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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9377117" data-attributes="member: 8461">How so? Who have I said are the conspirators, and what have I said they're trying to accomplish?Again, having a partisan interest in the conclusions they're presenting is not an accusation of lying. Just like with the difference between skepticism and mistrust, there are critical shades of difference which you're not acknowledging. (That's leaving aside that WotC is being presented as a singular entity in this context, and not as any sort of group.)I'll point out that both of those things which you've posited, i.e. "'WotC has a vested interest in lying to us, so we should dismiss their numbers outright unless they release the full data" and "a conspiracy," are misrepresentations of my point. As I noted above, having a partisan interest in something is not the same as calling someone a liar; it can simply be that they're falling subject to confirmation bias, or are presenting the truth in a manner that's most favorable to them, or any number of other things that compromise the integrity of their conclusions to some degree without actually telling an untruth.Nuance and distinctions aren't things to be glossed over; they're important.No, they're a conclusion, and we're not being told how that conclusion was reached. As such, I'm not "dismissing" it, but am saying that I haven't been given sufficient reason not to be skeptical of it.No, it's not. I'm saying that the conclusions we've been presented with haven't shown their work, and as such it can't be determined whether or not those conclusions are accurate. Calling that a "rejection" is a misnomer (let alone "wholesale").Why 2 or 3, specifically? Are you saying you know for certain that it can't be 4 or 5? If so, how do you know that? Because if you don't know that for certain, then you have to entertain the possibility that it could be 4 or 5 points off. At which point you'd need to admit it could be 6 or 7 points off, or 9 or 10 points off, etc. That's skepticism in a nutshell, and is why we shouldn't take what we're being told at face value.</blockquote>

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