[deltaonefour]

>Oftentimes, intuition is not correct.

However oftentimes statistical data is not AVAILABLE. Thus you must make a claim with available evidence.

>Similarly, simply because you believe that ebook sales reduce print book sales intuitively does not mean that this be so.

No but given the logic of how humans prefer to get free things then pay for things, and given the fact that I myself prefer this you can make a best possible conclusion.

> In fact, based on other studies, it seems that piracy actually increases sales [0].

There are studies that show piracy decreases sales as well rendering even statistics ineffective and contradictory. Additionally the MAJORITY of studies indicate the opposite of your cherry picked source; further indicating that "sources" alone can't even be trusted: https://corsearch.com/does-piracy-impact-sales-a-look-at-the...

>Second, just because you pirate does not mean everyone does.

No but if one person does, it's possible that other people do to. 1 person is 1 data point which is better than zero. Anecdotal data matters. Do I need a scientific study to prove that hitting someone with a car can potentially injure them? No. I don't. Intuition is valid evidence for me to follow so I don't go around running people over with my car.

>All in all, you have no source except intuition that can be shown to be wrong.

https://corsearch.com/does-piracy-impact-sales-a-look-at-the...

The site above shows your conclusion and your study to be wrong and contradictory. It says 22 out of 25 studies show that piracy harms sales.

Now the above is a scientific study, but before I even found that study I already knew intuitively that piracy harms sales. I made that claim BEFORE I had scientific evidence. I made that claim off of INTUITION.

I'm assuming your claim of Increased Sales was based off of you coming to a conclusion based off of that study you linked. Well we both arrived at conclusions. You arrived at your conclusion based off of a scientific study, mine off of intuition and the link I showed you above shows that MY INTUITION beat your SCIENCE.

This shows that there's a high amount of unreliable data and bias in science and that you cannot place your full trust into "studies" and "sources" Often times intuition can beat out these studies because there's so many flaws in science in practice that a lot of these studies are just as flawed as intuition.

[nvrspyx]

The real problem here is that you're extrapolating way past a reasonable intuition. Not only are you intuiting that pirating would impact sales, you're extrapolating that:

1. An ebook is the only way a pirated version gets circulated (many physical-only books are scanned and uploaded)

2. The displacement caused by piracy from introducing an ebook version will outweigh the combined revenue of physical and ebook sales, such that physical-only revenue > physical book revenue + ebook revenue - piracy displacement, which depends on assumption 1.

3. Piracy displacement is comparable across media types and topic. For example, does your "intuition" tell you that a programmer is just as likely to pirate a programming book given the amount of free learning material on the internet as a movie watcher is to pirate a movie or a video game player to pirate a game?

I think your intuition is more flawed than science. Science at least suggests only what the results show and doesn't build upon unsubstantiated assumption after unsubstantiated assumption.

To address some other points:

> However oftentimes statistical data is not AVAILABLE. Thus you must make a claim with available evidence.

In that case, you should make a hypothesis and not a claim, even if you don't have the means to test it. If you make a claim, you have the burden of proof, but by your own admission, you have none.

> 1 person is 1 data point which is better than zero. Anecdotal data matters.

It might be better than zero, but not my much. In many cases, it's worse because it's misleading. Anecdotal data only matters in aggregate such that the sample size is reasonable. Using a derivative of your car accident example: just because one pedestrian survives getting hit by a car doesn't mean that getting by a car isn't fatal.

Finally, your link is not a counter to the parent's link as all their link says is that ebooks sell more than physical books while also acknowledging that ebook piracy has also grown.

[deltaonefour]

--edit, i thought the original author was countering me. Turns out it's another person so I'm editing the comment to appropriately respond.

>The real problem here is that you're extrapolating way past a reasonable intuition. Not only are you intuiting that pirating would impact sales, you're extrapolating that:

No I'm not. I make a best claim based off of the best possible evidence.

