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thomblake comments on Open Thread: January 2010 - Less Wrong
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I don't think that's something that most people who think "life experience" is valuable would agree to.
It might be profitable for you to revise your criteria for what constitutes legitimate evidence. Throwing away information that has a positive correlation with the thing you're wondering about seems a bit hasty.
I am calling attention to reverting to "life experience" as recourse in an argument. If someone strays to that, it's clear that we're no longer considering evidence for whatever the argument is about. Referring back to "life experience" is far too nebulous to take as any evidence anything.
As for what constitutes legitimate evidence, even if anecdotes can correlate, anecdotes are not evidence!
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-anecdotal-evidence-can-undermine-scientific-results
Anecdotes are rational evidence, but not scientific evidence.
For a debate involving complex religious, scientific, or political arguments, this won't suffice.