Truth, Belief and Necropostism

Basically because I'm a very logically-minded person, and I tend to think things over until I come to a definite conclusion.

Regardless, even if it is more logical to believe that something could exist, a line has to be drawn somewhere. Like, there has to be some point where you stop believing that something could be true, and start believing it's not. Whether you draw the line at Belgians, yetis, griffins or triantiwontigonkalopes, it's your decision. Personally, I draw the line after Belgians, and with very little grey area. The existence of yetis is not supported by any conclusive evidence, and when the rest of the evidence includes things like this, things start to look very bleak. The scientific community tends to regard yetis as a legendary creature, which is the same classification as griffins, among other things, and for good reason in my opinion.

Again, I don't see anything wrong with believing that any of the things I previously mentioned could be real, I just personally don't believe any of them are. 'Cept Belgians. Maybe...

 

There is also the possibility of just believing in the possibility. You don't have to take a certain stance on the unknown.

 

You mean such as believing in the possibility of the existence of griffins?

 

I hate when people come up with the "believing in the possibility" argument. It's nothing but procrastination and an attempt to fillibuster the argument. IHG summed it up pretty well: Are you sacrificing a goat every Friday while chanting "At spiritus sanctus!" in case the great Space Blob is watching you and threatens to kill you unless you do so? Surely you cannot deny the possibility...

 

I am neither procrastinating nor attempting to filibuster the argument. I literally do not see how any of us is in a position whether or not something exists. If I ever enter a situation where an outcome is dependent on me choosing to believe or not to believe, then I will make a logical conclusion based on probabilities. Until then, there is no point in analyzing the probabilities because there is nothing to gain from taking a stance on the subject.

IHG makes the assumption that I am informed of the great Space Blob.

 

Why the hell would I do that, higgs? I am merely arguing that it is absolutely futile to take a stance against the existence of something that has both valid arguments for and opposed to its existence. It is just as futile to argue that something does exist when both sides have very valid points. Why should a stance be taken on whether, say, bigfoot exists or not, when you can just wait it all out?

 

I'm not claiming there's any outcome achieved by taking a particular side, or not in the case of yetis, at least. It's purely about what you believe to be true. That's why I was asking if you two believe griffins could exist. Do you honestly think they could?

And jiff, there aren't very valid arguments for both sides. There's next to no support for the existence of yetis, the only real evidence being the exactly what the article was discussing at the beginning of this thread. The problem with waiting it out is that superstition is not likely to die soon. It's easy to prove something does exist, provided it does, but it's very hard to prove the lack of somethings existence.

Giving a similar scenario, let's say you've been told there's a pink car in your neighborhood, but you don't know whether you've been told the truth or not. If you do see the car, then you know for a fact that it does exist, and that you were being told the truth. If you don't see the car, you don't know if you just haven't seen it yet or if it was never there in the first place. If you're waiting for a verdict on yetis, the verdicts in. They're regarded as creatures of legend.

If you still think there's a possibility, then answer my question. Do you believe in the possibility that griffins exist?

 

Yes. I do. I believe in the possibility.

So your pink car example supports our point. You're right. If you don't see it, you don't know whether or not you've just missed it or it doesn't exist. Thus, you stay open to both possibilities. If, say, somebody asks you whether or not there's a pink car and that if your answer is correct, you win something, then it is then logical to make a decision at that point. Without such a situation, it seems most logical to not make a decision.

 

What about triantiwontigonkalopes?

And the car example was a point about proof. If that was the whole story, then yeah, you're probably better off remaining undecided. It falls apart when you realise that, going by that logic, nothing can be disproved. Griffins, yetis, Bigfoot, Loch Ness, Leprechauns, the Legendary Black Beast of Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh, nothing. It doesn't matter if its biologically impossible, completely inconclusive, if it's admitted to being a hoax, purely fictitious, if only one person claims to have seen it or anything. It's counter productive if anything as it simply stops the progression of knowledge, accumulating superstition.

 

I will iterate again that a stance may be taken as soon as having a stance becomes desirable. the "progression of knowledge" will not stop because when the progression creates a situation in which having a stance is beneficiary, a stance can be taken at that point.

I do not know what triantiwontigonkalopes are.

Fine, so long as something is possible, it cannot be disproved. That is fine with me. All knowledge is assumption, anyway. This is why stances are taken when stances are desirable.

 

And what's a situation progression can create where a stance is beneficiary? And why wait until that point to make judgements on information we already have? Having to overcome superstition and misconception at the vital time? That's still a hindrance to progression.

My second cousins aunt, being my first cousin once removed, said she saw a triantiwontigonkalope when she was young. Honestly.

And knowledge is not assumption. There's a substantial difference. On top of that, speaking of being logical, it's logical to support the current scientific views of the time. It's the combined collective knowledge of everything up to this point in time. Really, it's illogical to believe anything other than that.

 

As I said earlier, I am not going to dismiss every single sighting on the basis of a writers experience with a piggy, so I am still gonna count sightings as evidence. With something like bigfoot, where everyone and his dog has looked for him, I am leaning far more to the side of nonexistence. But for creatures like the loch ness monster, yetis and akkorokamui, who have not had extensive surveys of their living areas (or, in the case of loch ness, had one which showed something big on radar), I am leaning towards the side of 'it could be possible, and its pretty pointless to take a stance for or against'.

 

I think it's more than safe to say there have been extensive surveys of Loch Ness, and I'm almost certain there's been quite a liberal use of radar in trying to find the monster. Apart from the thousands upon thousands of tourists it pulls each year, check out all the searches listed on Wikipedia. Since 1934 there've been a number of searches for the monster, employing several different methods such as sheer manpower, sonar technology, microphones, specialised underwater cameras, trawling, and most recently, this:

Over the course of the searches, yes, there have been some suspicious findings, but they're not at all substantial enough to warrant any claims that there's a monster living in the lake. Seals, definitely. Monsters, no.

As for yetis, upon closer examination, it turns out they actually are real. There's a even a picture of one here.

 

Ah well, scratch loch ness from the list then. Lets go for some more obscure cryptids.

 

I think that akkorokamui can be scratched too. If Wikipedia's anything to go by here, it's supposed to be about a hundred an ten metres long? The giant squid's existence used to be debated, but it's obviously officially been discovered since then, along with the colossal squid, which can grow up to fourteen metres long. If we not only ended up finding the giant squid, but the colossal squid as well, and were able to get enough information to identify them as two separate species, don't you think we would've found something almost ten times as big and said to inhabit a bay in the waters surrounding Japan?

Do you really think this could actually exist? Or do you reckon it's just a folk tale, possibly originating from an ancient sighting of a giant or colossal squid?

 

Frankly, I couldn't remember the names of any more cryptids, and looked for a random one on wikipedia that did not have discredited next to its name. Lets find some that are more likely to exist.

from the list of cryptids
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptids

Adjule: The wiki article seemed very insistent that the creature does not exist, although I can't see how every single sighting was checked and confirmed to be a wild canine. Especially when they say that it its existence is debunked by sightings later confirmed to be wild canines, I have to scratch my head. The article was very obviously written by someone who did not belief in the (possibility of) existence of this creature, and the last line just seems tacked on. I'd have to say that this creature is more likely to exist then most cryptids, if only because there does not seem to have been much research on this.

Agogwe: Typical walking ape, although this one has more valid sightings than the well-known ones, even though there are far less people looking for it. I'd have to say that this one also has a decent to good possibility of existance.

Ahool: The wiki page is, again, far too obviously written by someone opposed to the possibility of this creature, especially with three quarters of the page being descriptions of an owl it might be mistaken for. The second footnote provides some more information, which is interesting because of the original namer actually thinking it was a bird, but others who saw it denied it. I'd have to say that since there apparently were only two recorded sightings, it is more likely to have been a case of mistaken identity, although I know far too little about Java to make a good call.

Akkorokamui: The bay it is supposedly in is not that deep (maximum depth 107 meters) ( http://www.docstoc.com/docs/4933983...the-Basin-Water-in-Funka-Bay-Kazuo-Kino_-and- ) and has at least some fishing activity. Very, very unlikely to exist.

 

I think you're placing far too much credit on sightings, jiff. Canines and apes do live in Africa, in the area where the Adjule and Agogwe have been sighted. What is it that makes these sightings cryptids? Why is it so easy to find African Wild Dogs, when an Adjule has never been sighted? There really isn't anything different about it. They're the same size, same biological class, and they live in the same area. If I were to claim I saw an undiscovered creature, and that it was a small duck-billed mammal that lived in waterholes and laid eggs, would you say I've seen a new creature or would you say it's a platypus?

Honestly, how likely is it that there's such a large creature out there that's not only yet to be found, but who's remnants and excrement are yet to be found? And in Africa of all places? The African continent has the second highest percentage of the world's population and the third highest population density of all the other continents. We've literally found hundreds of thousands of different species of insects in Africa, so it's not as though it's undiscovered territory. Not only that, but we've found thousands of species that specialise in camouflage, we've found thousands of fish and other ocean-dwelling creatures, all sorts of different animals from extreme and uninhabited environments, we've even found archaea that live in over a hundred degree Celcius heat, others that live in twenty five percent salinity, and others still that live in acidities as low as zero pH and as high as eleven. We've even found the remains of animals that went extinct tens of millions of years ago, and not just their bones, but their dung and skin.

So, what are the chances some giant ape or bear in the Himalayas has gone under the radar? It's no less populated than the Arctic Circle, yet we're able to find polar bears easy enough, and it's a fraction of the size. And as it's been mentioned before, they manage to leave no physical trace of their existence. Not only that, but the conditions there seem almost perfect for preserving any sort of biological remains.

Let's look at the Agogwe in closer detail though. Wikipedia says it's a small human-like ape, with long arms, long black or rust-coloured woolly hair and yellowish-red skin, a more rounded head than most apes, and opposable toes, and is said to live in the forests of East Africa. According to the sightings, it walks on two legs and is notably graceful.

The Bonobo, is a small ape, with long arms, long black woolly hair and pink skin, has a less prominent brow than most apes, and opposable toes. It lives in the forests of central Africa. It walks on two legs approximately a quarter of the time and was previously known as the Gracile Chimpanzee.

So of course there have been more sightings than Bigfoot, because it actually exists. It's a Bonobo.

 

Good possibility of existence is a tad relative here, not even close to certainty.

Also, africa might not be an undiscovered country, it does have parts were few people live, and even fewer people are interested in discovering new species. Note that the most interesting sighting happened in Mauritania, which has quite a low population density, most of which lives among the senegal and the sea.

As for the agogwe, Bonobos don't have a large variety in fur color, although I admit an underfurred belly could be mistaken for rust-like fur. The agogwe ranges from 1 meter to 1 meter 70 (which is probably a far smaller ranger, but it was mostly documented from a distance), while the bonobo ranges from 70 to 83 cm.


Also, would the excrement of two dog-like creature living in similar environments really be that different?

 

I never claimed that excrement would be a distinguishing feature with the Adjule and African Wild Dog. It would be useful for many other cryptids, but not for anything so similar.

I dunno where you saw about the Mauritania sighting, but from what I read it was supposed to inhabit Eastern Africa, where Mauritania appears to be in the North-East.

And what makes these sightings so factual exactly? How can a minor detail like fur colour or height completely dismiss a valid explanation, especially when you pointed out two reasons why they might be wrong anyway?

Again, if I were to claim I saw an undiscovered creature, and that it was a small duck-billed mammal that lived in waterholes and laid eggs, would you say I've seen a new creature or would you say it's a platypus?

The main thing I want to know is what makes these sightings so infallible.

 

because quite a lot of species are distinguished by these sorts of minor details.
And by smaller range, I meant that the amount of possible heights was smaller, not that the possible heights were smaller numbers.
Mauritania is north-west, and its supposed to live around the Sahara

Its not that these sightings are infallible. Its that we can't automatically assume that all sightings that contradict present knowledge are wrong. That way we'd never discover new animal species.

If you mentioned your platypus, and you would be a reliable sighter, I would ask for fur-color, living area and egg color. You might just have discovered the related species Ornithorhynchus Itzahexgorius.