Totalitarianist

You are wrong. You are no Skeptic if you believe in such things. It is simply impossible.

---
Yours truly,
Totalitarianist

http://pub199.ezboard.com/bsuperniusthebrilliant97794

Mageth

Originally posted by Corwin
Call it a snide attidude then, I don't care.

To me it appears to be ultrasensitive overreaction on your part.

And any 'chip' you may see is well earned. Go back over this forum and look at anyone who suggests 'alternatives,' particularly medical ones. Excellent examples of exactly what I'm referring to are all over in here.

You should be aware by now that this is a hard group of people to slip any old bullshit over on.

There are christians who don't believe Genesis is meant to be taken literally as well.... does this validate Hovind's position? Or Hamm's?

What? I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, and have no idea how it's supposed to be responsive to my comment.

When people disagree with be based on facts I'm fine with it.... when people go out of their way to paint a particular situation in a favorable light that it doesn't deserve.... we have a problem.

Pot, kettle, black, in my opinion.

'Oh he's just annoyed that his trick didn't work.' Yes.... meaning he didn't get to 'prove who's best.' My point stands.

Whatever. I still disagree with it, and think there is a viable, more likely alternative explanation, so your point is standing on your own nose.

All of this is true, and has been noted before. The fact remains that when numbers are posted supporting something the mainstream doesn't support, the debunker/skeptic community ignores them.

Or perhaps examines them critically to determine if any of the above problems with such numbers are there???

'Well Genesis is an allegory you know....'

Actually, Genesis is a mix of myth, legend, and perhaps a bit of history. But that's another thing...

Once again, I have no idea how this is supposed to be responsive to my comment.

'Oh that's the ICR.... and they're a little odd.... good people tho!'

Once again, I have no idea how this is supposed to be responsive to my comment. Try to make a little more sense, please.

Ask Randi. He's the one that's so raging against anything that doesn't come out of a lab. (By the way.... when a 'placebo' proves potent enough to replace vicodin? It's medicine.)

The placebo effect is well-known; even research-developed drugs are tested against placebos. Guess what? The placebos typically have some postitive effect. There's lots of numbers to prove the placebo effect, BTW. So I don't really understand your seeming dismissal of it. Are you a hardcore skeptic or something?

Yes it would. Suffice to say that it works well for pain relief, and there are a number of clinics that offer it.

There's a number of clinics that offer all sorts of pseudoscientific healing techniques. Guess what? All of them claim to work, and have patients that claim they work. That's even true for tribal shamen dancing the evil spirits out of the sick person's body. The placebo effect (an example of the mind's ability to affect the body) is quite powerful for some types of ailments.

BTW, even Randi "believes" in the placebo effect, and thus believes that the mind does have the ability to affect the body.

You say this like it's a bad thing.....

Rational skeptics are good. 'Hardcore' skeptics are fundies. You appear to have missed this concept.

You appear, as usual, to be interpreting what other people say to say things they didn't say, and to spray around ad homs like they are some kind of valid argument.

No, I have not missed that concept. I'm not a big fan of extreme skepticism, as should be evident by my comments on this thread to anyone with enough rationality to read my comments as they are intended. I said earlier in this thread (twice) that I don't call myself a skeptic, but do claim to use the skeptical method to evaluate claims, what I consider the most honest, rational skeptical position to take.

Congratulations.... you realize Randi considers people like you to be delusional?

No. But I really don't care what Randi considers me, or rather what you claim he considers me. But why would he consider me "delusional" for deciding based on personal experience that chiropractors are not particularly effective, and indeed may even be detrimental in healing?

So essentially what's happening here is that in your desire to be a 'pure' skeptic, you're attacking the community that should be your ally, and standing with someone who considers you delusional because you go with results instead of ideology.

What? Well, whatever, Corwin. Keep up your little delusions.

And you have no idea what my desires are, BTW. Apparently you really do believe in ESP.

And where does that evidence come from? Oh yeah... looking.

Of course, try suggesting a research project on 'alternative' subjects at most research universities..... hope you're not fond of your academic career......

I'm not sure what "alternative" subjects you're referring to here, but there are some that are so far out that I wouldn't particularly want to see universities wasting money or time on them. And if the proponents of an alternative subject that shows promise approach them scientifically, and make good scientific proposals on how to research them, I do think that at least some of them are, or should at least, be researched. I've seen such studies on accupuncture and other "fringe" claims.

Hence, the term 'nonhuman ancestor.' As in 'not a human ancestor.' As far as the spelling is concerned, I was in a hurry and used the spelling typical of other primates in this class. Sue me.

Oh, OK. Whatever you say, Corwin.

Do you know what the term "ancestor" means? Of course you do. Do you know that Gigantopithecus blacki has no known ancestors, and is thus considered a "dead end"? I imagine you do. Then technically, of course, Gigantopithecus blacki is not an "ancestor" species.

As far as the spelling is concerned, I would hope that anyone that claims to know so much about a species would at least know how to spell the name correctly. But that's just me. Sue me.

Finds extend up into northern India, which would put them well within the range of the traditional 'yeti.'

The fossils found in northern India and Pakistan are of a different species of Gigantopithecus, [i]Gigantipithecus giganteus[/o], that predates G. blacki by about 5 million years (dated at @6.3 million years). It's been extinct a lot longer than G. blacki. All G. blacki fossils (about 4 lower jaws and 1000 or so teeth) have been found in a few places in China and in Vietnam.

'Remains' have yet to be found in North America, but fossil tracks and spoor have been.

Produce the evidence of the "fossil tracks and spoor" that have been found in NA and postively identified by reputable scientists as belonging to G. blacki, then. I've never seen nor heard of them until now.

For one thing, we have no fossils of G. blacki's feet or hands, so we wouldn't be able to postitively classify a track that was found as that of G. blacki. The same holds true for spoor (if you meant to refer to scat; spoor includes any traces on the trail of an animal or man - track, scent, scat, broken twigs, drag trail...). How would we know fossilized scat (a coprolyte) was from G. blacki?

Best guess is that they migrated across the Bering

That's not a "best guess"; it's an unsupported speculation of those who wish to support the hypothesis that those big guys might be still up there, haunting those unknown, vast expanses of the mountains just outside Seattle and Portland, munching on trees.

None of the sites I've visited mention anything about them, and they all limit G. blacki's known range to southeast China and northern Vietnam, the only place fossils have been found.

From 35k to 75k. I have no idea where you're getting your half million years figure....

To be accurate, the low range I gave is 400k years. I've since found sites that give a low range of 300-200k years. I saw none that gave anything near 35-75K.

Here's one site
And this page
Here's another page that indicates 300,000 years ago.
And there's this site (500k years) which appears sympathetic to the bigfoot/G. blacki claim
Another sympathetic site that places extinction at "over 400k years ago."

Is that enough?

the most generous I've seen refers to them having existed from 125k to 700k years ago. (Not having died out that long ago.)

I'm not sure where you're looking. In a little web research, the most generous range I've found is that G. Blacki went extinct between 200-400k years ago (I found a new site today that gave this more generous date - most sites I've seen say 400-500k years.) I've yet to see one that claims 125k years, much less 35K-75K as you claimed. The fossil mandibles have been dated at between 300-400k years, according to this site. BTW, that site supports the position that "the opinion of this author, the compelling circumstantial evidence warrants the dedication of additional resources to resolve the origin of the Bigfoot phenomenon".

You really have never been up here have you? Let me explain....

Yes, I've been in the Cascades, and in other remote regions of the Rockies. Have you?

Let me explation: I, quite simply, don't buy your claim that there are vast expanses where humans have never trod "up there" in the northwestern U.S. And anyway, such remote mountain regions are not likely to have sufficient vegetation to support significant breeding troops of such a large herbivore.

There are huge sections of the Rockies and Cascades especially that until we started getting satellite imagery of them, might just as well have been mapped with the words 'There Be Dragons' for all we knew about what was up there.

What's up there? Rocks, trees and snow; lots of all of them. And surveyor's stakes. There's not ten square miles up there that hasn't been surveyed on foot. Now, if you extend your range up into northern Canada, I might buy the theory that there's hundreds of square miles where humans rarely have been.

When the only way you can get into an area is with a helicopter or a very long hike (as in several weeks,)

Several weeks? That's a bit of an exaggeration for any place in the U.S., don't you think? Are you talking about the Himalayas or the Rockies?

...you don't know much about said area. Even if it is only a hundred miles from a city.

Hand and foot tracks prove you wrong.

What hand and foot tracks? Produce them. Put up or shut up. It'll be hard to do, as none have ever been found and positively identified of Gigantopithecus. Analysis and hypotheses of its locomotion are based on its mandible shape, as that's all we currently have to go on.

While it's remotely possible that Giganto was a fist-walker, it's amazingly unlikely that they were knucklewalkers.

I said they are considered to have been quadripedal. No one knows for sure if they were fist- or knuckle-walkers.

The pads on their fingers were wrong.

That would be damn hard to prove, as fingers of Gigantopithecus have never been found, nor have impressions of the fingers. They can't deduce what the fingers were like from the mandible.

They wouldn't have been able to support their weight properly.

Huh? You seem to be wildly speculating here. Well, actually pretty much everywhere.

They are in fact generally accepted to have been hominids, or possibly a pre-hominid that was capable of occasional fist-walking.

They're generally classified as "pre-hominid". Gigantopithecus is now generally considered to be more closely related to the orangutan than to either humans or African apes. And once again, their means of locomotion is speculative at best, but is generally considered to have been quadripedal.

I believe we've already discussed these mountains? Yeah... the big ones that run down the western part of the continent... the ones that even today have huge areas (as in hundreds of thousands of square acres) that are virtually unexplored.

Yes, we have, and I honestly don't accept your claim. Show me where in the Northwest there are hundreds of thousands of unexplored, uncharted acres with sufficient vegetation to support troops of such large herbivores. Provide some freakin' evidence instead of making unsupported assertions. Such a large herbivore would need hundreds of thousands of square acres, at least, to support a viable breeding population. And there would be nothing to stop them from occasionally wandering out of the remote areas. The whole concept of such a population existing "up there" without the occasional find of "spoor" or other physical evidence or a verifiable human encounter is quite a stretch.

Bamboo or other heavy vegetation. The teeth we've found would be suitable for grinding any woody plants really.... bamboo being one of them, but not the only one.

They would eat the leaves, stems and possibly the pulp inside the stalks, not the "wood" of the stalks, which is of low nutritional value and hard to digest.

And there's that "we" again. You haven't found a damn thing.

The deduction of bamboo as the primary diet was done through analysis of opal phytoliths, not just morphology of the teeth. From here:

**looks back for the 'Mageth has a raging idealogical bias' statement.... nope... not there.... not there either....**

I'll quote it for you; maybe this time you can find it:

"It's meant to demonstrate that like the Libertarians, your raging ideological bias drives off people who would otherwise be your allies if you'd just back the hell up for a second and calm the hell down."

Whoop, there it is! Unless you now want to claim that "your" isn't referring to me. You must really suck at "Where's Waldo?", BTW. How do you ever expect to find Bigfoot if you can't even find a statement you made in a recent post?

Either you honestly missed it or are being deliberately disingenuous. I'll go with the former since it was so easy for me to find to prove you wrong.

If you choose to accept that label, fine. That's your concern. I've been pretty specific this whole time about addressing 'hardcore skepticism.'

Which label? You've given me so many strawman labels on this thread, I've lost track. But no thanks, any labels I want for myself I'll make myself.

And, IMO, what I've seen you do here is blast away at anyone that doesn't take most or all "alternative" ideas seriously.

Of course based on what you've said, if you choose to defend such 'hardcore' skepticism, you're standing with people who tolerate you at best.... and snicker behind your back at you pretty regularly.

I haven't been defending hardcore skepticism, I've been responding to poorly-reasoned strawman attacks on skepticism (which, as I said, I consider a method and not a position) and those who apply it, providing counterarguments against speculative assertions, and correcting wrong information posted on your part in support of a wild speculation.

Normal

So a skeptic doesn't believe in morality?

Sounds pretty irrational to me.

Goober

Oh no, you mean Randi once got annoyed because Feynman was able to figure out his tricks? That must automatically make skeptics wrong and close minded! (slaps face and gives up skepticism).

Even if he did get annoyed, who gives a shit? <sarcasm>Wow, that really discredits the postition of all hardcore skeptics everywhere, because at one stage one skeptic was seen to have acted childishly!</sarcasm>

Give it a rest, you could at least come up with some decent examples to back up your assertions. Nobody cares what one skeptic may or may not have done.

Jeremy Pallant

[Moderator]

Getting a little tense in here. Could we (not royal) possibly get in touch with our (also not royal) inner diplomat?

[/Moderator]

Edited to add...

I should probably have voted "crashed alien."

Totalitarianist

It is self-contradictory for a Skeptic to believe in morals and yet be a Skeptic. Reason cannot discern morality. Therefore, morals are irrational, outside of reason.

braces_for_impact

I'm pretty skeptical of that. Perhaps that's a new thread topic? I consider myself a skeptic, but I do believe in morality. Not one handed down by a deity, or an ultimate morality, but one nonetheless. So my instinct tells me you're wrong, but I'm willing to hear evidence...

Normal

So it is irrational for me to not kill my enemies then, plato? Even that annoying guy who steals my lunch?

Totalitarianist

Do tell me, how would one go about proving a moral? It cannot be done. A moral is a kind of claim such that it is impossible to verify. The moralist has to prove that he is correct, for it is he who is claiming that morals are true. There is no reason, therefore, for me to provide evidence for the fact that morals are not true.

"But," responds the moralist, "morals are self-evident." A self-evident truth, however, is a truth such that any claim to the contrary would be self-contradictory and inconcievable. A=A is true and self-evident because if it were false, thought would be impossible. I am thinking. Therefore thought is possible. Therefore A=A is true. It is apparent that morals are not like this, for a world without morals is conceivable, whereas a world without space, plurality, the law of contradiction, etc., is inconceivable. If morals are not self-evident, then they must be verified empirically (for the only statements which need not be empirically verified are self-evident truths, and morals are evidently not of this class). If it is a question of verifying it empirically, then it is a question of science. The moralist, then, since morals are not self-evident, must provide us with scientific evidence.

You are the moralist: therefore it is not I who must provide the evidence, for I am no moralist; it is on the contrary you who must provide the evidence.

It follows from this that no true Skeptic can be a moralist. (Of course, you can be a skeptic of just God, a skeptic of just the supernatural, or some such thing, and yet adhere to morals, but you, I think, would not be a Skeptic; that Skeptic who does not limit his skepticism to the supernatural.)

Totalitarianist

I never said that it is rational to do anything. I said that morals are irrational beliefs. That does not make killing rational. It does not make it irrational, either. We are speaking of beliefs, not actions. Morals are beliefs which influence our actions -- ultimately nothing more than beliefs.

There are, however, cases in which it would be irrational to kill someone, and there are cases in which it would be rational to kill someone. For example, suppose you had an objective, and you did not care by which means you achieved it: the objective being "No more enemies". Suppose you had ten enemies. If you went out and killed all ten of your enemies, then that would be a rational means, one of many rational means I think, of achieving the objective -- I would advise against it for potential consequences (prison), but considering the objective in isolation, it is a perfectly logical means of achieving the objective. The objective itself may not be rational -- but we all have objectives, and there is no rational basis for any objective. We cannot escape having objectives. Since we all have objectives, we all try to do what is rational, what is senible, to achieve that objective, with varying degrees of success. Suppose, on the other hand, that your objective were "Peace and Unity". Killing would probably be less rational to achieve that objective.

It is supposed that rationality applies to our beliefs, not our actions. An objective is a belief. Our actions only become rational, or sensible, when we act sensibly to achieve an objective.

But this is completely irrelevant to whether or not morals are rational beliefs (which is relevant to the question of Skepticism).