So recently multiple people on this site have claimed to be speaking from personal experience in their opinions. I'll not single anyone out for it, even if for all I know maybe they take it as a compliment; it's still a recurring theme on this site and maybe it's best to address it more generally. But putting aside whether or not we should legitimize "trust" on the Internet, how if at all could one objectively define the role of experience in opinions? What if the exact same experience could be interpreted as biasing someone in one direction OR its opposite?
Suppose some guy had vivid memories of at one point being so obsessed with his crush that rumours of some other girl wanting him failed to draw him toward her, much less make him feel obliged to give himself to her.
The "direct" lesson of this if one were to project one's experiences onto others; and the first interpretation of it; might be that males don't have quite as strong an "I belong to whichever girl wants me the most this week" instinct as they're made out to.
However, suppose the people most insistent that this is normal were the people most dismissive of that individual's claim... beyond Internet "grain of salt" skepticism, but arbitrary dismissiveness of it, with no evidence either way, from people who arbitrarily believe other anecdotes that also have no evidence either way. His personal experience, therefore, tells him that the people who claim it is normal make false statements about him, therefore making one wonder what else they may be prone to false statements about, and in turn, reflecting well on the ideas they criticize; including there "I belong to whichever girl wants me the most this week" narrative of the male mind.
The indirect message, therefore, is that the aforementioned instinct is even stronger than it's made out to be, in most people, if not himself.
Therefore, the exact same experience would tell him each statement and its opposite. Both that this instinct is weaker than it's made out to be AND that it's stronger than it's made out to be. Schrodinger's Anecdote, if you will. In that context, who gets to say which of those counts as the "experience" inspired opinion? Therefore, how would you categorize whatever conclusion they come to in terms of whether it's "because of" said experience or "in spite of" it?
(Sorry I couldn't think of a better example, I just wanted to get this idea out there before I forget to.)
