Cory DoctorowToday's threads (a thread)
Inside: Process knowledge; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/08/process-knowledge-vs-bosses/
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Syntaxxor 🏳️‍⚧️ 
@pluralistic There's an excellent point at the end here that I never really considered before:
"And of course, the people who value process knowledge the least are the AI bros who think you can replace skilled workers with a chatbot trained on the things they say and write down, as though that somehow captured everything they know."Online posts and chats and documentation and everything else a chatbot might train off of are generally written to explain the output and structure of a thing to someone else. And while that generally means they'll be on the simpler side, easier to digest, it also is usually a very lossy process. I'm most familiar with how it works with programming, but I'm sure it applies to anything technical enough. And by "technical" I mean basically anything which involves process knowledge. So most positions outside the Board and the C-Suite.Explaining how something works rarely gets into the nitty gritty of exactly why each coding decision was made. Yet that's by far the most valuable thing to understand about any given piece of code. Those important conversations of imparting knowledge will happen in far more personal contexts. Usually through word-of-mouth, which means it never gets documented. Because how can it be documented? Even when it's talked about online, in things like those tumblr posts, it often only scratches the surface of the sheer depth of knowledge needed to actually do something.
The best teacher, the only one whose lessons can really be trusted, is experience. And a chatbot that can only be trained by reading existing text will never be able to learn from experience. Thus, it can't really be trusted to actually make correct, informed decisions based on real knowledge of what's needed in a specific context.
</rant>
AethonI agree and think this has always been the case. The process is one thing, the skills and knowledge to apply it can only be learned through experience.
Example- I have some reprints of 19th blacksmithing manuals. And although they might describe the process of welding an axle, or forging a wrench, it always assumes that, as the reader, you know what a welding heat is, about the correct temperature for drawing down, how to make the tools required to make the tool (first forge an eye punch of 1 inch) and so forth.
If you have never got your hands dirty doing the work, whether smithing, working front line support or deep in the code base (something I cannot do but admire), you simply don’t know.
And as you say, from that lack of knowledge comes the ignorance that leads to a misunderstanding of value and need.
j_bertolotti@tempusfelix Just think about all the implied knowledge in any cookbook. Recipes can be compressed to a page or two only because they assume you already know how to do a lot of the stuff they are talking about. If you have no idea how to cook, no amount of cookbooks will ever help you.
@syntaxxor @pluralistic
@syntaxxor @pluralistic
Graydon@j_bertolotti That's the stuff you can in principle write down.
Writing down how bread dough feels when it has been sufficiently kneaded exceeds the capacity of writing.
Bunches of stuff like that exists; texture, mass, and tension are nearly always both important and significantly experiential.
Or you can look at the reproduction of FOGBANK, where something important and thoroughly documented didn't work when following the recipe.
The Penguin of Evil@graydon @j_bertolotti @tempusfelix @syntaxxor @pluralistic Bricklaying is another great example. There's a ton of science behind it but actually building a brick wall cannot be learned from a book.
@etchedpixels @graydon @j_bertolotti @syntaxxor @pluralistic
Another example from the UK recently is sheep shearing. Our government, on one of their no immigrants policies decided that we wouldn’t provide visas for sheep shearers. We have quite a large national flock and nowhere near enough shearers to do the job in the time. Why? It’s hard work, it’s remarkably difficult to learn and it’s very seasonal so you can’t make an income from it. I’ve tried it. You can’t teach it from books, the dance is complex, and you sure as heck can’t teach a computer.
Eventually the government caved and let in the kiwis and Aussies who are world class. But we are going to have the same issue next year cos British jobs for British people. Even if they don’t want to do them.
dperkins@tempusfelix @etchedpixels @graydon @j_bertolotti @syntaxxor @pluralistic Maybe, but you gotta be really careful with that line of thinking. Many businesses want to bring in cheap labor. Is there a shearer shortage? Is there a shearer salary shortage? Those are related but different situations, and one of them is about exploiting workers.
@dperkins "No one knows how to do anything because people who don't know anything except displaying status have been making education system decisions for generations" and "there's a capitalist class who want all the money in a pile so it will love them" are orthogonal problems.
Not unrelated because nothing is unrelated to mistaking money for the love of god once the mammonism becomes the state religion, but distinct.
@tempusfelix @etchedpixels @j_bertolotti @syntaxxor @pluralistic
@dperkins "Learn by doing" is distinct from "live by doing"; the second is impossible if there's no way to do the first, but that's not the only reason it's impossible. (as you note! correctly!)
Having the entire notion of teaching collapse into "we can stuff this into words before we stuff the words into a plagiarism machine" breaks "learn by doing" completely. People actively prevent their kids from doing, out of love.
@tempusfelix @etchedpixels @j_bertolotti @syntaxxor @pluralistic
In this particular case there is a shearer shortage, which leads to an animal welfare issue. My perspective is from small flock management, where the shearers are not booking as they can make more money from the large flocks.
I agree that the cost of wool makes the cost of shearing a factor but these guys can charge a decent amount per head. Which is one reason why the size of the national flock has reduced over time. (This has had some interesting effects on upland rewilding but I digress).
I agree with your salary point in general. It’s a bigger issue in the farming and food production area generally for complicated reasons, most of which seem to come from corporations wanting to hold down the prices they are willing to pay for produce.
We do, as a society, need to reconsider how we compensate people for their skills and labour.