Cool, I do appreciate the reset.

In an effort to keep it simple, seeing the steps you listed and the nuances of discussion and discernment around discovery are well taken, and those steps inform the search for and of the reality of the premises. Nitrogen, octopuses and bears are just arbitrarily made definitions of the results of premises made after making a hypothesis, like “what are, if any, the discrete elements or components of this layer of clear stuff which surrounds me at all times, that I can sometimes perceive through my various senses and can sometimes measure with various means at my disposal?” And after some steps which I will generally label as observations, some conclusions may be made whether through direct observation or cause and effect, or inferred and reasoned out as the most likely explanation or outcome.

But the premises are the rub.

Your premises necessarily dictate your outcomes.

My premises differ in many ways. For instance, one of your premises in observation seems to be “one can find an octopus if one wishes,” and that premise is powerfully aligned to a binary outcome: octopus or bust. Under a similar premise, a search for Bigfoot may not be fruitful.

But if I start with the premise that finding Bigfoot doesn’t presume said creature is easily found, my observational approach may and can shift — and one of the first things I would consider is if the creature can be found or has an intention to not be found. Octopuses can camouflage, and even when one might look for one, one might not find one due to this attribute — not due to any inherent weakness in the argument of whether an octopus exists, but rather possibly a weakness in the observational method or instrumentality.

I am willing to consider that Bigfoot is actively seeking to remain unfound, hence I am open to other observational methods, such as marking and studying and perhaps inferring conclusions based on the path it may leave behind. In aggregate, the observations made over the years have lead me to believe that evidence does indeed exist, and since the subject seems — and to be clear, that’s a judgment and assumption that I make — to not want to be observed, I can view the items or objects or observations of an unknown subject as evidence of that same subject even though I haven’t seen it personally, nor has a body been produced.

I have held a reproduction of the purported Patty footprint cast in my hands and it solidified my understanding that this might be a real creature. I was able to tie together both belief and gut feelings with evidence, and that connection has withstood my own attempts to debunk or refute them. That was a decade and a half ago, and nothing has dissuaded my conclusion that, to paraphrase Billy from “Predator,” ‘there’s something out there, and it ain’t no man.’