"However, the important thing in Polanyi’s contribution is that he argued that skills are a precondition for articulate knowledge in general, and scientific knowledge in particular. For example, to carry out physical experiments requires a high degree of skills. These skills cannot just be learned from textbooks. They are acquired by instruction from someone who knows the trade."
#RagnarFjelland, 2020
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0494-4
(1/2)
Intriguing. So not only is science a set of methods rather than a body of knowledge, those methods are encoded in skills, not in documentation. If Polanyi is right, the skills of scientific software engineering can only be learned by being an apprentice to a master. Not by reading about it.
(2/2)
"The problem facing the development of expert systems, that is, systems that enable a computer to simulate expert performance ... is that an important part of the expert knowledge is tacit. If experts try to articulate the knowledge they apply in their performance, they normally regress to a lower level. Therefore, according to Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus, expert systems are not able to capture the skills of an expert performer."
#RagnarFjelland, 2020
"According to Pearl and Mackenzie the root of the problem is that computers do not have a model of reality. However, the problem is that nobody can have a model of reality. Any model can only depict simplified aspects of reality. The real problem is that computers are not in the world, because they are not embodied."
#RagnarFjelland, 2020
And a completely accurate map of reality would be so large and energy-expensive that it would be functionally useless. :D
@BillySmith
> a completely accurate map of reality would be
... indistinguishable from the reality mapped. It would need to include itself in the map, creating an infinite recursion problem with the completeness of the map. This is the deeper meaning behind the truism that "the map is not the territory".
And also gives a great example of Godel's lists, and, some aspects of the Tao. :D
@BillySmith
> some aspects of the Tao
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal, ever-changing Tao. Exactly.
Strypey
Billy Smith