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That question came up at work on Friday.  My boss noted, that his PH101 class was taught by a really hot grad student.  His answer?  "Because you're not naked."
How do you know you've learned something useful?  Mostly, because it becomes "predictive" - at least for awhile.  Of course, this is the piece of the puzzle that gets ignored by many of the most passionate analysts:  the truth changes over time.
The passionate number crunchers are looking for that ONE magic formula that can predict the future.  But, as sci-fi often tries to tell us -- if you "know" the future, you CAN change it.  It's the past that you're hosed on.  SABRmetrics and baseball blogs in general would take a giant leap forward, if the delivery protocols would simply add "yet", "today" or "perhaps" to every declaritive.  But, that might not increase the fun of the discussions.
Doc is dead-on, that the search for knowledge requires care in figuring out what to pay attention to AND what to ignore.  But, these answers aren't static.  Since 1920 K-rates have gone from 4-per-9 to 7-per-9.  Did pitchers get better?  Perhaps.  Or, did hitters make a CHOICE that hitting HRs was far more important than striking out - so the mass philosophy when heading into the batters box changed?  I'd argue the 2nd is probably the larger portion of a mix that could just as easily be 50/50.
Ultimately, what makes Doc one of the best is that he's superb at not only stating his opinion, but then stating in easy-to-understand (and often entertaining to read) prose WHY he believes what he does.