Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Process knowledge; and more!
Archived at: pluralistic.net/2026/04/08/pro…
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Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Process knowledge; and more!
Archived at: pluralistic.net/2026/04/08/pro…
1/
Syntaxxor 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •There's an excellent point at the end here that I never really considered before:
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 thin
... Show more...There's an excellent point at the end here that I never really considered before:
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>
Aethon
in reply to Syntaxxor 🏳️⚧️ • • •I 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
in reply to Aethon • • •@syntaxxor @pluralistic
Phosphenes
in reply to j_bertolotti • • •It's like the Roman concrete mystery. It took us 2,000 years to re-learn to use saltwater. All their recipes just assumed we'd know.
HighlandLawyer
in reply to j_bertolotti • • •@j_bertolotti @tempusfelix @syntaxxor
There are specific cookbooks for children, which include detailed instructions on how to do all the steps (with photos). The recipes there go on for several pages.
This confirms your point about the implied knowledge in ordinary cookbooks.
PhilSalkie
in reply to j_bertolotti • • •@j_bertolotti @tempusfelix @syntaxxor
My half-brothers would never eat tapioca pudding.
That's because our father, at that point in time a single dad, bought a box of tapioca pudding mix. The recipe on the box said "scald 2 cups of milk" - he knew that scald was another word for "burn", so he cooked the milk until it was black, and proceeded with the rest of the recipe (although he did have to add some water to get everything to dissolve.)
Life-long memories of horrid, black pudding...
Steven Heywood
in reply to j_bertolotti • • •Imagine the knowledge-based shopping involved in the list of ingredients.
Tall Simon
in reply to j_bertolotti • • •@j_bertolotti @tempusfelix @syntaxxor
I've said for many years that I don't fully understand something until I've taught a computer to do it.
During the tedious process of writing my thesis I suggested to my supervisor that, because I had coded the algorithm and proved it correct within itself, a write up was redundant and only invited error and misunderstanding.
🤔
Amusing, sure, but that didn't fly...
Graydon
in reply to j_bertolotti • • •@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.
@tempusfelix @syntaxxor @pluralistic
The Penguin of Evil
in reply to Graydon • • •Aethon
in reply to The Penguin of Evil • • •@etchedpixels @graydon @j_bertolotti @syntaxxor
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.
Nicole Parsons
in reply to Aethon • • •@tempusfelix @etchedpixels @graydon @j_bertolotti @syntaxxor
What happens to a society when a job is unpaid, undervalued, and disparaged, yet the government is orchestrating laws to coerce people into doing it?
Things like parenting.
Lots of process knowledge required to raise children successfully, and yet the GOP is defunding prenatal care, school lunches, vaccination programs, public education & health.
Republicans & their war on parenting children to adulthood successfully
Space Invader
in reply to j_bertolotti • • •@j_bertolotti @tempusfelix @syntaxxor
A friend was learning to cook. He read the instructions on o packet of pasta: “Bring a pot of water to boil”
He filled it to the brim!
A relatively harmless lesson, but a perfect example of assumed knowledge. (And yes, he’s much better now)
Spoofer3
in reply to Space Invader • • •@spaceinvader @j_bertolotti @tempusfelix @syntaxxor
This reminds me of the grade school project to write the instructions down for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich, followed by a very literal interpretation of those instructions.
I learned to ride horses and I read a lot of books related to it. My friend said I'd never learn to ride from the book. My conclusions after becoming a fairly accomplished horseman, 1) is that the horse (and time on task) is the best teacher, however, the books were what allowed me to expand well beyond anything that I would have discovered myself in my lifetime, 2) there was so much missing from every book though not the same parts, so important to read lots of them from lots of perspectives, 3) and at the beginning, I thought I'd write the book that had all the important pieces in it, but realized that it was impossible and that actually, the books did a pretty good job covering the basis after all.
Robotistry
in reply to j_bertolotti • • •@j_bertolotti @tempusfelix @syntaxxor This is one of the things grade school should be *for* - ensuring adults have basic process knowledge across a range of disciplines. Cooking, woodworking, sewing and mending, visual art, dance, cleaning, music, sculpture, managing one's finances, gardening, household repair and maintenance, metalworking....
(I'm still salty that as a girl, I had to take cooking and sewing and wasn't allowed to take woodworking and metalworking. I eventually learned woodworking, but metalworking seems so *cool*!)
Steven Heywood
in reply to Robotistry • • •At our school we didn't get to see or do any of the cool stuff in metalworking class, most of which consisted of our filing ingots of steel into roughly luggage-label-shaped pieces with rasps a blacksmith would use for polishing his baby's toenails.
Hamish Buchanan
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •This is the sad knowledge of anyone who has had to train their (cheaper) replacement.
The dishwasher was clearly a saint.
@pluralistic