3 ms·
This makes me think strongly of Matthew B. Crawford's books ("The World Beyond Your Head", "Shop Class as Soulcraft"). He focuses directly on difficult techniqu
by beat 10y ago
This makes me think strongly of Matthew B. Crawford's books ("The World Beyond Your Head", "Shop Class as Soulcraft"). He focuses directly on difficult techniques like this, things that require both intellectual focus and physical technique to master - craftsmanship. He believes that this is the finest work we can do. Pure intellectual abstraction doesn't exercise our minds fully, we need to engage with the physical world and its complexities as well.
Think about it - this is so incredibly sensitive to the exact consistency of the pasta dough, it must change by temperature, humidity, time of day, barometric pressure... to make it work, she just has to feel the pasta, to know pasta in a way that can only be done with years of manual effort.
That's why they can't build a machine to do it. They can't control the conditions well enough.
- Shivetya 10y agoI fail to believe such a machine cannot be made. I do however believe it may not be economical to do so. If it can be measured then why cannot it be reproduced? None of the values you listed cannot be measured and accounted for. She has three listed ingredients, however I am curious how much perspiration is in the final product, surely her hands impart something through the skin contact. Finally the drying process would have its own effect, after preparing it how much of a difference is there between it and another pasta? What exactly do they consider the differences? Is it purely texture, if so then just the preparation of the final dish can affect what you will perceive
- beat 10y agoYou should read Crawford, then. Read Sidney Dekker's "Drift into Failure" as well. Complexity is the problem. Complex, evolving, interacting conditions. You can't just measure in a vacuum when you have many interacting variables. What you're talking about is the result of the reductionist intellectual tradition. And it's been fantastic at many things - it built our modern world. But it cannot solve every problem. Not everything humans do can be reduced to simple measurement and process.