Cascades Carnivore Project - How Do They Miss The Bigfoots?

[WSA]

The intellectual dishonesty of this response ^^^ leaves me depressed for the state of the world if this is what passes for analytical rigor these days, as well as all others which smugly dismiss evidence because it doesn't come in the right package, with a certified mail receipt. You are handed the scientific premise you claim you need, and then pretend you didn't ask for it. Here it is. Kindly take on the question under the terms you've asked for. I always regret engaging you for this reason.

[Guest DWA]

Well, I am certainly glad to see many people here finally come to the same level of impatience I have had with this from the beginning.

 

Taking over a year away from here; coming back; and...not showing any evolution in thinking on this at all...is...well...might need another break, all I'd say.

 

And isn't it funny I don't even have to read them?  (Don't quote them for me.  Thanks.)  Just like the reports he never reads.  I already know the answer; no need.  Only in my case...I am RIGHT.

It is faith in truth as an invisible law of staticity, of non-motion, that prevents new insights, new tests, and new attempts at discovering what the heck is going on. - Hazel Sullivan

 

Just for the people that need it, who may not be reading these things right where they sit.

Edited June 7, 2017 by DWA

[dmaker]

1 hour ago, WSA said:

 

This response ^^^ is exactly why you will be treated with contempt here Dmaker, as well as all others who smugly dismiss evidence because it doesn't come in the right package, with a certified mail receipt

 

I did not dismiss any evidence at all. What are you talking about? I asked you a simple question that you completely avoided answering: do you consider anecdotes to be falsifiable? That is a simple yes or no question. 

 

 

[BigTreeWalker]

Dmaker, 

 

I did not bring the bone info here for any kind of scientific recognition. I brought it here because I was sharing possible bigfoot evidence with the bigfoot community. To bring awareness of other possible avenues of research. But it does bring more questions. Questions are what scientific enquiry is about. You want to know what we found look at my original analysis, it's in one of the bone threads. It has what we found and none of 'Dr Dagger's' conclusions you have so much problems with. 

[Guest DWA]

If there is one scoftical shibboleth that I have never had the slightest understanding of or respect for, and it is never going to happen, it's this idea that people do this for *attention.* Or *recognition.*

 

REALLY!?!?!? For the kind of attention they get?  Why'd you think almost none of them use their real names?  Oh sure, and you need to buy my bridge across the inland sea in Arizona before the tyrannosaurs eat it.

 

Occam says:  they do it because they had an experience.  Occam wins again.

 

(Meldrum has gotten so much crazy winnage that *no one in the mainstream appears to have read his book.*)

Edited June 8, 2017 by DWA

[WSA]

Yes DWA, all this prattle about "un-falsifiable data" and zero effort to engage on actually attempting to determine if this is truly the case, or not. 

 

Let's go with the original observation here: The hypothesis of a true sighting report can't be shown to be un-falsifiable, so any report is scientifically invalid, a nullity. Zero. Zip. 

 

So what the man avoids is the reality of coming to terms with hard data, like so many others exhibiting atrophied reasoning abilities and overall intellectual laziness. To wit: If Roger Patterson's sighting report is true, all other sighting reports can be tossed with no damage to the hypothesis of BF. (I'll leave to the side what it would mean to the other sighting reports if the PGF can't be shown to be un-falsifiable...another discussion all together) The images on the film are all that should matter on this question...not all the collateral b.s. that gets inserted into the discussion about what Roger and Bob cooked for breakfast that day, etc.

 

And on this question you have Bill Munn's analysis, hulking like Patty on the coffee table....lots and lots and lots of data points and hard information open to anyone who wants to tackle it, and Bill all but begging somebody to do just that. Takers? Not a one as far as I know.  And until you refute each and every one(Not "some", not "most", not "all but these few") of the material points in his hypothesis, you have not shown the film is not un-falsifiable (i.e., falsifiable), and you've not done the same for the sighting it supports.  It is just that simple. But it hurts-es the brain, I know.  

 

So, again, those of this school, spare me this un-falsifiable crap. Here is your job. Do it or go somewhere else and find somebody more gullible to share your pseudo-scientific non-reasoning with. If you don't have the brain amperage to take on the job, fine. Admit that and stop trying to convince others you do. Admit that and leave it to smarter people like Bill to do the work for you. Until then, those more serious minded inviduals here will consider you to be nothing but a pseudo-intellectual poser with too much time on your hands and no ability to bat in this league.  

