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> only knowledge that is tacit for the typical person is the knowledge of how to move muscles. Thats's not really true. If you are a native English speaker, i

> only knowledge that is tacit for the typical person is the knowledge of how to move muscles. Thats's not really true. If you are a native English speaker, it might surprise you to learn that English adjectives have a default order. We normally say "the big red ball" but "the red big ball" sounds decidedly odd unless there's an explicit contrast ("No, not the blue one. I want the red big ball"). This is apparently taught in ESL classes, but neither I nor any of my native-speaker colleagues remember learning it in school. You have an "intuitive" model of physics in your head that allows you to rapidly determine if piles of objects are stable without grinding through balance-of-forces calculations. It's not exact, and deviates from reality in interesting ways, but it's there. https://www.pnas.org/content/110/45/18327.short https://www.pnas.org/content/110/45/18327.short You have all kinds of implicit priors that help you make sense of sensory input. You have some idea of the speed and smoothness with which things move, how an object's apparent size changes as you move towards or away from it and how it might look under different lighting conditions. People share some, but not all of these priors, and they're hard to elicit, hence the endless discussion about The Dress that was either black/blue or white/gold.

Kednicma 6y ago
This knowledge that you are discussing is quite interesting, but not tacit: You had no problem explaining it to me in words alone. Moreover, it can all be operationalized; physics in particular is well-operationalized and usually evaluated numerically. I gather that part of the tacit-knowledge movement is to talk about knowledge that cannot be put into words. The example of how to move a muscle is extremely instructive: There is no sequence of words that will allow a person to examine and select the correct bundles of nerves for moving a muscle, and instead a person simply must learn to do it somehow. Even then, if somebody does something like isolating grouped muscle movements, they might be able to explain in words how to fine-tune control over some muscles.
- mattkrause 6y ago
  The adjective case might be debatable, since it's usually learned implicitly but could be taught. Intuitive physics may be a stronger example: the point is that it's not "real" physics where you numerically evaluate the statics and centers of mass. It's a set of heuristics that let you rapidly (and not always successfully) determine if a pile of books is stable, using some internal model of the world. Ditto for sensory input. You have all these built-in principles (or priors or biases) that have evolved over millions of years to help you make sense of ambiguous or impoverished sensory input. These are also mostly implicit. We can certainly name these effects talk /about/ them, and even probe them with careful experiments....but we can do that to bike-riding too.
Wistar 6y ago
The Royal Order of Adjectives. https://www.lavc.edu/profdev/library/docs/Adjectives-and-adverbs.aspx https://www.lavc.edu/profdev/library/docs/Adjectives-and-adv...
- mattkrause 6y ago
  Exactly. There is a rule but I would venture that very few native English speakers know it or were taught it; it's learned implicitly instead. I only found out there was a rule because I stumbled across the phenomenon doing a computational linguistics project. My broader point (which I made poorly) is that native levels of language proficiency require a mix of explicit and implicit learning. There are certainly explicit rules for verb conjugation and agreement. Some things can be learned either way, like adjective order. Others seem to be mostly implicit: I can't give you a general rule for why "I asked her to marry me and she agreed" sounds fine but *"I asked her to marry me and she concurred" sounds weird.

Kednicma 6y ago

This knowledge that you are discussing is quite interesting, but not tacit: You had no problem explaining it to me in words alone. Moreover, it can all be operationalized; physics in particular is well-operationalized and usually evaluated numerically. I gather that part of the tacit-knowledge movement is to talk about knowledge that cannot be put into words. The example of how to move a muscle is extremely instructive: There is no sequence of words that will allow a person to examine and select the correct bundles of nerves for moving a muscle, and instead a person simply must learn to do it somehow. Even then, if somebody does something like isolating grouped muscle movements, they might be able to explain in words how to fine-tune control over some muscles.

mattkrause 6y ago
The adjective case might be debatable, since it's usually learned implicitly but could be taught. Intuitive physics may be a stronger example: the point is that it's not "real" physics where you numerically evaluate the statics and centers of mass. It's a set of heuristics that let you rapidly (and not always successfully) determine if a pile of books is stable, using some internal model of the world. Ditto for sensory input. You have all these built-in principles (or priors or biases) that have evolved over millions of years to help you make sense of ambiguous or impoverished sensory input. These are also mostly implicit. We can certainly name these effects talk /about/ them, and even probe them with careful experiments....but we can do that to bike-riding too.

Wistar 6y ago

The Royal Order of Adjectives. https://www.lavc.edu/profdev/library/docs/Adjectives-and-adverbs.aspx https://www.lavc.edu/profdev/library/docs/Adjectives-and-adv...

mattkrause 6y ago
Exactly. There is a rule but I would venture that very few native English speakers know it or were taught it; it's learned implicitly instead. I only found out there was a rule because I stumbled across the phenomenon doing a computational linguistics project. My broader point (which I made poorly) is that native levels of language proficiency require a mix of explicit and implicit learning. There are certainly explicit rules for verb conjugation and agreement. Some things can be learned either way, like adjective order. Others seem to be mostly implicit: I can't give you a general rule for why "I asked her to marry me and she agreed" sounds fine but *"I asked her to marry me and she concurred" sounds weird.