The origins of Big Foot

[KunjeeB]

Does anyone consider that Big Foot could be a cross between a human and an ape?

There are documented cases of ligers, zonkeys, ...

Could this be the reason why we have so much "Big Foot" sightings but never official evidence of their existence. Such a creature would be too much of an embarrassment for us humans to deal with.

Any views on this???

[Peter87]

There are no non-human ape species native to the Americas as far as I know. Bears seem to be a more likely candidate. They can look a bit human-like when standing on their hind legs.

[KunjeeB]

I didn't realise that there are no non-human ape species native to the Americas, however this still doesn't preclude the possibility of these species being brought here via officially and unofficially recorded expeditions.

Since there are no official sittings or recordings of Big Foot, one cannot determine when this "species" came into existence. Thus, if these creatures are some type of hybrid between a human and an ape, would our human society not be highly opposed to this becoming public knowledge?

Would this not affect how we humans see ourselves and even more so w.r.t our religious beliefs?

I agree that some sittings are completely fake or misconstrued (like a bear on its hind legs) but to attribute all to such things may not be accurate.

[helios]

The problem with accepting the "hybrid" explanation is that doing so presupposes for no reason that a whole lot of simpler explanations are insufficient:

* The story is made-up whole cloth as a lie for any of various reasons (as a joke, to get attention, money, etc.).
* The story is made-up whole cloth because the person suffers from a mental condition.
* The person was intentionally deceived by someone for some reason. The purpose was to either deceive them specifically or the world in general.
* The person was unintentionally deceived by someone for some reason. E.g. maybe there's a furry who has a kink for doing stuff in the woods in full fursuit and the person just happened to see them.
* The person saw something mundane but because of the conditions or because they don't see too well they confused it for something extraordinary. This would be the bear explanation above.
* The person saw something unusual but not extraordinary. Maybe it was an actual gorilla that someone released or that escaped.

Because we know all of the above happen at least some of the time if not all the time, while a human/non-human-ape hybrid has never been documented, we would need to discard all of the above as possibilities before that explanation becomes worth considering. Or, someone would need to show unambiguous proof that a hybrid was born at some point and that it might be in the general area where the sighting happened.

By the way, did you know some people actually believe that Big Foot is so elusive because it teleports between dimensions through portals in trees? When you ignore Occam's razor's utility as a tool to eliminate ideas not worth considering, you open the door to believe nonsense like that.
Cryptozoology is kind of fascinating from an anthropological standpoint. Different people accept different cryptids for all sorts of different reasons.

[KunjeeB]

I get all the logical reasons and don't dispute that these are likely true most of the time however to discount all incidences as one of the simple explanations provided above would be an overuse of Occam's razor.

Take for instance the sightings of ghosts: personally, I have never seen one myself however I trust my wife who says she saw one a few times in an old place she lived in with her mother and sister. All three of them reported seeing the same little girl running through the house while laughing and playing. My wife said that she first thought this was someone's child from the neighbourhood who wandered into their house but realised that this child was not real after following her (the child) into a room where she just mysteriously vanished. ie the room the child ran into had no exits ...

All three (my wife, her mother and her sister) all described the little girl in basically the same way (the way she looked and was dressed). This makes it quite hard to believe all three women hallucinated the same thing.

I have also never personally seen a Big Foot or know anyone personally who has but cannot 100% discount all the reports especially if some of them are from very credible sources.

Somehow, I feel that the existence of ghosts is a "harder pill to swallow" than the existence of Big Foot. After all Big Foot looks like an ape species that just hasn't been formally documented yet and if the creature has human DNA, then wouldn't it strengthen my assertion that: our kind (humans) will not want to have this thing documented formally?

Personally, I don't believe the "hype" around Big Foot being a creature that can cross dimensions ... that sounds more like the type of BS someone would say to "create some distance" between us and a creature that would be too embarrassing to admit it is related to our own species.

[George P]

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” ― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

In my 6+ decades upon this ball of dirt I've seen lots of things I can't explain. Is there some rational explanation? Probably. Most times I simply don't care either way.

[helios]

to discount all incidences as one of the simple explanations provided above would be an overuse of Occam's razor.

No, no. The point of Occam's razor is not to discount explanations. That is it say, the point is not to arrive at a conclusion more quickly, but rather to prevent arriving at a conclusion too quickly. I'm not saying that any Big Foot sighting is one of those six explanations until proven otherwise. That's a contradictory statement. The fact we have is "someone says they saw something". That's all we're sure of. Occam's razor says that if we're investigating this fact, then until we've determined that all of those explanations cannot work there's no point in evaluating more complex explanations. In the mean time we're not concluding anything. We just don't know what happened. Big Foot might or might not exist, but we don't know.

