Referential Information
Summary: pointing out a concept and giving examples.
When you learn about a thing, I claim that there are generally two kinds of information you get:
Direct information: the direct, object-level information you get
Referential information: the information you get about other things in a similar reference class to the object-level thing
I think often the referential information value is substantial, and I tentatively suspect that people don’t account for it enough in their decisions. This post is just meant to point out referential information and the value of it.
Examples
Looking into the terms and conditions of a certain credit card, and how you go about setting it up
Direct info = information about this specific credit card
Referential info = information about how credit cards in general probably work
Specializing in chemistry
Direct info = chemistry knowledge
Referential info = what other STEM fields are probably like, how hard it is to become an expert in a field, how to go about becoming an expert in a field, how research within a field is conducted, how progress is generally made
Reading a paper from a field you know little about
Direct info = the specific stuff you read about
Referential info = some idea of what the frontier of the field looks like, the kinds of problems the field tackles, how the field tackles them
Talking in-depth about the details of a complicated but mostly unimportant social interaction with the other person involved
Direct info = what happened in that social interaction
Referential info = how other people work, how complicated social interactions can be, how useful digging into details about social interactions can be
Visiting another country or learning about a new culture
Direct info = learning about that country or culture
Referential info = learning how different a country/culture can be from your own
Learning a new language
Direct info = knowledge of how to read/write/speak the language
Referential info = what it is like and how difficult it might be to learn a new language
This distinction is probably most useful when there is a risk that something was placed in a wrong reference class (so the referential information is mostly irrelevant). So you may feel like you have a lot of information about something, but actually maybe you have none.