News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:My Decade as a Fugitive by DoreenMichele on Saturday November 09, 2019 @05:48AM (#21490750)
That's anecdotal. I have my own anecdotal first-hand experience that contradicts yours.

Battle Of The Personal Anecdotes never settles any internet arguments ever.

Re:My Decade as a Fugitive by dragonwriter on Saturday November 09, 2019 @06:07AM (#21490814)
> I have my own anecdotal first-hand experience that contradicts yours.

Leaving aside reliability concerns of anecdote in associating cause and effect, an anecdote could can suffice to say that alcohol does induce violence by means other than disinhibition (since if does so even once, this is true) but it could suffice (even, again, leaving aside reliability concerns) to say that it does not, because it not doing so in one particular case (or even a larger number of particular cases) does not support the argument that it cannot do so. All you can get from "it didn't happen this time" is "it doesn't always happen", not "it doesn't happen at all".

Re:My Decade as a Fugitive by DoreenMichele on Saturday November 09, 2019 @06:10AM (#21490823)
There can be many confounding factors in a particular instance. Correlation does not prove causation.

I've had personal experience with thinking X caused Y and only realizing years later that there was some unaccounted for variable that I had been unaware of at the time.

Re:My Decade as a Fugitive by dragonwriter on Saturday November 09, 2019 @06:18AM (#21490853)
> There can be many confounding factors in a particular instance. Correlation does not prove causation.

Yes, that is a source of reliability errors in associating cause with effect in anecdote, which is why I was discussing what was possible even in the semi-ideal case that such reliability errors were not a concern. Obviously, realistically, neither case can be made by anecdote, but anecdote can't even contradict one side of that discussion, because something not occurring in one case isn't inconsistent with it occurring sometimes, while something occurring even once is inconsistent with it never occurring.

Re:My Decade as a Fugitive by DoreenMichele on Saturday November 09, 2019 @06:23AM (#21490870)
If it's unreliable, it's unreliable. Setting up hypotheticals where you can rely on it so as to suggest that my unreliable anecdote is inferior to their unreliable anecdote is not a good faith tactic of debate.
Re:My Decade as a Fugitive by mattigames on Saturday November 09, 2019 @07:25AM (#21491105)
MDMA had been used to treat PTSD unlike alcohol, that's not an anecdote, it's the direct positive effects tested in multiple experiments. Also the amount of crimes commited under drug influence (percentage wise) is higher on alcohol than marihuana and MDMA, that's also not anecdote is statistics that repeat time and time again in multiple nations.