Originally Posted by
David-A
I don't see that statement as suggesting they are necessarily always without exception higher cost than BA, just that they are not as cheap as they used to be. While they might start just as cheap as they used to be, my experience (vs my requirements) is that they rise earlier than they used to - and then (comparatively) plateau twice.
I fail to perceive the relevance of this statement. The statement you quoted from my post made no reference to BA.
Just because you have a verifiable piece of data otherwise, it doesn't mean the personal answer is any way wrong. And it is only the personal answer that is relevant, so you can't say someone is wrong because the answer to a different problem question produces different results. And I don't see the implication that you seem to see.
If you make the statement that "easyJet tickets are hardly cheap anymore", this is a generic statement which purports to apply to all situations, not the situation of a specific individual.
Firstly that mixes up potentially un-assessable personal subjective factors (is something horrible) with verifiable ones to a personal problem (costs vs. what you are looking to book, when).
OK: replace "It was awful" with "it was made of vegetable fat rather than dairy products": you get your objective factor but that changes nothing to the point I was making.
Now you are quite correct that personal answer is indeed only relevant to the person themselves, and not others.
However that does NOT mean that an averaged out answer should be considered more correct as a general one. Anyone else similarly needs to consider it themselves. You wouldn't draw a line with a single data point.
And certainly it does not suggest that an averaged answer (which is the answer to a different question), should be considered to trump the personal answer purely because it is more verifiable.
I do not understand what you mean by "averaged answer". Are you suggesting that the plural of anecdote is data and that the expression of the views of a small number of FTers here constitutes a statistically solid, reliable sample on which to base conclusions?
(also: I wonder whether you meant "less" rather than "more" in the second paragraph).