Is “contextual comparison of experiences” a valid primitive for decision-support systems?

[PoX-Praxis]

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Question

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I am exploring a conceptual framework for experience-based decision support.

The problem I am trying to address is not lack of information, but lack of judgability:

people often cannot determine whether others’ experiences meaningfully apply to their own situation.

My working hypothesis is that this failure happens because:

• experiences are usually shared without sufficient context, and
• individuals cannot compare their own background and intent against the context in which another experience was formed.

This leads me to a structural question.

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Question

Is “contextual comparison of experiences” a valid and shareable primitive?

More concretely:

• Can “context” be specified at a level that allows third parties to compare experiences without overfitting or oversimplifying?
• At what point does contextual structure help judgment, and at what point does it start to distort or constrain interpretation?
• Is there a risk that formalizing context turns lived experience into something brittle or misleading?
• Are there known patterns where contextualized information improves decision-making, rather than just post-hoc justification?

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What I am not asking

• I am not proposing a product or implementation.
• I am not asking for feature suggestions.
• I am not assuming that this approach works.

I am explicitly looking for counterexamples, failure modes, or reasons this abstraction may be flawed.

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Why I’m asking here

I want to understand whether this idea can survive being treated as a shared structure—something that could reasonably be documented, reviewed, and reused by others—rather than as a purely personal or narrative construct.

[pnb-rae]

I think you’re pointing at a real problem. The issue often isn’t lack of information, but lack of judgability people can’t tell whether someone else’s experience actually transfers to their own situation.
To the core question: “contextual comparison of experiences” can be a valid, shareable primitive, but only as a probabilistic filter, not a deterministic one.
Context can be specified to a useful degree, but never exhaustively. In practice, contextual structure helps by ruling out clearly non-comparable experiences and by surfacing hidden assumptions (constraints, incentives, timing). This is similar to how case-based reasoning or external validity works in medicine: context narrows relevance, it doesn’t guarantee applicability.

The abstraction starts to break down when context is treated as complete or precise. Formalizing context can distort judgment by encouraging overconfidence, masking tacit knowledge, or turning the structure into a proxy for understanding rather than an aid to it.
There are patterns where contextualization improves decision-making rather than post-hoc justification—e.g. after-action reviews, scenario planning, and failure taxonomies that organize experiences by conditions instead of outcomes. In these cases, context bounds inference rather than dictates conclusions.

So the idea survives as a shared structure if it’s framed as a way to calibrate confidence in others’ experiences, not as a way to transfer decisions wholesale. Its main risk is appearing more precise and complete than it actually is.

[PoX-Praxis]

Proposed reply

Thank you — I find your framing helpful, especially the emphasis on context as a probabilistic filter rather than a determinant of decisions.

The way I support using such a system is grounded in the following view of its value:

・Making it easier to try an option, rather than selecting a “correct” one
・Lowering the cost of adjusting after an attempt, instead of committing upfront
・Encouraging iteration and learning over time, not one-shot optimization
・Supporting exploration under uncertainty, rather than promising correctness
・Keeping decision authority and responsibility with the individual

From this perspective, the framework is not meant to converge on answers, but to help people orient themselves, experiment, and update their understanding through use.

This leads to a question closely related to the risk you highlighted.
If a context-based framework is reused or becomes widely referenced, are there known ways to design or frame it so that it does not harden into an absolute or authoritative structure?

More specifically, are there mechanisms or patterns that help ensure such a framework continues to be read as:

guidance rather than prescription,

a space for exploration rather than a source of conclusions,

and an aid to judgment rather than a substitute for it?

I’m not looking for a way to prevent misuse entirely, but for ways a system can consistently signal its intended role — as something to be tried, revised, and learned from, rather than followed.

[rinas21]

Contextual comparison of experiences’ can be a useful primitive if treated as a probabilistic filter rather than a deterministic guide. Context helps rule out non-comparable cases and reveal hidden assumptions, but over-formalizing it risks overconfidence and rigidity. Best used to calibrate judgment, not replace it.

[PoX-Praxis]

Yes, I agree — this is essentially the same point.

My intent is aligned with that framing: treating contextual comparison as a probabilistic filter that helps calibrate judgment, rule out non-comparable cases, and surface assumptions, rather than as a deterministic or authoritative guide.

Where I’m focusing next is how such a framework can be framed or designed so that it doesn’t harden into something rigid or prescriptive as it gets reused, and instead continues to support experimentation, adjustment, and individual responsibility.

[PoX-Praxis]

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