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Notes -
Has anyone else noticed that people in academic or intellectual hobbies tend to split in terms of disposition? On one hand, you have fact collectors; Those professors who read everything in a dry voice, who seem impartial to the conclusions or suggestions of whatever they might say, as if the raw accumulation of knowledge or data were the only goal, and who fill their books with raw, nigh uncategorized information. On the other hand, you have those who love intellectual topics due to their love of conclusions, and who see knowledge as a stepping stone to something greater. These types love to cherrypick, they make sweeping generalizations, they are often your world-famous intellectuals.
I don't have much to add to this dichotomy, but I believe it would benefit everyone if we recognized it. Partially because they are incompatible: Just as narrative writers draw ire from the fact collectors and their inaccuracies, so too the former is frustrated with the latter's awful signal-to-noise ratio. As one hard-aligned in the former category, I find myself learning more from a Thucydides than an Oxbridge historian or a Freud than a journal; even if I entirely disagree with their narrative it still produces something to collide against and draw sparks, whereas a collection of facts passes through empty air leaving no impression.
Another concept analogous to this is the is-ought distinction. Fact collectors care about what is and the conclusion seekers care about what ought to be.
You could also say this about autists and normies. Autists leaning towards more how things are and the normies obsessed with how things are supposed to be. Although I will admit this one is a reach.
Unrelated but, I think for a long time biology has been filled with fact collectors and not enough conclusion seekers. The conclusion seekers go into programming and engineering. Once these engineering type conclusions seekers come to the conclusion that we should be healthy forever and turn their intellect and focus on biology, that's the beginning of us becoming Human 2.0
It's the opposite, in my experience. Normies just deal with what is, and autists are very concerned with the way things ought to be.
Normies deal with what is, but get very upset if you accurately describe them as they are, instead of how they ought to be. Autists can deal with things as they are, as long they're labelled correctly, it's the dissonance between the actual state and the description that drives them nuts.
This seems to hit the nail on the head.
I wonder if this clash plays any sort of key role in autists often falling out of working life and social circles.
I feel like polite social life often requires a certain amount of lying. Not only to others, but even to yourself. It helps ease the tension in all sorts of awkward situations, if we can all just fib a little and pretend things don't exist. Autists really struggle with that. (And I say that as someone who is a bit autistic and a terrible liar)
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