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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5080389" data-attributes="member: 177">So, the first part of this post is going to be largely academic.&nbsp; I'll get into why when I get to the second part of the post...I reject the whole &quot;we cannot know objective truth&quot; posit.&nbsp; It is trivial to counter, as it is itself paradoxical.&nbsp; Consider:Statement A: &quot;Humans cannot know objective truth.&quot;If A is always true, then it is itself an objective truth.&nbsp; Then by A, we cannot know A to be true!&nbsp; *poof!*Those who say that since all our observations are subjective, we can never know objective truth either have a predetermined idea of what counts as &quot;objective truth&quot;*, or they have failed to understand the very basic point of modern empirical science.In science, we take lots of measurements.&nbsp; Each of them has some error, some subjectivity.&nbsp; But we take a lot of them, many different ways.&nbsp; They don't all have the exact same subjectivity.&nbsp; The end result is that the errors and subjectivities tend to average out, leaving us with something suspiciously like truth.&nbsp; It is a crucible, in which all those errors, over time and effort, get burned away.Now, as I said, by and large, this is irrelevant.&nbsp; I brought it up only so I could knock it down.&nbsp; Yes, for some specific measure, we could, if we really wanted to, test one edition against another.&nbsp; We could investigate, and find some good definition of what combats are equivalent in 3e and 4e.&nbsp; We could then run them, and time them, and see which one is faster.&nbsp; We could, but we won't.&nbsp; Doing this properly takes time and manpower - effectively, it takes money.&nbsp; Nobody is going to put in the effort to do it right and definitively, because it is a lot of work for a very small amount of information that doesn't matter all that much.&nbsp; So - we will always be working with anecdotal evidence.But if we did do the experiment, some wiseacre would say, &quot;But I like slow and complicated combat!&quot; and all those who had put all the work into determining which was &quot;superior&quot; would beat their heads against the wall, because they had forgotten the singular fact that while we can see which edition is greater or lesser in some measure, &quot;superior&quot; is a matter of taste.And, in the original meaning - there is no accounting (no mathematics) for taste.*Specifically - objective truth does not need to be accurate to an infinite number of decimal points, and objective truth can, in fact, come with qualifiers.&nbsp; Mr. Heisenberg has cleanly demonstrated that. </blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 5080389, member: 177"] So, the first part of this post is going to be largely academic. I'll get into why when I get to the second part of the post... I reject the whole "we cannot know objective truth" posit. It is trivial to counter, as it is itself paradoxical. Consider: Statement A: "Humans cannot know objective truth." If A is always true, then it is itself an objective truth. Then by A, we cannot know A to be true! [i]*poof!*[/i] Those who say that since all our observations are subjective, we can never know objective truth either have a predetermined idea of what counts as "objective truth"*, or they have failed to understand the very basic point of modern empirical science. In science, we take lots of measurements. Each of them has some error, some subjectivity. But we take a lot of them, many different ways. They don't all have the [i]exact same[/i] subjectivity. The end result is that the errors and subjectivities tend to average out, leaving us with something suspiciously like truth. It is a crucible, in which all those errors, over time and effort, get burned away. Now, as I said, by and large, this is irrelevant. I brought it up only so I could knock it down. Yes, for some specific measure, we could, if we really wanted to, test one edition against another. We could investigate, and find some good definition of what combats are equivalent in 3e and 4e. We could then run them, and time them, and see which one is faster. We could, but we won't. Doing this properly takes time and manpower - effectively, it takes money. Nobody is going to put in the effort to do it right and definitively, because it is a lot of work for a very small amount of information that doesn't matter all that much. So - we will always be working with anecdotal evidence. But if we did do the experiment, some wiseacre would say, "But I like slow and complicated combat!" and all those who had put all the work into determining which was "superior" would beat their heads against the wall, because they had forgotten the singular fact that while we can see which edition is greater or lesser in some measure, "superior" is a matter of taste. And, in the original meaning - there is no accounting (no mathematics) for taste. *[SIZE="1"]Specifically - objective truth does not need to be accurate to an infinite number of decimal points, and objective truth can, in fact, come with qualifiers. Mr. Heisenberg has cleanly demonstrated that. [/SIZE] [/QUOTE]

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