Merged Bigfoot follies

Status
Not open for further replies.
OntarioSquatch said:
I can't speak for other bigfooters, but a good recreation of the PGF (even with today's technology) would lure me back to reality.
Click to expand...

The Three Stooges and Marx Bros used lifelike monkey suits that pre-date the PGF monkey suit by decades. Get a grip.

As an aside: does anyone know who ThinkerThunker is? I've read it posited that he's the Yeti of Sweatness, but I don't thinkthunk so.
 
Last edited:
Oh no, totally different people. Thinkerthunker, while deep in the woo is at least capable of interpersonal skills and media skills beyond crayons. For Tony Danza's sake, the man has his own t-shirts...

http://www.cafepress.com/thinkerthunker

On a number of occasions I have shown Sweaty the similarity between his Patty facial movement arguments and Thinkerthunker's facial movement arguments with the Independence Day footage, which was not well received.
 
OntarioSquatch said:
Is that a real fallacy? The closest thing I can think of is argument in moderation, where the truth is supposed to be found as a compromise, but that's not the same as what you're suggesting.
Click to expand...

Yes, it is called the argument to moderation, AKA the golden mean or golden middle, false compromise, etc.

But as Jerrywayne deploys it (and so many other BLAARGers), you lie about skeptics, who were long before he ever arrived discussing pareidolia under power of suggestion, misidentifications, and most especially the people with only very casual familiarity with bigfoot. The latter class has a large number of people who think bigfoot belief is reasonable for very understandable reasons, mostly ignorance. They are not lying.

So you misrepresent this long history before his arrival and pretend we're these extremists denying same in order to make a phony golden middle argument - not all 'footers are lying. Not all are true believers. Some middle proportion are lying:

Nobody lying - - - some people lying - - - everybody lying

That is the phony spectrum he's set up.

A weaker version of the same phony argument we see him using in the other thread is to acknowledge we admit to true believers, but that we do not acknowledge it nearly as much as we should. Then he places himself in the middle again. That is not an evidence-based argument. It is a fallacy, appealing to the middle.

The way some lie in setting up the same phony golden middle is like this:

'footers have no skepticism - - - Neutrality - - - Skeptics have closed minds

This phony golden middle pretends that you can't have an opinion one way or the other. As soon as you have taken a position, you're unreasonable.
 
I see what you're saying. My take on that is that the truth sometimes really is found in the middle depending on what you're talking about. This one is a good example of where the truth can be found somewhere near the middle:

Nobody lying - - - some people lying - - - everybody lying
Click to expand...


This one seems a little more complex

'footers have no skepticism - - - Neutrality - - - Skeptics have closed minds
Click to expand...

For this one a neutral stance wouldn't make sense. I think the truth for this can be found on both ends of the spectrum (in my opinion at least). Footers do tend to have a serious lack of skepticism. And on the other side, some skeptics really do seem rather close-minded.

Black and white reasoning doesn't work with every issue. The two above are good examples of where it wouldn't work.
 
Last edited:
In all cases the truth is found through evidence, not the specious claim that it must be in the middle of some array. That is why trials put evidence in front of juries instead of instructing them that they should take the middle position between the defendant and the prosecutor.

These arrays above are lies. They are constructed in order to give the phony appearance the speaker is in the middle, and even if it were true would not make him correct.

When you lie about someone's position in order to use a logical fallacy you are committing two crimes against reason, not just one.
 
Meaningless middle:

On Nov. 11, 1911, OKlahoma City hit a high temp of 83F before a cold front moved in and dropped them down to 17F by midnight.

The mean and median temp that day was 50F, but that hardly tells the real story.
 
jerrywayne said:
...Clear up a few things for me please. Is Sharon Hill dishonest (a BLAARGer)? Is Bryan Sykes a BLAARGer too?
Click to expand...
Edited by Agatha: 
Edited to remove moderated content

Sykes' study was made in a commercial context from the get-go (Icon films) and the use of its biased result (the ancient polar bear hypothesis) to promote a TV show and a book doesn't advocate in his favor imo.

http://www.livescience.com/50148-yeti-genetics-questioned.html
..."We made this discovery that basically that fragment of DNA is not informative to tell apart two species of bears: the brown bear and [modern-day Alaskan] polar bear," Gutiérrez told Live Science. The polar bear does not live in the Himalayas, so the hair samples likely belong to the Himalayan brown bear, he said...

... "Once they had determined that two of their samples were a match to a polar bear, they should have run further analyses on the extracted DNA to look at other regions of the mitochondrial genome [DNA passed down by the mother] in order to double-check this controversial result," said one of the letter's authors, Ceiridwen Edwards, a researcher in ancient DNA studies at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.
"Instead, after (incorrectly) establishing a direct link to a 40,000-year-old polar bear sequence, they then used this misinformation in the publicity for the paper," Edwards told Live Science in an email...
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
An identical behavior and term I've used regularly in business for the last 30+ years is playing both sides against the middle. It's that guy (and there's lots of them) who creates as much confusion/havoc/incompetence/doubt as necessary on either or both sides of a contract/project for the sole goal of making himself the winner somehow. Which is curious because it's a "playing not to lose" proposition, not a "winnable" one. And it's not necessarily about money, quite often it's simply somebody who's in over their head and they know it. Sadly it's a common human dysfunction and it can be a real battle against it when you're the actual honest, straight-shooting rational human in the equation.
 
For clarification post 4409 is an answer to two questions asked by jerrywayne before his post was edited: "Is Bryan Sykes a BLAARGer too?" and "Is Sykes into yeti research for the money?"
 
Last edited:
I see. Your response was good, and that's because you appealed to the evidence.

