Top 5 Skeptical Fallacies

[Donn]

I still don't understand the vehemence with which people attack people who think there's a large, hairy beast on the loose. They're not selling sasquatch cure-all, or reading minds or casting spells, they're walking in the woods.

A lot of them do sell various forms of the notion — tv shows and tickets. It seems they do more than walk in the woods, they shoot them up too. (See some foot threads.)

The vehemence comes from frustrated rubber-ducking over years. I agree, the MA should keep tongues civil. Mea culpa, often. It's hard to be human. SIWOTI!

There is no necessity to dismiss the argument at all. The only necessity is to ask for more evidence.

When you ask for more evidence more than once, you have dismissed an argument in between.

You can do it nicely, on a loop, but we are humans and not animated gifs. It gets trying.

Wow. Science as religion. Wish I'd thought that one up.

Reputation counts, why is this religion?

Isn't that what peer-review is for?

Is peer-review not reputation?

In the case of bigfoot, the lack of skeletal and photographic evidence can be used to back a negative proposition,

Which is what happens.

but if you try that with god/s, you'll come a cropper at the first hurdle.

Yeah, the immaterial is slippery.

 

[Dinwar]

Is peer-review not reputation?

In theory, no; it should be limited to that paper. However, if Ken Hamm tries to publish in Geology you can bet your best kidney they'll toss it out without reading further than the name. Known frauds have NO credibility, and therefore nothing they say is worth entering into the formal scientific literature. THAT is what peer-review is for: determining if something is worth allowing into the formal scientific literature. It's NOT an assurance of quality, completeness, validity, applicability, or anything but "These people accept it as worthy of inclusion into the scientific literature". Anyone who's gone through the process knows how much personal biases and the like affect this process.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Edited by Agatha: 

Edited moderated content

From what science can we learn how it is a person can repeatedly make a number of patently false plays like this? Especially when it requires a total disregard for the sincere, polite efforts skeptics have made in those hundreds of pages. The key is having no conscience about what you are doing, and unlike most people - actually enjoy trolling.

Edited by Agatha: 

Edited breach of rule 12

Rather, it is to advance our study of the gamesmanship 'footery largely represents as opposed to being a belief people have. It is a platform to operate from, not a belief system. It is fun to reel off the plays, especially the ones where you lecture skeptics on how a true skeptic is the one who believes in bigfoot.

There are at least three elements important to a person craving Duper's Delight and why they would play this game on a skeptic board. The degree of delight increases with:

1) The difficulty of the person you are duping. Skeptics are more of a challenge than others.

2) The difficulty of the subject matter. Bigfoot, a gigantic pretend creature with zero hard evidence in thousands of years' human experience - to dupe people into thinking you believe in that under sustained inquiry is quite a challenge.

3) The size of the audience, and in particular the number of people who know exactly what you are doing and are enjoying the show.


This is a scientific study on internet trolling we should take special note of:

Buckels, Erin E., Paul D. Trapnell, and Delroy L. Paulhus. "Trolls just want to have fun." Personality and Individual Differences 67 (2014): 97-102.

They conducted a study of over 1200 people online, showing an amazing correspondence between trolling and the Dark Tetrad of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism.

This sober, systematic, careful study of internet trolling resulted in them making this extremely strong statement:

their...scores were so strong that it might be said that online trolls are prototypical everyday sadists.

This is a scientific study, not me speculating. It is the appropriate scientific explanation for exactly why a person would repeatedly make false claims proven wrong in hundreds of pages. It isn't that THEY never learn. It is that WE never learn they don't believe in the first place, and are getting a rise out of putting us on. The holy grail is getting people so frustrated that they get sanctioned for responding to you in anger.

So is especially wonderful if you can report posts like this one right here for allegedly breaking forum rules under the false claim it is attacking the person rather than the argument. But this is precisely the science we need to understand what we are dealing with and it would be both intellectually wrong and supremely unfair to delete this science-based post offering such insight into the gamesmanship 'footery represents.

