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Polanyi’s Paradox

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Re: Polanyi’s Paradox

#41

Post by stcredzero »

rossdavidh wrote: post #32

My most important lesson in working with clients as a programmer, is that asking them how they want their program to work is like asking a native speaker to tell you the rules of grammar in their language. They have often lived with the rules of how their business process works for so long, it is intuitive, and no longer available to their conscious understanding, if it ever was. Show them a scenario, though ("X, Y,…

The worst part is when the customer _thinks_ they know the rules, and then don't (consciously), and you have to help them through that cognitive dissonance of realizing that the business rules they "know" aren't actually the same as the ones they know.

A coworker of mine used to term this, "Applied Philosophy."

There was a post on HN a few years ago, where a game developer had a game where all of the users were asking for an Undo key. This would have completely broken the game! So he looked into his data, and figured out that what people were mad about was moving into a stream tile and taking damage or dying. So instead, he made it impossible to move onto a stream tile, and the problem was solved.

Re: Polanyi’s Paradox

#42

Post by a1369209993 »

joyeuse6701 wrote: post #38
tlb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean for a system to contain a complete model of itself? If I can fit all the firmware, schematics and silicon mask layouts of a laptop on that laptop's disk, in what sense does it not contain a complete model? Concretely, consider that the CAD files describing a terabyte of flash are less than a terabyte, because most parts are repeated in a grid. And you can add more terabytes without increasing the si…

My understanding: You are containing the 'plan' or instructions to recreate or describe the system, but not the system itself. The system contains more information than what the plan can actually describe, even if you are storing duplicates in such a way as to 'reduce' it. Your plan won't be able to store, for example, the information conveyed to the nerves by touching the laptop, you may have a description, but it w…

> You are containing [...] not the system itself.

Well, sure; we're asking for a model, not a copy.

Re: Polanyi’s Paradox

#43

Post by lukifer »

tw1010 wrote: post #20
zeckalpha wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that Slavoj Zizek? I thought it was Johari.

I thought it was Rumsfeld. (Not joking.)

Rumseld famously classified the difference between known unknowns and unknown unknowns; Zizek typically uses Rumsfeld as a jumping-off point to elucidate the concept of unknown knowns. (Though I think Zizek means it more in the sense of belief systems, norms, and ideology, in the vein of "can't tell a fish about water"; whereas Polyani seems to refer primarily to genetic instincts, subconscious cognitive processes, motor skills learned prior to language, etc.)

Re: Polanyi’s Paradox

#44

Post by rossdavidh »

stcredzero wrote: post #41
rossdavidh wrote: post #32

My most important lesson in working with clients as a programmer, is that asking them how they want their program to work is like asking a native speaker to tell you the rules of grammar in their language. They have often lived with the rules of how their business process works for so long, it is intuitive, and no longer available to their conscious understanding, if it ever was. Show them a scenario, though ("X, Y,…

The worst part is when the customer _thinks_ they know the rules, and then don't (consciously), and you have to help them through that cognitive dissonance of realizing that the business rules they "know" aren't actually the same as the ones they know. A coworker of mine used to term this, "Applied Philosophy." There was a post on HN a few years ago, where a game developer had a game where all of the users were askin…

They knew _that_ there was a problem, but not necessarily what the problem really was, or how it should be (programmatically) solved. Sounds similar. The answer bubbles up from the subconscious ('system 1' as some put it).

Re: Polanyi’s Paradox

#45

Post by H8crilA »

Simon_says wrote: post #8
H8crilA wrote: post #5

Next time someone asks me how does a modern artificial neural network really work - I'll just ask them "how do you know that my face does indeed look like mine?". Or "how do you recognize people by their voices?". Or this creepy one: "can you consciously stop decoding the English I'm speaking now?". This Wikipedia page can serve as an extension of the argument.

Those are all great to think about but seem rather lacking as an answer to the question.

That's the point - we don't know.

Re: Polanyi’s Paradox

#46

Post by unixhero »

xaedes wrote: post #37
unixhero wrote: post #3

Poliany was central to my social science master degree thesis. How do you transfer tacit knowledge across international cultural borders?

I would think by working together face-to-face. Learning by doing from a "master" knowing his stuff. Like an apprenticeship. What answer did you find?

Well it was like what you mention. Tacit knowledge must be transferred by showing, hands on learning, but was surprisingly little affected by culture and borders in global companies which was a dimension I was investigating.

After all the work of putting together a thesis on the subject, it all boils down to the example of how to you train a new chef to be as good as his "master".

This is still a hot topic amongst those who continue to research the Social science around Innovation, economics, sociological, management studies and so on. I enjoyed the topic, but being chained to a laptop for 6 months of thesis writing not do much.

Re: Polanyi’s Paradox

#48

Post by dlkf »

The article discusses the argument that statistical machine learning is a resolution to the paradox - as it shows that an agent can learn something without being given explicit instruction. I think this is basically a sound argument, and I find Polanyi pretty unconvincing.

It's worth noting that a similar argument (albeit without a demonstration as concrete as modern ML) was actually advanced in the 1960s by Wilfrid Sellars. [0]

> There is all the difference in the world between knowing how to ride a bicycle and knowing that a steady pressure by the legs of a balanced person on the pedals would result in forward motion ...It can be argued that anything which can be properly called 'knowing how to do something' presupposes a body of knowledge that; or, to put it differently, knowledge of truth or facts. If this were so, then the statement that 'ducks know how to swim' would be as metaphorical as the statement that they know that water supports them.

[0] Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man - Wilfrid Sellars http://www.ditext.com/sellars/psim.html

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