Guest DWA Posted June 1, 2017 Posted June 1, 2017 20 hours ago, Starling said: Any one of the pertinent social sciences would easily be able to account for both the mountain of eye witness reports and also the lack of physical evidence. A psycho social explanation is an all size fits all solution. Does it have to be any more complicated than this? Science would tell you that it always *is.* Except for this. A mountain of eyewitness reports so consistent a scientist examining them could classify the animal right down to family means something in a lot more than a psychosocial sense. A mountain of physical evidence - footprints are and if you don't think so you are flat wrong - that is equally consistent and points to the animal people are seeing also exists; and a film ties those two threads together with consummate perfection. Not even in the social sciences do people go, here's the one size fits all explanation, and walk away. Newbies do it all the time ;-) .
MIB Posted June 1, 2017 Moderator Posted June 1, 2017 Real social sciences people operate on statistical distributions of measured characteristics. Take of the label with social stigma, put in "football player" instead of "bigfoot", and they'd find exactly the trends and distributions they're used to seeing. With the preconceived biases accompanying the label removed, they'd be on board with "football players" being real based on analysis of the data so fast it'd make your head spin. The data does not at all jibe with the assumption of bug eyed monsters reported to get attention. Not at all. And, knowing that, it appears to me this introduction of "social sciences" is an attempted appeal to authority which is fraudulent at best. To quote hiflier: "NEXT!!!" MIB 1
Guest DWA Posted June 1, 2017 Posted June 1, 2017 (edited) ^^^^That. Slam dunk. What a scientist would say, anyway. And why my determination whether you are a scientist or not cuts to what you do when confronted with something new, not what you got drilled on through grad school. And why one of the biggest OK-this-one-don't-get-it eyerolls you will get from me is if you ever try "the plural of anecdotes is not data" on me. That is about as profoundly unscientific a canard as there is. Science is anecdotes backed by advanced degrees, and if you don't get that you're hopelessly lost. Outside your very narrow field, now. Edited June 1, 2017 by DWA
norseman Posted June 1, 2017 Admin Posted June 1, 2017 47 minutes ago, MIB said: Real social sciences people operate on statistical distributions of measured characteristics. Take of the label with social stigma, put in "football player" instead of "bigfoot", and they'd find exactly the trends and distributions they're used to seeing. With the preconceived biases accompanying the label removed, they'd be on board with "football players" being real based on analysis of the data so fast it'd make your head spin. The data does not at all jibe with the assumption of bug eyed monsters reported to get attention. Not at all. And, knowing that, it appears to me this introduction of "social sciences" is an attempted appeal to authority which is fraudulent at best. To quote hiflier: "NEXT!!!" MIB But one has to be careful. Because in order to have a Bigfoot sighting? You need a Bigfoot. But you also need a human. So data like seasonal elevations could point to seasonal behavior of Bigfoots. But it could also point to the seasonal behavior of humans as well. 1
Guest Starling Posted June 2, 2017 Posted June 2, 2017 20 hours ago, DWA said: Science would tell you that it always *is.* Except for this. A mountain of eyewitness reports so consistent a scientist examining them could classify the animal right down to family means something in a lot more than a psychosocial sense. A mountain of physical evidence - footprints are and if you don't think so you are flat wrong - that is equally consistent and points to the animal people are seeing also exists; and a film ties those two threads together with consummate perfection. Not even in the social sciences do people go, here's the one size fits all explanation, and walk away. Newbies do it all the time ;-) . The big difference in our approaches to the scientific method seems to be that in mine, I'm happy to concede that I may be wrong. That is the scientific method in practice. Your assertion that I'm flat wrong without conceding your position, too, may be in error demonstrates quite clearly you are not applying the scientific method.
Guest DWA Posted June 3, 2017 Posted June 3, 2017 But I don't have patience with anyone saying, "I might be wrong...but I am probably not," when the evidence indicates that *I* might be wrong...but very very probably not. It doesn't do to brush aside the evidence, even admitting uncertainty. Scientific method leads one to my conclusion; I have never seen anyone applying it that comes to another one (and I mean the ones coming to another one demonstrably *are not* using it). I've been saying it ever since I came here: show me a scientist who thinks these aren't real; show me why; ...and I will show he didn't use science to come to his conclusion. Total [crickets] on that, and it's been years now.
MIB Posted June 3, 2017 Moderator Posted June 3, 2017 On 6/1/2017 at 11:59 AM, norseman said: But one has to be careful. Because in order to have a Bigfoot sighting? You need a Bigfoot. But you also need a human. So data like seasonal elevations could point to seasonal behavior of Bigfoots. But it could also point to the seasonal behavior of humans as well. Absolutely. More over, numbers of people, taken alone, is not enough. Different demographics vary in their propensity to report. For several years I thought that my favorite location "turned on" mid to late August and "went dead" about mid September. The first part seems to be correct, the bigfoots and the humans (family campers at end of summer) arrive roughly at the same time. However, the second is not. What happens? At the end of Labor Day weekend the summer campers go home and kids go back to school. They are replaced about a week later with archery hunters. The bigfoots seem to still be there, the change is that the hunters are, per capita, less likely to file a report. However, loading and unloading at the trailheads, fishing, and talking to those folks as they stop by to have lunch, etc ... they've got incredible amounts of activity going on. .. enough to make me think about taking up archery hunting and set my rifle aside for a few years. By the time rifle season starts in October, things do seem to have dropped off a lot. So, additional questions for me are where the bigfoots are coming from .. where were they before they show up in my spot in mid-late August? And where do they go after they leave? MIB 1
norseman Posted June 3, 2017 Admin Posted June 3, 2017 I wanna know where they go in mid winter. If a person could flush something then? It would be easy to track. You should try bow hunting MIB, it's very close and personal, challenging and rewarding. 1
MIB Posted June 4, 2017 Moderator Posted June 4, 2017 You may have already answered this but have you ever checked the lake shore and the bottom quarter to half mile of any feeder streams during winter? There's a large area of open grassland cut up into ranches along a river to the SE (20-50 miles) of where I recorded the whoops and had the camp visits, etc, which all fall in late Aug into September. That area has a history of winter time nocturnal vocalization reports. Between where I go and that valley is a higher rim. Beyond the rim, leading down to the big lake in the bottom, is a canyon. In that canyon I heard a mumbly voice in mid - late October a couple years ago. Hmmm .. maybe mumbly is the wrong word ... muffled. It sounded like a young girl soothing / shushing a dog so that it would behave as we passed on the trail only I rounded the bend and there was nobody. I hadn't, and didn't, meet anyone. Hadn't passed, or been overtaken by, anyone. No camps that I noticed. So ... eh, maybe. The pieces seemingly fit whether they really do or not. Worth more of a look. The relevance to archery is that canyon is within the boundaries of a late season controlled / application bow hunt at about the right time. So far my up close and personal hunting has been with iron sighted revolvers, occasionally even with fixed sights. Just as close, more noise. MIB
Guest DWA Posted June 4, 2017 Posted June 4, 2017 (edited) 5 hours ago, Starling said: Because no one can prove a negative? No scientist worth his salt should ever assert something is the case and then use that as his excuse for not being able to back it up. This in fact is the very reason it is flat forbidden for a scientist to assert something doesn't exist. It's lunacy to haughtily assert something as fact for which one can provide no evidence. That all kinds of people do it all the time simply illustrates how little most people - including many if not most who call themselves scientists - know about thinking like a scientist. Edited June 4, 2017 by DWA
Guest DWA Posted June 4, 2017 Posted June 4, 2017 And of course I should have said BINGO! There's a scientist using the opposite of science to come to his conclusion.
Guest Starling Posted June 4, 2017 Posted June 4, 2017 On 2017-6-3 at 4:24 PM, DWA said: It doesn't do to brush aside the evidence 20 hours ago, DWA said: It's lunacy to haughtily assert something as fact for which one can provide no evidence. But I detect here a serious inconsistency on matters of evidence, though. On the one hand you say it's lunacy to assert something as fact for which one can provide no evidence and on the other you say it doesn't do to dismiss evidence. Ant yet my point that the Bigfoot phenomena may be purely psycho-social in nature is something that can absolutely be backed up by a ton of evidence. You don't have to be a PhD in anthropology to read a vast quantity of peer reviewed data relating to folklore and quasi-religious mythologies. These are human constructs and the literature goes back as ling as there has been art and language. I've seen you make the claim that there is more evidence for the existence of Bigfoot than any other unproven unknown on the planet. Again, I believe that to be easily refuted as I could list any number of other Cryptids (we in Scotland know a thing or two about unclassified world famous creatures) for efficiency you could make that claim. And, as has already been said, that's before we even get started on the long list of other apparent unexplaineds that now litter our TV channels as cheap entertainments. And yet you appear to be content to dismiss all this evidence for a psycho-social explanation out of hand without first properly examining all of it. It's a huge subject and scientifically would encompass many different disciplines. Read the reports, you say, and I have...many of them. But there are other possibilities beyond the giant flesh and blood creature you insist upon. Why not properly explore those possibilities? This seems to be the major contradiction in your scientific approach. Matched against what you describe as a mountain of evidence for existence is a veritable Everest (No, an Olympus Mons) of data that suggests you simply don't need a Sasquatch to account for every single Sasquatch report. Dismissing the social sciences that study human mythology is a mighty big part of the puzzle that you say we are required to look at properly, because we absolutely must not dismiss the evidence.
dmaker Posted June 5, 2017 Posted June 5, 2017 3 hours ago, Starling said: you simply don't need a Sasquatch to account for every single Sasquatch report. Precisely. Nevermind the fact that reports are non falsifiable in the first place, so any attempt to prove or disprove any one is intellectual at best. Every single bigfoot report could easily be accounted for without the presence of a bigfoot. Whether that be mistaken identity, fabrication, hallucination, etc, does not really matter. We have documented examples of all of those scenarios. The more time that goes by and the more reports pile up, make the non bigfoot explanation more and more likely.
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