Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice • Hacker News Board

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#111

Post by kashyapc » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 9:47 AM UTC

Michael Polanyi[1] introduced the topic of tacit knowledge in his short book (100 pages), "The Tacit Dimension". The blog series only mentions Polanyi in passing in its third article. And only indirectly references his book in a dismissive tone, because "this blog is a practitioner's blog: it is interested in what is useful, not what is `true`". Well, regardless of what the author's blog is about, it is still important to grapple with the original idea.

In his book, Polanyi also uses the idea of tacit knowledge to tackle a question from Plato's famous Socratic dialogue, 'Meno': "can virtue be taught?"

You can find an excellent English translation of 'Meno' in Hackett's "Five Dialogues"[2] publication. A superb short book with a great selection of five short Platonic dialogues; reading it gives a richer picture of Polanyi's ideas. It[2] also serves as a great intro to Plato.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Polanyi

[2] https://www.hackettpublishing.com/five-dialogues

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#112

Post by affectsk » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 10:56 AM UTC

voiper1 wrote: post #3

I'm sorry, I was really into the whole Deliberate practice thing and then I read this and thought "Oh no, did I have it all wrong?" So I read the book he quoted - "Source of Power". And you know what? It has a tremendous overlap with Deliberate Practice. The proponents of Deliberate Practice never claim to "just do it over and over" - you have to have background knowledge, a teacher/coach, etc... the tacit knowledge.…

As someone who's recently gotten into deliberate practice, I, too, started reading this worried I'm heading in the wrong direction.

And it left me with a similar feeling: the author suggests that acquiring tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice, when in fact deliberate practice is the most effective way to acquire tacit knowledge.

In the bicycle example, that would mean trying out different approaches, figuring out what works and what doesn't, and working with a coach (parent) to practice more effectively.

So, pitting these concepts against one another seems wrong, but keeping tacit knowledge in mind when applying deliberate practice might make it more efficient.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#113

Post by mandmandam » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 12:30 PM UTC

travisd wrote: post #31

skybrian wrote: post #17

Programmers have another common example of how a belief in transmissionism often doesn't work out as well as the author hopes: the monad tutorial. Here are other examples I can think of: - Learning programming in the first place. Many people struggle. - Teaching rhythm to an older adult with no musical experience. - Ear training. No explanation will substitute for practice. This isn't to say that explanations never w…

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Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#114

Post by kubanczyk » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 12:45 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #57

PaulHoule wrote: post #29

"Tacit knowledge cannot be externalized" is a cruel thing for me to hear when it comes to social skills. Ty Tashiro writes about how "awkward" people https://www.ted.com/talks/ty_tashiro_why_we_re_socially_awkw... need things to be spelled out and made explicit. With that, we can function as well as anyone. Without that we suffer when we get advice like "be yourself", "read Dale Carnegie", etc. Ty was lucky to have p…

While I agree that tacit knowledge exists and is widespread, I think the author misuses the word "tacit" to mean unspeakable rather than unspoken. Clearly unspeakable knowledge is a subset of unspoken knowledge, but there is definitely unspoken knowledge that is speakable if we take the effort to make it explicit. "things awkward people need spelled out" is a great example of tacit knowledge that is often speakable (…

No, I don't think it's a misuse of the word "tacit". It's a spectrum which has boundary line on one side only, but is open-ended on the other side. The boundary between the unspoken and the codified knowledge is clear-cut. The unspoken and unspeakable are just one spectrum, and the author's model does not have a boundary between them nor does he seem interested in finding such boundary.

In other words the unspoken knowledge can be learned from two sides, not one. It's understandable that the author focuses on their side, but I don't think he does so with the intention to discourage "the effort to make [the knownledge] explicit".

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#115

Post by kashunstva » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

This would not sit well in my field - I'm a classical pianist - because I'm getting hung up on the role that knowledge ('tacit' or otherwise) plays in what I do, vs. the reality of a very motor-focused activity. Yes, after years of what I'd call deliberate practice, certain heuristics emerge - stylistic conventions, performance practice, what fingerings work in different situations. All fine - and those elements of tacit knowledge are definitely enabling. But in rehearsal and in performance, there's very little cognition going on. It's very much a motor activity. Instead, I rather think that tacit knowledge and deliberate practice interact in mutually-enabling ways. Deliberate practice allows you to build mental models (~tacit knowledge) that serve to enable higher quality practice.

Perhaps I'm missing something here. But the hypothesis that tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice - without reference to the field we're talking about - is a bold claim. I know cognitively that the staccato of Mozart is qualitatively different than that of, say, Bartok. But that doesn't do anything until I develop the motor skill to make it so.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#116

Post by throwaway4356 » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

bsanr2 wrote: post #49

shadowsun7 wrote: post #13

Readers who are interested in the actionable aspects of this topic should probably read the last instalment in this series: https://commoncog.com/blog/accelerated-expertise/ The basic idea is this: 1. Deliberate practice only works for skills with a history of good pedagogical development. If no such pedagogical development exists, you can’t do DP. Source: read Peak, or any of Ericsson’s original papers. Don’t read t…

This exposes part of the reason behind, and bodes poorly for those subject to, the lack of success underrepresented groups have in certain fields. If "tacit knowledge" most expeditiously gained from interacting with experts is the most important aspect of skill acquisition in cutting edge (relatively-speaking) areas like applied STEM, then, of course, issues of mentorship and gatekeeping rise to primacy. This has bee…

Fantastic observation!

