Cryptomundo
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26 Responses to “How to Have “Bigfoot Interaction””

1. DWA responds: September 7th, 2012 at 9:20 am

   I need to know the answer to this question:

   If it’s this easy, where’s the proof? Why haven’t the people writing stuff like this videotaped themselves doing this? Why haven’t they invited mainstream scientists along? Why are the printed words all they have (and they expect us to spend $$$ for the book, when I can read actual encounter reports for free on the Internet)?

   OK. Fine. More than one question.

   I just wish that these folks understood that they are pushing, way back, the day that the rest of us will know about this, one way or the other.

   i.e.: they look silly.

2. Goodfoot responds: September 7th, 2012 at 12:29 pm

   Why don’t you try it, instead of armchair quarterbacking? Bear in mind, too, that Morehead’s interactions took place over forty years ago. There were no video cameras because they didn’t exist. And how do you know whether they’ve invited “mainstream” scientists along or not?

3. DWA responds: September 7th, 2012 at 1:32 pm

   Um, try what, precisely?

   Um, videocams have been around for other things just like this. (I’m not just addressing this case.) And you may have heard of “movie cameras,” which have been around slightly longer, as Roger Patterson could tell you.

   Now tell me what’s wrong with my post. Why, praytell, would I try this?

4. DWA responds: September 7th, 2012 at 5:00 pm

   Oh. I didn’t answer this.

   “…how do you know whether they’ve invited “mainstream” scientists along or not?”

   Um. OK.

   DO THEY SAY THEY HAVE? Do we have those people’s input? (Can I guess?) And no I am NOT spending $$ on that book and on those recordings to find out. (If you want to read/listen, then tell me so I can get the info free, I’d appreciate it.) Encounter reports are not only far better evidence (if you do not know why you have not read them, and have not thought much about this topic), but they are FREE if you have internet service.

   Here’s my point, again and don’t miss it this time:

   SCIENTISTS ROLL THEIR EYES AT THIS STUFF, and continue to remain ignorant of the good evidence because crap like this chases them away.

   You need any more proof of that than you already have…?

5. Fhqwhgads responds: September 7th, 2012 at 10:16 pm

   I’m with DWA on this one.

   Anyone can play this game.

   HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH ALIENS:

   First, go to a place where friendly UFOs are known to land….

   HOW TO MAKE CHUPACABRAS SOUP:

   Ingredients:
   20 lbs potatoes, peeled
   5 lbs onions, diced
   5 lbs carrots, chopped
   2 lbs mushrooms
   2 gallons beef broth
   1 chupacabras, peeled and de-boned….

6. Goodfoot responds: September 8th, 2012 at 2:41 pm

   Scientists seem to be the problem, not the solution.

7. Fhqwhgads responds: September 9th, 2012 at 9:48 am

   Yeah, great way to fend off the charge of being cranks involved in pseudoscience: attack scientists as a group.

   Then write 10 posts loudly wondering why no one is interested in spending their time or money on your pet cause.

8. DWA responds: September 9th, 2012 at 8:48 pm

   Goodfoot:

   Scientists are not the problem. They are the solution.

   Reason?

   I’m not gonna say this is real until science proves it. Unless, of course, I see one.

   No one has shown me anything that would make me CONCLUDE that this is real. Krantz and Meldrum and Bindernagel – um, er, scientists, right? – have done much looking at the evidence. They – and I – have independently come to very similar conclusions that amount to – OK, at a minimum – this is a very legit scientific topic, and it is more than justified to prod the mainstream to come have a look, until they do.

   (And there are reasons it pains me to say are fairly decent, although insufficient to one who has seen the evidence, that they shy away. Like, um, stuff like the subject of this blog.)

   You are stuck with “believing in” – something on which I don’t “believe in” being stuck – this until it is proven to you, either by direct observation or something you flat can’t ignore….like, you know, what scientists do when they announce they have confirmed something.

   Or – like me – you can be more than content, for the nonce, with “the evidence seems to point strongly to the reality,” without saying “it’s real” until it’s proven to you.

9. Goodfoot responds: September 10th, 2012 at 12:36 pm

   I could care less if one cent were spent on my “pet cause”, for your information. Nor am I interested in proving the existence of Bigfoot creatures; in fact, they are much better off in the absence of it.
   The reason scientists are so skeptical is that they remain in their ivory towers, and no bigfoots are coming there anytime soon, are they?

   If you want to satisfy your own curiosity – and I am not suggesting you do, or even have such – is there a better way than getting out in the wild for awhile? If you have one, I’d love to hear it.

