To a degree you might say that they live too much in the space of the abstract and not enough in the concrete, or too much in the general and not enough in the specific.

I think that's a fair criticism a lot of the time. Most of the time we have precedent that can guide our actions well. Trying to reason everything out from first principles can be wasteful navel gazing when we've collectively seen the movie a million times.

Focusing on reality and specifics though is what causes people to say there's no global warming because December is cold.

It is sometimes possible to see a trajectory that has never happened before though and that's when you need the autists.