If someone says “Joe did bad things X, Y, and Z to me because he plays violent video games,” we can take it as true that X, Y, and Z actually happened without thereby agreeing that video games have anything to do with it. Being unconvinced of the conclusion (or even rejecting it) does not license us to disregard the evidence of that person’s experience.
General note: let’s not do that thing where we don’t like an argument someone is presenting and so we fail to update on the evidence they present in favor of it.
No, we take their experiences as fact.
It is not clear, though, why we must automatically take their interpretation of the policy relevance of their experiences as fact.
Well, no.
If someone says “Joe did bad things X, Y, and Z to me because he plays violent video games,” we can take it as true that X, Y, and Z actually happened without thereby agreeing that video games have anything to do with it. Being unconvinced of the conclusion (or even rejecting it) does not license us to disregard the evidence of that person’s experience.
See also Qiaochu_Yuan’s comment here: