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[SalmonGod]

EDIT: To be clear, people often insert a superfluous "only" into your quote after "respect".

You can't take a set of anecdotes as evidence of a wider trend though, precisely because the world is complex and things are not the same for everybody.  I think MetalSlimeHunt's quote is completely fair.

I think the vaccine/autism scare is the best example of this.  You can find plenty of "my child had the MMR vaccine and then they developed autism" anecdotes, and in the vast majority of cases those anecdotes are entirely true.  If you're prepared to accept anecdotal evidence then at this point you'd conclude that MMR vaccinations cause autism.  However, if you actually do the statistics you can find that rates of autism are no higher amongst vaccinated children than unvaccinated children, and that the association was only made because MMR vaccinations are generally given around the time when symptoms of autism begin to be seen.  There is no way you could find this out just by listening to anecdotes.

Which is a perfect example of this...

If I encounter a large number of anecdotes that contradict science, I expect the science to explain that.

You're not illustrating that anecdote isn't worth anything.  Just that sources of information need to be balanced.  It takes a special kind of idiot to even put any stock in the particular anecdote you're describing.  Too bad there's a lot of them out there.  I don't even need to be confronted with a scientific article to conclude that there are plenty of vaccinated children not developing autism, therefor this particular anecdote is worthless without comparison to larger trends.

But taking it back to the subject at hand, if you have rising size and frequency of strikes and protests around the world, you shouldn't need science to be convinced of those people's claims that they're impoverished and miserable.  This I find rather silly.

[Bauglir]

If you're prepared to accept anecdotal evidence then at this point you'd conclude that MMR vaccinations cause autism.

Here's where your analysis fails. No, I wouldn't. I'd conclude that maybe I should consider whether or not MMR vaccinations cause autism. I would then look at the relevant data, think about what people more knowledgeable on the topic than me are saying, wonder if there's a plausible mechanism, and probably decide that the hypothesis is most likely a misunderstanding at best or a malicious fabrication at worst. Certainly, if I were making public policy, I'd want more evidence before changing anything, so maybe I'd weigh the likely costs against the potential benefit of commissioning a study or twelve, along with the plausibility of there being anything actually worth investigating.

But you'd have me reject the matter out of hand until confronted with data?

EDIT: I want to be clear, I still stand by the "this is idiotic" thing, but make no mistake - I'm an idiot. So this is basically perfect.

[Leafsnail]

But taking it back to the subject at hand, if you have rising size and frequency of strikes and protests around the world, you shouldn't need science to be convinced of those people's claims that they're impoverished and miserable.  This I find rather silly.

Rising size and frequency of strikes is a statistical trend (rather than an anecdote like "here are some people who are upset") that would presumably have to be determined scientifically, so I don't see what your point is.

But you'd have me reject the matter out of hand until confronted with data?

If no statistical evidence exists on a subject then a reasonable body of anecdotes may suggest that it deserves examination.  However, those anecdotes cannot be taken as evidence of a trend in and of themselves.

[Truean]

6 of your neighbors are filling up sandbags and making arrangements for themselves and their valuables to stay elsewhere next week. They anecdotally say the creek is going to rise and flood to damage an unknown area. No study exists or will exist, especially not in time. Weather is nearly impossible to predict; you can gain no other information in a practical manner; the area has no flooding history.

Perhaps, consider the consequences and reason from there:

A.) If you are correct and you do nothing, then no damage happens and it's no big deal.

B.) If they are correct and you do nothing, then you are in danger of losing property and having your home and yard damaged, etc.

The cost benefit analysis would seem to indicate that their anecdotes could constitute notice and warning. Of course, other factors may play into things such as how far away from the creek you are, the topography of the land, if you have flood insurance or not, and the cost of countermeasures. Additional considerations may include any possible gain they may have leading to possibly deceive you. It appears they don't have said motive and they are acting upon it themselves.... This is to say that they have "skin in the game."

Do you act on their advice as if it were true, or not? 

Logically, this is actually a logical fallacy called an argument ad numerum, or argument to numbers. The number of people who believe an idea in and of itself does not prove that correct or incorrect. How many people thought the world was flat? Is it? That said, it isn't necessarily irrational or unwise not to act upon this, in the above mentioned situation. It also depends upon your personal preference and tolerance for risk.

Is there a "correct" answer to this question? Does the fact that there is an unknown and perhaps unpredictable factor here relevant?

[Frumple]

The point is, all this information is still being collected from the mouths or pencils of human beings, and the only thing that makes it more objective than a conversation is the scale and method.  The statistic has 10,000 conversations for me, and distills them down to a set of data points.  If I personally had 10,000 conversations and were an honest, self-reflecting person, I would still come away from it with those same data points.

... that scale and method kinda' make the difference, SG. That statistic is going to have 10k fairly specific conversations you're not going to manage in person, regardless of how honest or self-reflecting you are, and "it" is going to do so on a scale that, for you, is going to blur together into a half-meaningless mush unless you're some kind of incredible cognitive anomaly. If you personally had those tens of thousands of conversations, the chances of you actually coming away with the same data points is pretty bloody small -- you'd almost certainly come out with a significantly different set of data (also, the data set could easily change before you finished 'em all, but eh). That doesn't really have anything to do with the character of the people on either side of the conversations, it has to do with the nature of the beasts having them. We're really kinda' freaking terrible on a mechanical level with dealing with processing that sort and that scale of information on our own.

I'd largely kinda' agree with the other stuff y'mentioned in that quoted post, but... well, that scale and that method is actually what makes the difference. Human error, misinterpretation, miscommunication, and all the et ceteras and so forths and so ons are still going to be there with statistical analysis, but... well, at least when it's actually done correctly, the methodology involved corrects for human error in a way that we're just not really capable of on a personal level, or at least very, very few of us are.

I guess what I'm saying is that you actually nailed it. What makes it more objective is the scale and the method. That is exactly what makes it more objective than thousands of anecdotes.

---

As to that question, well, I know my six neighbors and the surrounding area. If they say the creek is going to flood, I'm going to (almost certainly accurately) assume they're drunk or drugged and calmly ignore them :V

The mitigating factors are an issue, there, though. If the area I'm in flooded enough for it to reach where I'm at, sandbags and leaving for a week wouldn't help because most of the state would have sunk.

What's the point you're trying to make, T?

[Putnam]

Gut reaction is to go, but only because I've already been through two or three floods in my life and that stuff is hella expensive. Weighted cost-benefit (including actual mental probability considering who's saying it, etc.)... still comes out to going.

But that specific example isn't necessarily the best one, since, again, floods are hella expensive. Also, I lost a house to one once, though I was too young to remember.

[Truean]

My point was illustrating that anecdotes can have practical value, on a sliding scale depending upon the factors.... This is especially true for unknown and practically unpredictable situations with unknown variables. Ideally, we could perfectly predict the weather. We can't now; maybe one day we will. Til then.... This is what we have and it's all we have.

Dissect that problem into its component parts with each new bit of information as a distinct anatomy of it.

Are you more or less likely to believe the creek will rise if

i.) Your neighbors are typically trustworthy. (subjective as you see it I guess?)
ii.) Your neighbors are prone to be untruthful/play jokes.
iii.) One of your neighbors is a well respected scientist
iv.) One of your neighbors is a conspiracy theorist with a penchant for ranting and eating cream cheese....
v.) Your house is on a hill
vi.) Your house is slightly lower than your next door neighbors'
vii.) Your basement floods and you own a sump pump
viii.) Your basement has never flooded, or you don't even have a basement.

You see? It's reasonable to consider these as facts in decision making even anecdotally....

[Bauglir]

If no statistical evidence exists on a subject then a reasonable body of anecdotes may suggest that it deserves examination.  However, those anecdotes cannot be taken as evidence of a trend in and of themselves.

Why am I forbidden to think about the anecdote based on what I already know about autism, vaccination, population demographics, statistics, and logic, perhaps while I wait for the study to be completed or when I attempt to interpret the results? Or, perhaps more accurately, why is such thinking totally valueless?

Or do you mean something else by "evidence" than what is commonly meant? Is this an example of "It's just a theory!", in which by "evidence" I mean "A factor tending to suggest a particular conclusion, if granted as true", and you mean "A claim which, if accepted, inescapably leads to a particular conclusion"? See, I'm prepared to accept that evidence can be misleading, inaccurate, or outright false, but it's my job to exercise judgment as to which of those qualities it possesses. But it remains evidence, nevertheless - just bad evidence. You don't seem to be willing to do this.

Truean raises a much better practical argument (fallibility is a tremendously important, and empirically verifiable - ha! - fact of life), but I don't think this "Statistically rigorous, empirically tested fact is the only thing worth knowing" stuff holds water, even philosophically, unless we've got very different ideas of what various words mean.

[Frumple]

I guess the odd thing for that scenario to me is... why would I trust my neighbors, none of whom have any meteorological background and, well, several which didn't make it out of high school and some that are outright drug addicts, to be able to accurately predict a flood a week ahead of time? I mean, I'd trust 'em if they were sober and telling me they're on hard times or about their field of experience or somethin', but incoming flood? Some of these folks are literally medically insane. None of them have any background or indication that would suggest they're not swinging at ghosts. Trustworthy in some things doesn't mean trustworthy in others.

Now, if most of the block or town was packing up and leaving, I'd be more likely to consider it. At the very least ask why the zog they think it was going to happen. Just take them at their word, though... probably not. Not for something like that. Plenty of other things, sure, but not something major.

... which your edit has covered a bit, T. Hrm.

[scriver]

* scriver activates passive aggressiveness mode

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh

[Helgoland]

This. You guys are simply talking past each other as far as I can tell:
The claim isn't 'anecdotes ---> truth'. The claim is 'research is sometimes incorrect or incomplete, so we should always keep our mind open for new ideas and information. Anecdotes may guide us in the direction of new knowledge, they may show us where to conduct more rigorous research.' That statement is not controversial at all, it was just (IMO) badly presented.
You're all hacking at strawmen here.

Spoiler: @Vec (click to show/hide)

I'd like to remind everyone that I have a degree in mathematics and specialized in measure theory (abstract probability theory). I have scientific and engineering training. I have worked in a job where my task was to create and present statistical research. That research is now published. It is science. I have attended rationality training sessions with the Center for Applied Rationality and have read many books on reducing bias and improving cognitive thinking skills.

My degree is from UC Berkeley, one of the top three mathematics programs in the united states, and the very best public university in the world. My undergraduate GPA was 3.7 and I was mentored by some of the university's top mathematical researchers. I completed 19 math courses, including two graduate courses, and I received a near-perfect (missed half a point on the writing section) on the GRE. An appeal to authority obviously does not mean that I am automatically correct, but I would hope that it would give you pause before you accuse me of fundamentally misunderstanding my chosen field of study.

I also have professional training in rhetoric, philosophy (specifically: ontology, i.e. What Is That Thing We Call the Truth, and epistemology--How Do We Find Out The Truth), literature, and art, and currently work as a literary researcher (Specifically: I work in verisimilitude and fictionality, and am currently working with Popper, i.e. the guy who invented Popperian Falsification).

That's a horrible appeal to authority. How is your training in mathematics, rhetoric, literature, art relevant here? There's a guy in my semester - very good as a mathematician too - who espouses very worrying right-wing ideas and votes for far-right parties. Should I agree with his political opinions because he's great at topology? And I know you pointed out that it's an appeal to authority; that doesn't make it any better. We're all just screen names here; our ideas count, not our credentials. If you have a problem with people telling you things you find disrespectful on the internet, the problem kinda is on your end.
Also 'Popperian falsification' sounds odd to me, and I'd challenge that he invented it ('it' being falsification in the context he applied it to): The idea of fasification has been known for ages, and the first guy to really dig deep using this approach was Hume. Popper worked Hume into something that the scientific community can use, but claiming he 'invented Popperian falsification' strikes me as weird, to say the least.
Also I find it disrespectful that you imply that I (as part of your audience) don't know who Popper was

[Glowcat]

Well considering that they followed with...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I realize that I may sound something like the wackjobs you usually hear on the internet, but I have a fundamentally different position and the seeming kneejerk assumption that I'm a hostile, irrational, unenlightened person seems both a. off the mark to me and b. at this point, honestly disrespectful.

This is the point at which people usually say: "Oh, so you want me to bow down to you?!" No. I want you to look at yourself, and how you respect viewpoints that have Science written on them, and look at my arguments and see how I have a scientific background, and see that I am trying to convince you that having a scientific background does not mean that what you say is true, and see that you are disrespecting what I am saying despite my scientific background, and see that you are exercising my point exactly--except not willing to admit it because what I'm saying doesn't fit with your confirmation bias.

It's kinda relevant if people are trying to explain statistics versus anecdotes to them, and given that their philosophy education focused on the nature of truth that makes them kind of an expert in that field... not merely an unrelated field such as math to politics [/brieffalseequivalencechiding]... it all fits into their argument (at least from my interpretation) that trust in the modern institution of science through credentialed members and the fruits of their knowledge clearly isn't an absolute standard, and rather seems to have leeway of its own in people being free to challenge the body of organized knowledge.

And that is clearly not an appeal to authority, forming a coherent argument independent of a direct claim based on expertise. Your rebuttal even demonstrated the primary mechanism towards the phenomenon they spoke of - attempts to discredit the validity via a claim of logical fallacy, which further rested upon credentials not being a factor in this topic's discussion. Considering that what set this off was an issue with how people pretend that one requires rigorous data from accredited bodies before anything can be taken seriously points to an underlying issue in the boundaries of our skepticism. With people setting their boundaries for what constitutes extraordinary claims (and corresponding the amount of evidence required to substantiate their validity) based on absurd notions. If we are drawing analogies with anti-scientific movements, such as vaccine deniers and creationists and global warming deniers, and how they create knowledge, we should also draw attention to their own standards of skepticism which are complicating their ability to accept knowledge from the scientific consensus. Overall what is happening, at least mostly in internet communities which have latched onto a very... rough... form of atheism and skepticism, is that they apply this on a blanket level and end up fouling their thinking as they attempt to simplify reality around a few principles that might not even apply to the issue at hand, or at least not be feasible.

As per the examples drawing from very immediate decision making, which I'll further expand upon to contain the human body of knowledge before new standards of scientific rigor entered our collective consciousness (with failures, but also successes), we can/do not construct knowledge purely through those methods*, and discounting experiences that you would not have based on it being anecdotal evidence can itself be both damaging to your own intellectual development as well as the social ties between people since we can't speak for ourselves and our own experiences, as well as frustrations/fears/etc, without being challenged as if we're liars or somehow less capable of analyzing our own situations without people who might have even less actual experience to construct their hypotheses telling us we're correct/wrong -- and even when data is demonstrated we end up right back to these deductive logic tussles between which data is valid and which isn't. At least outside of "hard sciences" which I suspect is largely more due to having less demands on being able to think outside of one's own experience, and thus be able to come up with a solid hypothesis/theory, outside of a few niche conflicts where culture (typically religious though not always) tries to inform reality in a way that can usually be more easily separated from the knowledge-producing venture itself.

* Briefly rechecking what started the topic, this seems to be a crux of the issue. Something that seemed self-evident had to be structured around a scientific study before it was taken seriously, despite the benefit of framing the argument around quantitative data being questionable.

If you have a problem with people telling you things you find disrespectful on the internet, the problem kinda is on your end.

This is one of those disrespectful things I imagine... At least take responsibility for your behavior rather than cast it off as if it is necessarily another's problem. One can have a problem with the color red, but one can also be offended (or at least annoyed) by being called an idiot by somebody who knows absolutely nothing on the subject, or offended by somebody who steps on your toes and refuses to apologize, or many other things which are readily accepted as reasonable things to raise an issue about without it suddenly being the aggrieved party's responsibility. But then to argue that we'd have to come to agreement on which posting behavior is patronizing and worthy of disapproval and which is fair game for discourse, and I'm not sure anybody wants to be arsed with that since it tends to open the doors for more of the same rather than open a meaningful dialogue that can satisfy all parties. So this is one of those scenarios where everyone gives the stinkeye and solidifies opinions about other posters. *stinkeyes*

[Vector]

Thank you.

[ArKFallen]

That's a horrible appeal to authority. How is your training in mathematics, rhetoric, literature, art relevant here? There's a guy in my semester - very good as a mathematician too - who espouses very worrying right-wing ideas and votes for far-right parties. Should I agree with his political opinions because he's great at topology? And I know you pointed out that it's an appeal to authority; that doesn't make it any better. We're all just screen names here; our ideas count, not our credentials.

Congratulations on agreeing on one of Vector's major points while framing it in a disagreeing manner. Glowcat already quoted it though so moving on.

Also I find it disrespectful that you imply that I (as part of your audience) don't know who Popper was

If this wasn't tongue-in-cheek it would require a tongue lashing.

If you have a problem with people telling you things you find disrespectful on the internet, the problem kinda is on your end.

This is one of those disrespectful things I imagine... At least take responsibility for your behavior rather than cast it off as if it is necessarily another's problem. One can have a problem with the color red, but one can also be offended (or at least annoyed) by being called an idiot by somebody who knows absolutely nothing on the subject, or offended by somebody who steps on your toes and refuses to apologize, or many other things which are readily accepted as reasonable things to raise an issue about without it suddenly being the aggrieved party's responsibility. But then to argue that we'd have to come to agreement on which posting behavior is patronizing and worthy of disapproval and which is fair game for discourse, and I'm not sure anybody wants to be arsed with that since it tends to open the doors for more of the same rather than open a meaningful dialogue that can satisfy all parties. So this is one of those scenarios where everyone gives the stinkeye and solidifies opinions about other posters. *stinkeyes*

I agree with you in this. Which also means that I agree with Helgoland that

If you have a problem with people telling you things you find disrespectful on the internet, the problem kinda is on your end.

because this is the practical stance for an internet user. Disrespect and offensiveness is a sliding scale with different thresh-holds for different people and in an international medium there is little hope for consensus beyond the forum rules we are all expected to operate under.

As far as who/what was disrespecting/hostile towards Vector before Helgo's ill-considered post I am drawing
Having your ideas under fire is not the same as being under fire unless you identify according to them which loops back to the context-less quotation of Helgo.

[Leafsnail]

It's still a horrible strawman of an argument.