There is a Yeti in the back of everyone’s mind; only the blessed are not haunted by it. ~ old sherpa saying

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Bigfoot Sighting? Just a Case of Input/Output

I love to lurk on the JREF paranormal and general skepticism message board, particularly the Bigfoot threads. As I've mentioned before here and on my blog Snarly Skepticism and Unofficial JREF Watch, the last time I counted there were well over fifty seperate threads about Bigfoot. For something they don't believe exists, that's a lot of wasted time and effort!

The latest post that caught my attention for its surreal example of a pathological skeptic moment is this response to a poster named WGBH, who had, in the past, posted about his Bigfoot sighting. "Drewbot" comes along and wonders where WGBH is, WGBH responds that, since "Drewbot" doesn't believe WGBH saw a Bigfoot, what's the point of going on? To which "Drewbot" posts:
I believe you had a sighting, I just don't think you saw an actual Bigfoot.

Look at this formula:

INPUT STIMULI I1, I2, I3, I4... = OUTPUT X

OUTPUT X = SIGHTING
A sighting is an output function

INPUT (IX) could be any number of inputs that lead you to believe you had a sighting.

I don't believe that the input stimulus was an actual bigfoot. However I do believe that you had an input that created an output of a sighting.
I love it.

No comments: