10 ms·

Why Bigfoot is unlikely only if you know what "unlikely" means

44 points by RougeFemme 13y ago

roc 13y ago
The approach seems fine when considering sightings vs (lack of) data for a specific potential-creature in a specific habitat. But it seems rather flawed to group together all the various "large ape", "ape/human hybrid" type legends under the single umbrella of "bigfoot", so as to dismiss it as being "spotted too frequently to likely exist". Why do this for "bigfoot" but not for giant squid? Surely the incredible breadth of "sea monster" legends and stories and sightings dwarfs the limited evidence that anyone had that a species of giant squids might exist.
- lhc- 13y ago
  Sea Monsters (such as Nessie) are in the same category as Bigfoot. The Giant Squid has been caught on camera, and bodies have washed up on shore, leaving real evidence. No bigfoot-like creature has ever been found, nor any evidence. Is there a reason to differentiate between different varieties of them when none of those varieties have any evidence?
  - roc 13y ago
    We did eventually get bodies, but only fairly recently. We had scraps before that, but those were often dismissed and had their aberrant characteristics ascribed to mutation or decomposition. In hindsight we have identified them as being of colossal squid, but that was anything but accepted at the time. It wasn't really until the 2000's and a live specimen was discovered that it was generally accepted that these things were real. And, again, my point isn't whether Bigfoot does or doesn't exist. But whether the logical argument survives such abstraction. And I don't think it does. The inexistence of bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest doesn't really speak to the (un)likelihood of the Yeti in the Himalayas. Nor does the lack of evidence for elves and goblins in Europe speak to the likelihood of an Orang Pendek.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      The fact that people all over describe similar things indicates that people have a predisposition to see human-like shapes. Therefore, people seeing human-like shapes is very poor evidence - whereas if the claims were more geographically (or environmentally) localized it would be comparatively likely to be telling us about features of that space (like existence of a creature) rather than features of humans. Of course, memes cluster as well, so it's not really clean-cut...
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      I think the article addresses your point nicely. People reportedly see bigfoot everywhere, all the time. For so many citings, we really should have an abundance of physical evidence, but we just don't. Giant squid citings however are rare. The infrequent discovery of physical evidence is therefore not particularly troubling. (And before we found any credible physical evidence, the lack of physical evidence was still less troubling than the lack of physical evidence for bigfoot). (Also not covered by the article: Thanks to sperm whales, who eat the things and sport scars from fights with them, we've actually had credible physical evidence of giant squid for quite some time. As far as I can tell nobody was mistaking these things for abnormally large regular squid since at least the 19th century, and people have been finding credible intact (although dead) specimens of them since about that same time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_giant_squid_specimens_and_sightings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_giant_squid_specimens_a... "Steenstrup wrote a number of papers on giant squid in the 1850s. He first used the term "Architeuthus" (this was the spelling he chose) in a paper in 1857. A portion of a giant squid was secured by the French gunboat Alecton in 1861, leading to wider recognition of the genus in the scientific community. From 1870 to 1880, many squid were stranded on the shores of Newfoundland. For example, a specimen washed ashore in Thimble Tickle Bay, Newfoundland on 2 November 1878; its mantle was reported to be 6.1 m (20 ft) long, with one tentacle 10.7 m (35 ft) long, and it was estimated as weighing 2.2 tonnes.[citation needed] In 1873, a squid "attacked" a minister and a young boy in a dory in Bell Island, Newfoundland. Many strandings also occurred in New Zealand during the late 19th century.")
      - roc 13y ago
        > "Giant squid citings however are rare." That's missing my question. Colossal squid sightings are rare, but "sea monsters" are sighted everywhere, all the time. And if we're expected to roll up the large bipeds (bigfoot, yeti, skunk ape, letiche, et al -- many of which with very distinct reported features) shouldn't we have rolled up "sea monsters" and dismissed the colossal squid until (almost literally) someone dropped it onto our faces? Granted, that isn't far from what happened, but shouldn't we have learned from that experience, rather than seek to codify the logic? > "we've actually had credible physical evidence of giant squid for quite some time." Accounts, but a dearth of specimen. Should someone discover the Orang Pendak tomorrow, surely hindsight will declare credible the records of the early 20th century dutch colonists. But as of this moment, it's far from generally accepted that these creatures exist, let alone that those accounts are actually credible. And the logic of this article is literally arguing that we ought to weigh the likelihood of Orange Pendak, based on whether other creatures on other continents, that just happen to be roughly the same shape, have any credible evidence.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
I like the similar argument for Alien visitors, we are approaching saturation in terms of cameras that can take videos and a highly discoverable channel for making such videos available (*tube) and so, like the neutrino detectors in mine shafts, if there is an "event" we'll catch it on camera. That gives us the ability to start computing the probabilities more accurately vis-a-vis alien visitation.
- wtvanhest 13y ago
  I was thinking the same thing while reading it. We do have a way to go before consumer camera technology is good enough to capture moving spaceships (or even jet liners at night). Cameras are not very good at catching sharp movement of low lit objects. Just to photograph sports clearly requires several thousand dollars in equipment and you can be as close as 50 meters most of the game. That will change a lot over the years as sensor technology continues to improve and eventually your point will be important.
  - johnchristopher 13y ago
    You are both forgetting Suliban and Romulan cloaking devices.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    I thought cameras would be the death of paranormal, but then we have photoshop and facebook to convert a whole new wave of believers. I do like the thought process though - if it's supposedly this common but still unproven, it's less likely to be true. Do we put ghosts in the same category?
    - dkersten 13y ago
      I always think about it the other way around: given we have photoshop and similar tools, every bit of photographic and video evidence is suspect. Just look at a movie - if that's what we can do, how could anybody ever believe a photo or video of, say, aliens unless they were there themselves.
jimmyhmiller 13y ago
>A scientist generally starts with the conservative working assumption that proposed new ideas are not true or that hypothetical new entities do not exist, and then revises her probability estimate upwards only when the evidence forces her to do so. A pseudoscientist typically starts with the assumption that a novel proposal seems to be true, and then revises her probability downward as the evidence leaves her no choice—if she is willing to surrender the possibility to any degree at all. That sounds more like a verificationist idea of science than a Popperian falsification process. Is verificationism coming back in vogue in the sciences? Wouldn't it be a much better criticism to say that the cryptozoologists are not scientific because they do not make falsifiable predictions?
- api 13y ago
  Ahh philosophy... But if cryptozoologists are unscientific by the Popperian criteria then so is SETI.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > But if cryptozoologists are unscientific by the Popperian criteria then so is SETI. Not at all. Cryptozoologists assume their subject exists, SETI researchers assume it doesn't. Surely you don't think SETI people assume a priori that they will hear a transmission from an intelligent alien species? Or that they have heard such a thing? There's a single report of an anomalous reception, now called the "Wow" signal, that no serious SETI person thinks represents an alien broadcast. By contrast, there are any number of books and articles by cryptozoologists that analyze, but don't doubt, the many reports of Bigfoot, Yeti, Nessie, etc. sightings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal Quote: "Ehman has voiced doubts that the signal was of intelligent extraterrestrial origin: 'We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-sourced signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris.'" Spoken like a true scientist.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > That sounds more like a verificationist idea of science than a Popperian falsification process. Actually, it's an informal statement of the null hypothesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis In the null hypothesis, supposedly the basis for all experimental science, you start with the assumption that there is no effect, and let the evidence force you to a different conclusion. In other words, you assume nothing out of the ordinary and take no position on the subject of study. > Wouldn't it be a much better criticism to say that the cryptozoologists are not scientific because they do not make falsifiable predictions? Yes, it would, but that's not a very popular definition of science these days. If it were, psychiatrists and psychologists would be immediately excluded -- they make plenty of predictions, but the predictions don't work out.
codezero 13y ago
I think an interesting analogy here is the idea that there is (or was) life on Mars. Most assumptions are that there is life on Mars and time is simply whittling away at the probability, rather than, as the article says, assumptions are made that there is no life and probabilities are increased as evidence suggests that there is.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > Most assumptions are that there is life on Mars and time is simply whittling away at the probability ... Certainly not, at least not among scientists. To a scientist, there's nothing up there but sand and thin air, until evidence proves otherwise. Popular reports naturally enough get this scientific, appropriately skeptical outlook completely wrong.
woodchuck64 13y ago
Note that when you substitute "God" for "Bigfoot" the article works quite well, suggesting that cryptozoology is more of a religion than a science.
- JackFr 13y ago
  I think you're wrong in both premise and conclusion. "Cryptozoological creatures like [God] are (supposedly) large animals living in large areas, and both have decades of 'evidence' to suggest that we might film one someday—as we did the giant squid." Nope. Doesn't quite work. Further, a religion is typically characterized as an organized system of beliefs, rituals and rules used to worship a god or group of gods. Maintaining one particular irrational belief does not a religion make. (Although I'm sure "What Would Bigfoot Do?" bumper stickers would sell quite well.)
  - woodchuck64 13y ago
    How about: "Cryptozoological creatures like [God] are (supposedly) [all powerful entities] living [somewhere outside time], and both have decades of 'evidence' to suggest that we might [measure one's effect in some shape or form]—as we did the giant squid." > Maintaining one particular irrational belief does not a religion make. According to the article, cryptozoologists have many irrational beliefs, one for each creature.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      You're stretching. Both can be irrational beliefs while not being particularly similar to each other.
      - woodchuck64 13y ago
        On the contrary, most irrational beliefs are similar to each other because they all stem from the same neurological modules crafted by evolution. Fallacies that are easily exposed by formal logic often seem correct to people not trained in science. For example, anecdotal evidence is given perverse weight because most of the time, anecdotal evidence is pretty solid evidence for a group of hunter gatherers.
api 13y ago
More accurately: there is not enough good-quality evidence vs. the sample size to tip the needle. If we had very very few observations of Loch Ness -- like say if it was Lake Vostok -- but we had a few Nessie sightings, that would be different. But we have only a few Nessie sightings in a place that's constantly being observed and photographed.
everettForth 13y ago
If I don't know what "unlikely" means, Bigfoot is not unlikely?
GhotiFish 13y ago
I find the position that cryptozooligists never "abandon any discredited evidence" to be unfair. They're talking about a whole demographic here. There are likely to be more reasonable cryptozooloigists that disregard discredited evidence, and would happily admit to hoaxes in this area. I think the majority would hacker news would be with me if I said that, on the whole, cryptozoologists are a little nutty. You don't need to resort to political smear tactics to say it. However. You do need to use smear tactics if you want to create outrage. If that was the articles objective... then... good job I guess? As a side note: squatchers is a great name.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > I find the position that cryptozooligists never "abandon any discredited evidence" to be unfair. Science isn't about what's fair, it's about what the evidence tells us. The fact that, in spite of no evidence whatsoever, Bigfoot stories, books and TV shows have escalated tremendously over the past 20 years, supports the claim you're objecting to. > There are likely to be more reasonable cryptozooloigists that disregard discredited evidence, and would happily admit to hoaxes in this area. Those aren't cryptozoologists, at least not gainfully employed ones. It's sort of like psychologists who know talk therapy is a waste of time -- they may still be psychologists, but they're not making a living at psychology. > You do need to use smear tactics if you want to create outrage. The article didn't need to use smear tactics, and it didn't use smear tactics -- it used evidence.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    > It's sort of like psychologists who know talk therapy is a waste of time -- they may still be psychologists, but they're not making a living at psychology I know you hold anti psychology views, but some forms of talking therapy are evidence based and are as effective as medication for some mental illnesses. They are quick and achieve good rates of recovery (both amount of recovery, sometimes total, and length of recovery, sometimes many years.) I'd agree if you'd used the terms "counselling" and "counsellors".
    - 13y ago
static_typed 13y ago
It most comes down to the human condition, the need in our psyche for some mystery, things to keep our eyes and mind active, even when occasionally the rational part tends to point out the unlikeliness of the creature or event. Some like Bigfoot, some Aliens, some Nessie - me personally, I am fond of the tales I was told as a young child of a few remaining dinosaurs in the large remaining land masses, such as Central Africa, and Brazil. Probably unlikely, yet, nice to dream that perhaps, maybe, a few select dinosaurs are at this moment hiding away.
wmeredith 13y ago
Hitting this link on a mobile device redirects you to the home page of their mobile site, not the mobile version of this story. Ugh. When will web masters stop doing this?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

44 points by RougeFemme 13y ago

roc 13y ago

The approach seems fine when considering sightings vs (lack of) data for a specific potential-creature in a specific habitat. But it seems rather flawed to group together all the various "large ape", "ape/human hybrid" type legends under the single umbrella of "bigfoot", so as to dismiss it as being "spotted too frequently to likely exist". Why do this for "bigfoot" but not for giant squid? Surely the incredible breadth of "sea monster" legends and stories and sightings dwarfs the limited evidence that anyone had that a species of giant squids might exist.

lhc- 13y ago
Sea Monsters (such as Nessie) are in the same category as Bigfoot. The Giant Squid has been caught on camera, and bodies have washed up on shore, leaving real evidence. No bigfoot-like creature has ever been found, nor any evidence. Is there a reason to differentiate between different varieties of them when none of those varieties have any evidence?
- roc 13y ago
  We did eventually get bodies, but only fairly recently. We had scraps before that, but those were often dismissed and had their aberrant characteristics ascribed to mutation or decomposition. In hindsight we have identified them as being of colossal squid, but that was anything but accepted at the time. It wasn't really until the 2000's and a live specimen was discovered that it was generally accepted that these things were real. And, again, my point isn't whether Bigfoot does or doesn't exist. But whether the logical argument survives such abstraction. And I don't think it does. The inexistence of bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest doesn't really speak to the (un)likelihood of the Yeti in the Himalayas. Nor does the lack of evidence for elves and goblins in Europe speak to the likelihood of an Orang Pendek.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    The fact that people all over describe similar things indicates that people have a predisposition to see human-like shapes. Therefore, people seeing human-like shapes is very poor evidence - whereas if the claims were more geographically (or environmentally) localized it would be comparatively likely to be telling us about features of that space (like existence of a creature) rather than features of humans. Of course, memes cluster as well, so it's not really clean-cut...
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    I think the article addresses your point nicely. People reportedly see bigfoot everywhere, all the time. For so many citings, we really should have an abundance of physical evidence, but we just don't. Giant squid citings however are rare. The infrequent discovery of physical evidence is therefore not particularly troubling. (And before we found any credible physical evidence, the lack of physical evidence was still less troubling than the lack of physical evidence for bigfoot). (Also not covered by the article: Thanks to sperm whales, who eat the things and sport scars from fights with them, we've actually had credible physical evidence of giant squid for quite some time. As far as I can tell nobody was mistaking these things for abnormally large regular squid since at least the 19th century, and people have been finding credible intact (although dead) specimens of them since about that same time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_giant_squid_specimens_and_sightings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_giant_squid_specimens_a... "Steenstrup wrote a number of papers on giant squid in the 1850s. He first used the term "Architeuthus" (this was the spelling he chose) in a paper in 1857. A portion of a giant squid was secured by the French gunboat Alecton in 1861, leading to wider recognition of the genus in the scientific community. From 1870 to 1880, many squid were stranded on the shores of Newfoundland. For example, a specimen washed ashore in Thimble Tickle Bay, Newfoundland on 2 November 1878; its mantle was reported to be 6.1 m (20 ft) long, with one tentacle 10.7 m (35 ft) long, and it was estimated as weighing 2.2 tonnes.[citation needed] In 1873, a squid "attacked" a minister and a young boy in a dory in Bell Island, Newfoundland. Many strandings also occurred in New Zealand during the late 19th century.")
    - roc 13y ago
      > "Giant squid citings however are rare." That's missing my question. Colossal squid sightings are rare, but "sea monsters" are sighted everywhere, all the time. And if we're expected to roll up the large bipeds (bigfoot, yeti, skunk ape, letiche, et al -- many of which with very distinct reported features) shouldn't we have rolled up "sea monsters" and dismissed the colossal squid until (almost literally) someone dropped it onto our faces? Granted, that isn't far from what happened, but shouldn't we have learned from that experience, rather than seek to codify the logic? > "we've actually had credible physical evidence of giant squid for quite some time." Accounts, but a dearth of specimen. Should someone discover the Orang Pendak tomorrow, surely hindsight will declare credible the records of the early 20th century dutch colonists. But as of this moment, it's far from generally accepted that these creatures exist, let alone that those accounts are actually credible. And the logic of this article is literally arguing that we ought to weigh the likelihood of Orange Pendak, based on whether other creatures on other continents, that just happen to be roughly the same shape, have any credible evidence.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

I like the similar argument for Alien visitors, we are approaching saturation in terms of cameras that can take videos and a highly discoverable channel for making such videos available (*tube) and so, like the neutrino detectors in mine shafts, if there is an "event" we'll catch it on camera. That gives us the ability to start computing the probabilities more accurately vis-a-vis alien visitation.

wtvanhest 13y ago
I was thinking the same thing while reading it. We do have a way to go before consumer camera technology is good enough to capture moving spaceships (or even jet liners at night). Cameras are not very good at catching sharp movement of low lit objects. Just to photograph sports clearly requires several thousand dollars in equipment and you can be as close as 50 meters most of the game. That will change a lot over the years as sensor technology continues to improve and eventually your point will be important.
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  You are both forgetting Suliban and Romulan cloaking devices.
- mathattack 13y ago
  I thought cameras would be the death of paranormal, but then we have photoshop and facebook to convert a whole new wave of believers. I do like the thought process though - if it's supposedly this common but still unproven, it's less likely to be true. Do we put ghosts in the same category?
  - dkersten 13y ago
    I always think about it the other way around: given we have photoshop and similar tools, every bit of photographic and video evidence is suspect. Just look at a movie - if that's what we can do, how could anybody ever believe a photo or video of, say, aliens unless they were there themselves.

jimmyhmiller 13y ago

>A scientist generally starts with the conservative working assumption that proposed new ideas are not true or that hypothetical new entities do not exist, and then revises her probability estimate upwards only when the evidence forces her to do so. A pseudoscientist typically starts with the assumption that a novel proposal seems to be true, and then revises her probability downward as the evidence leaves her no choice—if she is willing to surrender the possibility to any degree at all. That sounds more like a verificationist idea of science than a Popperian falsification process. Is verificationism coming back in vogue in the sciences? Wouldn't it be a much better criticism to say that the cryptozoologists are not scientific because they do not make falsifiable predictions?

api 13y ago
Ahh philosophy... But if cryptozoologists are unscientific by the Popperian criteria then so is SETI.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > But if cryptozoologists are unscientific by the Popperian criteria then so is SETI. Not at all. Cryptozoologists assume their subject exists, SETI researchers assume it doesn't. Surely you don't think SETI people assume a priori that they will hear a transmission from an intelligent alien species? Or that they have heard such a thing? There's a single report of an anomalous reception, now called the "Wow" signal, that no serious SETI person thinks represents an alien broadcast. By contrast, there are any number of books and articles by cryptozoologists that analyze, but don't doubt, the many reports of Bigfoot, Yeti, Nessie, etc. sightings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal Quote: "Ehman has voiced doubts that the signal was of intelligent extraterrestrial origin: 'We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-sourced signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris.'" Spoken like a true scientist.
lutusp 13y ago
> That sounds more like a verificationist idea of science than a Popperian falsification process. Actually, it's an informal statement of the null hypothesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis In the null hypothesis, supposedly the basis for all experimental science, you start with the assumption that there is no effect, and let the evidence force you to a different conclusion. In other words, you assume nothing out of the ordinary and take no position on the subject of study. > Wouldn't it be a much better criticism to say that the cryptozoologists are not scientific because they do not make falsifiable predictions? Yes, it would, but that's not a very popular definition of science these days. If it were, psychiatrists and psychologists would be immediately excluded -- they make plenty of predictions, but the predictions don't work out.

codezero 13y ago

I think an interesting analogy here is the idea that there is (or was) life on Mars. Most assumptions are that there is life on Mars and time is simply whittling away at the probability, rather than, as the article says, assumptions are made that there is no life and probabilities are increased as evidence suggests that there is.

lutusp 13y ago
> Most assumptions are that there is life on Mars and time is simply whittling away at the probability ... Certainly not, at least not among scientists. To a scientist, there's nothing up there but sand and thin air, until evidence proves otherwise. Popular reports naturally enough get this scientific, appropriately skeptical outlook completely wrong.

woodchuck64 13y ago

Note that when you substitute "God" for "Bigfoot" the article works quite well, suggesting that cryptozoology is more of a religion than a science.

JackFr 13y ago
I think you're wrong in both premise and conclusion. "Cryptozoological creatures like [God] are (supposedly) large animals living in large areas, and both have decades of 'evidence' to suggest that we might film one someday—as we did the giant squid." Nope. Doesn't quite work. Further, a religion is typically characterized as an organized system of beliefs, rituals and rules used to worship a god or group of gods. Maintaining one particular irrational belief does not a religion make. (Although I'm sure "What Would Bigfoot Do?" bumper stickers would sell quite well.)
- woodchuck64 13y ago
  How about: "Cryptozoological creatures like [God] are (supposedly) [all powerful entities] living [somewhere outside time], and both have decades of 'evidence' to suggest that we might [measure one's effect in some shape or form]—as we did the giant squid." > Maintaining one particular irrational belief does not a religion make. According to the article, cryptozoologists have many irrational beliefs, one for each creature.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    You're stretching. Both can be irrational beliefs while not being particularly similar to each other.
    - woodchuck64 13y ago
      On the contrary, most irrational beliefs are similar to each other because they all stem from the same neurological modules crafted by evolution. Fallacies that are easily exposed by formal logic often seem correct to people not trained in science. For example, anecdotal evidence is given perverse weight because most of the time, anecdotal evidence is pretty solid evidence for a group of hunter gatherers.

api 13y ago

More accurately: there is not enough good-quality evidence vs. the sample size to tip the needle. If we had very very few observations of Loch Ness -- like say if it was Lake Vostok -- but we had a few Nessie sightings, that would be different. But we have only a few Nessie sightings in a place that's constantly being observed and photographed.

everettForth 13y ago

If I don't know what "unlikely" means, Bigfoot is not unlikely?

GhotiFish 13y ago

I find the position that cryptozooligists never "abandon any discredited evidence" to be unfair. They're talking about a whole demographic here. There are likely to be more reasonable cryptozooloigists that disregard discredited evidence, and would happily admit to hoaxes in this area. I think the majority would hacker news would be with me if I said that, on the whole, cryptozoologists are a little nutty. You don't need to resort to political smear tactics to say it. However. You do need to use smear tactics if you want to create outrage. If that was the articles objective... then... good job I guess? As a side note: squatchers is a great name.

lutusp 13y ago
> I find the position that cryptozooligists never "abandon any discredited evidence" to be unfair. Science isn't about what's fair, it's about what the evidence tells us. The fact that, in spite of no evidence whatsoever, Bigfoot stories, books and TV shows have escalated tremendously over the past 20 years, supports the claim you're objecting to. > There are likely to be more reasonable cryptozooloigists that disregard discredited evidence, and would happily admit to hoaxes in this area. Those aren't cryptozoologists, at least not gainfully employed ones. It's sort of like psychologists who know talk therapy is a waste of time -- they may still be psychologists, but they're not making a living at psychology. > You do need to use smear tactics if you want to create outrage. The article didn't need to use smear tactics, and it didn't use smear tactics -- it used evidence.
- DanBC 13y ago
  > It's sort of like psychologists who know talk therapy is a waste of time -- they may still be psychologists, but they're not making a living at psychology I know you hold anti psychology views, but some forms of talking therapy are evidence based and are as effective as medication for some mental illnesses. They are quick and achieve good rates of recovery (both amount of recovery, sometimes total, and length of recovery, sometimes many years.) I'd agree if you'd used the terms "counselling" and "counsellors".
  - 13y ago

static_typed 13y ago

It most comes down to the human condition, the need in our psyche for some mystery, things to keep our eyes and mind active, even when occasionally the rational part tends to point out the unlikeliness of the creature or event. Some like Bigfoot, some Aliens, some Nessie - me personally, I am fond of the tales I was told as a young child of a few remaining dinosaurs in the large remaining land masses, such as Central Africa, and Brazil. Probably unlikely, yet, nice to dream that perhaps, maybe, a few select dinosaurs are at this moment hiding away.

wmeredith 13y ago

Hitting this link on a mobile device redirects you to the home page of their mobile site, not the mobile version of this story. Ugh. When will web masters stop doing this?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]