10. Goodfoot responds: September 10th, 2012 at 1:19 pm

    Not only “mere” belief. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. You seem under the impression this is a SCIENCE blog. Not everyone would agree. Heck, I don’t even think I WANT proof of Bigfoot’s existence, though, if it ever happens, it will change the way we think about ourselves immensely, for all time. And I AM in favor of us changing the way we think about ourselves. Very much so.

11. Fhqwhgads responds: September 10th, 2012 at 2:53 pm

    Again I have to agree with DWA. I may tentatively suspect that Bigfoot does not exist, and he may tentatively suspect that Bigfoot does exist, but tentative suspicions are not the same thing as knowledge. What we need is solid proof, and until we get that proof, open but inquisitive minds.

12. Fhqwhgads responds: September 10th, 2012 at 4:35 pm

    Goodfoot: What, are you typing this over satellite link while in the midst of the virgin forest? Or are you just blowing smoke?

13. Goodfoot responds: September 10th, 2012 at 4:54 pm

    Is my position that hard to fathom, or are you just pretending?

14. DWA responds: September 10th, 2012 at 5:09 pm

    As regards tentative suspicions.

    Leila Hadj-Chikh – one of the scientific proponents of the sasquatch – says, in her foreword to Bindernagel’s “The Discovery of the Sasquatch:” “A fact is not something that we know for sure, it is only something we believe we know for sure.” Good example: we “know” the sun is 93 million miles from Earth. Only, it isn’t. Not only is the precise distance (apparently) different; it has only been inferentially measured. No one has flown there. We “knew” gorillas didn’t like water, didn’t swim, and that rivers thus delineated gorilla populations in Africa…until we found out that wasn’t the case. We “knew” that Pluto was one of nine planets in the solar system. We “know” that Earth is approximately 4.5 or so billion years old, even though our species only goes back an infinitesimal fraction of that time. We infer; nothing contests what we have inferred; but that ain’t knowledge absolute. It is provisional truth, subject to alteration by further evidence and refined methods.

    Another good example: I “know” that Jeffrey Meldrum and John Bindernagel have done all the things they say they have done, and reviewed all the evidence they say they have reviewed, and have conclusions solidly backed by their direct scientific expertise.

    Um….right….?

    The conclusions I come to from reading sighting reports, and from reading what I have read about the footprint evidence, and about the proponents’ work with the evidence, lead me to believe certain things…IF THE SUPPORTING DATA ARE AUTHENTIC.

    What I “know” may lead me to conclude that science should look. It does not prompt me to say the big guy is real. I’d be totally cool with provisional identification of a species yet to be classified. But as Fhqwhgads says: that ain’t knowledge (although it might spur some work that would get us there).

    What is this book doing? It seems based to me on far, far flimsier evidence than the work of the proponents above. And none of it seems to be supported by the vast bulk of the evidence. I got a problem with that, particularly when one wants scientists to get interested based on the evidence. (And I got a major heartburn with “buy it and find out!” I am too used to “knowing” without paying a huckster.)

    And I disagree that the sasquatch is better off if we don’t acknowledge it. It may be; but evidence so far suggests not. Its confirmation certainly looks to me like it may be the last block that can be tossed in the way of the total consumption of its habitat by our civilization. So: ignorance is, what, bliss? We do seem to at least attempt to save what science acknowledges, successfully or not (the “not” often based on belated acknowledgment, which is the case here if the sasquatch is out there).

    As to curiosity: I seem to have more than you do, Goodfoot. My primary reason for being here is that I WANT SCIENCE TO CONFIRM WHETHER THIS IS REAL OR NOT SO I WILL KNOW. Do you, um, know?

    And as to going out there to confirm: I personally don’t believe that my effort will do so, whatever effort that is. I’d rather more productive avenues (like, say, a concerted search by people with not only established, tested search protocols but the money and expertise and time to execute them). Doesn’t seem exactly stupid of me.

    “Awhile” is a long time. I’m interested in knowing, and believe based on a lot of thinking about this that scientific interest will help me (know) and the sasquatch (survive). Pretty reasonable, if you just ask me.

15. DWA responds: September 10th, 2012 at 5:43 pm

    Goodfoot:

    If you have personal experiences, you have something I don’t.

    I don’t want to wait for my personal experience. I may never have one.

    There is no animal science has confirmed that I have any significant doubts about. (For just about everyone confirmed as of or since the invention of photography, we have pictures, for one thing.)

    I want to know; and science looks like my only significant chance, given the lifetime I’ve gone without a sighting.

    If that makes me selfish, ring it up.

