It’s an important point. Equivocation can also be framed as the heuristic inference “if A and B are highly correlated, replace A with B” (but made implicitly, without even making a distinction between A and B, because A and B have been clustered together at some previous point).
The real point is to have the flexibility to be able to make fine distinctions or big generalizations as appropriate for a situation, rather than being stuck in whichever way you think about it.
However, making distinctions seems especially powerful somehow. You want to be able to do both, and you want to actually use bot, but if it were only a matter of moving one direction or the other, it seems somehow better to move in the “distinctions” direction.
One point is that distinctions tend to be more concrete and objective, and therefore, more “portable” between brains, and more scientifically testable.
Also, making more distinctions temporarily for the sake of putting things back together later (in a hopefully better way) can be a great way of making progress. The other direction (temporary abstraction) is incredibly useful as well, but seems a bit weaker (it’s like analogy as opposed to logic).
Another point is that we have to cluster a lot to fit things into our limited working memory. So it’s more probable that by making extra distinctions, you can see things that you’d miss otherwise. On the other hand, since everyone is abstracting all the time (to handle limited working memory), the probability that you’ll hit new insights that way seems lower.
It’s an important point. Equivocation can also be framed as the heuristic inference “if A and B are highly correlated, replace A with B” (but made implicitly, without even making a distinction between A and B, because A and B have been clustered together at some previous point).
The real point is to have the flexibility to be able to make fine distinctions or big generalizations as appropriate for a situation, rather than being stuck in whichever way you think about it.
However, making distinctions seems especially powerful somehow. You want to be able to do both, and you want to actually use bot, but if it were only a matter of moving one direction or the other, it seems somehow better to move in the “distinctions” direction.
One point is that distinctions tend to be more concrete and objective, and therefore, more “portable” between brains, and more scientifically testable.
Also, making more distinctions temporarily for the sake of putting things back together later (in a hopefully better way) can be a great way of making progress. The other direction (temporary abstraction) is incredibly useful as well, but seems a bit weaker (it’s like analogy as opposed to logic).
Another point is that we have to cluster a lot to fit things into our limited working memory. So it’s more probable that by making extra distinctions, you can see things that you’d miss otherwise. On the other hand, since everyone is abstracting all the time (to handle limited working memory), the probability that you’ll hit new insights that way seems lower.