We have come to call it the Bigfoot Live Action Alternate Reality Game, or BLAARGing.

 

[Loss Leader]

1) Appeal to Ignorance

2) Argumentum Ad Populum

Hahaha. That's complete nonsense. But this one is the crown jewel

3) Burden of Proof and False Default Position

"Bigfoot doesn't exist and it's up to proponents to prove otherwise."

The denialist assumes a negative default position and shifts the burden of proof to others.

It's not possible to prove a negative in the case of Bigfoot, so the burden of proof in this case can't ever be fulfilled. It's important to at least be theoretically able to back up the claims you make.

What? The burden of proof should be on denialists to prove bigfoot doesn't exist? That's the definition of proving a negative. Instead, the burden is on the claimant. I don't have to prove that the earth isn't round. The claimant must present evidence of his positive claim: bigfoot does exist.

You've absolutely upended the entire concept. Are you honestly saying that it is impossible for you to provide evidence that bigfoot does exist? And then are you actually claiming that, because you're having trouble with proof, we all need to assume that bigfoot exists?

That's not logic. The Queen of Hearts couldn't make sense of that.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

they're walking in the woods.

Prove that - because our experience through hundreds of pages' interaction is that these are people quite distinctive for very, very little outdoor experience.

Show us the evidence that 'footers are people who, instead of doing what we see right here (posting on the internet) are people who get out in the woods to any significant degree.

There's a really cool disconnect between Forum Management - where the argument that the poster must not be attacked is agreed upon by 100% of people.

Yet in this - and other "woo" threads - abusing the poster rather than the post is so de rigeur it neatly segues back into logical fallacies:

Argumentum ad hominem.

Dead wrong.

There is no greater example to lead us than the founder of the forum himself - James Randi - who was relentless in exposing con men and stating emphatically what a danger to society they represent. He called them Charlatans because that is what they are. Yet under your false argument, James Randi should be condemned for attacking them personally!

This false argument is a form of blaming the victims: we are not allowed to properly characterize a murderer as such because poor baby that would be attacking the person rather than what they are doing.

Forums like these provide a platform for extremely abusive behavior under the guise of playing dumb, selective memory, selective attention, etc. that are the tactics of woo purveyors. You are not an active participant in the bigfoot threads. We do not see you on them, so you are not personally experiencing this kind of abuse and prove your ignorance about them in asserting they are people who are "walking in the woods". That is certainly not an accurate claim about the OP who claims getting out in the woods is not feasible for him, and he would not explain to us why.

These tactics are abusive. They are straight from the literature on abusive personality disorders, and it is appropriate for us to point them out. But it is not against the forum rules to ignore hundreds of pages as if they had never happened and make the same false claim again and again.

You say what is the harm? They are just walking in the woods! Wrong - they are ignoring hundreds of pages of sincere responses to their rubbish, and perpetrating a whole host of other abusive tactics that are bad for society in human interaction. That is not walking in the woods. That is abuse, and more than anything else University of Bigfoot is a school on how to interact with people disingenuously. The five false assertions in the OP are an example of this. We should speak out and condemn it just as our founder has, and understand that the rules of science are more than cold machine-like behavior: they are instead good rules for decent conduct amongst people.

You have it exactly opposite and just the way trollers want it: to abuse the decent people of this forum in disallowing what James Randi is all about: exposing the abusive behavior of woo-peddlers. It is a LOT more than being "just wrong". Making a false claim over and over again is not being "just wrong", and it is not walking in the woods. Lying is not walking in the woods. Intentional misrepresentation is not walking in the woods. And for convicted felons like the Dean of Bigfootery Peter Byrne, the Godfather of film clips like con man Roger Patterson, and a host of other profiteers of bigfoot woo - it is not walking in the woods.

 

[GT/CS]

Of course not.

'Footers relish trolling like this. They don't believe what they are saying themselves. Having you take them seriously is their whole game.

It is called Duper's Delight. It is something sociopaths do, and so long as you keep falling for it they will make the same play over and over and over again, getting a little rush each time because you are all the more stupid in their view each additional time you fall for it.

This thread is a perfect example.

 

[Vortigern99]

Prove that - because our experience through hundreds of pages' interaction is that these are people quite distinctive for very, very little outdoor experience.

Show us the evidence that 'footers are people who, instead of doing what we see right here (posting on the internet) are people who get out in the woods to any significant degree.



Dead wrong.

There is no greater example to lead us than the founder of the forum himself - James Randi - who was relentless in exposing con men and stating emphatically what a danger to society they represent. He called them Charlatans because that is what they are. Yet under your false argument, James Randi should be condemned for attacking them personally!

This false argument is a form of blaming the victims: we are not allowed to properly characterize a murderer as such because poor baby that would be attacking the person rather than what they are doing.

Forums like these provide a platform for extremely abusive behavior under the guise of playing dumb, selective memory, selective attention, etc. that are the tactics of woo purveyors. You are not an active participant in the bigfoot threads. We do not see you on them, so you are not personally experiencing this kind of abuse and prove your ignorance about them in asserting they are people who are "walking in the woods". That is certainly not an accurate claim about the OP who claims getting out in the woods is not feasible for him, and he would not explain to us why.

These tactics are abusive. They are straight from the literature on abusive personality disorders, and it is appropriate for us to point them out. But it is not against the forum rules to ignore hundreds of pages as if they had never happened and make the same false claim again and again.

You say what is the harm? They are just walking in the woods! Wrong - they are ignoring hundreds of pages of sincere responses to their rubbish, and perpetrating a whole host of other abusive tactics that are bad for society in human interaction. That is not walking in the woods. That is abuse, and more than anything else University of Bigfoot is a school on how to interact with people disingenuously. The five false assertions in the OP are an example of this. We should speak out and condemn it just as our founder has, and understand that the rules of science are more than cold machine-like behavior: they are instead good rules for decent conduct amongst people.

You have it exactly opposite and just the way trollers want it: to abuse the decent people of this forum in disallowing what James Randi is all about: exposing the abusive behavior of woo-peddlers. It is a LOT more than being "just wrong". Making a false claim over and over again is not being "just wrong", and it is not walking in the woods. Lying is not walking in the woods. Intentional misrepresentation is not walking in the woods. And for convicted felons like the Dean of Bigfootery Peter Byrne, the Godfather of film clips like con man Roger Patterson, and a host of other profiteers of bigfoot woo - it is not walking in the woods.

 

[Craig4]

Yes, the guy who made the base suit that Patterson modified (Phillip Morris) and the guy who wore the suit (Bob Heironimus) have both come forward.

Oh well, that's done and dusted then. The film is a fraud.

 

[Axxman300]

Man, I want to believe in bigfoot, I really, really do. As soon as I see some credible evidence I will.

My complaint about this thread is that the burden of proof is pretty low. They've discovered two new cephalopods in the Monterey Bay over the past 6 years. These guys live deep, and it took DRSVs and hundreds of dives until they stumbled across them.

The next step was to capture one, which they did, and then run DNA on them to make sure they were new species and not obscure branches of a known species.

Bigfoot is a land mammal (in theory), specifically a bipedal mammal (that means he walks on 2 feet) and the act of finding one shouldn't be difficult to a committed search team. The Pacific Northwest is rugged, but it's not the Amazon, or SE Asian jungles. You can even fly your own drone to help the search if you want.

 

[OntarioSquatch]

Oh well, that's done and dusted then. The film is a fraud.

Philip Morris and BobH both lied about their involvement in the film. Not only did they have serious inconsistencies with their description of "the suit", but when they were asked to do a re-creation of the film using modern day technology, they ended up failing miserably.

