User blog comment:Zippertrain85/The reasons why Serana is not from the First Era./@comment-3217145-20130510005609

I'm going to give you a hand here and tell you exactly what you would have to do to solidify your position and win the debate. You must do BOTH of these things:
 * 1) Amend your position from "Serana ISN'T and can't be from the First Era" to "Serana MIGHT NOT be from the First Era." You cannot claim it as fact.
 * 2) Give an alternative situation that Serana could be talking about, one in which she could be within visual range of Solitude yet not know about the Empire.

Why?

Even if you could give believable, factual evidence from in-game that denies any possibility that Serana is from the First Era, you would only have proven that there's a plot hole, and we still wouldn't know what's true. Serana's dialog is the most direct information we have. One piece of in-game information cannot outweigh another. If you found a contradiction, it would show that Bethesda stated one version of history in one place, and another in a different place, and we could not make a judgment on which is canon until they personally resolved the issue with Word of God. Stating as fact that "Serana isn't from the First Era" is indefensible and an abuse of logic.

If, however, you could resolve the two conflicting pieces of information, you could make a case about what is factual and canon. So show how Serana's quote could still apply with her being younger. If you could do this, we wouldn't be able to assume that she's from the First Era, since our most direct evidence is now invalid. Then, ALL the arguments you've brought in could be used as incidental corroborating details to show that your explanation is more consistent with all these other observations, which "seem unlikely" under the current prevailing theory. You wouldn't need evidence for these other arguments, since you wouldn't be using them to "prove" anything (we'd still be allowed to discredit them, but it wouldn't matter whether they're demonstrably true or not, only whether believing them requires fewer assumptions than not). You'd only need direct, factual evidence to show that the plot and all details given are logically consistent with a younger Serana, and we would be forced to relent and say "yes, that's possible, maybe she's not from the First Era."

Until you do both of these, you have no case. Even if you could finally produce actual evidence against Serana's statement that is exactly as strong as it, you cannot prove your position to be factually correct. You haven't even proven it's logically consistent so far. "Non sequitur" is a defined fallacy of logic that invalidates the conclusion, because it doesn't prove anything about it being true or false. Your conclusion may be true despite your failure to prove it, but there's no reason so far to believe that it is.