A FV-diagram will clarify the topic.
Which question/topic do you believe it will clarify?
1. Is a plinthless TT better or worse than a plinthed TT?
2. Is a self-standing tonearm better than a directly coupled tonearm?
(1) or (2) or both? Do they amount to the same question for you? By better or worse I mean that from the perspective of the end user and not from a design perspective (even if its true that the design takes the end user's perspective into account).
How specifically does it clarify? Which concepts? And if one makes a distinction between clarifying a question and answering it, I take your claim above to imply that drawing the FV diagram doesnt by itself answer the questions at hand. That is, the FV diagram doesnt settle the dispute between Lewm and Halcro/Raul/Chris.
Also, do you believe that the specific sound quality (phenomenological experience) of a TT set up can be deduced a priori from knowledge of its constituent parts + arrangement? I ask this in all seriousness since, in the monumentally amusing TW Acustic Arm thread you seemed to suggest that one could infer the sound of that arm merely by knowing how it was designed (+knowledge of the physics pertaining to arms); that is, know it without actually listening to it. I suspect that if you do believe this, then the conversation is over since Rauls empiricism, if I understand his above post, isnt having any of it.
Im a grown man and I also like to go to public lectures, although you are right that I dont like to be lectured. If you tell me something useful that I dont know about something Im interested in (which wont be all that difficult in this context), then far from receiving scorn, youll have my gratitude.