 

[Guest DWA]

6 minutes ago, WSA said:

Yes DWA, all this prattle about "un-falsifiable data" and zero effort to engage on actually attempting to determine if this is truly the case, or not. 

 

Quickie Thesis Time:  They are so used to having the work done for them.  New animal, new planet, new fossil, new galactic cluster, woohoo! All handed to them by scientists. They always had something to lean on, something they basically *believed in.*  (Like so many people use "believing in" evolution or science as a political litmus test.  It ain't believing in; it is concluding *based on evidence.*)

 

This here what we're talking about here is DIY science.  The frontiers, where you and I and select others are, they're always like that.  You gotta do the work yourself.  You have to read the reports and think about them, with the normal distributions forming in your head as you go.  You have to take every report; drop outliers; and feel the legit ones - the vast majority, that would be - slot right in with everything else, just the way evidence should, not The Exact Same Thing, it never is when different people see something, but here it is, they saw the same thing, using the varied voices of a continent to describe it, but the same thing, 5 to 10 guidebook-consistent data points in every one, delivered in the voices of unschooled laymen, but eminently recognizable to the naturalist, to the primatologist.  You have to feel, right down in your scientifical bootsoles, these people aren't copycatting this, they aren't sharing notes, they aren't Playing The Hoax Game, they are one more John/Joanie Schlub, most of them thinking no way before their gobs got smacked by reality so hard they couldn't readjust their heads, many of them, for years.  Or decades. 

 

As I say elsewhere:  most people's interest in nature and animals can be poured in a thimble with room for cream.  That's why they have no idea how broad and deep the evidence river is here. I stayed with it because animals have always been about as big a thing as there is for me.  I know what they feel like when you see one in the wild; that is what the reports are describing, period, no qualifier.  If animals aren't for you what they are for me, you are gonna have the hardest time climbing aboard, that's all there is to it. And even if they are for you like they are for me, you need the right mindset, the one real scientists always have.  Evidence moves the needle for me and nothing else will.

 

 

6 minutes ago, WSA said:

 

Let's go with the original observation here: The hypothesis of a true sighting report can't be shown to be un-falsifiable, so any report is scientifically invalid, a nullity. Zero. Zip. 

 

Right.  Tell me you saw a unicorn, and I'll go, life moment, brah!  We can talk about it, but otherwise you need to hie yourself to a unicorn database, cos we can't take this one to the Museum of Natural History just like this, now.

 

 

6 minutes ago, WSA said:

 

So what the man avoids is the reality of coming to terms with hard data, like so many others exhibiting atrophied reasoning abilities and overall intellectual laziness. To wit: If Roger Patterson's sighting report is true, all other sighting reports can be tossed with no damage to the hypothesis of BF. (I'll leave to the side what it would mean to the other sighting reports if the PGF can't be shown to be un-falsifiable...another discussion all together) The images on the film are all that should matter on this question...not all the collateral b.s. that gets inserted into the discussion about what Roger and Bob cooked for breakfast that day, etc.

 

Exactly.  If you can't touch the film, go on talking Sanskrit, buddy, whilst I laugh at you.

 

 

6 minutes ago, WSA said:

 

And on this question you have Bill Munn's analysis, hulking like Patty on the coffee table....lots and lots and lots of data points and hard information open to anyone who wants to tackle it, and Bill all but begging somebody to do just that. Takers? Not a one as far as I know.  And until you refute each and every one(Not "some", not "most", not "all but these few") of the material points in his hypothesis, you have not shown the film is not un-falsifiable (i.e., falsifiable), and you've not done the same for the sighting it supports.  It is just that simple. But it hurts-es the brain, I know.  

 

Bill Munns has scientifically proven the P/G film authentic, and if you don't understand that, you are like a dinosaur shot in the hindbrain, dead and you don't know it yet.  And it's just like relativity, Einstein:  real and proven and final until somebody comes up with something better.  Your serve.  But you gotta put it this side of the chalk line, bud.

 

6 minutes ago, WSA said:

 

So, again, those of this school, spare me this un-falsifiable crap. Here is your job. Do it or go somewhere else and find somebody more gullible to share your pseudo-scientific non-reasoning with. If you don't have the brain amperage to take on the job, fine. Admit that and stop trying to convince others you do. Admit that and leave it to smarter people like Bill to do the work for you. Until then, those more serious minded inviduals here will consider you to be nothing but a pseudo-intellectual poser with too much time on your hands and no ability to bat in this league.  

