# Russ Roberts posits that there are four ways of knowing 1. Theory 2. Empirical observation 1. Large N - studies 2. Medium - collected anecdotes 3. Small N - experience 3. Common Sense 4. Tradition What about trust/received wisdom? Arguably that is a second order version of one of the above four. You listen to a scientist because you assume that they have conducted some combination of theory and empirical observation. You listen to your grandmother because you assume that she has some combination of common sense, tradition, and empirical observation. However, a grandmother’s empirical observation is very different from an observational study, or even the collection of many anecdotes. The different natures of empirical observations also raises the question ‘where does common sense come from?’ Some of it is pure intuition or inference: it is common sense that “Giraffes eat leaves therefore they don’t eat eggplants.” Some common sense is built out of experience though - it is common sense to me that you need drywall anchors because I’ve tried to put screws in drywall enough times without them to know the mistake without thinking of any specific time I’ve done that. This [[Nebulous]] boundary between empirical observation and common sense, along with the nebulosity between each of the kinds of empirical observation suggests some sort of continuum. Picking up this continuum idea and sprinting, you could actually think of tradition as “compressed intergenerational common sense.” This is not the *only* purpose of tradition, but it is a reasonable approximation of its function as a way of knowing. Tradition, in turn, has a fuzzy boundary with theory. Have you or anybody else you know ever done the proof that E=mc^2? PV=nRT? etc. Aesthetically, I really want to close the circle and show a fuzzy boundary between theory and empirical observation. One could argue that we often treat empirically derived knowledge as theory. This process often involves abstracting the results away from their contexts. You see this all the time in psychology and history. Another way to look at the boundary between theory and empirical observation is that empirical observation gives rise to theory via induction (which you could just call empirical observation + pattern prediction). Something notable about this list is that these are ways to have *group* knowledge. Group knowledge and individual knowledge are very related (most individuals know very few things separate from the group) but have key distinctions. For example, it doesn’t matter to the group how an accepted theory was arrived at. However, to an individual it matters whether the theory was arrived at via induction or deduction. Weirdly this feels related to the idea of [[strevensKnowledgeMachineHow2020]]’s iron law — the idea that science separates science from the scientists leaving behind coral without the polyps. ### Fun examples of different ways of knowing 1. Theory 1. Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang theory 2. Empirical observation 1. Large N - studies 2. Medium - collected anecdotes 3. Small N - experience 3. Common Sense 1. Han Solo “Hokey religions are nothing compared to a good blaster” 2. Spider Man 4. Tradition 1. The Mandalorean “This is the way” 2. Game of Thrones “It is known” ### Related * [[Epistemology]] * [[If everything is matter, science explains everything]] [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Russ+Roberts+posits+that+there+are+four+ways+of+knowing) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Russ+Roberts+posits+that+there+are+four+ways+of+knowing)