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Are you familiar with the Recognition Primed Decision Making Model, or the field of Naturalistic Decision Making? NDM is a field of research that focuses on tak

Are you familiar with the Recognition Primed Decision Making Model, or the field of Naturalistic Decision Making? NDM is a field of research that focuses on taking expert intuition (which I refer to as tacit knowledge in this piece), extracting it out of the heads of professionals and then creating training methods to enable less skilled operators to learn these tacit skills on their own. The methods are primarily associated with and deployed in the military. I think the most famous paper from this tradition is Gary Klein and Daniel Kahneman's A Failure to Disagree, which lays out the conditions necessary for expert intuition: https://www.fs.usda.gov/rmrs/sites/default/files/Kahneman2009_ConditionsforIntuitiveExpertise_AFailureToDisagree.pdf https://www.fs.usda.gov/rmrs/sites/default/files/Kahneman200... (The two are intellectual rivals, but they put aside their differences to write this piece, over a period of about 6 years, IIRC.) If you want to get at a definitional debate about the computing applications, that is fine by me. If you want to argue about the philosophical problems with Polanyi's formulation, that is also cool. But understand that I don't particularly care for either debate. I am interested in instrumental outcomes. The discovery of tacit knowledge and the methods found in NDM have been incredibly useful to me in the pursuit of skill acquisition. This was mostly what I was getting at in the post.

bwestergard 6y ago
"I am interested in instrumental outcomes. The discovery of tacit knowledge and the methods found in NDM have been incredibly useful to me in the pursuit of skill acquisition. This was mostly what I was getting at in the post." Yup, no worries, I think it's a fine post in that regard. Just trying to separate your genuine insights into the practical problems faced by individuals with a certain social position (knowledge workers, aspiring entrepreneurs), and more general theories about the evolution of labor markets, technological change, and the political consequences thereof. "NDM is a field of research that focuses on taking expert intuition (which I refer to as tacit knowledge in this piece), extracting it out of the heads of professionals and then creating training methods to enable less skilled operators to learn these tacit skills on their own. The methods are primarily associated with and deployed in the military." I am only glancingly familiar with this work, but I think you've summarized it well. This basic project - of formalizing work procedures to allow for a shift in the relative amount of skilled versus unskilled labor input to a process - can be traced back to the dawn of the industrial revolution. Gaspard de Prony, Charles Babbage, F.W. Taylor (of "Taylorism" fame), and Herbert Simon (cited in the Klein/Kahneman paper) were all essentially concerned with this question. Harry Braverman and David Noble wrote interesting social histories on this theme, describing how this problem came to be seen as important, and how structuring work in this way - though it was eminently reasonable in the sort term for individual technical decision makers - might have deleterious effects in the long term for society as a whole. In a way, your recommendations give voice to the desire of many knowledge workers to return to a model of skill acquisition that would have been familiar to the members of pre- and early- modern guilds. Apprenticeship and on-the-job experience was valorized over the "book learning" of "schoolmen".
qznc 6y ago
I just realized that Klein and Kahneman conditions are a good argument for apprenticeships in programming. One condition is that the you get quick feedback about your decisions. For example, if a surgeon makes a mistake then blood splatters. In programming, if you make a syntax error the compiler immediately complains. However, a design mistake might only bite you months or years later. That is a big obstacle for developing an intuition. However, if an apprentice programmer makes a design mistake. His master can give quick feedback. I can imagine that the lack of such feedback not only results in slower learning. It might mean the non-apprentice programmer is unable to ever acquire an intuition for design no matter how many years of experience.
- itsArtur 6y ago
  > I can imagine that the lack of such feedback not only results in slower learning. It might mean the non-apprentice programmer is unable to ever acquire an intuition for design no matter how many years of experience. Yes! This is also worsened by the fact that changing jobs frequently is so common. This makes me appreciate my first job, where good design was a priority, so much more.

bwestergard 6y ago

"I am interested in instrumental outcomes. The discovery of tacit knowledge and the methods found in NDM have been incredibly useful to me in the pursuit of skill acquisition. This was mostly what I was getting at in the post." Yup, no worries, I think it's a fine post in that regard. Just trying to separate your genuine insights into the practical problems faced by individuals with a certain social position (knowledge workers, aspiring entrepreneurs), and more general theories about the evolution of labor markets, technological change, and the political consequences thereof. "NDM is a field of research that focuses on taking expert intuition (which I refer to as tacit knowledge in this piece), extracting it out of the heads of professionals and then creating training methods to enable less skilled operators to learn these tacit skills on their own. The methods are primarily associated with and deployed in the military." I am only glancingly familiar with this work, but I think you've summarized it well. This basic project - of formalizing work procedures to allow for a shift in the relative amount of skilled versus unskilled labor input to a process - can be traced back to the dawn of the industrial revolution. Gaspard de Prony, Charles Babbage, F.W. Taylor (of "Taylorism" fame), and Herbert Simon (cited in the Klein/Kahneman paper) were all essentially concerned with this question. Harry Braverman and David Noble wrote interesting social histories on this theme, describing how this problem came to be seen as important, and how structuring work in this way - though it was eminently reasonable in the sort term for individual technical decision makers - might have deleterious effects in the long term for society as a whole. In a way, your recommendations give voice to the desire of many knowledge workers to return to a model of skill acquisition that would have been familiar to the members of pre- and early- modern guilds. Apprenticeship and on-the-job experience was valorized over the "book learning" of "schoolmen".

qznc 6y ago

I just realized that Klein and Kahneman conditions are a good argument for apprenticeships in programming. One condition is that the you get quick feedback about your decisions. For example, if a surgeon makes a mistake then blood splatters. In programming, if you make a syntax error the compiler immediately complains. However, a design mistake might only bite you months or years later. That is a big obstacle for developing an intuition. However, if an apprentice programmer makes a design mistake. His master can give quick feedback. I can imagine that the lack of such feedback not only results in slower learning. It might mean the non-apprentice programmer is unable to ever acquire an intuition for design no matter how many years of experience.

itsArtur 6y ago
> I can imagine that the lack of such feedback not only results in slower learning. It might mean the non-apprentice programmer is unable to ever acquire an intuition for design no matter how many years of experience. Yes! This is also worsened by the fact that changing jobs frequently is so common. This makes me appreciate my first job, where good design was a priority, so much more.