The tacit dimension
"The Tacit Dimension" argues that tacit knowledge -tradition, inherited practices, implied values, and prejudgments- is a crucial part of scientific knowledge. This volume challenges the assumption that skepticism, rather than established belief, lies at the heart of scientific discovery.
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- Polanyi's work "The Tacit Dimension" is one of my favorites! You can teach calligraphy fundamentals, the principles of hardness and grinding, but it's hard to tell someone how to use a pencil to write. You never think of how you use it while writing, it becomes an extension of the body like a cane allows the blind to feel the world. Maybe Video Games in a genre also feel like they have a bit of this quality, where familiar interfaces allow hard to explain expertise. What virtual tools give the same opportunity for depth of understanding? For me, the old Photoshop UI and VI come to mind.
- The Tacit Dimension, Michael Polanyi, 1966
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo603536...
Programming and Tacit Knowledge
https://mbuffett.com/posts/all-tacit-knowledge/
Tacit Knowledge blogpost series, Commoncog
https://commoncog.com/the-tacit-knowledge-series/
Acquiring and Sharing Tacit Knowledge in Software Development, 2013
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264125152_Acquiring...
- Article states: "In his book, Personal Knowledge Polanyi introduced the expression tacit knowledge. Most of the knowledge we apply in everyday life is tacit. In fact, we do not know which rules we apply when we perform a task."
This is an essential realization. The author's examples (swimming, bicycle-riding) are instructive. Also consider that each of us learned to understand a human language - an extremely complex task - with little explicit teaching. Our minds somehow learn to decode the complex patterns in language. Also languages often often refer to a very complex natural environment we must also perceive and comprehend. That amazing capability was not constructed.
For a shorter intro to Polanyi's thoughts, try 1964 book The Tacit Dimension.
Not ruling out AGI as possible. The question is whether we will be able to communicate with it if its referents are very different from ours. And then there's the question: why would it cooperate rather than compete?
- I only very recently learnt that some of the main ideas that are attributed to Thomas Kuhn have their origins in the works of Michael Polanyi[1].
"... Although they used different terminologies, both Kuhn and Michael Polanyi believed that scientists' subjective experiences made science a relativized discipline. Polanyi lectured on this topic for decades before Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." [2]
If you haven't checked out Polanyi yet, look up The Tacit Dimension — a very short book that talks about "tacit knowledge" (also discussed in uky.edu page, with attribution).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Polanyi
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn#Polanyi%E2%80%93Ku...
- Michael Polanyi's "The Tacit Dimension" is a good starting point on the concept.
- I consider Michael Polanyi's works to be very important in a certain way.
MP's The Tacit Dimension (1966, ~120pp) is a good introduction to his ideas about "Tacit knowledge", i.e. 'we can know more than we can tell', e.g. facial recognition. , A quick and enjoyable read that might appeal to many in this crowd.
Akin to Hadamard's Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field.
If you've got time, MP's earlier Personal Knowledge (1958, ~400pp) might be a worthwhile deeper-dive. I recall that his style reminded me of Lewis Thomas.