 

 

Pretty much, and get the donut from around your neck and put it on the barrel where it belongs, cos you got some practice swings to take.  A lot of them, in fact.

[Guest Starling]

 

 

 

 

 

On 2017-6-5 at 1:47 AM, ShadowBorn said:

Starling

What other possibilities did you find in reading the reports other then it being Flesh and Blood?

 

There are as many possibilties as the wide spectrum of human behaviour will allow and it's a very wide spectrum. I would suggest that people are believing, hoaxing, misinterpreting, theorising, speculating, guessing, fabricating, game-playing, role-playing, fantasising, mistaking, mythologising, misinterpreting, story-telling, joking, hallucinating, self-aggrandising, self-deluding,  and, yes, sometimes bare-faced fib telling. |

 

What we see here is the creation of social history and we know for a fact that very often has nothing to do with reality. People contribute to a mythology both consciously and sub-consciously. The possibilities for how this is both instigated and executed are pretty much endless. 

 

On 2017-6-5 at 6:09 AM, FarArcher said:

 

 

So everyone is mistaken, fabricating their narrative, or seeing things not there?

 

Why do folks testify in court?  Obviously, a crime didn't even happen according to your logic, as everything witnessed, observed, heard and experienced was all mistaken identity, fabrication, hallucination, etc.

 

 

 

In a nutshell...yes. Why not? For your last question to be pertinent you must first ask why are people who testify in court required to say an oath? Is it not because it's a concrete and undeniably documented fact that as a species a large number of us have a propensity towards all of the things I listed above? 

 

On 2017-6-5 at 6:09 AM, FarArcher said:

 

 

Who's payroll are you on?  

 

 

 

There's a certain irony that you should ask this in the context of me simply pointing out that, amongst other things, folk sometimes have tendency to see things that aren't there.

 

On 2017-6-5 at 11:11 AM, JustCurious said:

Anyone who really wants a taste of what it's like to go through trail cam pics of unfamiliar territory should go to www.zooniverse.org and spend some time searching for elephants!  You'd think they'd be so easy to spot - and sometimes they are - but until you've seen a few shots of the same scene, it can be near impossible to spot them because they blend in so well.  But searching for elephants is kinda fun.

 

 

 

This rather undermines your point doesn't it? Using elephants as an example, you'd think they'd be easy to spot and, yes, you concede, sometimes they are. Why then does this not apply to Sasquatch? I've never seen a completely unambiguous image of one, including  the PGF, ( I challenge you to present one)  but by this logic, there should be plenty. 

 

On 2017-6-5 at 4:18 PM, DWA said:

 

 

YOUR challenge, and if not accepted, I am done:  Read Meldrum and Bindernagel, just for starters, and give me an opinion that isn't a dismissal.  I'll know if it's a dismissal. And I'll tell you why and you'll recognize, as you should here, that a scientist is talking to you.

 

 

 

On 2017-6-5 at 4:18 PM, DWA said:

 

On 2017-6-5 at 3:41 PM, DWA said:

 

 

I am thinking you are misjudging the nature of the evidence.  The "evidence" for sasquatch as a psychosocial phenomenon is in fact NOT EVIDENCE FOR THAT. 

 

Your challenge is moot. No amount of  special pleading to your own -or any other authority-  can detract from the fact that what I've described most certainly is indeed evidence for just that. It is substantial and it is, in my view, highly persuasive evidence. Your reluctance to examine it (or even discuss it) demonstrates a bias that is hard to miss. The one factor that seems to be under-discussed on this topic, whether it's the trail-cam footage or any other aspect of the phenomenon is the human factor, the part that we all, whether proponent or skeptic, know to be involved.

 

The sheer volume of reports, all of them, can be explained in one fell swoop if you're willing to accept that human nature is highly ingenious when it comes to myth creation. We all love a good story. If that were not true what is the compulsion that lies behind the sightings and photographs that we know for a fact are hoaxes? People, particularly where group thinking is involved, are highly fallible. They are occasionally witless, sometimes wily, often unpredictable and also wholly surprising. That's before you even get started on clever and cunning.  

