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Message: <blockquote data-quote="prosfilaes" data-source="post: 5731030" data-attributes="member: 40166">I'm arguing that you haven't demonstrated that. I accept it as a philosophical position, but I do not see it as innately superior. Certainly if you're working on Venera 5, claiming that the single data points that Venera 4 gave you don't tell you anything about how to make Venera 5 survive Venus's atmosphere isn't going to let you keep your job. Fine. But why are you telling me that? I haven't taken a position in this thread. I was replying to someone who had taken a position, pointing out that he didn't have evidence for that position. Why didn't you tell him that "I don't know" is allowed?Frankly, I see you as having taken a position. In my experience, I've seen you take an aggressive stance against data for Pathfinder in other threads. In that thread as well as this one, you've supported people who simply assume that D&D 4 is the clear leader versus people who have data for Pathfinder.  You can produce the correct population for the United States by putting up 10 dart boards with the numbers 0-9 on them, and throwing darts. It's just massively improbable. The question here is not can data be wrong, but whether it is more reliable than assumptions.Again, part of my assumptions about relative success of Pathfinder versus D&D 4 come from seeing that there were more Pathfinder Society games then LFR games at Neoncon. That's not good data; so why does it make for good assumptions?Sure. I've seen plenty of assumptions that were dead wrong, too. The question is not can either of them be wrong, but what's more reliable.Thanks for making my case for me. Assumptions are built off lousy data, so the conclusions you draw from your assumptions are lousy.I'm not taking data to the bank. I'm collecting a wide variety of data to give me as good an image of my world as I can get. It's not great data, but I think there's value in looking at the data we can get and trying to dig out what we can know instead of standing back and saying I don't know. Umbran disagrees, and I acknowledge his epistemological position, even if I don't hold it. If you want to say "I don't know", go for it. But you're saying:Prevailing wisdom is not data you can take to the bank. Prevailing wisdom is crap. Heck, how do you even know that your position is prevailing wisdom? How can you lecture me about "incontrovertible data" and hold to prevailing wisdom?</blockquote>

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