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>One of the things he told me, and that I also observed, was that the vast majority of financial experts (basically, the people in the accounting department of
by vmurthy 4mo ago
>One of the things he told me, and that I also observed, was that the vast majority of financial experts (basically, the people in the accounting department of companies) had an extremely difficult time just telling him what the rules of any particular transaction should be
We have internalized more knowledge than we can explain sounds like the textbook definition of Polanyi's paradox:"Polanyi's paradox, named in honour of the British-Hungarian philosopher Michael Polanyi, is the theory that human knowledge of how the world functions and of our own capability are, to a large extent, beyond our explicit understanding" [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polanyi%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polanyi%27s_paradox
- hn_throwaway_99 4mo agoThanks so much! I hadn't heard of Polanyi's paradox before but it is exactly what I was talking about. The Wikipedia entry even highlights the problem for AI-driven development: > Polanyi's paradox has been widely considered to identify a major obstacle in the fields of AI and automation, since programming an automated task or system is difficult unless a complete and fully specific description of the procedure is available.
- rcxdude 4mo agoI'd say the opposite in some ways: it's arguably the reason for the bitter lesson and ML techniques tending to beat other approaches, because they work by giving examples as opposed to trying to articulate the rules in an explicit manner.
- formerly_proven 4mo agocf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory as a causative agent behind the paradox.
- reemyoass 4mo agohaving worked on automation of accounting process, it has been a combination of ever evolving ruleset/edge scenarios for 10% cases plus standardised rules for 90% of the cases. i think the problem is that it is an evolving field. alot of times it borders law, which makes it murky and vague too.
- cindyllm 4mo ago[dead]
- taneq 4mo agoThis reminds me of that quote about how if our brains were simple enough for us to understand, we'd be too simple to understand them.
- halfcat 4mo agoThe body can know more than it can tell.