 

Von Daniken famously sold a best-seller in which he put forth the proposition that because archaeologists don't know for certain the exact manner in which some ancient structures were built, it must have been the result of a non-human influence. Today the number of experts in the related fields who agree with this are rarer than hen's teeth; because the imagination and ingenious resourcefulness of homo sapiens is all that is requited to explain a Stone Henge or a Great Pyramid. And it's certainly, in my view, all that's required to explain a Bigfoot. Nevertheless, it remains just as interesting to me as if the creature were real. It's still a highly fascinating and stimulating subject because what we're discussing is the nature of human belief. 

 

As I said, I may be wrong. In fact I sincerely very much hope I am. I like and admire the wonder of the world and like many here I'd love love it for something as amazing as a gigantic unclassified hominid to be discovered in modern times. Being wrong quickly would pale into insignificance in the face of that revelation.  It's a wonderful and intriguing. All I'm suggesting is that that is part of the problem, isn't it? Like most social memes, the big hairy man in the woods is passed from person to person, it has touched something in us, and it's entertaining enough that we want it to be real. But my conviction is not yours. I believe the evidence points strongly towards psycho-social and not flesh and blood. 

 

One recurring theme in your argument seems to be that you know all the evidence, that you've looked at all the evidence and for this reason the possibility of you being wrong is so slight as to be practically non-existent.

 

 I would politely suggest otherwise.

 

22 hours ago, DWA said:

 

  Why do people advancing this 'psycho-social phenomenon' so-called 'argument' not do a single thing, ever, to back it up? 

 

One has to provide evidence that this accounts for everything we are looking at, and that means prove that all the reports and all the footprints and all of everything else

 

I don't think anyone has to do anything to back it up. It's a theory that's out there to be attacked in the same way that yours is. If it has merit it lives to fight another day and I would be the last person to say your take on this does not have merit. On the other hand, you've offered nothing that, in my view, puts even a small dent in my own conviction. In fact, if anything your refusal to accept there are some broad truths in what I say only bolsters that conviction. But that's human nature at work, isn't it? 

I will say that the strength of my theory is that it doesn't just account for all the reports and all the existing evidence but, even more crucially, it accounts for the continuing absence of non-ambiguous evidence. That's why it holds water. 

The reason you state that scientists are not doing their job is because, I suspect, those that have looked into it (and I simply don't believe it's necessary to disprove every single case) have satisfied themselves that it's probably psycho-social. No doubt they've added a caveat that if more credible or compelling evidence comes to light they'll take another look. In the meantime those trail cams continue to miss the bigfoot and clearly there's a reason for that. That is where Occam's razor is slicing.  

 

 

[dmaker]

WSA, do you believe anecdotes to be falsifiable? Yes or no?

Do you understand what falsifiable means? I'm not convinced you do.

[WSA]

^^ I sure as hell know of one report that is very well suited to take on your challenge as stated, and the longer you dodge that challenge, the more-poser you become, and the more of a fool you look. As of this moment, you still are.

[dmaker]

I present no challenge, and I'm not the one dodging, you are. Why do you refuse to answer a simple question? You and DWA both love to apply rigid logic to what a scientist would or would not proclaim. As in a scientist would never proclaim that something does not exist. In the strictest sense of the logic involved, I am forced to agree. But, also, provisional conclusions in science are common place, if not the standard, even. There is always an understanding that additional information gathered from scientific testing could update and change any position. Pretty standard fare. 

 

Yet you both refuse to apply that same logic to anecdotes. You prefer to ignore the fact that anecdotes, by any logic, are not falsifiable and therefore are not testable. Again, pretty standard fare. Now either you do not understand this, or you do, and you refuse to acknowledge this in your attempt to dress up the anecdotes as important scientific evidence. Which they are not. 

 

No report is testable. By it's very nature it is a subjective retelling of something. Take a very basic example: "I saw a coyote in my backyard last night". How would you logically test that and either falsify it, or prove it true? You simply cannot. Even if evidence of a coyote was found in your backyard, one can still not say with 100% confidence that it was the one you saw, or that you even saw one to begin with. You see the problem? Now apply that same scenario to bigfoot. You should begin to see the problem with evidence that is not testable--the truth of it is impossible to test or determine. This is not fancy rhetoric. This is simply fact. 

 

That you flat out refuse to accept this basic fact, and the need that science has for testable evidence, puzzles me. That you readily apply strict logic to when science can make a provisional determination, but refuse to apply that same logic to the value of anecdotes as scientific evidence speaks volume to either your understanding or your willingness to be objective about this.

