If you can't see a structure in something and it feels like idiosyncratic noise, does that mean that it's noise or that there's a structure you're failing to identify? In general, I'd say it depends, but in this case, you may be missing the point. If you read through the entire thing, you'll see that she presents her story of how she got involved with sex work, and how that particular vocation for her changed over time, highs and lows, major and minor characters included.

There's a problem with the kind of mentality associated with privileging "facts totally divorced from human empathy, especially idiosyncratic empathy" because it oversimplifies the problem. You have a plurality of testimonials, you can have patterns, you can have structures, but to say that you need facts to be able to even reason about things seems like a little lazy to me, even if it comes from an honest attempt to avoid "all sorts of cognitive biases, availability heuristics, invented narratives." To use an imperfect analogy, how would you imagine lawyers and judges to ever be capable of doing their jobs when they need facts but they only ever receive testimonials and arguments? How does even flawed justice ever work itself out from the process of any kind of legal arbitration or intermediation?

I think it's because you learn quite a lot just by listening to someone's account of things, even if it doesn't tell you exactly everything you need to know. Even details that seem irrelevant can, if you're paying attention, illustrate something later on that might not add up. On the other hand, a seemingly irrelevant detail could give a crucial element needed to see something form a pattern that maybe wasn't explained in a manner where that pattern would come across as obvious. Even if you consider a large collection of anecdota to be partially falsehoods and partially truths, if you begin to see patterns come up over and over again in stories told by people who do not know each other, what do you think the statistical likelihood is of all of them colluding to lie versus it actually happening at least occasionally?

I think that to actually reckon with cognitive biases, availability heuristics, and invented narratives, you need to reckon with those as an individual and learn to see past those, whether it's by broadening your world of folks you talk to or whose narratives you read about, or by reflection on how you think about things, so that your internal judge starts becoming more intrinsically fair and even-handed. If one's internal judge struggles with those issues when reasoning and commenting and exploring testimonials, what is to make us think that adding data and determinations made by others to be facts to the mix is going to help that internal judge rather than amplify its intrinsic biases?

All those "accoutrements of interspersed narrative" and "details about random other people she met along the way" are all purported details of a sequential account. When accounts are inconsistent, they begin to leaking narrative directions perhaps they were not intended to. My admittedly subjective impression here was that this was not the case, and my broader impression of how this narrative integrates into those of others I've heard or read about is that she is largely accurate, and presenting a story in a way that honestly shines a light on the catch-22 societal situation that sex workers in America are trapped in.