>1. An ebook is the only way a pirated version gets circulated (many physical-only books are scanned and uploaded)

No you extrapolated that I was thinking this. Your intuition is the one way beyond reason. First off I am aware of scans and scanlations. There's an entire scene of asian comics where not only are the pages scanned, but they are translated into english. Additionally famous books like JK Rowlings final Harry Potter was famously not released as an ebook but was scanned within a couple days of it's release.

Not having an ebook makes pirating HARDER. Such that books such as computer programming books may never get copied because they're more obscure. It would be stupid of me to extrapolate unreasonably that you're unaware of this, but unlike you, I don't make unreasonable extrapolations. You're aware of everything I just said, but now you're also aware that you yourself is quite unreasonable.

>2. The displacement caused by piracy from introducing an ebook version will outweigh the combined revenue of physical and ebook sales, such that physical-only revenue > physical book revenue + ebook revenue - piracy displacement, which depends on assumption 1.

This is a reasonable assumption. Given my own anecdotal evidence. Unless you have evidence to prove otherwise?

>3. Piracy displacement is comparable across media types and topic. For example, does your "intuition" tell you that a programmer is just as likely to pirate a programming book given the amount of free learning material on the internet as a movie watcher is to pirate a movie or a video game player to pirate a game?

It is comparable. This is a highly reasonable assumption. Everybody likes free things, this extends past media types and topic. I am a programmer and I am just as likely to pirate from all genres and media types. I also pirate software.

>I think your intuition is more flawed than science. Science at least suggests only what the results show and doesn't build upon unsubstantiated assumption after unsubstantiated assumption.

Well I would say you'd be wrong. It's not so clear especially given the whole fiasco in psychology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis It's actually not so clear cut what to trust.

Science is better then intuition in principle. But in practice it is highly flawed. So flawed that there are measurable cases where intuition beats it.

>In that case, you should make a hypothesis and not a claim,

There's no difference between these two things. A hypothesis is a claim. They are one in the same. You don't truly understand science. You're imagining that a claim is hypothesis proven, but there's actually no such thing as proof in science. All there is in science is just claims and supporting evidence. But there is never enough evidence for proof. The entire endeavor of science is an attempt at falsification.

From a statistical perspective, Fuzzy connections can be drawn through correlations. Correlations are also again not proof as correlation does not equal causation.

Causation on the other hand is a much harder type of experiment to setup. Much more expensive and the conclusions it produces are also still not proof. Just a fuzzy causative connection that may or may not be actual.

>It might be better than zero, but not my much. In many cases, it's worse because it's misleading. Anecdotal data only matters in aggregate such that the sample size is reasonable. Using a derivative of your car accident example: just because one pedestrian survives getting hit by a car doesn't mean that getting by a car isn't fatal.

There is a time when I worshipped science like you thinking that dispassionate logic was the way to truth. It is the truth path, and I followed it so much that I understand the philosophy of science and everything about it. But once you get to a certain point of understanding it comes full circle. You realize the limits of science and you realize that it's so limited that it's flawed.

Here's the thing. People often mistake science as a form of logic. As if science was a way to logically analyze the world. This is wrong. Science and logic are different. Logic is often inapplicable to the real world, but science is no replacement for logic.

Intuition is flawed. But in many cases not more flawed then science. There are tons of studies with bogus results out there. And those bogus results can be often invalidated by intuition alone.

Another thing with intuition is raw speed. If I punch a person in the face he will be in pain. Intuition tells me this in seconds. A scientific study will take a lot of time and money to create a fuzzy causative connection at best. But most people don't even run the causative experiment as that experiment is more complicated and harder, so they just do the correlative experiment that proves absolutely nothing then they call it a day.

Also you have to note anecdotal data is much more then one data point. Intuition can be described as a machine learning model trying to upscale a picture. It is often flawed but you have to realize the model is also OFTEN right despite not being a purely logical automaton. When given anecdotal data, people often describe with vivid descriptions and reasoning such that we can run our intuitions on it and form a somewhat accurate conclusion.

>Finally, your link is not a counter to the parent's link as all their link says is that ebooks sell more than physical books while also acknowledging that ebook piracy has also grown.

Then his link doesn't support his point. Then his evidence was invalid to begin with. Thus my claim completely demolishes his claim.