The next theory is the correspondence theory of truth. That is, what is true is what corresponds to observed reality.
Here, the premises begin to fall apart. Is it true that summarisation leads to bad thinking? Are there examples or counter examples?
Indeed there are.
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Lawyers cannot remember the details of every case. So they use something called 'headnotes' to summarise the key judgments of relevant case law. These are raw, 'blind' summaries.
You may even purchase them.
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This is a longstanding practice in law. Many if not most lawyers do this. They do this because no lawyer can hold all the relevant cases in their heads.
And yet, they are able to come up with novel, powerful legal innovations in court. Why?
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This is because the 'chunking' afforded to them by their headnotes allow them to construct novel cases.
We have our first counter-example.
actually argues this is one of the benefits of PS. Milo does not address this.
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Milo’s premise doesn’t seem to match up to reality. There appears to be novel thinkers who are able to do good thinking, and who are aided by blind, raw summaries.
Perhaps critical thinking is orthogonal to summarisation technique? Hmm. We shall see.
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The third theory of truth is the consensus theory of truth. This theory states that what everyone agrees on is true, is true.
You might think that this is a stupid theory, but consider: how do we know that Perelman solved the Poincaré conjecture?
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When Perelman's proof was discovered, there were only a handful of mathematicians in the world who could verify it. Perelman was 39. The Fields Medal (math's highest prize) could only be awarded to mathematicians below the age of 40.
The mathematicians RACED to verify the proof.
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You may read more about it in this fantastic piece: newyorker.com/magazine/2006/
We believe that the Poincaré conjecture is true because those small handful of mathematicians announced that it was true. We must trust in their consensus that it is true.
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The scientific method works similarly as well. We trust in scientific consensus in highly technical domains, because we have no other way to verify what is true, as ordinary laymen.
Back to Milo. This theory of truth doesn't seem to apply here. We shall move on.
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(Total digression) The point of the four theories of truth is that they underpin nearly every pursuit, actually. So science is a combination of all four, in really really interesting ways.