Hi WM,
This is something that Anthropologists do all the time - reason by analogy. Personally, I think that Carlo Ginzburg's position on this is probably best: (paraphrasing) The interpretation that requires the fewest number of additional hypotheses is the most plausible (aka Ginzburg's Razor; note that this considers plausibility, not "truth"). I like the concept of "relevant dissimilarities" but, I have to ask, who decides relevance?
Marc
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