PSA: Using personal anecdotes to support your argument is bad

Alright, I'll bite. I disagree! Anecdote can definitely be useful.

For example, someone made a claim in another thread about women's experiences in childbirth. For one, since this is a claim about experiences by someone who's never had the experience, having an anecdote from someone who's had the experience might be useful.

The claim was something like that childbirth isn't a big deal partially because women can't remember it. I did mention some claims that could be backed by papers if I had wanted to, however I also provided an anecdote of my own experience of childbirth.

There are studies showing that women have poor memories of their childbirth. But this means they don't remember it at all.

So for instance, during my second day of labour, my parents visited the hospital and I have no recollection of that. Because I was unable to sleep (you try to nap whilst giving birth!) I failed to consolidate a lot of the specific memories. However, I do recall enough of the experience to know it was really fucking awful! It's not like a total mind wipe.

So the fact that I know both a) that I have a poor memory of it and still b) can remember it was fucking awful is the counterpoint to "childbirth isn't that bad because women don't remember it," which is fundamentally about experiences of it.

/r/PurplePillDebate Thread