--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.