Getting to the truth
Your anecdote isn’t true.
I know it happened. I know that your experience, your feelings, your outcomes are real. And they’re yours.
Statistics suffer when compared to anecdotes. Because your mileage may vary. Your interaction with the randomness of the world will never match up to what the statisticians tell us to expect. Because averages and correlations are never what we actually experience. We experience a tiny slice of it.
But, at the same time that the larger truth can’t be experienced, your anecdote can never represent the larger truth, because it’s yours. What happened to you will never happen to anyone else, not in quite the same way.
By relying on well-told stories, we ignore the real truth, the universal truth of how the world actually is.
Yes, our mileage varies. But please let me know what the reality of the world is.