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Samzdat has an absolutely excellent article on the distinctions between state-level (often technocratic) knowledge and on-the-ground knowledge, and the difficul

• wutbrodo 6y ago
  I've read this post, and Seeing Like a State after SSC's review of it (thank you for the reference though!). Both of these came after my Peruvian epiphany, but they really helped sharpen my understanding of epistemology. Though my focus here is a little different: instead of focusing on how top-down policy privileges techne over metis due to its legibility[1], I'm primarily interested in how the individual can make better use of metis from outside his bubble. This is the main thing I look for when I travel, and a nine-month, and a 6-continent backpacking trip I took in my early 20s was a really transformative experience for exactly that reason. [1] The reason I don't focus too much on this aspect is because I've already found it productive to model politics and policy as a natural disasters, or millions of monkeys banging on typewriters: I don't think most humans are capable of what I'd consider critical thinking, and they're certainly not capable of exercising it in large, complex systems. I get that this is a little nihilistic, but in practice it just means being selective about how you choose to spend your time with and not getting too drawn into cases where you can't control it, like politics.