Photons and history books both descend by causal chains from the event itself.
Right, but history books are a much lossier source of information.
I realized that the invention and destruction of vitalism—which I had only read about in books—had actually happened to real people, who experienced it much the same way I experienced the invention and destruction of my own mysterious answer
This realization makes the Stephen Pinker-esque stories about the extent of violence in the middle ages and earlier that much more surreal.
This chapter made me feel things.
The excellent book Algorithms to Live By has an entire chapter dedicated to this concept, using the secretary problem as an example: https://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Live-Computer-Science-Decisions/dp/1627790365