Why Would Denialist Waste Their Time On This Or Any Other Bf Website?

[Guest DWA]

as a skeptic I disagree with this very unscientific viewpoint especially from someone who claims to hold to the scientific principle

No, I am right.  Until you point out to me the "skeptics" that I will show you are proponents.

 

The "very unscientific viewpoint" is believing that people continuing to spout the same old tired canards as if they haven't been proven wrong 1,000 times are somehow enhancing the conversation.

[Rockape]

as a skeptic I disagree with this very unscientific viewpoint especially from someone who claims to hold to the scientific principle

Someone needs to learn the difference between skeptics and scofftics/denialists, and it ain't you.

[Guest Crowlogic]

A scoftic operates by telling the believer they are stupid or otherwise mentally deficient.  Scoffing is design as  dig against the individual.  I am not a proponent but I'll never tell a believer that they are stupid.  Fact of the matter it does take intelligence to believe as the matrix of belief is a complex one.

[Guest DWA]

No it ain't.  It is reading publicly available information...and knowing how to think about it.

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

After spending time on a skeptical forum, I saw that some of the Bigfoot-devoted denialists there actually have pretty good investigation skills. In other words, they have the skills necessary to figure out the answer as to whether Sasquatch are real or not. The problem is that they have a bias and it's that they want to believe that Bigfoot doesn't exist, which basically means these people are pseudo-skeptics.

 

Skepticism is about withholding belief until you can make a reasonable determination of what the truth is based on the proper evidence. There's nothing skeptical about the stance that Bigfoot doesn't exist. It's a belief that no real skeptic who is well-read on the subject would subscribe to.

[Guest DWA]

^^^This, pretty much.

 

See, some of us understand that unicorns might be real.  There just isn't a sufficient evidence base that anyone has shown us to go on, and we're content to wait until there is.  (Hint:  "Never" would not precisely stun us.)  Saying "unicorns aren't real!" is actually an irrational stance.  Really?  They aren't?  PROVE IT.

 

Exactly.

 

I don't think that bigfoot deniers are stupid.  Far from it.  They've gotten as far as they have in life the same way I have:  accepting what their senses tell them as real unless there is good reason to do otherwise.  They just can't understand that people who have seen a sasquatch are doing just what they have, and that those people's testimony is for this reason alone worthy of consideration unless ONE CAN PROVE! that they're lying or mistaken.  They don't use their analytical tools on the evidence, the way they would were the evidence in their comfort zone, because they can't turn the denial voice off.  They have had it ingrained in them that certain things are Just Not So; and they can't understand that to hold such a belief absent PROOF THAT IT IS TRUE is, in fact, an irrational stance.

[Guest Divergent1]

No it ain't.  It is reading publicly available information...and knowing how to think about it.

You mean like propaganda and commercials? Or the Raelian beliefs?

[Guest DWA]

"knowing how to think about it" is critical. 

[Guest Divergent1]

^^^This, pretty much.

 

See, some of us understand that unicorns might be real.  There just isn't a sufficient evidence base that anyone has shown us to go on, and we're content to wait until there is.  (Hint:  "Never" would not precisely stun us.)  Saying "unicorns aren't real!" is actually an irrational stance.  Really?  They aren't?  PROVE IT.

 

Exactly.

 

I don't think that bigfoot deniers are stupid.  Far from it.  They've gotten as far as they have in life the same way I have:  accepting what their senses tell them as real unless there is good reason to do otherwise.  They just can't understand that people who have seen a sasquatch are doing just what they have, and that those people's testimony is for this reason alone worthy of consideration unless ONE CAN PROVE! that they're lying or mistaken.  They don't use their analytical tools on the evidence, the way they would were the evidence in their comfort zone, because they can't turn the denial voice off.  They have had it ingrained in them that certain things are Just Not So; and they can't understand that to hold such a belief absent PROOF THAT IT IS TRUE is, in fact, an irrational stance.

I guess it depends on whether they ever bring a body in. We'll all be dead 50 years down the road but what would you think of proponents that are still out there looking and never finding bigfoot?

[Guest DWA]

"knowing how to think about it" is critical.

 

I get asked that question a lot.  Know my answer?

 

If the precise same level of effort that is being devoted now is being devoted then, I'd say:  of course it's real.  The evidence says so!  But what do you expect when no one is addressing it, and no one, essentially, is looking (as is held by the organization that is doing by far the *most* looking now)?

[Guest Divergent1]

Well look at the U.S population in 1967 compared to today. How many sightings did you have then versus now, surely that should give you an indication of something?

 

I would think that the amount of sightings would be directly proportional to the amount of human population growth if there is a healthy population of bigfoot out there.

 

 

If the sightings are greater in proportion that should tell you that someone somewhere is lying or mistaken. If the proportion is less it might mean that sasquatch population is on the decline.

Edited May 29, 2015 by Divergent1

[MIB]

No, I don't think that tells much we can rely on.   Unmeasurable changes in the propensity to report or not report throw any such "calculation" into chaos.    We have to be aware of cultural changes that turn apples to oranges, not just count each at any given time in history.

 

MIB

[Guest Divergent1]

True, but there has to be some kind of statistical method that can account for unknown variables. Running those equations might give some kind of indication for what variables to look for......

[Guest DWA]

Well look at the U.S population in 1967 compared to today. How many sightings did you have then versus now, surely that should give you an indication of something?

 

I would think that the amount of sightings would be directly proportional to the amount of human population growth if there is a healthy population of bigfoot out there.

 

 

If the sightings are greater in proportion that should tell you that someone somewhere is lying or mistaken. If the proportion is less it might mean that sasquatch population is on the decline.

 

But the Internet is a wild card one can't properly factor in, except to say this:  it probably (make that IT CERTAINLY) prompts a whole whole lot more people to report now than would have reported in 1967 given what the public knew then (which was virtually nothing compared to now).  People have a place to virtually instantaneously report, and a TV program that is telling them where and how to do it.  There was nothing even close to approximating that in 1967.

 

Problem is, something else hasn't changed:  the mainstream's disinclination to do a thing about this.

 

I can say with virtual certainty that sightings are 10 to 100 times (if not more) the number of reports; this is something that just makes common sense when one is talking about something that the culture generally ridicules.  Almost no one will report; the only proof I need of this is the road crossings that have involved broad daylight and multiple - up to dozens to hundreds - of vehicles (there are many of these).  I think that in one or two cases I am aware of have motorists in separate cars reported the same road crossing.  From my read alone, a number of these should have been major news stories...except that the only person who reported went to a website and did it anonymously.  Obviously many motorists didn't see it; many couldn't clearly make it out; many are probably still wondering what that was (or know) and just haven't said a thing.

 

Nothing is going to change until the omerta on discussing this topic in the mainstream is ditched for the medieval foolishness it is.  You're a scientist, for Pete's sake.  You haven't the slightest interest in what is causing all this?  Oh, sorry then...you aren't a scientist.

No, I don't think that tells much we can rely on.   Unmeasurable changes in the propensity to report or not report throw any such "calculation" into chaos.    We have to be aware of cultural changes that turn apples to oranges, not just count each at any given time in history.

 

MIB

Precisely.

[Guest Divergent1]

I was a scientist once upon a time. At any rate, refusing to look at evidence in a new way seems kind of narrow minded to me. It might lead to nothing, but it also might lead you in a direction that wasn't very obvious before.