My point....if there really is one, and if I can even come close to articulating it is this.
There are what we might call "Generally Accepted Principals" and then there are "Facts" and then there are "Opinions". What I was trying to suggest to the poster who asked if he should stock, loft fly, or race a YB he got as a gift. Is that most of what will be offered here, is "Opinion", and those can, and often are, all over the place.
RodSD, offered what I considered an idea which may fall somewhere between an opinion and a fact. He provided a good explanation of the theory, and why he views it as a fact. I don't fault him with this theory of best to best, and using the race sheets as the measuring stick.
I may have gone far afield, from the original question, as to what to do with this bird he got. I myself, follow a performance based selection process, so generally speaking, the best long term course of action, is to race every bird and judge it's performance. But, I have never convinced myself, that this is the only way, or indeed the best way, to produce a colony of Champion racers. There are what I consider "Issues" with this method, which do not make it a perfect system, and thus not really a fact.
If simply breeding best to best, was the best way, or the only way to produce winners, then race results would not be what they are. Since there are a number of well known fanciers in the USA, who own a large number of National Ace Winners, which might be called some of the "best" and then they mate these birds to other "good" racing champs, to produce YB's for the One Loft Events. Now, if you review the dozen or so events that they enter birds into, and then add up the number of birds entered, and then at the end of the series of races, add up all of their winners or lack of winners...and what do you find ? A fairly average or typical if you will, % of winners.
If you use local club or combine events, then how do you figure in loft location, quality of loft, direction of wind on that particular race, handler skill, management, training, etc. etc. Is being the #1 bird, really make it the "Best" out of thousands ? That's the first problem.....the #2 issue, is how then do you explain the bird which is sent, week after week, but never is a 1st prize winner. How is that bird, compared on the Bell Curve ? Then #3.....how does one explain or account for the bird, which comes home, sometimes in the clock, sometimes not, week after week....and is so-so on the Bell Curve...but produces the #1 racers as offspring. There is a big catch 22.....
Then there are other numerous issues, what if you are using a highly inbred parental line, where racing performance has declined, but as breeders, when crossed onto another unrelated inbred line, produces the stuff which dreams are made of ?
I don't disagree with anything RodSD has suggested, only to suggest, that it needs to be presented as theory, and not documented facts, as I can offer examples, where some of these "Rules" or "Facts" are not always the case, and do not always hold true 100% of the time. At one time, I may have suggested that RodSD was 100% correct, that pairing the best performers to the best performers was the "correct" way to proceed....but the more I have learned, the more I realize, that there are things, as of yet, I can not fully explain or understand.
So, I am suggesting, that the original poster, take everything we say, including me, with a grain of salt.