arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
I love a good ghost story too, but that doesn't mean that I think ghosts might actually exist.
AmyStrange
Philosopher
That's true, but it also might just mean that the "perfectly natural phenomenon" is just something we haven't yet discovered and that it also might be something that we now think is paranormal in nature.
Who knows what the future holds?
If you were living a thousand years in the past, and somehow a time traveler came back and showed you a smartphone, what would you think it was?
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arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
That argument isn't as good as you think it is. We actually know an awful lot - there's not a lot of room for "new physics" that isn't very esoteric and on the fringe of the quantum realm. We know the fundamental forces that govern the universe. We know how ecology works. We know that a breeding population of large mammals cannot be sustained without a significant number of individuals and a very large area. Unless we do actually establish that some phenomenon exists that can't be explained by our current science, no "new science" is needed. And that has not been established.
Again, any phenomenon has an explanation within current science, even if we do not currently know what it is. There is little room for "new science" - it's just another "god of the gaps" style argument.
We know that the future holds science that is much like today's - just with additional detail. New scientific discoveries rarely completely overturn current science. While it does happen occasionally, the vast majority of science consists of explaining reality at greater and greater detail.
Demonstrate conclusively that some phenomenon exists that cannot, in principle, be explained by currently known science, then let's talk.
Irrelevant. I don't live a thousand years ago, and smartphones didn't exist then. A thousand years ago the scientific method had not been codified the way it is today. Magic was a reasonable explanation for phenomena that were not understood. Today, we know that there is no magic, and everything has a natural explanation.
Here's a better hypothetical: If some alien suddenly appeared today with a device from its technology, which was a thousand years more advanced than ours, I would not think it was magic. I would think that their technology was more advanced than ours, and I would look for a scientific description of how it worked.
RedRatSnake
Slithering Through life
AmyStrange
Philosopher
Not yet anyway, and you might be right that it never will be, but I don't like to confine myself to just thinking inside the box.
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AmyStrange
Philosopher
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
But the box is huge, and fascinating.
Isn't enough to acknowledge that the garden is beautiful without thinking that there are fairies at the bottom of it?
AmyStrange
Philosopher
And that was my point. What was then thought of as magic (or paranormal) now has a natural explanation.
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AmyStrange
Philosopher
It is fascinating, but I'm a writer, and what I do is dream up things that don't happen in the real world.
I don't think life would be as much fun without some of those fairies that you mentioned.
As far as the paranormal is concerned, I only deal in hard facts and nothing else when I do my research, and sometimes those same facts can be interpreted in more than one way.
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AmyStrange
Philosopher
Sorry arthwollipot, I'm abandoning the direction our discussion is headed, because I think it might end up veering us away from the original intent of this thread, and that's mainly about Bigfoot and not the paranormal in general.
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RedRatSnake
Slithering Through life
I never got into that BF Alien / Ghost stuff ~ It was hard enough just keeping faith with the one that was most certainly living in the real with us.
Living in Plymouth, MA one of the most Ghostly places a good part of my life I have yet to see Myles Standish looking over Plymouth Rock shaking his head with a look of BS on his face.
RRS
Long Live The Thylacine
Living in Plymouth, MA one of the most Ghostly places a good part of my life I have yet to see Myles Standish looking over Plymouth Rock shaking his head with a look of BS on his face.
RRS
Long Live The Thylacine
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Cosmic Yak
Philosopher
Hopefully, you've now seen from the further posts on this one, that this is just a con, perpetrated by fraudsters for fame and financial profit.
Nests? For heaven's sake...
Now, remember that you cited this area as being a possible habitat for Bigfoots, due to it not having been explored much. Now, how does that reconcile with these supposed sightings, in which it's apparently easy to wander in and stumble across Bigfoot nests (whatever they may be), and to encounter the creatures lolloping across roads?
I don't see how both these can be true, and the most reasonable explanation is that there are no huge, hard-to-see-in-a-remote-area animals, which are simultaneously easy to spot and leave signs of their presence all over the place: it's just a combination of genuine misidentifications (the overlap between supposed BF sightings and black bear habitat is striking), and outright fraud.
AmyStrange
Philosopher
Hey, I just googled, "Bigfoot"+"Olympic", and those were the first two hits. Maybe your luck will be better, but yes I agree with your assessment.
Like I posted before, crap like that is why Bigfoot research is not taken seriously by the scientific community.
I used to keep track of Bigfoot sightings, but I've been busy with my six novels.
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Cosmic Yak
Philosopher
I think the reason Bigfoot research is not being taken seriously by the scientific community is because there is no Bigfoot research. What we see are either well-meaning attempts by confused amateurs to somehow wedge their claimed experiences into something resembling biological plausibility, or cynical attempts by fraudsters to conceal their money-making grifting in a veneer of scientific respectability. The scientific community (generally) does not dismiss new or novel ideas out of hand. It does, however, deal rather sharply with pseudoscience and fraud.
AmyStrange
Philosopher
I may not have actually been looking for it, but I did do serious Bigfoot research:
https://www.atomadness.com/UNX-sasquatch.html#nativeamericanlegends
ETA: I'm having a problem with the security certificate for my original domain name (amystrange.org) so I've moved it to my other domain (atomadness.com) and some of the links won't work.
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William Parcher
Show me the monkey!
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2005
- Messages
- 27,487
Amy, do you consider yourself a Bigfoot believer?
AmyStrange
Philosopher
Not really, but when I first started out, I did.
Now, I think the odds are against it, but there are some anomalies that make me wonder if I'm right in that assessment.
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autumn1971
Illuminator
Hopefully, you've now seen from the further posts on this one, that this is just a con, perpetrated by fraudsters for fame and financial profit.
Nests? For heaven's sake...
Now, remember that you cited this area as being a possible habitat for Bigfoots, due to it not having been explored much. Now, how does that reconcile with these supposed sightings, in which it's apparently easy to wander in and stumble across Bigfoot nests (whatever they may be), and to encounter the creatures lolloping across roads?
I don't see how both these can be true, and the most reasonable explanation is that there are no huge, hard-to-see-in-a-remote-area animals, which are simultaneously easy to spot and leave signs of their presence all over the place: it's just a combination of genuine misidentifications (the overlap between supposed BF sightings and black bear habitat is striking), and outright fraud.
I’ve said it before, but with logging roads and hunting camps, the most remote parts of the Pacific Northwest are accessible fairly easily.
The Everglades are much more difficult to access in a lot of ares, and science was still able to tag every one of only about 50 Florida panthers existing.
Once a Bigfoot team does that sort of work I’ll be happy to see the results.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
Again, if there are anomalies, look into them. Look at possible naturalistic explanations for them that do not require the hypothesis of a breeding population of giant hominid ape that has remained hidden for decades.
Would you like to present one such anomaly for us to examine?
AmyStrange
Philosopher
Well, there's the weirdness of the Patterson film, but I'm not going anywhere near that one.
But, what do you know about the Native American Legends that are related to Bigfoot?
Or, how about Grover S. Krantz?
And of course, there's also the three friends I mentioned here:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=14232104#post14232104
Unfortunately, there's really nothing there to examine except my reaction to what they told me, but of course, there's always the option to not believe me, which I wouldn't blame you in the least.
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