
On Facts and Thinking - ptbrodie
https://reading.supply/@patrick/on-facts-and-thinking-dzbJgI
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throwawaymath
In my opinion the central thesis of this article is obscured by its framework
of first vs higher order facts and thinking. The article states its real point
quite simply:

 _> You must temper your desire to jump to conclusions, explore the search
space of possible conclusions, and generate probabilities of truth._

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meesterdude
I think "higher order facts" is a shitty label. The premise's and grid
outlined is right, but the labels used are simply not clear. Higher order
thinking is a real thing that you can google for, but higher order facts is
not.

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Chris2048
"high order thinking" appears to be loose, metaphorical reasoning; or partial-
information where a lot isn't explicitly stated, but assumed, or extrapolated
(Pragmatic? Speculative?) - but that relies heavily on correlation too, and I
find the distinction is hard to outline.

It also dinstinguished facts by "topic relevance" i.e a less-relevant fact may
require more speculation; However this ignore resolution - how accurate,
and/or generalised a given fact is in the first place.

Finally, any corrolation/speculation can be tainted when you include an uneven
mix, or cherry-picked slection, of facts to be informed by which isn't handled
when we start catagorising individual facts, rather than collections of facts
as a whole.

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moretai
Could someone explain what he meant about the wise abstracting their knowledge
into myths? What’s so special about Jesus turning the other cheek and Odysseus
going home? I feel like it’s straight forward what they are metaphors for
(forgiveness and I guess for the odysessus one it’s you can’t run away from
your problems), unless I’m still not going deep enough which is most likely
the case. It’s this kind of thinking that scares me because I feel like I stop
a bit short in my thought, and I’d like to go deeper without going off the
deep end

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uncle_ted
My interpretation is that fof+hot might not have immediately obvious utility,
so that it's made into myth(heuristics?) when it's particularly valuable. For
example, in fof+fot it wouldn't make any sense to allow yourself to be
slapped, because you need a complex casual model to justify it.

But echoing others in the thread, I'm not too sure and wish the author had
written more on the topic or gave some references.

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mannykannot
The author missed a chance to complete his example by showing how the 'right'
sort of thinking about the 'right' sort of facts lead one to ask whether,
and/or to what extent, attitudes about race shaped the current demographics of
Chicago. Perhaps it is intended to be an exercise left to the reader, to
notice that this would involve thinking causally about the given first-order
fact of the matter, which puts it in the 'wisdom' quadrant.

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tom-thistime
Can we try this out?

Here's a proposed 'fact': "If you don't eat with us at mealtimes, your whole
caloric intake will be sugar and oil. That's probably unhealthy in the long
run."

Is that a 'first order fact' or a 'higher order fact'? How do we decide?

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ilaksh
The problem is that no one agrees what the facts are.

And each faction is sure that the other group is poorly informed and/or
stupid.

~~~
coldtea
Plus the "facts" are often misreported, selectively reported, manipulated on
the ground, and several other kinds of trickery...

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onefuncman
> We may now deploy trust.

Figuring out how to bootstrap trust in a network of anonymous actors is my
white whale.

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moretai
I liked the writing. Felt a bit short though