 

[marplots]

Philip Morris and BobH both lied about their involvement in the film. Not only did they have serious inconsistencies with their description of "the suit", but when they were asked to do a re-creation of the film using modern day technology, they ended up failing miserably.

[qimg]http://i.imgur.com/ybBTKjV.jpg[/qimg]

So the hoaxers were fake too?
Wheels within wheels.

 

[Dinwar]

Philip Morris and BobH both lied about their involvement in the film. Not only did they have serious inconsistencies with their description of "the suit", but when they were asked to do a re-creation of the film using modern day technology, they ended up failing miserably.

[qimg]http://i.imgur.com/ybBTKjV.jpg[/qimg]

What is the miserable failure? Besides the color, everything I see that is different is explicable by the different photo quality, or is so minor as to be inconsequential (the shape of the head or slightly wider thighs, for example).

 

[Garrette]

What is the miserable failure? Besides the color, everything I see that is different is explicable by the different photo quality, or is so minor as to be inconsequential (the shape of the head or slightly wider thighs, for example).

You ate, of course, correct, but it does not matter. It will be just like those who swear psychics are real and discount mundane replication because the replications are not exact to the minutes detail.

Years ago on this forum I predicted just such a reaction by saying the psychic proponent would object because the prediction in my counter example involved a different color shirt. He complained exactly in that fashion.

 

[OntarioSquatch]

The anatomical details seen in the film match what one could expect to see with a human or near-human biological entity. It doesn't fit the exact profile of a wearable costume, especially not one from 50 years ago. It's also a very close match to most eyewitness drawings of Sasquatch.

I've also noticed that the clearer the copy of the film, the more real she looks. Bigfoot hoaxes don't work that way; the clearer the film, the more obvious the hoax should be.

 

[AdMan]

<snip>

Why are you avoiding answering the arguments against your original post? You're going way off topic in your own thread.

 

[Giordano]

I too ask why is Ontario discussing the details of the film here? There is an entire thread on this topic- post there. The OP presented a list of claimed logical fallacies; the OPer should focus on responding to the many comments on that list presented here.

 

[The Atheist]

It's pretty clear in biology, however, that no evidence=case dismissed.

I could have sworn this thread was about skepticism. It will become biology when one is found. (ie never) This is a discussion forum, not a biology lab.

Never forget: This is a biological issue, and specifically a question of whether this organism qualifies as a newly-named species. That's the heart and sole of this issue.

"Soul" is the word you needed.

See above re: biology. If people are applying for sasquatch to be listed as a species, just ignore them. Who on earth is going to listen?

If that's how you interpreted this, I can only conclude you lead a sheltered career. Or are reading this in the absolute worst light possible.

Nope; that's just how it reads. Pompous and belittling. Exactly what science is not and should not be.

It's not religion--it's all about intellectual integrity. If you demonstrate that you have none, we cannot trust you to provide accurate information and at that point you become irrelevant. I suppose you can still publish, but no one will pay attention to you.

I think we're going at cross-purposes here.

What the heck does intellectual integrity have to do with a discussion forum?

As you say, scientific credibility is important, but since the number of people capable of being classified as scientists who think bigfoot is real could be counted on one hand, and none of them are taken seriously, your vehemence is a classic example of what I mean, so thanks for that.

What is there to be so upset about?

A lot of them do sell various forms of the notion — tv shows and tickets. It seems they do more than walk in the woods, they shoot them up too. (See some foot threads.)

The vehemence comes from frustrated rubber-ducking over years. I agree, the MA should keep tongues civil. Mea culpa, often. It's hard to be human. SIWOTI!

And on the other hand, I've seen many a noddy of a skeptic skiting about making hoax bigfoot tracks.

It's not a one-sided fight.

In terms of shows and tickets, again, so what? They're not all believers who go along. I have a very good mate who goes to bigfoot conventions and shows because they're fun to go to. He doesn't think for a millisecond it's real.

