Background Concept: What World Does The Referent Live In?

When we see some symbols representing something, it's useful to ask “what world does the referent[1] live in?”. Some examples:

When I’m reading a Harry Potter book, the referents of the words/sentences mostly live in the fictional world of Harry Potter.
When I’m going over a spreadsheet of recent crop yields, the referents live in our physical world.
When a textbook contains a problem involving a perfect vacuum or an infinite plane, the referents live in a simple hypothetical world (typically chosen to approximately match many little chunks of our physical world).
When a news article talks about an expert consensus, the referents live in “social reality”.
When I explain how to fix a printer, and you ask “will that actually work?”, and I reply “well that's how it should work”, I am implying that the referents of my explanation [...]

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Outline:

(00:10) Background Concept: What World Does The Referent Live In?

(01:30) Background Concept: Fictional Worlds vs Physical Reality

(03:39) Fictional Thinking

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
June 17th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/phJYTM4WJsoEWdXwr/fictional-thinking-vs-real-thinking

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“Fictional Thinking vs Real Thinking” by johnswentworth

LessWrong (30+ Karma)