Or do you believe the geologic record to be more or less homogenous after sampling the tiniest fraction?
You keep coming back to demanding some "fraction" of the Earth's crust that we have sampled. Let's look at that.
I think it depends on how much induction you're willing to do. Your trend is rather clearly toward zero induction, so let's assume zero is allowed.
You have a cake. It's got icing on it. Someone says that under the icing it's a layer cake. You say it's a solid cake. The guy cuts it in two right down the middle. "See?" he says, "It's a layer cake."
"That proves nothing," you say. "The internal volume is solid cake. All you've done is expose an unrepresentative bit of surface area."
"But it wasn't surface area until I cut it!" the guy says.
You aren't impressed. "It's still unrepresentative, and the entire volume is far from sampled."
Now the guy explains how you're being unreasonable: How many cuts does it take before he's sampled a significant percentage of the internal volume of the cake? No matter how much surface he exposes, the sum of the internal volumes of the pieces of cake is the same as the internal volume of the original cake. Thus, he will never, no matter how often he cuts, make any inroad upon sampling a non-zero percent of the volume unless you're willing to make some assumptions about continuity between nearby samples which look the same. But, thus far, you are unwilling to infer anything about the internals from the exposed surfaces.
But you reply, "You just admitted you've sampled zero percent and you fault me for not assuming anything?"
Before man ever dug a ditch on the Earth, rivers had made deep gorges in mountain after mountain, thousands of them all around the Earth. Tides and geologic uplift had created great coastal cliffs. Man has added deep roadcuts by the thousands. Geologists and oilmen have dug deep cores by thousands and thousands more, including in the oceans.
Geology has noted meaningful patterns of information in the preceding. Some sediments in Arizona correlate to some sediments in Colorado. Some sediments in West Virginia correlate sediments in New York State. The Burgess Shales in Canada have fossils like at least one major deposit in China. Geology has lavished 200 years of time and effort in the analysis the sediments, their extent, content, and probable formation, even as it gathers more and more raw data. Thus we have this thing called the geologic column, observed and studied for 200 years.
But that's geology. By contrast, Chugabrewism says it's all a pipe dream, that beyond the exposed surfaces lies something different. Chugabrewism says the geologic column would go away if we only would sample a real percentage of it.
If Chugabrewism ever replaces geology, lazy kids will be able to do their homework very quickly.
I predict a random word generator reply.
I wondered why you brought it into a discussion about the volume of geologic data as yet unexamined.
I believe Stoke's Law, as you describe it, was in play during the formation of the earth as we know it. I also believe it does not operate alone. How does this law apply, for example, to reptiles ascending a creek bed?
"Chug-a-brewism" was my major freshman year. ;-)