Ask HN: Are there "story-based" and "fact-based" people?

It sure does ring true. I think fact-based more or less overlaps with unbiased and open-mindedness while the other category is more on the side of having certain mental biases either as a result of personal experience or ideology, for this category new evidence and facts do not make much of a difference unless they are too big and readily perceivable.

It would help to have an example, but this kind of reminds me of a difference in perspective I've experienced with some people when engaging in dialog in real life.

The only way I've found to describe the difference in perspective I experience with some people is that I'll establish a thread with the intention of abstract curious exploration, not necessarily having anything to do with a discrete concrete problem, fact, or event, and they'll interpret it as though I'm looking for an answer to my specific personal problem, then getting frustrated when I steer it back to a more theoretical anecdote.

Most recently we were walking by a marina, and I was talking with them about their interest in getting into sailing. Tangentially, I posed the rhetorical question of "Hmm, I wonder how the municipality permits/taxes/allocates property when it comes to it being on the water? As in, is there a finite amount of shoreline that someone could have the right to build a dock on a charge for parking space?".

They immediately got frustrated that I was asking them exactly what the dollar value was that this specific Marina would be paying, but I was just establishing a vague idea to talk about, whereby if they had any insight, it would be something to discuss hypothetically.

In other cases it's been the economy, as in what effects might be had if X hypothetical policy change was passed, and they've answered with advice on specific personal investment mechanics as though I'm trying to solve a personal financial problem and looking for an account to open.

Reflecting on this, although different than your quandry, seems to come down to whether someone is intuitively an abstract thinker or likes that sort of discussion, or whether they're more about the concrete details of some specific case, and uninterested in intangibles.

Note that I also don't shy away from personal discussion, it's just that there can be more to explore in curious, abstract, larger scale topics, and it's an element of chemistry whether someone will run with your type of communication

It's easier to work in terms of "logically valid vs logically invalid" rather than "true vs false". What even is universally true, anyway? There are always axioms and assumptions.

The distinctions sound a bit too congratulatory.

Reframe as "quibbler vs reasoners", maybe, and see where it takes you.

Or "proposers vs disposers"

Or look at the Big 5 personality profile attributes of Agreeableness and Neuroticism

Some people are finding "story-based" thinking, as you phrase it, to be the case in general among many people. Here's a recent study that makes similar points.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/730763

When Truth Trumps Facts: Studies on Partisan Moral Flexibility in American Politics

This article presents results from a series of online surveys—conducted among American voters during and after the Trump administration that show how voters from both parties provide explicit moral justification for politicians’ statements that flagrantly violate the norm of fact-grounding. Such justification is inconsistent with prevailing theory, whereby partisan voters’ tendency to mistake misinformation for fact is what drives their positive response to misinformation purveyed by partisan standard-bearers. The studies presented here provide consistent evidence of such factual flexibility. Yet they also provide consistent evidence of moral flexibility, whereby voters justify demagogic fact-flouting as an effective way of proclaiming a deeply resonant political “truth.” A key implication is that political misinformation cannot be fully eliminated by getting voters to distinguish fact from fiction; voters’ moral orientations may be such that they prefer fact-flouting. More general lessons pertain to the role of democratic norms in liberal democracies and to how moral orientations relate to perceived interests.

Relevant quote, p. 227: Table 6 presents responses that attest to a range of distinct but overlapping themes in these qualitative data. In particular, some articulate to moral flexibility as a strategy in partisan politics, such that they weigh the “deeper truth” more than commitment to fact-grounding. One such example, expressed by a respondent who supported the DeSantis statement, was presented in the introduction of this article. “I believe that there are times when it is more important for a leader to send the right message, even if it is not entirely accurate” (respondent 216). Another respondent, who assessed the “the right message” as more important that objective evidence when evaluating Biden’s statement said: “In a public health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, it was more important for President Biden to appeal to American values of patriotism and the willingness to step up for others. Most people are aware that while vaccinations greatly reduce the spread of disease, there is no vaccine that can completely, utterly stop it. However, Biden was using strong, emotional, positive language to encourage Americans to do what was morally correct and patriotic at that moment, and I feel that was entirely appropriate” (respondent 37).