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> Quality, Pirsig says, surrounds us. It is in a rug cleaned with care, a well-maintained garden, and the order of words in a sentence. Reminds me a lot of Ale
by voisin 4y ago
> Quality, Pirsig says, surrounds us. It is in a rug cleaned with care, a well-maintained garden, and the order of words in a sentence.
Reminds me a lot of Alexander’s “Thing which cannot be named” from A Pattern Language. You know it when you experience it, but it can’t be described fully in words.
- hprotagonist 4y agoall the good stuff is ineffable. There’s a hard limit to extent to which “knowing that” covers the facts of the world; after which comes “knowing how”, and there’s no getting around it. my absolute favorite benediction begins with “the peace of god, which passes all understanding…”
- hinkley 4y agoA particularly tongue in cheek way to describe a statue is that it's a block of marble with all the bits that aren't the statue removed. Both Michelangelo and Mark Twain have quotes that bear that sentiment. There are ways to describe Quality by what it is not, and people often do, but defining things in the negative tends to be a less effective coping mechanism. Some people try to describe Quality by its consequences, rather than the consequences of not having it. But it's still slippery, in large part because we often only know it in hindsight. Long feedback loops are notoriously bad learning opportunities.