One of the things our interlocutor is doing is shaming. We don't have much alternative but to say frankly that BLAARGing is lying. So our interlocutor has for years gotten all bent out of shape, pointing the finger at us, shaming us for calling someone a liar. Look what awful people we are to call someone a liar. Blame the victim of the lie instead of the liar.

We have nothing to be ashamed of. What is shameful is allowing people to lie through conflicts of interest that have the effect of regressing society backwards towards witchcraft, superstition, and magic.

When the purpose of the lie is innocent, you don't see this kind of behavior. When Mom and Dad are caught lying about Santa Clause, it does not reflect badly on them. But when someone is lying for profit or as a dirty trick on someone else, then exposing them gets just the kind of reaction.

If our interlocutor would just be honest in promoting his Legend Tripping model, that would be great. Being underhanded about it is what sullies the debate, and that is not the fault of the person pointing out the underhanded tactics.
 
AlaskaBushPilot said:
I see. Your response was good, and that's because you appealed to the evidence.

One of the things our interlocutor is doing is shaming. We don't have much alternative but to say frankly that BLAARGing is lying. So our interlocutor has for years gotten all bent out of shape, pointing the finger at us, shaming us for calling someone a liar. Look what awful people we are to call someone a liar. Blame the victim of the lie instead of the liar.

We have nothing to be ashamed of. What is shameful is allowing people to lie through conflicts of interest that have the effect of regressing society backwards towards witchcraft, superstition, and magic.

When the purpose of the lie is innocent, you don't see this kind of behavior. When Mom and Dad are caught lying about Santa Clause, it does not reflect badly on them. But when someone is lying for profit or as a dirty trick on someone else, then exposing them gets just the kind of reaction.

If our interlocutor would just be honest in promoting his Legend Tripping model, that would be great. Being underhanded about it is what sullies the debate, and that is not the fault of the person pointing out the underhanded tactics.
Click to expand...

Nailed it.
 
Several posts have been moved to AAH and others edited for various breaches of the rules.

Do not personalize your arguments and remain civil and polite. Whilst no cards have been handed out at this time, further incivility will result in more drastic actions, including infractions and/or suspensions.

Thank you for your anticipated cooperation in this matter.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Agatha
 
jerrywayne said:
Here is the latest from Darren Naish. There is a little bit about Bigfoot.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/2015/04/20/things-i-have-gotten-wrong/
Click to expand...

My current take on sasquatch – enunciated in several Tet Zoo ver 3 articles as well as in print (Naish 2012, Conway et al. 2013) – is that it’s a sociological phenomenon, not a zoological one.
Click to expand...

Quite. Which is the take of most skeptical folks here: sasquatch/ghosts/alien abductions/psychic mediums are all sociological phenomena.

ETA: However it's good to note that he's come to the correct conclusion. No matter how sheepishly.
 
Last edited:
He cites a book of his that came out in 2013:

Cryptozoologicon aims to provide a new way to approach cryptozoology: as fictional biology

The one-star reviews are the best:

I thought I was getting into a serious (or even semi-serious) discussion of cryptid animals and legends, but instead got a book full of explanations how the observer's reports were mistakes, misrepresentations, lies, and then calling the reports and observers "absurd."
Click to expand...


Mistakes, misrepresentations, lies... reports and OBSERVERS are absurd.

Better call the fire truck. Accuse him of saying all the reports are lies and what a horrible person he is for calling people liars.
 
AlaskaBushPilot said:
He cites a book of his that came out in 2013:

Cryptozoologicon aims to provide a new way to approach cryptozoology: as fictional biology

The one-star reviews are the best:




Mistakes, misrepresentations, lies... reports and OBSERVERS are absurd.

Better call the fire truck. Accuse him of saying all the reports are lies and what a horrible person he is for calling people liars.
Click to expand...

Here is what Darren said about the yeti in another column (and I'm sure he would say something similar about Bigfoot):

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/2013/08/04/cryptozoologicon-yeti-teaser/

The part I want to discuss:

"This is the only logical interpretation if we choose to imagine all ‘wildman’ sightings and lore as encounters with real creatures.

If, however, these sightings and lore combine mistakes, hoaxes and wishful thinking with the seemingly universal human belief that there have always been wild creatures or spirits that are somehow intermediate between people and the rest of the natural world, it is wisest to interpret all or most ‘mystery hominids’ as a sort of socio-cultural phenomenon that has been mistakenly ‘de-mythified’ by cryptozoologists. In view of the continuing lack of good evidence of any sort for Yetis and other mystery hominids, the latter is our preferred option."

I would agree with his opinion here. Note that he does not reduce it all to gaming (lies). He argues that some people "choose to imagine," not "choose to lie" about the existence of wildmen. Note he says the lore "combines mistakes, hoaxes and wishful thinking" with "seemingly universal human belief" in human/non-human intermediates and this lore is best understood as "socio-cultural phenomenon." He does not reduce Bigfootville to an overriding gaming explanation.
 
I've personally seen more than enough evidence that suggests this is both a zoological and sociological phenomenon. Anyone who researches the phenomenon hard enough and unbiased enough will come to the same conclusion.
 
OntarioSquatch said:
I've personally seen more than enough evidence that suggests this is both a zoological and sociological phenomenon. Anyone who researches the phenomenon hard enough and unbiased enough will come to the same conclusion.
Click to expand...

There's not one single shred of evidence that would be useful in establishing the existence of bigfoot, and there are many well-reasoned arguments to support the view that bigfoot witnessing/fandom is a social phenomenon. I'd say that bigfoot fandom is purely a social phenomenon.

I can't imagine what you'd suggest my bias could be. I don't care one way or another whether any particular animal exists, including bigfoot. I only care that bigfooters make false claims based on an attitude that attacks basic science.

Show me some good evidence, and I'll consider it as such. In the meantime, you have to consider that to date I've not seen any.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom