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Comment by throwup238 | Hacker News Reader

As is tradition in archaeology.

It's the archaeologists saying, “Nobody knows for certain how the Romans used them,” and offering a variety of competing theories, while people on this thread are trying to finesse the facts to support the theory they like.

So saying, "archaeologists are doing it" is demonstrably untrue here.

There are plenty of academic papers written by historians and archaeologists speculating about Roman dodecahedrons. That's where most of these ideas are coming from.

You just won't find them in HN comments for obvious reasons.

I didn't say they are merely speculating; that's a pretty normal thing to do. I said they are "latching on to this theory and making speculations to support it." In other words, they are starting with the conclusion, and making guesses to support that conclusion.

You incorrectly stated that's a tradition in archaeology, as if that would make any difference. It's not how theories are meant to be formed from evidence, regardless of whether or not you think it's a tradition in archaeology (which it isn't.)

>people on this thread are trying to finesse the facts to support the theory they like.

Explicitly so, given that the root of this thread is saying it is a theory that they 'like', not that they think is objective truth.

The original commenter was explicit that they liked the theory, not that they were willing to make things up to support it. Those are two completely different things.

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