Quote Originally Posted by orrion View Post
It's a reason. It might not be the only reason. For instance, he may have chosen to forgo showing that because it was even more chilling to show Redcloak's impassive demeanor in the face of it, and also because the audience, left to their own imaginations, will dream up their own horrors. Or because Tsukiko isn't a very important character, and Redcloak is. Or none of those reasons. Or 10 additional ones I didn't think of.
Again, please explain why something that doesn't say everything that could be said about a topic isn't useful.

The specific reason tells us zilch. It's not a rule, it's not a tenet, and it's not an explanation of or method for how/when/where to apply the reason.
NO! That's simply not true. Knowing that this was a reason is new knowledge. It's not not "zilch." It's greater than zero.

Nowhere in the rules of this thread does it say that only general statements of rule/tenet/method/how/when/where should be included.

It has to provide what fits the definition of the word. You're throwing "insight" around with regard to the creative process like it means "every single decision ever made no matter how big or small." That's not what "insight" means. That's like me telling you I had an orange for a snack yesterday afternoon because I was hungry and you telling me it provides insight into my eating habits.
Can you point to the word "insight" in the thread rules? 'Cause I don't see it.

Moreover, your example is simply wrong. It does provide insight into your eating habits. For example, I now know that you are not allergic to citrus, that you eat fruit, and specifically that you eat oranges.

Might the huge combination of data eventually give you some insight? Yes, which I suppose is your point. Does that mean each individual comment is itself insightful? No. At best it's a misnomer.
Fine, forget insight if that will get us off this stupid semantic track. Use "more verified information than we had before." It still fits within the rules of the thread. And it's not "zilch."

But regardless of the applicability of "insight" to this remark, it definitely applies to the combination of remarks like this. If someone wants to learn and discuss about how the comic is put together, they're likely to learn far more from simply reading lots of specific examples about creative decisions than from a synthesis of those. It's the nitty gritty application of general rules and principles that actually matter. Dismissing the specifics because they don't individually establish the general is ignoring a host of information.

And that's where we disagree because such an analysis has no guarantee of being accurate.
So? Why does it have to be guaranteed to be useful? Almost everything I know about this comic is not guaranteed to be accurate. It's impressions formed by tons of individual little things we learn while reading it and the Giant's writings on it.

This is supposed to help in discussions on the forum. Discussions about things that can be outright proved accurate are not really discussions; they're recitations of fact.

The whole point of discussing a literary work is to figure out what can't be gleaned from reading the work directly. Additional information, such as the Giant didn't show wights chowing down on each other because it was horrific tells us something, especially when put in context with a hundred thousand other observations from the comic (including, for example, that he showed a horrific image of Miko cut in half).

You cite the social sciences where they use the method to create a hypothesis to be tested - how exactly are you going to test yours here?
I also cited other areas where there isn't a way to scientifically test your answers.

But, more importantly, why does it have to ultimately be testable?

We're just not going to agree on this, period. If you want to keep the quote for your own purposes, that's fine, but i don't think it needs to be indexed. Ironically, I think the quote Jasdoif mentions provides more insight than this one ever will.
And if you want to ignore its presence in the index if it gets added there, that's fine. Why even say that? Do you think I don't know I could create my own index?

But what harm does it do to index it when some people find it useful? This cramped little view you have of the index--specifically that only things that can be guaranteed accurate should be included--makes it worthless for most uses other than stopping discussions based on premises that the Giant has expressly rejected. I would hope that the effort being expended on it could be used for something better than that.

There are people who aggressively campaign to make the index less useful for discussion. It makes no sense to me. When asked, no one has really articulated what the harm is, other than the thoroughly debunked "stalking" theory (that is, the Giant has not expressed any discomfort with posts in this thread about OOTS being included, whereas he has expressed discomfort about certain other types of posts) and vague references to "clutter."