• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Seeing Cryptids: The Problems

Northern Lights said:
Interesting wording. So feeling relevant is important to you on a forum comprises of a bunch of people you don't know. Who's BLAARGing now?
Click to expand...

You are. This tactic, projection, is one of the oldest and most rusty tools in the gaming kit.

You are the person who claims to have had an 800 lb. monster throw a tiny piece of candy at him from just feet away. It is no greater fib to say someone just wrote the opposite of what they said.

G Sdid not say he wanted attention. He said the exact opposite.

Students of gaming have to zero in on how they are being played. A gamer knows all they have to do is lie, and it will bother people with a conscience. So the gamer says to himself "watch how I can get all these skeptics on the defensive by lying..."

One gamer is on the ropes, the lie told for attention being exposed for what it is... and another gamer comes to the rescue, falsely accusing a skeptic of lying in order to get attention. When the skeptic is saying exactly the opposite!

None of us would do this. We would be horrified to discover we had taken someone's words in the exact opposite way. We would be deeply apologetic to have done so and admit immediately to our mistake.

But when the intention is to jam the works, to sabotage, to troll, to stick the knife in wherever we can manufacture an excuse, then the more defensive protests against the lie, the better. What is interesting is to see how in the long run this mask of the cheerful, polite and curious "researcher" has given way to the true character under the mask.

Let's go back to what we are teaching our children to do with BLAARGing. Bigfoot live action alternate reality gaming. We teach the children antisocial conduct: to tell a tall tale for attention, thereby inviting the appropriate skeptical response, and then accuse skeptics of telling tall tales in order to get attention.

It's a pretty dirty trick: baiting people like this. You don't believe in bigfoot and all the actions prove so. It is a posture taken on in order to toy with people.

It is apparently exquisite duper's delight to have people thinking that you believe the nonsense you are typing. Look how stupid people are for taking me seriously. Look what I can get away with.

We get it. This is our study subject and thank you for playing.
 
The Shrike said:
Post 2802, Jodie.

For some reason, you've developed this habit of calling me out for statements I haven't made. Then, when your error is pointed out, you double down on it instead of own up to it. I'm not sure why you're doing this, but if you can't be a reliable witness to your own statements that are preserved right here in these threads then yes, it does erode my confidence in your claims of extraordinary events you've witnessed.
Click to expand...

The only time I've done that is in the BLAARG thread. Where are these multiple statements that I made about you denying cougars could exist in SC. I saw one comment that I linked to you, then I told you that I didn't misrepresent anything.
 
The Shrike said:
Post 2802, Jodie.

For some reason, you've developed this habit of calling me out for statements I haven't made. Then, when your error is pointed out, you double down on it instead of own up to it. I'm not sure why you're doing this, but if you can't be a reliable witness to your own statements that are preserved right here in these threads then yes, it does erode my confidence in your claims of extraordinary events you've witnessed.
Click to expand...

The only time I've done that is in the BLAARG thread. Where are these multiple statements that I made about you denying cougars could exist in SC? I saw one comment that I linked to you, then I told you that I didn't misrepresent anything.

I really don't have issues with anyone that doesn't believe me, however, I do if you resort to insulting me, which you have. You still deny the posts I linked back in the BLAARG thread. You seem to think I trolled you over there when in fact I asked you two different times to let it go because I didn't think it was important. You kept bringing it back up so I obliged and linked two of your posts to show you what you said.

That's the only instance that has happened. I really haven't mentioned anything about you specifically as far as my cougar sighting is concerned and I'm not certain what you are referring to in this thread other than the above mentioned post where you specifically said there wasn't a cougar in Edisto, which is in SC.

And I'm going to say this one more time, not being able to cite verbatim what someone said on a forum is not equivalent to misidentifying a cougar that is 15 feet away from you in daylight. If you keep insisting that has anything to do with my ability to identify animals then that only makes you less reliable since I'm not certain what sense of authority you are speaking from to make that kind of judgment. It's only your personal opinion.
 
