The GLP Lounge Community Rules — Updated January 2026

LibrarianMeg said:

It helps to ask what evidence would change your mind before you look at any.

Coming at LibrarianMeg’s question from a different direction. Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the correction. That is slower than asserting, and it is the only version that survives being wrong.

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. For anyone reading later: the numbers in this thread are worth checking against a primary source before you act on them, including mine. Half the figures circulating in this community trace back to a secondary summary that dropped a qualifier.

Following on from LibrarianMeg — and this may be the naive question:

How would you tell the difference between that and the alternative explanation?

stefan_berlin said:

For anyone reading later: the numbers in this thread are worth checking against a primary source before you act on them, including mine.

Pushing back on stefan_berlin here. The counter-case has not been addressed. Somebody upthread described the situation that does not fit, and the thread moved on rather than engaging with it, which is the failure mode this board is supposed to avoid.

stefan_berlin said:

For anyone reading later: the numbers in this thread are worth checking against a primary source before you act on them, including mine.

No disagreement, though it depends on where somebody is starting from, and this thread has been assuming a starting point nobody stated.