16. Fhqwhgads responds: September 11th, 2012 at 7:32 am

    DWA: There is a difference between an imprecise statement and a bald falsehood. Sorry, but I am a realist, in the sense that I believe there is a real world about which objectively true and false statements may be made, even though we may make errors when trying to discover which are true and which are false.

    About some things, though, I will not bother to express doubt. For example, I have feet. I can see them, I can feel them, and I can feel with them. I’ve had them all my life. I had to trim my toenails last night, and I had to replace my shoes last week. A madman or a professor of philosophy (if there is a difference) might still doubt he had feet, but I do not.

    Our knowledge of the position of the sun is not so immediate, but it is also backed up by A LOT of data, not least of which is the fact that we are able to put space probes where we want them all over the solar system. Any one of those trajectories is at least as good a confirmation of the sun’s relative position as “going there” — probably a good deal more of a confirmation. There are other things: We can measure the distance to Venus by radar to get the scale of the solar system, or we can measure the speed of light in an undergraduate lab and see how long light takes to get here from Jupiter (say, at opposition and at quadrature) by carefully measuring the orbits of its moons (which, again, can be done by undergrads, or anyone with a backyard telescope). All these measurements are independent and consistent.

    The Bigfoot evidence we have so far is nowhere near that convincing. I’ll be delighted if better evidence for Bigfoot is found, just like I will be delighted if NASA discovers evidence of native Martian microbes. So far, I think both are still a long shot, but not impossible,

17. Goodfoot responds: September 11th, 2012 at 11:40 am

    I’m not opposed to any form of belief OR disbelief. But if three friends told you they just saw a kangaroo in the corner bar, would you go look, or ask a scientist to do so? My point is that, after a certain point, anecdotal evidence becomes more than mere anecdotal evidence, as with the doubters a century ago of the Mountain Gorilla. And there is WAY more anecdotal evidence of Bigfoot’s existence than there was of the MG, at the time of their scientific discovery.

    I want to say that I have GRAVE doubts that mainstream science will handle this matter safely and sanely. Can we doubt that, after confirmation, there will be capture expeditions? The lab is no place to study these creatures! We need to meet them in THEIR bailiwick, live like THEY do. And that will change the world incalculably!

18. DWA responds: September 12th, 2012 at 9:14 am

    Fhqwhgads:

    No problem with anything you’re saying.

    It’s just that what the facts are changes as we learn more.

    Although believe me there are thousands of facts that I simply take for granted, as do you

    (side note: for the very reasons you point out, this is the only ammunition one needs to dismiss blanket skeptical attacks on eyewitness testimony as “bad evidence”)

    …one needs to accept that for most of us, facts are what we believe to be true, as we ourselves have not independently verified them. In that sense – as Hadj-Chikh points out – knowledge is, for most of us, a form of belief, although it certainly appears to have been more strongly tested than what we term “belief in.” I think my belief that the sun is approximately 93 million miles away is backed much more strongly than anyone’s belief in, say, the Great Pumpkin or the Easter Bunny. Or pterodactyls in New Guiniea; or mokele-mbembe; or the Loch Ness Monster, for that matter. But maybe not that much more strongly than John Bindernagel’s conviction that the sasquatch is real, which is based on evidence that the vast majority of scientists simply haven’t reviewed. (Or aren’t letting on that they have.)

    I could give greater credence to scientists’ skepticism regarding the sasquatch if any scientist expressing such skepticism showed any sign of having reviewed the available evidence. In fact, every scientist I have heard pronouncing negatively on the topic has not only failed to show any such sign, but has conclusively shown – within his first couple sentences – that he has not reviewed it. I finish his assessment noting, with utter confidence: I know more than this guy on this topic.

    In other words:

    The scientific nay-saying (e.g., yelling for Meldrum’s tenure on a pike) on this topic amounts not to skepticism, but to “belief in” the nonexistence of the sasquatch, backed by no evidence.

    I can say this from my personal experience. It has taken a careful review and a lot of thought about the evidence to bring me where I am on this. (When I first saw P-G, I chuckled. When I first saw that encounters were being reported throughout the lower 48, I said: just like UFOs. Uh-huh.) And I can confidently say that no one who disagrees with me, and has pronounced on same, brings to the table what I do – let alone Bindernagel and Meldrum – in terms of knowledge, credentials aside.

    And I think that I can also pronounce with confidence on this book. Because anything in direct contravention of the bulk of the evidence is, at the very least, not ready for prime time until the evidence has been reviewed; acted upon; and pronounced as a confirmed fact. (Such as those are.)

    Regarding one thing, or another.

