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Brian R
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Brian R
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PostWed Oct 16, 2019 6:23 pm 
RandyHiker wrote:
Brian R wrote:
RandyHiker wrote:
Hiking the Wonderland trail has been regimented with limited campsites and required reservations for decades. Similarly hiking the PCT/John Muir trail in the Sierras is tightly regulated.
Just because we've become conditioned to accept arbitrary rule-making doesn't make it just. Ask yourself this: would you abide a bureaucrat, or his private contractor, demanding to see your papers while walking down a sidewalk? Then why do you accept it while hiking along a trail in the wilderness?
You assert that it is arbitrary. Prove it.
Review the so-called science behind "carrying capacity," as it applies to quotas, and get back to me.

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Randito
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PostWed Oct 16, 2019 6:28 pm 
Brian R wrote:
Review the so-called science behind "carrying capacity," as it applies to quotas, and get back to me.
That's a punt, not a proof.

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Brian R
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PostWed Oct 16, 2019 11:30 pm 
Sorry Randy, but given your history of argument for the sake of argument, I doubt any amount of "proof" would be adequate to your needs. Like the true believers who occasionally ring my doorbell, all dressed in black & white, sometimes it's better to just politely close the door. Still, feel free to explore the arbitrary rule-making nature of bureaucracies at your leisure.

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Randito
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PostThu Oct 17, 2019 3:35 am 
Brian R wrote:
Sorry Randy, but given your history of argument for the sake of argument, I doubt any amount of "proof" would be adequate to your needs. Like the true believers who occasionally ring my doorbell, all dressed in black & white, sometimes it's better to just politely close the door. Still, feel free to explore the arbitrary rule-making nature of bureaucracies at your leisure.
So you can't be bothered to back up your assertion that administration quotas are arbitrary. If it was so easy for me to "look up" myself as you suggested it should have been even easier for you to cite them. Perhaps said articles don't actually exist.

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cdestroyer
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PostThu Oct 17, 2019 7:52 am 
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Malachai Constant
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PostThu Oct 17, 2019 8:03 am 
RandyHiker wrote:
So you can't be bothered to back up your assertion that administration quotas are arbitrary. If it was so easy for me to "look up" myself as you suggested it should have been even easier for you to cite them. Perhaps said articles don't actually exist.
It is called Sealioning, a common trolling tactic, require documentation by the person you are arguing with while never providing proof for your own unsubstantiated claims.

"You do not laugh when you look at the mountains, or when you look at the sea." Lafcadio Hearn
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Cyclopath
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PostThu Oct 17, 2019 9:07 am 
RandyHiker wrote:
You assert that it is arbitrary. Prove it.
Went are you asking him to prove an opinion? confused.gif

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Randito
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PostThu Oct 17, 2019 10:13 am 
Cyclopath wrote:
RandyHiker wrote:
You assert that it is arbitrary. Prove it.
Went are you asking him to prove an opinion? confused.gif
That's correct. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/no-youre-not-entitled-your-opinion/

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Brian R
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PostThu Oct 17, 2019 10:34 am 
The topic of arbitrary rule-making by NPS, USFS, BLM, F&W, and even state DNR has been the topic of numerous threads right here on this site. You know this, because you have participated in these threads. Your feigned indignation at my assertion that rule-making is often arbitrary strikes me as disingenuous. As is your juvenile demand for "proof." The beauty of The Wilderness Act 1964 is that it's only 5 1/2 pages. And therein lies a problem only partly remedied by NEPA. Bureaucracies are free to issue rules with force of law based too often on their own arbitrary interpretations. And they do. Heck, even Rousseau warned about the dangers of delegation. It seems you might have missed this lesson. In any event, your faith in unelected bureaucrats is misplaced--but I'm sure they appreciate your support.

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Cyclopath
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PostThu Oct 17, 2019 10:59 am 
RandyHiker wrote:
That's correct. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/no-youre-not-entitled-your-opinion/
Ok, that says some people aren't entitled to their opinions. But you asked him to prove an opinion when you know opinions can't be proved or disproved.

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RumiDude
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PostThu Oct 17, 2019 11:56 am 
Bernardo wrote:
BTW, that 160 number is a straw man. There is no evidence that 160 actually planned to start on that one fateful day or that they actually did start then. A voluntary start system would be fine for me, but not real quotas.
Well the PCTA issues that many permits for that day. I would say that is pretty good evidence. Did every single person with a permit for that day start on that day? I don't know. We have to assume the vast majority did absent any evidence that they did not. Voluntary systems have not be shown to work well. Even in areas where there is a quota system, there are always people that think the quotas don't apply to them. Seen it first hand several times in ONP. Rumi

"This is my Indian summer ... I'm far more dangerous now, because I don't care at all."
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RumiDude
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PostThu Oct 17, 2019 12:38 pm 
markweth wrote:
I agree with you that on the macro scale (permits in areas or trail corridors, for example) that, of course, those decisions are best left to the land managers. Where we seem to diverge is that -- on the micro scale -- I think that we might also want to look at what our actions (including our posting on social media) are doing to contribute to the issues that land managers ultimately have to deal with. My point, which perhaps I was being snarky about and I apologize, was that in the case of PCT limits you didn't seem to demand data in the same way that you are asking in regard to being thoughtful about sharing information about places with limited carrying capacity for crowds on social media. You cited vague "past experience" with no data as the basis for your belief. When others did so in regard to social media, you downplayed the legitimacy of their belief. It seems a bit contradictory, is all. You also said that "that too many people all at once do impact the land negatively" which I agree with 100%. It is demonstrable that social media contributes to "too many people all at once" and negative impacts to the landscape.
I guess I should be clear about what what I mean when I say that we only have anecdotal evidence concerning social media impacts. I am not referring to overuse and overcrouwding on particular spots. We know fairly well the negative effects of overuse and such. Vegetation gets trampled and eventually bare spots emerge. Miriad of social trails, fire rings (even where fires should not occur), crap gardens, etc., all begin to show their ugly heads. No, what I am referring to are the effects of TRs of visitation. We don't know. If it is one person visiting they might see more people than they encountered two years ago. Searching for a reason why this is so the find a recent TR about the place. It's tempting to conclude that TR explains the increased visitation. But the increased visitation may have began much earlier than the posting of that TR, Instagramn photo, or whatever. If there is an effect of social media, how big is it? How long lasting is it? We know that areas can sustain a temporary small increase in use without too much damage and it will heal up relatively quickly. There are just so many questions left unstudied and it seems too easy to just blame social media impacts, especially when we already know the the shear numbers of people recreating in our backcountry has exploded. As for the PCT northern terminus, we have a better handle on the situation because people are supposed to get permits. So we have a good idea how many people are on that section of trail at any given time. Most people start at Hart's Pass, hike north to tag Monument 78, and then begin their SoBo journey to the southern terminus. It generally takes a hiker 1.5 - 2 days to reach the Monument and turn around, depending on their speed and how early they get up in the morning. There currently are not that many established campsites on that section, which means a crowd of hikers would be "expanding" corrent campsites and creating new ones. Rumi

"This is my Indian summer ... I'm far more dangerous now, because I don't care at all."
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joker
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PostThu Oct 17, 2019 1:24 pm 
I'm still curious what's wrong with the "methodology" of going to a place multiple times in a season, and upon noticing a big uptick in traffic from one trip to the next, asking every party encountered "why did you choose this particular route for today." When all the parties tell me that it was because of the single same trip report on a place not previously reported on in the given forum, that's a very interesting "anecdotal" clue IMO. And often this appears to be followed by more reports, which leads to yet more visits - which has the net effect of increasing visitation to some specific spots MUCH more rapidly than the general population increase would cause (if it were just population, we'd see a more steady increase in flow from year to year, versus the sometimes dramatic step-changes I and others have observed - any alternative explanation to mine needs to credibly explain these step-changes; I have yet to see a satisfactory alternate hypothesis posed here). And this is not ncessarily bad. It depends. And not all online reports cause such spikes - again it depends (I've spent a while observing which reports seem to get lots of "likes" or views and comments - iconic photo scenes help, though in some cases simply being very accessible to the city is sufficient... this bears more study for sure). Which is why I think the LNT.ORG folks have proposed a new principle asking folks simply to think about potential impacts before posting.

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RumiDude
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PostThu Oct 17, 2019 4:37 pm 
joker wrote:
I'm still curious what's wrong with the "methodology" of going to a place multiple times in a season
This in itself is part of the problem as I have pointed out several times in the past. Going to the same place multiple times a year is not spreading one's impact. We old dogs must seek new places to go, maybe no quite so glorious and familiar.
joker wrote:
And not all online reports cause such spikes
There are likely many many TRs produced each weekend across various platforms. And with Instagramn it doesn't even need to be recent to attract attention. I am not sure anyone has really studied why one goes "viral" and the others do not. And spread across so many platforms and such, it seems unlikely these LNT suggestions will have much of an effect. I could be mistaken and if shown that I am I will admit it. I am just stating my educated guess on the matter. And further, when I talk about LNT to others I am almost certainly noy going to mention these social media suggestions. I'll be happy if they bury their poop and carry out all their trash. I like to keep it simple and understandable. I myself have encountered some TRs (really just photo collections mostly) which purport to hide the location. They are sad and most reflect an air of snobishness when asked specific questions about them. I pretty much ignore those sorts now. Rumi

"This is my Indian summer ... I'm far more dangerous now, because I don't care at all."
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Brian R
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PostThu Oct 17, 2019 5:56 pm 
Malachai Constant wrote:
RandyHiker wrote:
So you can't be bothered to back up your assertion that administration quotas are arbitrary. If it was so easy for me to "look up" myself as you suggested it should have been even easier for you to cite them. Perhaps said articles don't actually exist.
It is called Sealioning, a common trolling tactic, require documentation by the person you are arguing with while never providing proof for your own unsubstantiated claims.
Randy, I didn't ask you to "look it up," rather, I asked you to research. If you need help understanding the difference, send me a PM. MC, not sure if this is directed at me or Randy. I assume the latter, since I made no demand for proof from him. "Sealioning?" I learn something every day.

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