To me there are additional modes that pithy sayings are using—conveying knowledge at the time of utterance seems like part or a mere side channel.
One way the shared knowledge can be established if the psychological development of the receiver and sender goes along similar lines. One way to develop similarly is to live in the same environment and make the same inferences. Conveing the parts that are similar is redundant. Thus one communication scheme is to only say things that work as developmental junctions ie where you infer differently by being informed. This kind of scheme doesn’t require the receiver to believe or understand the pithy thing on the oral transmission. Say the hint is “When you get kids you will learn that life is not about survival but life is about sacrifice.”. This does not meaningfully alter if we drop the condition and just make it “life is not about survival but sacrifice”.
Another mode is to guide “prior selection” or “imagination aiming”. If you have pithy sayings floating around in your head when you are trying to structure and model a new venue of life, representations that are compatible with the sayings are more probable and natural. So while there is need to have practical and detailed experience of the thing being talked about those that have “spoilers” can extract more abstract and useful lessons earlier. A saying usually does not come with its proof, but the life situation working as a “verification” that the claim in fact holds is the event that convinces the receipient. Those without advice might try to verify random claims but those that have hints will try claims that prove more often. Blind fate to advice could be counterproductive but this kind of verification guiding has the nice property that if a general advice does not hold in some special niche or such it can be found to not hold.
To me there are additional modes that pithy sayings are using—conveying knowledge at the time of utterance seems like part or a mere side channel.
One way the shared knowledge can be established if the psychological development of the receiver and sender goes along similar lines. One way to develop similarly is to live in the same environment and make the same inferences. Conveing the parts that are similar is redundant. Thus one communication scheme is to only say things that work as developmental junctions ie where you infer differently by being informed. This kind of scheme doesn’t require the receiver to believe or understand the pithy thing on the oral transmission. Say the hint is “When you get kids you will learn that life is not about survival but life is about sacrifice.”. This does not meaningfully alter if we drop the condition and just make it “life is not about survival but sacrifice”.
Another mode is to guide “prior selection” or “imagination aiming”. If you have pithy sayings floating around in your head when you are trying to structure and model a new venue of life, representations that are compatible with the sayings are more probable and natural. So while there is need to have practical and detailed experience of the thing being talked about those that have “spoilers” can extract more abstract and useful lessons earlier. A saying usually does not come with its proof, but the life situation working as a “verification” that the claim in fact holds is the event that convinces the receipient. Those without advice might try to verify random claims but those that have hints will try claims that prove more often. Blind fate to advice could be counterproductive but this kind of verification guiding has the nice property that if a general advice does not hold in some special niche or such it can be found to not hold.