I will add though, some fields are far more open than others. Most notable would probably be software or computing in general. An observant person can glean insights from places like HN, Reddit, lobste.rs, GitHub/Lab threads, university course pages from all over the world, personal opinionated blogs, etc. etc. (add reading good open source code to this list too). I say observant because you need to sift through marketing (mostly HN and Reddit), influencer crap [0], (often attractive) polemics, etc. With computing, these places can come from genuine passion and respect for the craft, rather than grift like you'd find on LinkedIn [1]. From there a person can weigh up different ideas and experiences, looks for patterns, try to determine what is being implied and what context has gone unsaid, what is taken for granted, etc. This would replace otherwise unavailable mentors.

Like you, what you mention has been my personal experience. My experience with people from my demographic is that some, without formal guidance, struggle, and in getting started really need someone to hold their hand. In some cases this would be a problem of confidence and self-esteem more than ability. Others can soldier through looking to pick up bits of wisdom from wherever, eventually being able to make judgements of their own.

>and it makes me highly suspicious of anyone whose advice for acquiring technical skills is simply to practice constantly - "draw every day," "you have to code," "always be networking," etc.

It's a matter of perspective I think. This reminds me of that Ira Glass quote on taste and creativity. Perhaps taste is a sort of tacit knowledge, and this is picked up from mentors, or developed independently like I mentioned above. Then a person who does not know the experience of lacking taste -- either because they have access to mentorship (and took it for granted) or because they had the confidence and ability to independently "seek" tacit knowledge (and took the confidence and ability to actually do so for granted) -- lacks perspective and gives this advice. It "worked" for them, but really this is just the apparent, and they cannot express how they developed the taste or tacit knowledge (or that it is necessary!) for this advice to be useful.

[0] I specifically left YouTube off that list. Aside from conference videos posted to YouTube (hardly any views), university lecture recordings (hardly any views past first year with a few exceptions), and maybe a feeew other channels, YouTube content is in my experience garbage and very typical-influencer, mostly hyping up megacorps, the latest buzzword-tech, and grinding leetcode.

[1] Yes computing grift is very real, but I mean that it appears that sharing information online for "nobler" reasons or genuine professional reasons is more common in computing than in some other fields.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#117

Post by mannykannot » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

affectsk wrote: post #112

voiper1 wrote: post #3

I'm sorry, I was really into the whole Deliberate practice thing and then I read this and thought "Oh no, did I have it all wrong?" So I read the book he quoted - "Source of Power". And you know what? It has a tremendous overlap with Deliberate Practice. The proponents of Deliberate Practice never claim to "just do it over and over" - you have to have background knowledge, a teacher/coach, etc... the tacit knowledge.…

As someone who's recently gotten into deliberate practice, I, too, started reading this worried I'm heading in the wrong direction. And it left me with a similar feeling: the author suggests that acquiring tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice, when in fact deliberate practice is the most effective way to acquire tacit knowledge. In the bicycle example, that would mean trying out different approa…

I am completely with the author on his defense of the reality of tacit knowledge, but his argument against deliberate practice depends on pedantic, hair-splitting definitions that would be better presented as second-order refinements applicable in certain circumstances, such as when you are "in a field where no ‘highly-developed, broadly accepted training methods’ exist." It may be that this style of presentation is a reaction to highly specific claims that some proponents of deliberate practice insist are universal truths.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#118

Post by nathanfig » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

kashunstva wrote: post #115

This would not sit well in my field - I'm a classical pianist - because I'm getting hung up on the role that knowledge ('tacit' or otherwise) plays in what I do, vs. the reality of a very motor-focused activity. Yes, after years of what I'd call deliberate practice, certain heuristics emerge - stylistic conventions, performance practice, what fingerings work in different situations. All fine - and those elements of t…

The author mentions music as an exception because it has a long pedagogical history which enables deliberate practice.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#119

Post by shkkmo » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 3:28 PM UTC

kubanczyk wrote: post #114

shkkmo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that tacit knowledge exists and is widespread, I think the author misuses the word "tacit" to mean unspeakable rather than unspoken. Clearly unspeakable knowledge is a subset of unspoken knowledge, but there is definitely unspoken knowledge that is speakable if we take the effort to make it explicit. "things awkward people need spelled out" is a great example of tacit knowledge that is often speakable (…

No, I don't think it's a misuse of the word "tacit". It's a spectrum which has boundary line on one side only, but is open-ended on the other side. The boundary between the unspoken and the codified knowledge is clear-cut. The unspoken and unspeakable are just one spectrum, and the author's model does not have a boundary between them nor does he seem interested in finding such boundary. In other words the unspoken kn…

The author doesn't acknowledge any sort of spectrum and makes a general statement that trying to make tacit knowledge explicit is so hard as to be pointless to try.

> My take on this is that it is so difficult that we shouldn’t even bother; assuming that you are reading this because you want to get good in your career, you should give up on turning tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge and just go after tacit knowledge itself.

Re: Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

#120

Post by kubanczyk » Mon, Dec 13, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #119

kubanczyk wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think it's a misuse of the word "tacit". It's a spectrum which has boundary line on one side only, but is open-ended on the other side. The boundary between the unspoken and the codified knowledge is clear-cut. The unspoken and unspeakable are just one spectrum, and the author's model does not have a boundary between them nor does he seem interested in finding such boundary. In other words the unspoken kn…

The author doesn't acknowledge any sort of spectrum and makes a general statement that trying to make tacit knowledge explicit is so hard as to be pointless to try. > My take on this is that it is so difficult that we shouldn’t even bother; assuming that you are reading this because you want to get good in your career, you should give up on turning tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge and just go after tacit knowl…

Maybe it's just my reading, but what follows this excerpt puts it in context. I.e. we shouldn't bother with converting the entirety of unspoken knowledge in some field:

> Why do we know this? > [What many researchers found out] was that it is extremely difficult to encode all the possible branches and gotchas and nuances from a human expert into an expert system.