Take for instance the sightings of ghosts: personally, I have never seen one myself however I trust my wife who says she saw one a few times in an old place she lived in with her mother and sister. All three of them reported seeing the same little girl running through the house while laughing and playing. My wife said that she first thought this was someone's child from the neighbourhood who wandered into their house but realised that this child was not real after following her (the child) into a room where she just mysteriously vanished. ie the room the child ran into had no exits ...

So you're saying you believe in ghosts? You're not saying you believe your wife saw something, you're saying you believe she saw a ghost. Personally, I would not believe I saw a ghost even if I myself held a conversation with a translucent intangible person, until I studied the phenomenon carefully. I imagine I would be very freaked out initially, but if I thought about it, the idea is so far removed from everyday experience that nothing short of a detailed scientific analysis and refutation of all alternative hypotheses would convince me. I would sooner think aliens installed nanobots into my brain and are beaming false perceptions into it from their base on the dark side of the moon. At least that's an idea I can comprehend.

After all Big Foot looks like an ape species that just hasn't been formally documented yet and if the creature has human DNA, then wouldn't it strengthen my assertion that: our kind (humans) will not want to have this thing documented formally?

That's begging the question. If Big Foot exists and is related to humans, it might be the case that some people would want to prevent it being documented (I doubt it, but I'll grant it momentarily). But this doesn't tell you anything about whether Big Foot is more or less likely to be related to humans, because you assumed it is in your reasoning. All you can say is that the two propositions are compatible.

However, that's as far as I'll entertain that line of reasoning. No, that's not how people work. With the amount of interest around the Big Foot meme, you can bet there's someone out there who'd be very interested in attempting to document it, whatever "it" is. Are you saying you think there's no one who would want to be famous for capturing Big Foot?
And I'll go a step further: given how popular Big Foot is, if it was anything that up-close still looks remarkable, it would have been found by now. The reason it can't be found is the same reason you can't reach the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

[KunjeeB]

@helios: I accept your point concerning Occam's razor and do agree that many people would try to capture a Big Foot despite any amount of covering up operations by authorities. My only speculation on this is that the creature is very rare in numbers and is very adapted at being highly elusive in an environment where it is far more suited than us coupled with its above average then ape intelligence.

I would sooner think aliens installed nanobots into my brain and are beaming false perceptions into it from their base on the dark side of the moon

I suppose to each his own. If you choose not believe there exist something after death then you call it an alien apparition. To others like me, I call it a ghost and mean it to be an entity that is connected to the individual it represented in life. I also in the above context refer to individual as encompassing animals as well.

For me though I find it more plausible to think that the little girl my wife, her mother and sister saw was the residual energy of a child fitting the mentioned description who died sometime in the past who inhabited their house instead of aliens messing with them. Somehow, I think there is much more we still don't know about death. (Some alien species may not even consider most people/creatures dead by the same definition/standards as we do).

[helios]

Yes, I don't believe souls exist. But, let's entertain a thought. Let's suppose not just that both you and me believe souls exist, but that they're demonstrated scientifically to the same extent that atoms are. We can measure the soul content of objects (the devices display values in Randis, with 1 Randi equal to the soul of one person) using sound and well-understood scientific principles and we can even detect when a person is definitely dead, as well as when souls enter or are created into embryos, not to mention that we can know exactly how souly animals, plants, and non-living objects are. We really have the tech down.

In this scenario, is "I saw a person running around a house and when I followed them into a room with no exits they weren't there" enough reason to conclude ghosts exist? That is to say, that souls linger on in the world after dying and apparently play pranks on the living? How common is this? Why does it happen? Are the souls choosing to mess with the living for fun, or have they gone crazy, or why are they doing it? I can accept that ghosts exist, but if they are to work as explanations for phenomena, then they have to fit consistently into a worldview. Why would a dead person do the things people claim ghosts do? As an alternative hypothesis in this fictional universe, don't demons work better? If we're already assuming the spirits of the dead exist, why not natural trickster spirits? It wasn't a ghost, it was a faerie.

[KunjeeB]

@George P: Much respect to you for your years and wisdom. Thank you for sharing your views regarding this subject. I tend to believe that there are things that will not be explainable to us humans as we are.

I am itching to know some of your experiences but understand if you would rather belay that for some other time.

[KunjeeB]

Are the souls choosing to mess with the living for fun, or have they gone crazy, or why are they doing it?

Souls / spirits or energy residue could be stuck in some sort of reality - this is why they could end up doing things that they did when alive. Take highway Sheila for instance - many have claimed to have had some type of interaction with "her" while driving on the highway - the place where she lost her life. Sure - some people are most likely pretending to have had encounters but that is most likely not the case with everyone.

Whether one believes Sheila to be the ghost of the real Sheila or a demon or whatever, the fact still remains that we have phenomena that cannot be explained with modern science - no matter how much you think we have it down already.

Somehow, I think we are going to realise that not everything can be reduced down to a bunch of atoms.

[helios]

the fact still remains that we have phenomena that cannot be explained with modern science

When you say "cannot", do you actually mean to say that literally? If there's a phenomenon that science has no explanation for, it just means that we don't yet know what's happening. An example of this is the rotation curve of galaxies. We don't yet know for sure why it happens, although a candidate hypothesis is dark matter.

Now, to say there's a phenomenon that cannot be explained scientifically even in principle, is very different. Personally, I'm of the opinion that no such phenomena exist. I even have a hard time imagining what a phenomenon like that would even be.
It's the same reason I don't understand what "miracles" are. By definition a miracle is an event that is contrary to natural law, but if a miracle occurs then it can't be contrary to natural law, because it happened. I don't see how "contrary to natural law" and "impossible" are not synonymous. If the impossible happens then necessarily it wasn't impossible, therefore if a miracle happens it's not a miracle, it's just a previously unknown feature of the universe.

My point being, to me the phrase "a phenomenon that cannot be explained by science" sounds like a contradiction, equivalent to "an impossible possible event" or "a cube with five sides". I can understand the idea, but it doesn't seem to correspond to anything that could possibly exist in the real world, outside a human mind.

[jonnin]

or maybe they just ran into the footprints or saw from afar someone like this:

the record for the biggest feet ever goes to Robert Wadlow, who wore a size 37AA shoe (his feet measured at 18.5 inches each). The American-born Wadlow was 8 foot 11 and lived from 1918 to 1940.

[Ganado]

We would have turned one into roadkill by now, had they existed.

[KunjeeB]

We would have turned one into roadkill by now, had they existed.

With that logic we should have found every type of creature in the sea by now giving our human habits of fishing and exploring the ocean. Clearly when the 2004 tsunami hit it brought up species from the ocean that we humans have never seen before or some we thought was long extinct.

[KunjeeB]

the biggest feet ever goes to Robert Wadlow, who wore a size 37AA shoe (his feet measured at 18.5 inches each).

so Big Foot was a normal American :)

[KunjeeB]

When you say "cannot", do you actually mean to say that literally?

Yes I do - so far official science has no explanation for ghosts and will simply defer to: they don't exist. Just because you can't reproduce something over and over again doesn't imply that it don't exist - all that it says is that it does not have a scientific explanation as per our human level of science.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that no such phenomena exist. I even have a hard time imagining what a phenomenon like that would even be.
It's the same reason I don't understand what "miracles" are.

Well the "magic" some people are capable of have been speculated that it is not trickery at all. I once heard Simon Cowell from AGT make such a claim. I think he has seen his fair share of such things and most likely have consultants who can assert that some of these things far out of the realm of being a "card trick".

I admire your blind faith in science even if it does not have an explanation for certain things - I suppose you believe that given enough time, science could figure out everything. Since there is no way to test this hypothesis, I conclude this topic and thank everyone for their input.

[helios]

so far official science has no explanation for ghosts and will simply defer to: they don't exist.

No, this is wrong. "ghosts don't exist" is not a scientific position. There could be a planet on the opposite side of the galaxy filled with ghosts and we'd never know. The most that can be concluded scientifically is "there's no irrefutable evidence of ghosts".
Some people, myself included, take this and follow with "ghosts don't exist, because if they did the world should look too different from how it looks". I'm open to being proven wrong, but so far it hasn't happened.

I admire your blind faith in science

Says he, as he uses one the most advanced fruits of science to denigrate it. There's no need for blind faith in the effectiveness of science, just look at the results. It works.