Prove that - because our experience through hundreds of pages' interaction is that these are people quite distinctive for very, very little outdoor experience.

Simple. Go to bigfoot forums, read some of the threads. The vast majority of them - and there are a lot more supporters there than here - do actually go out in the woods and hunt the mythical beast.

Photographic and video evidence won't wash for the sasquatch, but it certainly proves these people have been out in the woods looking.

There is no greater example to lead us ...

Holy crap, even the phrases are getting all biblical!

...than the founder of the forum himself - James Randi - who was relentless in exposing con men and stating emphatically what a danger to society they represent.

Please don't get me started on Randi.

Yes, he did some good things, but seriously. His hiding himself in a closet until it was far too late to matter was unconscionable, in my view, but that's another thread entirely.

I expose con-men myself, so I'm not against it, but calling them a threat to society is downright absurd. They're a threat to a few idiots' wallets is all.

He called them Charlatans because that is what they are. Yet under your false argument, James Randi should be condemned for attacking them personally!

Randi attacked some well-known frauds. In the same way, if someone's perpetrating an actual fraud in respect of sasquatch, go get 'em, but I don't imagine any of them are posting here.

This false argument is a form of blaming the victims:

Victims? Wow, this is getting very revealing.

I was talking about giving crap to bigfoot supporters, now you're talking about victim-blaming.

But wait, there's more!

...we are not allowed to properly characterize a murderer as such because poor baby that would be attacking the person rather than what they are doing.

A Murderer!

Couldn't you just have used bank robber or rapist? A murderer seems a bit OTT for someone to be compared to just because they believe there's a hairy guy in the woods.

Forums like these provide a platform for extremely abusive behavior under the guise of playing dumb, selective memory, selective attention, etc. that are the tactics of woo purveyors.

Funny, every time I have a look at a biugfoot thread, the exact opposite appears to be the case, and it's absolutely true for this thread.

I'm snipping the rest to respond to in a minute.

 

[The Atheist]

Righto, to continue:

You are not an active participant in the bigfoot threads.

I used to, but I got sick and tired of people displaying how clever they were by creatively abusing people who think bigfoot is real.
Hey, this next bit is hilarious, keep going!

... so you are not personally experiencing this kind of abuse and prove your ignorance about them in asserting they are people who are "walking in the woods". That is certainly not an accurate claim about the OP who claims getting out in the woods is not feasible for him, and he would not explain to us why.

These tactics are abusive.

I agree that these tactics are abusive, but as far as I can tell not a single one was made by a bigfoot supporter.

Read 'em and weep:

Argument from Authority
Bigfoot tells me he approves of your post. He says it's 100% spot on.

Is nutjobbery a real word?

Boss story, mate! Now pass me the Special Brew so that I too can waffle bollocks.

'Footers relish trolling like this.

Nut jobs exist. QED.

Possibly a future Olympic event.

Gold medal bollock wobbler. The silver medalist was insufficiently wobbly, and the bronze medalist was simply wasting our time.

I think that's where I say quod erat demosntrandum.

 

[abaddon]

Righto, to continue:



I used to, but I got sick and tired of people displaying how clever they were by creatively abusing people who think bigfoot is real.
Hey, this next bit is hilarious, keep going!



I agree that these tactics are abusive, but as far as I can tell not a single one was made by a bigfoot supporter.

Read 'em and weep:













I think that's where I say quod erat demosntrandum.

You can say it, but you sure can't spell it.

 

[ehcks]

I could have sworn this thread was about skepticism. It will become biology when one is found. (ie never) This is a discussion forum, not a biology lab.

It's a claim of a new living thing, and so biology applies regardless. To say that you can't use biology to examine claims of bigfoot is to say that you can't use physics to examine claims of the electric universe theory. That is, instead, exactly what you're supposed to do.