(October 7, 2016 at 5:52 am)RoadRunner79 Wrote:(October 6, 2016 at 11:53 pm)bennyboy Wrote: My view is that mundane anecdotes are more likely reliable for a different reason. If I'm trying to convince you that the Okanagan region in British Columbia has really nice peaches, I'll probably just state so. If you don't believe me, then I'll shrug and change the subject.
So I'd recommend this as a second measure of validity-- the more the person tries to convince you that their anecdote is real, the less likely it is to be true, since the person obviously has a personal motivation for getting you to believe.
I don't know if I would agree with that. Would you apply the same standard of reasoning to other evidence?
Absolutely. If you can determine that someone is highly motivated, perhaps by the possibility of personal benefit, in pushing forward an anecdote, then you'd be quite right in questioning its validity. It's quite easy to think of examples where a conflict of interests prevents someone's anecdote from being considered as valid.