19. DWA responds: September 12th, 2012 at 10:07 am

    Goodfoot:

    “I’m not opposed to any form of belief OR disbelief. But if three friends told you they just saw a kangaroo in the corner bar, would you go look, or ask a scientist to do so?”

    Neither of the above, probably, unless their report gave me good reason to believe the kangaroo would be there when I arrived. And, kangaroos being something we generally accept, I might be able to see a reason for one being there. Long-time regular’s pet, maybe. Or a promotion. Or drunk friends who wanted to have fun with me. (Alcohol: not a hallucinogen. Has anyone posting here ever had an alcohol-fueled hallucination? Me neither.)

    (And forget it if the bar served nothing better than Bud. I’m not going there; nor would I advise anyone else to do such a thing.)

    This is something different. What’s the proof for any of the allegations based on which this guy is publishing a book, and asking me to pay for it to boot? When I read about new species confirmed on the internet, I’ve already paid, and just for the access, not for the news, which comes at no additional charge. Hucksterism is hucksterism, regardless what’s being hucked.

    I agree with you about the anecdotal evidence. I have gone on record here, more than once, that no species has had so much solid corroborating evidence as the sasquatch prior to confirmation by science. That’s a fact, not an assertion.

    It’s also a fact that killing something to confirm it is nineteenth-century science, and no longer required. Although I do get the frustration that prompts such science-based, hard-nosed outfits as the TBRC to want to throw a body at the feet of science and say: told you so!

20. Fhqwhgads responds: September 13th, 2012 at 2:00 pm

    DWA, have you ever heard of the Invisible Gorilla? Look it up. It gives a few reasons (there are more) not to think that eyewitness testimony is “golden”.

    Or, for that matter, there are things like the connection between the “old hag” and sleep paralysis. People in many parts of the world interpret sleep paralysis as a kind of witch or demon that comes and sits on their chest. There are lots of eyewitness accounts of this. In the US, on the other hand, there is evidence that many accounts of abduction by space aliens are sleep paralysis. Whether this is experienced as an old hag, a space alien, or something else seems to be culturally determined. The culture also helps assure that the descriptions are largely in agreement. That doesn’t mean that either the hag or the aliens are REAL, nor does it mean that the people are lying about their experiences, only that the experiences and reality don’t correspond.

    All that this means is that a bit of caution must be exercised.

21. DWA responds: September 13th, 2012 at 4:54 pm

    Fhqwhgads:

    As someone who’s read hundreds and hundreds of sasquatch sighting reports, I think they can be taken as pretty good testimony.

    To me, “golden” = proof. No one says they are proof. But their extraordinary consistency, on all details, and correspondence with the morphology and behavior of known apes – reports come overwhelmingly from people with no knowledge of ape behavior in the wild – argue, very strongly, for exercising “a bit of caution” before totally dismissing them.

    Which is what anyone is doing who simply says, “that isn’t proof,” and turns away, thinking that’s it, until we have a body.

    Eyewitness testimony precedes practically all scientific discovery.

22. Fhqwhgads responds: September 13th, 2012 at 8:06 pm

    We’ve been over the “consistency” claim several times. I’m not so impressed, because (1) it involves first filtering out the accounts that don’t fit (wears a hat, speaks, looks more like a werewolf, etc.) and (2) there are cultural biases that have to be taken into account, as in the old hag/alien abduction issue. These are really serious problems and a big part of the reason we need solid, indisputable, physical evidence.

23. DWA responds: September 13th, 2012 at 9:22 pm

    I should add that the “Invisible Gorilla” really doesn’t apply to sasquatch sightings.

    (And yes, I’ve read that many.)

    I turned on the video and waited for the boom! gorilla. Simple. Caught the first hairs to enter the screen.

    (NOTE: NOT A GORILLA. A person in a gorilla suit. Human gait; human proportions. I just took care of pretty much every purported sasvid you will see put up here.)

    How many passes? You think I was counting passes? I was simulating a sasquatch sighting.

    People aren’t usually riveted on ONE THING THEY CANNOT MESS UP when they see a sasquatch. No, driving isn’t like that. You aren’t focused on one thing. (Count the left front tires you see.) Neither is hunting. (Breeze! Count the number of moving leaves.) You’re scanning, the way you are in regular daily life. Something anomalous crosses the field, boom, you’re on it.

    A bigfoot, make no mistake, the reports say so, is something pretty anomalous.