Edited June 8, 2017 by dmaker

[BigTreeWalker]

One big problem I see with your coyote anecdote is that there is no weight placed on the coinciding evidence. If coyote tracks and scat are found in the area it supports that it was a coyote that was seen. Timing becomes immaterial because we know there are coyotes in the area. If all you found in the area were bobcat scat and tracks, chances are lower that you actually saw a coyote. If the coincidental evidence for bobcats persists the chances that you saw a coyote become less. That is where the supporting evidence helps to determine whether your anecdotal sighting is falsifiable or not. However, if we choose to assume that all of the corresponding evidence is also falsified then I can understand the conundrum. 

[WSA]

Bblah, blah, blah...and there's your answer folks. Here we have one report, eminently testable, but Mr. Un-falsifiable chooses to change his own rules and side-step that work. Convenient.  Very Predictable. Back on "ignore."  

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

An observation taken as evidence isn't testable on its own. There needs to be a hypothesis, otherwise there isn't anything to test or falsify.

 

An example of a testable hypothesis:

 

"If X (report) is true, then it'll contain language that based on certain psychology theories, indicate that the person is being truthful."

 

An untestable statement:

 

"Bigfoot exists because my friend saw one."

[dmaker]

2 hours ago, BigTreeWalker said:

One big problem I see with your coyote anecdote is that there is no weight placed on the coinciding evidence. If coyote tracks and scat are found in the area it supports that it was a coyote that was seen. Timing becomes immaterial because we know there are coyotes in the area. If all you found in the area were bobcat scat and tracks, chances are lower that you actually saw a coyote. If the coincidental evidence for bobcats persists the chances that you saw a coyote become less. That is where the supporting evidence helps to determine whether your anecdotal sighting is falsifiable or not. However, if we choose to assume that all of the corresponding evidence is also falsified then I can understand the conundrum. 

Yes, most of what you say is true. Except for the part about determining whether an anecdote is falsifiable or not. They are not. My point was that, strictly speaking, there is no way to test and confirm the truth of the anecdote. That is pure and simple logic. The exact same logic that informs claims such as a scientist can never declare something does not exist. It's the same logic. 

 

Supporting evidence does indeed lend credence to the coyote example. I agree. That is why I constantly ask anyone who presents an anecdote if they have any supporting evidence. With the coyote example the supporting evidence, particularly biological evidence, can be tested and confirmed to have come from that species. It still does not, however, prove the anecdote true. It certainly lends weight to it, but it could never prove it. The evidence may be old, or may have been left the morning after, etc, etc. Do you see what I mean? You are conflating the notion of whether a story should be believed, with whether it can be proven. The former may happen, but the latter, never. And don't forget, the same logic also means the story can never be disproven either. It works both ways. I understand that. It is, in fact, that unfalsifiability of an anecdote that bigfoot mostly lives in. No one can prove a bigfoot anecdote just as much as no one can disprove one either. Hence the utility of anecdotes as scientific evidence is pretty much null.

 

With bigfoot this is never the case. The supporting evidence is always ambiguous and almost always untestable. Whenever testable evidence, truly testable evidence, is supplied, it fails to support the bigfoot claim. 

 

1 hour ago, WSA said:

Bblah, blah, blah...and there's your answer folks. Here we have one report, eminently testable, but Mr. Un-falsifiable chooses to change his own rules and side-step that work. Convenient.  Very Predictable. Back on "ignore."  

You're missing the point, WSA. The PGF is not a testable anecdote. Some of the supporting evidence may be testable in some fashion, personally I don't think the film will ever yield scientifically unquestionable results. That is my opinion. 

 

But you are still, predictably, avoiding the core question I have asked. Do you believe anecdotes to be testable evidence? Blowing smoke and hand waving to the PGF, does not address the question. 

1 hour ago, OntarioSquatch said:

"If X (report) is true, then it'll contain language that based on certain psychology theories, indicate that the person is being truthful."

That is wrong. Flat out wrong. There may be indicators that some believe indicate truthfulness, or otherwise, but it's not proof of the anecdote. Never will be. Your logic basically says that if someone makes a claim and I believe them to be telling the truth, then the claim must be true. Absent any evidence to prove that claim.  

Edited June 8, 2017 by dmaker