Bishops and Knights are equal

Right

1)  It's bad logic to argue the superiority of bishops over knights by looking at the special case of minor piece pairs in commonly occurring positions.

2) It's not quantifiable how many positoins the bishop pair is better than, say, a bisohp and knight pair.

3) Even if it were it would be useless data as these positions don't arise arbitrarily but through the course of a game involving many competing factors (space, time, initiative etc)

4) Masters of old, current day masters, and computer analysis alike have maintained the raw score of bishop vs knight as very nearly equal. (Some computer simulations putting a knight ahead according to wiki)

5) All games head toward an endgame, but not pure minor piece endgames.  A rook and knight may be more effective than a rook and bishop regardless of if the endgame features an open or closed position.

When people even try to say otherwise it's in these special situations or as theultimatechampion likes to do, use vague qualifiers amounting to statements such as "I'm always right in every situation where I'm not wrong"

It's sort of like saying you're going to recruit for your college sports team based on how strong a candidate's calf muscle is in their left leg.

Sure it's important to have a calf muscle, but in a real game there's a lot more going on determining the effectiveness of a player.

Look at all the mainline openings that involve trading a bishop for a knight within the first few moves.

This whole thread is silly.

Just stick with the rule of thumb of Bishops=Open Knights=Closed and you'll be fine.

It's all opinionated, anyway. 

To the extent that this statement can even be said to mean anything, it is silly.  Petrosian was famous for his prowess with knights...and one thing I was impressed by in going over Soltis' book of Spassky's games was how often Spassky seemed to prefer knights (even in quite open positions).

But then, I have to agree with wafflle:  this whole thread is silly.  As is the topic (and it has been since time began)...as was pointed out by bolshevikhellraiser (oh great, and now I'm agreeing with a blatant commie).

Actually, the rankings are:

king pawn knight bishop rook queen.

Joined chess.com 1 hour ago, and 13 minutes after joining re-opened a thread that had been idle for more than 5 years. 

I wonder what the OP thinks now? 

When he first wrote the illogical first post (bishops can pin, knights can fork... implies nothing about their relative value) he was rated 700 in bullet and 1000 in blitz. He's improved quite a bit in six years.

Bishops are usually better and a bishop pair is usually superior to a B+N or 2 N's.

There's a rule of thumb that tends to work: a N on the 3rd rank is inferior to a B, a N on the 4th rank is equal to a B, a N on the 5th rank is superior to a B, a N on the 6th rank is a potentially devastating force.

depends on position

For the most part you are right.  However, after many years of chess experience a concept developed amongst professional players. 

That concept is called the Minor Exchange:  it is considered advantageous to exchange a N for a B.

It is also considered an advantage to have the 2 Bs.  Whereas there is no advantage recognized in having both Ns.

That's correct - a bishop is better than a knight.

Players should keep in mind that this kind of thinking is similar to exchange sacrifice - sometimes a minor piece can work better than or equal to a rook, except the difference is much less. But it's still a difference. 

And saying a bishop is better than a knight is similar to saying a queen is better than a knight - sometimes a knight is more valuable, but a slight majority of the time, a bishop is better. Especially when the pawn structure is not determined, it generally has much more potential than the knight.