24. DWA responds: September 13th, 2012 at 9:36 pm

    Fhqwhgads:

    The point is, we haven’t been over the consistency claim. Your reservations with it simply don’t apply. There are no cultural biases in sighting reports. There aren’t. If there were, 99% of sightings would be by Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. Instead, OH ranks up there with any PNW state – which it should; better habitat, and more people to register sightings – and so do PA, VA and MD, for the same reasons.

    Oh, OK, there is one bias. In some places, people feel free to talk about their sightings, because most they know have had one or know someone who has. Those places are few, however. And OH, PA and MD are generally not among those few, which means there should be virtually no reports. But there are quite a few. And whites in MD are describing what Native Americans in Manitoba, British Columbia, and Alaska are seeing, pretty much. If no one told you what they were describing, you’d know they all were describing the same kind of animal – frequently right down to fine detail.

    You have to read them to know that.

    This is like me saying: physics? CROCK! I’m not made of tiny dots separated by vast spaces! And I don’t have to read anything to know that!

    You have to read the evidence to understand that the “skeptical” counters aren’t skeptical. They are toss-off assumptions by people who haven’t read up. But “skeptics” don’t get that. They feel they can comfortably ignore anything they don’t agree with, or want to bother with, because this topic is silly. As Bindernagel says: they don’t think the evidence is evidence. They simply don’t recognize it, because they can’t.

25. Fhqwhgads responds: September 14th, 2012 at 2:21 pm

    How many of these people in Ohio new EXACTLY WHAT TO CALL THIS THING WHEN THEY SAW IT? Well, pretty much all of them. Everybody “knows” what Bigfoot looks like now, because he’s all over the TV. Just like everybody “knows” that aliens are small, gray, wimpy critters, and that ghosts are associated with cold spots, electromagnetic disturbances, and sounds that miraculously show up on tape recorders even though nobody heard them in real time.

    That doesn’t mean that eyewitness accounts are all wrong, it means that there is nothing very surprising that many of them sound just like Chewbacca.

    You can think physics is crap or not if you like. Some of it even physicists suspect is crap — string theory, for example. But one difference is that I can take you into a lab and SHOW you how to measure the speed of light or the charge on an electron. That’s a lot better than anything the Bigfoot camp can do, and that’s just a fact. Scientists don’t doubt Bigfoot because they hate the idea of such animals; if they did, it would be impossible to explain why Homo floresiensis is widely, though not universally, accepted, or why the Denisovans are accepted on the basis of one or two genetically distinct bones.

26. DWA responds: September 14th, 2012 at 3:01 pm

    But this is where reading reports comes in.

    People describe what they saw; in most of the ones I’ve read, they don’t call it anything. In fact in many, they don’t want to, and in fact strenuously avoid that, because they simply cannot believe they saw THAT. But they describe what they saw, many of them with no acquaintance with the P-G film. And the description sounds like Patty; like a member of her species; or like a member of a closely related species.

    And Chewbacca was based on sasquatch descriptions, of course, not the other way around. Although, sure, with a cultural referent now available, I’ve seen Chewbacca referred to in a very few reports.

    And I wasn’t referring to physics as crap. I was showing how people unacquainted with the topic, and a priori biased against it, treat sasquatch evidence. That the sasquatch hasn’t been proven is irrelevant. It exists, or doesn’t, irrespective of what we think. Really, in fact, the only thing the physicists can do that the Bigfoot camp can’t is say “we’ve proven this.” Which in reality only means “we’ve agreed that it’s real, because most of us have looked at it and agree.” Both can show an impressive array of all kinds of evidence backing what they think. Any physicist recognizes the evidence from that field. Any biologist would recognize, and be impressed by, the sasquatch evidence. (And as I’ve said, they could not be plainer that they have not been exposed to it.) And while the scientific mainstream may not “hate” the idea of such an animal existing, as their comments show, they are very heavily biased against it, enough so that they simply can’t take evidence seriously in the way an open-minded scientist should do. If a scientist’s interest in a topic – backed very clearly by what his scientific expertise tells him – makes no waves with one, one’s mind simply isn’t open. There is no other way a scientist could look at it. No one – and I do mean no one – has advanced a demurrer against the sasquatch evidence that cannot be shot to pieces as unschooled by an informed layman.

    The difference between floriensis and Denisovans, on the one hand, and the sasquatch on the other, is that remains of the former were found by searches with mainstream backing and entree. Imagine if an American Museum of Natural History expedition had come back with that film, and you have the difference.

    A taboo topic will remain taboo until a corpse is stinking up your lab. Open-minded consideration of the evidence, however, avoids the stink, and gets the search into the field, where it long since belongs. And where most animals have been found on the basis of following up inconclusive – but compelling – evidence.

    Right, TBRC?

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