Sorry to have upset you, Arlo. Sincerely. That's not my intent.
Let me use another phrase here. Let me call it "DSE", by which I mean deciding things the way folks do in science and economics papers. The book Freakonomics does a great job of showing how these methods go in the context of a lot of real-world issues.
Not knowing or using DSE doesn't mean you didn't do a lot of things in your life, or think about a lot of things, or have life experiences, or go through hardships, or any of that. Doesn't mean you don't have opinions or knowledge. Doesn't mean you aren't a good, valuable, and admirable person -- which you are, Arlo.
It is a method and system that relatively few people know unless they were taught as scientists, engineers, or economists and worked over the course of time at changing their thinking process to work that way.