I wouldn’t say I know it to be true, but read and reviewed books by experts (anthropologists, special effects experts, pro and con) and ended up concluding that bigfoot probably exists (~75%).
I wrote up my rationale in r/slatestarcodex a year or so ago:
Huh, yeah, that seems a lot more plausible than I was expecting. Effectively, the proposal is that “bigfoot” is a near-hominid species of great ape that avoids humans very effectively, and who look enough like humans that humans consistently roll to disbelieve they’re not humans in fur suits. Seems cool as hell if true. My only real question, then, is how this species of great ape got to the americas.
I hope we can invite them to participate distantly in society at some point, same as the other great apes, primates, and, well, really all animals, once we’ve figured out what their communication limits and personal/community space bubbles are and satisfied those.
I’d say after seeing this, my subjective probability there really is a great ape species native to the americas is about 50%. It really doesn’t seem like a weird claim a priori anyway, and the reasoning for why we’d see absence of strong evidence seems reasonable, as does the claim that the evidence available seems to point to the encounters being real. Before this, I retrospectively estimate I’d have said between 2% and 10%.
I find it kinda suspicious that this species niche seems to only make sense with homo sapiens around? Who would that hominid need to run away from if not for homo sapiens? I don’t have great intuitions for the numbers here, but it seems like homo sapiens invading the americas would probably not be enough time to adapt.
If they exist, then they would have crossed the Bering land bridge at the same time as humans. They would never have lived anywhere without a human presence. And yes, similar sightings are known from across Asia also.
I’m not sure about 75% but it is an interesting subject and I do think the consensus view is slightly too sceptical. I don’t have any expertise but one thing that always sticks out to me as decreasing the likelihood of bigfoot’s existence is the lack of remains. Ok, I buy encounters could be rare enough so that there isn’t one within the advent of the smartphone. But where are the skeletons? Is part of the claim they might have some type of burial grounds? Very remote territory they stick to without exceptions?
It’s discussed in the Reddit comments, if you want more details, but briefly: A rare species with a long life might leave on the order of ~100 dead a year. If each corpse has, say 1e-5 chance (low but still plausible number) of being found by a person, then it could take a while.
I don’t know of any claim that they would take care of their dead, but I don’t see that as implausible.
I wouldn’t say I know it to be true, but read and reviewed books by experts (anthropologists, special effects experts, pro and con) and ended up concluding that bigfoot probably exists (~75%).
I wrote up my rationale in r/slatestarcodex a year or so ago:
link
Huh, yeah, that seems a lot more plausible than I was expecting. Effectively, the proposal is that “bigfoot” is a near-hominid species of great ape that avoids humans very effectively, and who look enough like humans that humans consistently roll to disbelieve they’re not humans in fur suits. Seems cool as hell if true. My only real question, then, is how this species of great ape got to the americas.
I hope we can invite them to participate distantly in society at some point, same as the other great apes, primates, and, well, really all animals, once we’ve figured out what their communication limits and personal/community space bubbles are and satisfied those.
I’d say after seeing this, my subjective probability there really is a great ape species native to the americas is about 50%. It really doesn’t seem like a weird claim a priori anyway, and the reasoning for why we’d see absence of strong evidence seems reasonable, as does the claim that the evidence available seems to point to the encounters being real. Before this, I retrospectively estimate I’d have said between 2% and 10%.
I find it kinda suspicious that this species niche seems to only make sense with homo sapiens around? Who would that hominid need to run away from if not for homo sapiens? I don’t have great intuitions for the numbers here, but it seems like homo sapiens invading the americas would probably not be enough time to adapt.
If they exist, then they would have crossed the Bering land bridge at the same time as humans. They would never have lived anywhere without a human presence. And yes, similar sightings are known from across Asia also.
Well, this sounds kinda intriguing, but I am not sure whether this is the kind of area where I am currently epistemically helpless. Thankfully, prediction markets exist
I’m not sure about 75% but it is an interesting subject and I do think the consensus view is slightly too sceptical. I don’t have any expertise but one thing that always sticks out to me as decreasing the likelihood of bigfoot’s existence is the lack of remains. Ok, I buy encounters could be rare enough so that there isn’t one within the advent of the smartphone. But where are the skeletons? Is part of the claim they might have some type of burial grounds? Very remote territory they stick to without exceptions?
It’s discussed in the Reddit comments, if you want more details, but briefly: A rare species with a long life might leave on the order of ~100 dead a year. If each corpse has, say 1e-5 chance (low but still plausible number) of being found by a person, then it could take a while.
I don’t know of any claim that they would take care of their dead, but I don’t see that as implausible.