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> So I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make that actually needed making. My point is that the anecdotal data of one person is completely worthless

by lapcat 1y ago

> So I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make that actually needed making. My point is that the anecdotal data of one person is completely worthless. And for what it's worth (nothing), my own personal anecdotal data is the opposite of yours, so we cancel each other out. I would also note that the commenters on a MacIntyre obituary are an extremely biased sample. > the other three people in this thread passing judgement on the relative fame of Rorty and MacIntyre (1) in no instance give any more evidence than I did, and (2) in fact give no indication at all of where their opinion comes from. It's true that I've offered no empirical evidence for my claim. My objection to you is that you offered your own personal experience as a data point, whereas I did not, and indeed deny that my experience is data: "I don't judge fame by my own familiarity". I actually have no wish to get into a long argument about the relative fame of two persons and was mainly just reacting to the ridiculous, "20 years after Rorty's death, he's largely forgotten", which by the way was not supported with evidence either (and was not even numerically accurate, because Rorty died 18 years ago). In any case, another commenter did mention how Rorty has entered into the wider culture in at least one respect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44074114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44074114

gjm11 1y ago
The value of one person's anecdata is in fact not zero. I agree it's small. That's why I festooned what I said with caveats about how my own experience need not be representative, etc., etc. But it's not zero, which is why I thought it worth saying anything. (Zero plus zero plus zero plus ... plus zero equals zero. But if you ask 1000 people and they all say "I've heard of X but not of Y" or "I've heard of them both but heard more about X than about Y" then you have, in fact, got pretty good evidence that X is more famous than Y. Even if they're in the comments on an article about X, which of course I agree will give you a biased sample.) Anyway, I think this argument is taking up something like 10x more space than it actually deserves and don't propose to continue it further.
- lapcat 1y ago
  > The value of one person's anecdata is in fact not zero. I agree it's small. It's less than zero. It's negative. Taking a very biased, unrepresentive anecedote and presenting it as positive evidence for some conclusion is fallacious and misleading. It's worse than presenting no data at all. You should have no confidence in a broad conclusion based on an anecdote. > But if you ask 1000 people and they all say "I've heard of X but not of Y" or "I've heard of them both but heard more about X than about Y" then you have, in fact, got pretty good evidence that X is more famous than Y. Even if they're in the comments on an article about X, which of course I agree will give you a biased sample. I couldn't disagree more. If you ask 1000 randomly selected people, that's pretty good evidence, but it's not good evidence if the sample is highly biased.

by lapcat 1y ago

gjm11 1y ago

The value of one person's anecdata is in fact not zero. I agree it's small. That's why I festooned what I said with caveats about how my own experience need not be representative, etc., etc. But it's not zero, which is why I thought it worth saying anything. (Zero plus zero plus zero plus ... plus zero equals zero. But if you ask 1000 people and they all say "I've heard of X but not of Y" or "I've heard of them both but heard more about X than about Y" then you have, in fact, got pretty good evidence that X is more famous than Y. Even if they're in the comments on an article about X, which of course I agree will give you a biased sample.) Anyway, I think this argument is taking up something like 10x more space than it actually deserves and don't propose to continue it further.

lapcat 1y ago
> The value of one person's anecdata is in fact not zero. I agree it's small. It's less than zero. It's negative. Taking a very biased, unrepresentive anecedote and presenting it as positive evidence for some conclusion is fallacious and misleading. It's worse than presenting no data at all. You should have no confidence in a broad conclusion based on an anecdote. > But if you ask 1000 people and they all say "I've heard of X but not of Y" or "I've heard of them both but heard more about X than about Y" then you have, in fact, got pretty good evidence that X is more famous than Y. Even if they're in the comments on an article about X, which of course I agree will give you a biased sample. I couldn't disagree more. If you ask 1000 randomly selected people, that's pretty good evidence, but it's not good evidence if the sample is highly biased.