A new friend writes to me: "One thing that has always frustrated me has been the realization that when I did something like having a kitchen redone I developed a great deal of obsolescent knowledge that I didn't really have a chance to communicate before it became completely obsolete."
I think this may be another way to think about Anecdotal Value -- it is knowledge that may have a short shelf-life (I'd say half-life, but I really don't know what that means, not being a card-carrying physicist) but may also have emblematic or structural value. Still, shelf-life aside, it needs to be communicated and the value is in the communicating. Again, this is like the very bad blind date: there is no real value to telling people at the office the next day about this guy's halitosis or bad manners (they're not going to go out with him) but there is value in reminding people that bad blind dates occur and something good can come of it. You can, as the saying goes, dine out on the story for months.
A funny anecdotal story: years ago, as an undergraduate, I went on a sailing date with a couple of grad students, one of whom liked me a little bit (as might be expected, since it was sort of a date). We were on the Chesapeake and this fellow saw another sailboat with its bumpers -- those tampon-looking things that keep the boat from bumping the dock -- still hanging over the side, not nicely pulled in. The fellow said "I hate that -- it's like people who tuck their shirt into their underwear to keep it from pulling up. Yes you CAN do it, but it's really in poor taste." Wouldn't you know he ended up marrying one of my roommates -- a woman who I know first hand used to tuck her shirts into her underpants. I wonder if she still does?
