Thank you.

We seem to have plenty of differences. Isn't it nice that this is one we can actually resolve? As I understood it, your statement was outrageous enough to warrant elevation to its own topic. With the word usage resolved, that's no longer necessary. Back to our normally scheduled programming.

"My assertion there is not that I have the right to interpret what people mean. I am saying that if we got a hundred people who said that and explained to them the alternatives and asked them which they really meant, we would find out what their response was. ((Until then I have no reason to believe that an as yet unconducted experiment would conform to my hypothesis or disprove my hypothesis. It's an empirical assertion which is as yet not justified to believe in.))"

Technically correct. Obviously you've put a pejorative spin on it, emphasizing (in what I put in double parens) the lack of current evidence. But most things most of us say don't have that kind of citable evidence behind them.

But there is still an important point I was making. Suppose I say, "When Bob said X, he really meant Y." We can't find Bob, but we imagine catching up with him and having a brief conversation with him to clarify what he meant. If I say, "I don't care what he says, he still meant Y", that is arrogant. If I say, "If after that brief conversation he still says X, then I was wrong" that is not claiming to know Bob's mind better than he does.

Spending all your time treating it as though it were a justified empirical claim led me to believe you were making one.

You might try reading it again and find I wasn't making the point you thought I was. Few people have addressed the idea that "Kids aren't able to say the words 'yes' and 'no'" is just a pretty unlikely thing for people to believe.

I'd like to see all your reading on the Austrian School have an impact on your future evaluations and claims.

Part of wisdom is ignoring irrelevant details. I've never had any reason to think you understood the scientific method BETTER than I do in any respect. In the hundreds of strands in our conversations that have remained open you've alleged that, but I've never had any doubts.

cite or STFU

It's never that simple. Citations rarely resolve any interesting questions definitively, as there are always questions in the applicability. There's no avoiding judgments of plausibility. It's an illusion that any of our discussions could approach the form of some logical proof.

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I don't know what happened with the "empirical question" reference. I was looking at it just before I wrote my post and saw that phrasing in a higher post, and then "empirical assertion" in the lower one. I can't find it any more, so I'll have to assume you're right unless I can figure out what led me astray. Was it in somebody else's post? Whatever.