Last edited:
Here's a misidentification made considerably closer than 15 feet.
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/DNA-Clears-Man-Convicted-in-1994-Rape-295627971.html
On July 11, 1994, prosecutors say a woman was abducted by two men from her apartment.
The Chicago Tribune reported the two men dragged the victim to a sedan and drove her to another location, where the woman says she was raped in some bushes by a man she said was Gonzalez. The woman ran and hid from her attackers, but the second man reportedly found her and raped her.

An officer testified in court that Gonzalez matched the description the woman gave them for one of her attackers, and the woman identified him, testifying in court that “he was wearing the same clothes, everything,” the Tribune reported.

New DNA testing revealed that forensic material from the victim came from two men, but neither of the DNA profiles matched Gonzalez . . .

"This new evidence is substantial and casts serious doubt on the guilt of Angel Gonzalez," the Lake County State's Attorney's office said in a release.
Click to expand...
 
OK, so I have no idea of the actual circumstances of that crime to draw any kind of conclusion about her memory.

The point I was trying to make is that different cognitive processes are required to memorize text versus recognition of an animal. The circumstances in which each occur also dictate the amount of retention in one's long term memory.

I remember very little of the direct quotes that people post on this forum for several reasons mainly due to lack of interest, however, if links to research are included I'm much more likely to retain that information. Likewise with animal identification, that is in my my long term memory. Seeing a cougar where one isn't supposed to be will crystalize the event in my long term memory.

You guys are great at reciting sound bites regarding memory but IMO your knowledge is superficial at best. I had to learn and know this information in detail as a result of working on a brain injury unit for a couple of years.
 
The Shrike said:
My statement:




Not only are your monkeys incapable of flight, they aren't even monkeys.
Click to expand...

I've asked you two times to link these quotes of mine and yet you fail to do it. I can only assume that the only one doubling down here is you.
 
Missing by a mile as usual. Memory is fallible, and people are suggestible.

In the instance cited above, a person was utterly convinced that she remembered right, but she remembered wrong. It's really as simple as that. We are agile animals with brains that are wired to put together a great deal of partial, inconclusive, even wrong, information quickly and to act decisively. We're sometimes wrong and often right, but we cannot always be sure. Back when we were living in jungles and trees, error and pareidolia were likely to be an evolutionary advantage. If you think you saw a puma and run away, a mistake is cheap. If you stop and re-evaluate whether it was a puma, a mistake is deadly. The consequences of wrong guesses are out of balance, like those of Russian roulette. If you play Russian roulette with a gun that has a thousand empty chambers, the odds of getting shot are very small, but most of us would still consider it a bad bet. We are wired for safety and inaccuracy.

The likelihood of seeing a cougar is, though not absolutely impossible, extremely small. It is so small that without corroboration it is entirely reasonable for reasonable people to question it and to suggest other alternatives.

The mistake is not the observational error. It is the insistence that one is so above it that the knowledge, consideration and observation of others is worthless.
 
Better to see the panther that isn't there than to miss the one that is.


ETA:
Who better to consult concerning memory and cognition than Dr. Steven Novella.
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/sleep-and-false-memory/
When someone looks at me and earnestly says, “I know what I saw,” I am fond of replying, “No you don’t.” You have a distorted and constructed memory of a distorted and constructed perception, both of which are subservient to whatever narrative your brain is operating under.

One of the more dramatic aspects of memory distortion is false memories. These can be completely fabricated memories that are indistinguishable from genuine memories. False memories can involve small details, or entire scenarios. One way to fabricate false memories is with suggestion – just suggesting to someone a detail of an experience they had may cause them to incorporate that detail into their memory of the experience.

The apparent reason for this is that our brains appear to favor consistency over accuracy . . .
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Jodie said:
I've asked you two times to link these quotes of mine and yet you fail to do it. I can only assume that the only one doubling down here is you.
Click to expand...

In my post 2815 I directed you to your post 2802. Note that the posts have been renumbered following Moderator action earlier today, so your post is now #2793 in this thread. Here are your exact words:

"Using a tact that Shrike uses, to continue to say that it's not possible for a cougar to be present in SC is irrational."

This statement from you is in error. Here is my response illustrating your error in post #2805:

"I cannot continue to say that it's not possible for a cougar to be in South Carolina because I haven't said that once yet. I have not said that because I think it is possible for a cougar to occur in South Carolina."

You wrote that I had continued to say that it was impossible for a cougar to occur in South Carolina. I never said that. That's your error. Do you see that?
 
bruto said:
Missing by a mile as usual. Memory is fallible, and people are suggestible.

In the instance cited above, a person was utterly convinced that she remembered right, but she remembered wrong. It's really as simple as that. .
Click to expand...

Not really, there could be a thousand reasons for why she misidentified that man that have nothing to do with her memory.
 
The Shrike said:
In my post 2815 I directed you to your post 2802. Note that the posts have been renumbered following Moderator action earlier today, so your post is now #2793 in this thread. Here are your exact words:

"Using a tact that Shrike uses, to continue to say that it's not possible for a cougar to be present in SC is irrational."
Click to expand...

Edisto is in SC, but it wasn't the content I was referring to, it was the way that you discount things when you don't necessarily know what you are talking about. You ignored the first part of the sentence and took what I said out of context.
 
Last edited:
Well that's up to you, I'm pretty sure everyone made up their mind before I even posted my sighting.
 
Jodie said:
You ignored the first part of the sentence and took what I said out of context.
Click to expand...
So could you please tell me what you actually meant by this statement then please?

"Using a tact that Shrike uses, to continue to say that it's not possible for a cougar to be present in SC is irrational."

You see, to the English-speaking world, this means that someone known as "Shrike" has some kind of history of saying that it's not possible for a cougar to be present in SC [South Carolina].
 
bruto said:
The likelihood of seeing a cougar is, though not absolutely impossible, extremely small. It is so small that without corroboration it is entirely reasonable for reasonable people to question it and to suggest other alternatives.

The mistake is not the observational error. It is the insistence that one is so above it that the knowledge, consideration and observation of others is worthless.
Click to expand...

Let's see, one of you didn't know that these were tidal islands illustrating how little some of you know about the area. Many state inaccuracies or overly simplified versions of research results and try to apply those inappropriately to the topic. Other's with nothing left to say resort to insults. I think, with few exceptions, I'm well within my right to disregard the vast majority of the input. The mistake would be blindly accepting what's posted here ( by anyone, myself included) without question. Rejection of my sighting isn't the problem, it's the grounds upon which any of you choose to reject my sighting, and the disrespectful approach that is the problem.
 
The Shrike said:
So could you please tell me what you actually meant by this statement then please?

"Using a tact that Shrike uses, to continue to say that it's not possible for a cougar to be present in SC is irrational."

You see, to the English-speaking world, this means that someone known as "Shrike" has some kind of history of saying that it's not possible for a cougar to be present in SC [South Carolina].
Click to expand...

That refers to those that did say it, not specifically you. By this point in the thread I had posted the articles for the track found on the property in the upstate, the article with DNA confirmation that a cougar had traveled 1500 miles from it's home territory, and the article of the cougar shot in the Metro Atlanta area, yet some of you still insisted it couldn't have happened. To me, that was an irrational position, something I've seen you state when taking on footers. For someone to continue to insist that cougars couldn't exist in SC amounted to trolling me, for whatever reason, rather than pursuing a legitimate conversation. Obviously the moderators agreed with me since they cleaned most of it out of the thread.

I can see how you would come to that conclusion now that you've pointed it out, but that wasn't a reference to you other than how you handle an argument or debate.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom