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TimS comments on Rationality Quotes July 2013 - Less Wrong
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Very very cursory investigation - I went to Wikipedia, and noticed the lack of "Yo stupid, Bigfoot is real" section.
The argument applies to any phenomena that can be unambiguously recorded. Given the ease of recording relatively high quality video / audio / IR, assertions of a recordable phenomena without unambiguous recordings implies the assertions are false.
If proponents do not assert recordable phenomena, the rise-of-smartphones argument is not as powerful, but such assertions are much more vulnerable to invisible-undetectable-dragon issues.
I once heard an argument on a skeptical podcast: Why do we never see any Bigfoot roadkill?
That's easy. Bigfoot must be stronger and more durable than cars. The real question is why we don't find Bigfoot faeces with traces of partially digested steel, oil and rubber from Bigfoot's vehicular combat success.
That’s just goverment misinformation. They steal all evidence and mind-wipe the witnesses. Then they use the DNA for top-secret research trying to make a super-soldier. Makes a lot more sense than the ridiculous rubber digestion. Everyone knows its chupacabra that eats rubber.
There are plenty of recorded sightings of UFOs on youtube. Probably more videos than existed 50 years ago.
That doesn't imply in any way that the evidence that now exist is the same strength as was 50 years ago. It just doesn't.
Let me expand: I assume Wikipedia would link or discuss the best evidence for Bigfoot. It does link evidence, and the quality of that evidence is poor. As of this writing, the most recent evidence listed in wikipedia is a 2007 photo that forest rangers assert is a bear with mange and a 2008 youtube video link to what pro-Bigfoot groups apparently admit is a hoax.
None of this is higher quality evidence than the famous 1967 film.
Imagine a ten minute encounter with a para-normal / unexplained phenomena. In 1967 or 1980, it is essentially luck whether the observer has decent quality recording equipment and time to get into position to make a good recording. In 2013, the smartphone-per-person density is such that we should expect the vast majority of sighting of Bigfoot, or UFOs, or whatever, to be recorded by smartphone video cameras.
90% or more of those recordings will be crap, but the sheer volume of possible recordings implies that we should expect to see some very high quality evidence by now. And we haven't (more precisely, wikipedia has no such link, which I think is equivalent in these circumstances).
Further, this analysis ignores the fairly large number of people actively searching for para-normal / unexplained phenomena.
Do we observe this explosion-of-recorded-evidence phenomenon with real but weird things (e.g. some rare, bizarre-looking bug)?
Excellent question - I don't know the answer. This link is suggestive, and the last picture includes a species discovered via upload to flicker.
In general, Googling "newly discovered species" suggests that many new species are found in relatively exotic locations. Bigfoot is supposed to live in the forests of the NW United States. I don't consider that location exotic because those forests are heavily populated and very accessible to people (compared to the bottom of the ocean or deep jungle of Brazil or Africa).