cannot count the number of times I have done it *this year* - to identify something, conclusively, within milliseconds, if that, of it hitting your peripheral vision. There is no bigfoot report of that type that leaves but 100% impression in an open-minded person's mind that the person saw what they say they did. Because I see deer and squirrel and rabbit like that *all the time.* A gigantic non-human hominid? Oh, they saw it, and the report makes it more than clear. There has to be reason, i.e., evidence, to doubt them. And it just doesn't exist. You take their word they saw what they're reporting...and then you have to say, when you have read thousands of them...*why would they be doing this?* No evidence of a motivation there either other than "I love being laughed at. About something I wouldn't be telling you I saw if I hadn't seen it." I would think that BFRO investigators, who are really the only ones investigating, check out the vision of those who report sightings. I know I would. That can be done with simple questions. The near sighted women I mention do not tell anyone they are visually impaired. It crops it when you point out a deer and they cannot see what you are talking about.Again, *thousands of them*? I'll leave that to the skeptics, and that backlog is getting kind of huge. Might want to get started on that. The skeptics have the most problem with close face to face encounters. At that point they have to resort to questioning sanity to explain away the sighting. Sure, but I don't see how somebody can turn a flicker in their peripheral vision into something they insist on months, even years, afterward. I wouldn't do that and suspect most people wouldn't. Quote Vetting a skeptic is problematic. While they will question your abilities to assess anything, for the most part they would never reveal their shortcomings. Certainly the only way for skeptics to vet witnesses is for them to get out from behind their computers and go into the field. That effort is not something they are likely to do. They do all their sniping from cover. That would be wool, and it's over their eyes, not ours. The things they say betray not only unfamiliarity with the evidence, but unfamiliarity with the natural world and with human behavior. 19 minutes ago, WSA said: No, really Randy, they don't have to do that. All they have to do is take a shave with Occam. I don't have to vet witness statements in the field to come to make my predictions. One accurate report equals 100% certainty for existence. Absent a unified, 100% accurate and infallible combination of hoaxes and mistaken identity (.000001 % probability of THAT....not a scientific conclusion, but probably a good working prediction) you make the case for Sasquatch, going away. Keep in mind that *the unified skeptic field theory* is of a random concatenation of *all kinds of stuff,* not just hoaxes and mistaken identity but hallucinations and copycats - and those of utterly *all* stripes - as well. Probability goes *down* with each cause you add. Particularly when you put no delimiters on what's possible, and they don't and they know they can't. Edited June 23, 2017 by DWA
Guest Starling Posted June 25, 2017 Posted June 25, 2017 On 23/06/2017 at 9:34 PM, DWA said: Again, *thousands of them*? I'll leave that to the skeptics, and that backlog is getting kind of huge. Absolutely...thousands of them. Because when someone catches something they can't immediately identify out of the corner of their eye and there's a go-to ready made archetype that the average person has a psychological pre-disposition towards (as most, even the most rational, of us do) when it comes to folklore...then yes...that absolutely could explain many thousands of sincere bigfoot sightings. You add a natural eye witness capacity to subconsciously add details to an experience and then emotionally invest in these new memories and bingo...you've got thousands of apparently genuine hairy giant sightings. Add some individuals prone to even greater exaggeration and invention...and now we're really off to the races. DWA has me on ignore because even small mention of this psycho-social phenomenon as a possible explanation Is enough to make him balk at the idea and look the other way. However we know a lot more about this and have tons more peer reviewed science about this than we do the mythological bigfoot.
Patterson-Gimlin Posted June 26, 2017 Posted June 26, 2017 I could not agree more as I have read up on this . Plussed. 1
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