As was correctly pointed out in my last question, it's hard to ask whether the claim that we paid "hundreds of billions" of costs on immigrants is accurate because it did not provide a time frame for which the hundreds of billions were paid. If one counts the entire length of US existence we likely have paid that much, but the context of the quote does not imply that it is meant to include the US entire existence. In short, the exact quote can not be given a simple true/false value because it is to imprecise to measure.
Is it within the bounds of Skeptics to instead ask in what context would an imprecise quote one is skeptical of be accurate? For the above example could I ask what timeframe one would need to include for "hundreds of billions" to be an accurate value (could it be an annual cost, cost during last presidential election, since last immigration reform, last decade, etc.)?
I realize it's not a true/false evaluation. However, such a question could give strong context to the viability of the claim. For instance, if the answer is that we spent that kind of money in the last annual year the claim seems quite viable, an annual expense seems a reasonable 'implied' unit of time when when doesn't exist. If instead it turns out that it took over 100 years to hit that expense the claim still isn't false, since no timeframe was given, but it may lead to skeptics of the source since that is longer then any timeframe most might presume reading the question.
I'm not asking just about the above question, in general if a quote is imprecise is it still valid to ask about what situations would make it accurate instead of an exact falsifiable question?
