How Not to Solve Mysteries

[DaveC426913]

A collection of exemplars for the opposite of how to solve mysteries.

Only Classics! If this thread covered all the terrible forms of nonsense, it would break the server.



1. Post the first Googled image you find. Provide zero c0ntext. Bonus points if it comes from a known meme/joke site.

Source: imgUR

https://www.sciforums.com/threads/c...e-bigfoot-on-video.166175/page-5#post-3720903

 

[DaveC426913]

2. Immediately post a video you find. Make sure you don't waste the slightest moment's-worth of time to check it yourself (like, say, by reading the comments).

https://www.sciforums.com/threads/ufos-uaps-explanations.160045/page-294#post-3693726

 

[foghorn]

And then there's the "eyewitness" (Robert Salas) to a ufo event at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, yet, the "eyewitness" did not SEE the ufo because he was 60 ft down in a bunker and was TOLD about the ufo in a phone call from a guard up-top.
It's in MR's own clip at time tag 1:05.
To Quote Salas in the clip... "Sometime in the early morming hours we get a call"

My bold below:
"based on the account of an eyewitness who was there at the time"

This astounding incident occurred at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967 and involves an encounter with a ufo that definitely got the military's attention. The incident is depicted here in dramatized form and is based on the account of an eyewitness who was there at the time:

And for someone (Robert Salas) who did not SEE the ufo himself, the comment by him at time tag 4: oo
“ This was extraterrestrial in Nature.”

 

[wegs]

I think it’s also important to admit to ourselves that some things truly aren’t “mysteries” at all. They’ve just been marketed or labeled that way by hoaxsters to make money, gain fame, etc…

Calling something like Bigfoot a “mystery,” makes it more exciting to some, I guess. I’m honestly shocked tbh, that claims of Bigfoot sightings have created this sort of cult following. It’s not interesting to me in the slightest, like say the tic tac image where we truly don’t know with certainty, the origin of that object.

There is just too much info out there to refute the remote possibility that a creature like “Bigfoot” exists. So, to conjure up this tale…it’s just folklore to me. Bad folklore, at that.

 

[Magical Realist]

A collection of exemplars for the opposite of how to solve mysteries.

Only Classics! If this thread covered all the terrible forms of nonsense, it would break the server.



1. Post the first Googled image you find. Provide zero c0ntext. Bonus points if it comes from a known meme/joke site.

Source: imgUR

https://www.sciforums.com/threads/c...e-bigfoot-on-video.166175/page-5#post-3720903

The photo of the footprints are casts of bigfoot footprints collected by anthropologist Jeff Meldrum of Idaho State University. The original source for the photo was removed to prevent hotlinking, something I do with all my images.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna49688342

 

[DaveC426913]

I think it’s also important to admit to ourselves that some things truly aren’t “mysteries” at all. They’ve just been marketed or labeled that way by hoaxsters to make money, gain fame, etc…

I'll give Yazata et al their due.

I don't categorically rule out Bigfoot, (just as I don't categorically rule out aliens piloting UFOs).
I am happy to have my skepticism overturned by sufficiently convincing evidence.

I don't think sufficient evidence has been submitted, and therefore I simply bide my time.
My objections to claims of Bigfoot (and alien UFOs alike) is the zeal with which enthusiasts jump to their hasty conclusions.

A simple example of hasty conclusion:

A skeptic and an enthusiast are both in a fish store both looking to purchase a dozen black koi together.
The attendant shovels a dozen koi into each the bag and brings it to the cash.

Enthusiasts, spotting eleven of the fish as black, will assume the twelfth is too (because: hasty conclusion.
Skeptics will not conclude that twelfth fish is black, despite the enthusiast objecting that

• "it's common sense", or
• "the evidence is overwhelmingly convincing", or
• "the attendant assured me and why would he lie?", or
• "to assume the attendant is lying is paranoid", or
• "checking all twelve fish is boring and pedantic and hurts my brain".

(These are all arguments used by enthusiasts right here in this forum).


The skeptic wants to be wrong. (But he's not wrong until he's wrong.)

 

[DaveC426913]

The photo of the footprints are casts of bigfoot footprints collected by anthropologist Jeff Meldrum of Idaho State University. The original source for the photo was removed to prevent hotlinking, something I do with all my images.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna49688342

Instead of constantly having to backtrack and make excuses, the enthusiast actually wanting to get to the bottom of a mystery would take the twelve seconds to do their homework.

This is what homework looks like.

You squander the time of readers. You have proven, time and time again, that you are an unreliable source of information. Indeed, that you are reliable source of misinformation. Fool us twice shame on us...

Be better.