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[Platypus]

There seems to be a little digression starting approximately here in the "Gay High School" thread over whether anecdotes are useful in a debate. Here are some choice excerpts:

While anecdotal evidence might be interesting to some, it has no validity in a debate. But then you already know that. For every gay you know who's been slapped around I can give you one who wasn't. More than one actually. For every gay bar you name that has cops waiting for DUI's I can name dozens of others that are in the same boat.

I disagree. IMO, anecdotal evidence is important to many types of debate. How else am I supposed to understand what it's like to be a gay person and go to highschool? I have to see it through the eyes of someone who has been there. Obviously, no one's experience is going to encompass every situation for every person in America, but it does offer a general idea.

I agree for the most part. Anecdotal evidence is valuable, but I don't think it can be used to paint society with a wide paintbrush as it is typically used here. As stated, for every anecdotal example given, there are many that can be countered.

Your contention that anecdotal evidence "has no validity in debate" is just wrong.

The debate question is in this topic's subtitle: Are anecdotes useful in debate? My answer follows.

I'd say that anecdotes have great value in debate so long as they're used illustratively. Mrs. P makes a great point that sharing personal experiences is an important part of debate, but IMO goes astray when she says that without anecdotes it would just be a surfing contest. Even when every possible source has already been identified, there's still plenty of room for interpretation and application to the precise topic at hand.

The main point I'm trying to make is that anecdotes don't prove anything. If I say "for example, at this gay bar where I used to hang out..." that's useful because it illustrates a point, reducing a vast field of generalities to a single concrete thing that represents what I'm talking about. However, if I went on to talk about how all the people I met in gay bars dressed a certain way, that would be invalid because now it's not illustration but presentation of a (non-zero, but still small) statistical sample. Nobody can invalidate my experience, but they can certainly try to invalidate any conclusions based on it that contradict broader or more scientific samples.

I could go on, I guess, but it probably wouldn't be as useful as waiting for others to weigh in. Have at it.