I suppose you believe that given enough time, science could figure out everything

No, there's probably some things that we'll never know, even if given infinite time. What's outside the observable universe? Why is the universe the way it is instead of being any other way? And this is without even getting into metaphysics. Why is there something instead of nothing? What is ultimate reality?
What I think is that science is the only way to obtain reliable knowledge of the universe. If there's some knowledge that can't be obtained scientifically, it can't be obtained at all.
Believe in ghosts and magic all you want, but the next time you flick a light switch, remember that's neither ghosts nor magic doing it. That's the work of people who deliberately tried to learn how the world works, instead of crossing their arms and insisting they knew already.

[KunjeeB]

but the next time you flick a light switch, remember that's neither ghosts nor magic doing it

I never claimed ghost or magic is responsible for all things. My assertion is that science has no definitive way of quantifying things that exist on the level of ghosts or magic - that is not to say that such things don't exist or is some type of illusion.

I bet you would never be able to figure out how some people are able to do weird / supernatural things no matter how many scientists try to crack it even with very large funds to research it.

What I think is that science is the only way to obtain reliable knowledge of the universe

Too bad for some sad individuals who spent many years in prison because forensic science wasn't so clued up back when they were arrested. One could clap hands for science eventually freeing them, but one could also get really pissed off at science which wrongfully had them detained in the first place.

I wonder if you would be such a admirer of science if you got falsely convicted of something, by scientific methods that are plain and simple not enough to ascribe guilt to the one being convicted. Chances are you'd be happier with version 2 of the science that would exonerate you (if lucky). Unfortunately, you would have to wait for it for 20+ years sometimes.

[helios]

My assertion is that science has no definitive way of quantifying things that exist on the level of ghosts or magic - that is not to say that such things don't exist or is some type of illusion.

Yes, I got you. My assertion is that no such thing exists. That was my point. If magic or ghosts existed they would not be "supernatural", they would just be another thing science studies. Why wouldn't that be the case? What makes ghosts unquantifiable? You can supposedly perceive them with your senses, right? If one measurement device can pick them up, surely another one can. If something affects the real world then it must be objectively measurable, because it affects the real world. If it's not measurable then it has no effect on the real world, and so it doesn't exist.

I bet you would never be able to figure out how some people are able to do weird / supernatural things no matter how many scientists try to crack it even with very large funds to research it.

If such people existed, perhaps you'd be right. Paranormal claims have been put to the test and they've failed every time, though.

Too bad for some sad individuals who spent many years in prison because forensic science wasn't so clued up back when they were arrested. One could clap hands for science eventually freeing them, but one could also get really pissed off at science which wrongfully had them detained in the first place.

Okay, you got me. This is one argument I had never heard before.

You understand the difference between science and the legal system, right? Science is just a method to obtain knowledge, it has no power to sentence people, and a particular judicial system is free to accept or reject specific classes of evidence regardless of their scientific validity. A lot of jurisdictions accept polygraph tests as evidence, even though it's been proven to be pseudoscientific nonsense plenty of times.
I don't know what if any example in particular you have in mind, but I'll grant that at some point someone was incorrectly convicted due to evidence that was scientifically valid at the time but has now been proven wrong. I think you're probably conflating unrelated things, but I'll grant it anyway. So what do you propose as a solution to this problem? What would you say the legal system should use as a standard of evidence other than science? If you were being accused of a rape, and the DNA evidence proves someone else did it, but a fortune-teller says they saw you do it, you'd say it's just to convict you of rape, right? The fortune-teller says you did it, so you must have done it. Or, maybe you think the judicial system is bullshit and crime should just not be punished, I don't know.

scientific methods that are plain and simple not enough to ascribe guilt to the one being convicted

I'll go a step further than you: any piece of evidence obtained by forensic science is at least questionable in validity. One of the basic assumptions of science is that the universe is not trying to deceive the researcher. We assume that the universe just does what it does and is neither aware whether at any particular time its behavior is being tested, nor capable of changing its behavior arbitrarily. In a criminal case, the perpetrator is aware any evidence they leave will be investigated, and so they'll try as hard as they can to frustrate efforts to do so. Evidence used in a trial would mostly not pass peer review if used to write a paper, because for any given piece of evidence one can ask "how do you know this is not fabricated?"
And that is precisely why your complaint is nonsensical. Finding out the truth in a trial is messy because there are parties deliberately trying to obfuscate it, and that's not getting into the fact that not every event leaves behind detectable evidence. Regardless of what your standard of evidence is, if some people are found guilty, inevitably some innocent people will be incorrectly found guilty. But this tells you nothing of science's effectiveness to learn about the world. The universe is not trying to deceive us, and we can tell, because science works.