I thought the other conventional wisdom is that we get our theories by building mental models. I throw a ball, and I can either remember how it flew in the past and use that to predict, I can also build a mental model from first principles to find out what will happen. Maybe run a short 5 second idealized simulation in my head and I can predict what might happen. Well then I might realize that there was wind that my original model was too idealized.
Another example someone on HN (or an article posted to HN) talked about how would they be able to predict what happens to a pen dropped on the moon. And why did Astronauts stood firmly planted on the moon's surface. It was interesting how many people got that wrong. And the difference was that some seemed to have been reasoning by analogy or have encoded faulty facts (gravity happens on earth), some by past experiences (they have heavy boots), some that have the correct understanding of first principles can so to speak simulate and understand what would happen -- the pen would drop to the moon. Moon has some gravity. So do other planets. And so on.
Now most of these are still based on some principles that we hold true and are "like the past". Gravity is like yesterday, the fact that winds affects objects in flight is like yesterday, speed of light is like yesterdays. There needs to be wide set of known and predictable rules about the world and then deriving or simulating the future can be done.
There can be something in between, maybe if I built a mental model just recently it gets memoized and instead of re-running it I just remember that it is like the "past one" but with a small tweak.
Another mechanism is the "seeker of inconsistencies". Something that understands that these facts together don't make sense. So if I first thought the pencil would float away on the moon and then thought but Astronauts are planted firmly on its surface. This would, so to speak, raise an exception and say "aha, something is not consistent, pay more attention to this one".
But, that is how my brain works. Others brains might work differently. I can inspect to some degree my own thought process but I cannot get into the head of someone else and "see" how they think about things. Do they visualize, to the see words and formulas instead and plug values is. Are some completely unaware of how they think and lack much self reflexive.
I am papering over and being too simplistic here and don't necessarily disagree with the article, that just that reaction when read that paragraph.