"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."

But introducing our speculation is pointless.

"Most people would say X," is a rather silly thing to say about something which is potentially observable at present. Either we lack the evidence to validate any claim, or we're citing the evidence backing up a particular claim.

One doesn't publish the untested hypothesis. Its an "internal document" for these purposes.

And BTW there is nothing more dangerous than a popularly believed untested empirical claim whose testing goes viral before the results are in.

This is how we have the D.A.R.E. Program. Mid testing word got out about the anti-drug education program. Everyone wanted such a thing. And before long everyone had it. Only later could the long-term data to validate it be analyzed. And it was proven to lead to D.A.R.E. students being MORE likely to abuse drugs than those without any program. Its creators, being empiricists, recognize that it is a failure. But all their shouting that it doesn't work cannot remove it from the schools.

"You might try reading it again and find I wasn't making the point you thought I was."

Given that I'm the only one who copypastas the original claim without substitutions AND given that you concur that the original had an unwarranted assumption that a projection could be validated by your belief in a hypothetical test, I think you will note that the point you made cannot stand up to scrutiny.

"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."

Back to Argumentum ad Populum? I thought that we were discussing an Empirical claim?

Even if its one about belief, you cannot know, prior to testing, what people believe. ( Neverminding the fact that their belief has nothing to do with whether their belief is true. )

This reduces to cite or STFU. Don't draw conclusions from surveys which are nonexistent.

"Part of wisdom is ignoring irrelevant details."

If they are irrelevant don't raise them. Capisce?

This is the danger of allowing Google to evaluate content for you by substituting quote-mining for actual reading and understanding what your sources say. The mere fact that you cites two theses about controversies in epistemology rather than articles about the noncontroversial operating principles of science establishes that you didn't care to understand the contents of your citations provided that they contained the relevant key words and you could pull a quote from its context.

OTOH, if you had cared to read the "irrelevant details" you might have learned something which your rather cynical exploitation of another's thesis wouldn't have taught you.

Reading the entry on Ayer might have provided clues about why you were wrong. Or at least might have justified your imagined "gist" of my standard of evidence. Because what you falsely believed of me ( and objected to ) was overtly true of the guy whose views you endorsed by citing.

The unread and disregarded source really doesn't qualify as a proper citation.

If there are no better possible sources ( and there were, at Wikipedia itself ) you flag the limits of the source by noting them.

E.g.;" While I find the Neo-Nazi views of this page reprehensible I use it to note that my spelling of Franz Liszt's name is the accepted one." This then indicates that you weren't a quote-mine bot but a human who reads the sources they cite just as they expect other to.

"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."

Then don't raise empirical claims if you're uninterested in citing the date justifying them.

Your response is indicative of your MO to avoid or dismiss empirical standards. And if that's going to be your preference then avoid the claim and its standards of evidence.

But it seems that you want to appeal to an authority you don't respect. Certainly your previous claim about the untested hypothesis validating you shows that you use the word "empirical" for its effect, not because you are willing to defer to its conditions.

Wanting the authority of science without the rigors and limits of science is Scientism. Its hogwash.

You raise the terms, be prepared to respond to the terms you raise.

You cite a source, be prepared to respond to what the source actually says.

Its fairly simple.

Dante