Post Axq2m4GIhNYzntshd2 by vga256@dialup.cafe
(DIR) More posts by vga256@dialup.cafe
(DIR) Post #Axpzu7PMaMCI12GeUS by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-09-03T18:40:38Z
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First off, this guy is crazy smart, his views on LLMs, which I posted here to a great silence (too many people seem to think that the problems with LLMs are technical? lol, yes I'm making fun of you).The book he's referring to below, about "Process knowledge", is directly about human skill, passed from person to person, through social structures and apprenticeships. The MAJOR THING MISSING from American work places today. You get skills with your body, no human or animal is a mind floating in the aether......the kind of thing you get by going into a physical workplace. But of course the value of that place is entirely contingent upon being pleasant or tolerable, with co-workers, more skilled and lesser, solving problems together, developing solutions, whatever, not just hunkered down in surveillance cubicles coding in solitude. I wouldn't work in those either.https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/process-knowledge-is-crucial-to-economic
(DIR) Post #Axq2m4GIhNYzntshd2 by vga256@dialup.cafe
2025-09-03T19:12:35Z
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@tomjennings although this article and the book are more focused on economics, the concept of "process knowledge" is an interesting one that received much deeper treatment in the 70s and 80s (second-order) systems theory and cybernetics academic literature. thinking here of michael polanyi's book "Personal Knowledge".. which is basically about how we come to embody (in ourselves) a practical and tacit relationship with the world.those ideas got picked up by sociologists and psychologists, and some of the best work produced really deep phenomenologies and cultural studies of work environments. the vast majority of theorists still believe that knowledge is information that you can beam/transfer from person to person (via the aether!). these cyberneticists really decimated that 19th century view and offered an ecological/human perspective to replace itfor me, the sad part about working remotely, and solo, has been the absolute dearth of creative problem solving that can only be done in pairs or threes. i miss being able to think out a problem as a group, and come up with a bunch of very different solutions out loud. my software development has totally suffered for a lack of it.
(DIR) Post #Axq3iKPknnJQhC5Fpo by vga256@dialup.cafe
2025-09-03T19:13:10Z
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@tomjennings although this article and the book are more focused on economics, the concept of "process knowledge" is an interesting one that received much deeper treatment in the 70s and 80s (second-order) systems theory and cybernetics academic literature. thinking here of michael polanyi's books "Personal Knowledge" and "The Tacit Dimension".. which are basically about how we come to embody (in ourselves) a practical and tacit relationship with the world.those ideas got picked up by sociologists and psychologists, and some of the best work produced really deep phenomenologies and cultural studies of work environments. the vast majority of theorists still believe that knowledge is information that you can beam/transfer from person to person (via the aether!). these cyberneticists really decimated that 19th century view and offered an ecological/human perspective to replace itfor me, the sad part about working remotely, and solo, has been the absolute dearth of creative problem solving that can only be done in pairs or threes. i miss being able to think out a problem as a group, and come up with a bunch of very different solutions out loud. my software development has totally suffered for a lack of it.
(DIR) Post #AxqJeneziuyhVZYHa4 by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-09-03T22:21:58Z
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@vga256 Yes. What was interesting to me was the discussion of Chinese folk hopping from job to job, picking up skills and meeting people. That is PRECISELY my work experience. My skill set is so broad people think I'm making shit up. Not always deep but I can find a way to dig myself out of very many holes. Beyond that mundanity, our American and Western culture has internalized what I see as the Christian mind/body split, and act as if it is fact. Certainly all of so call a-I (lol if I use the obvious phrases my filters will block replies) has assumed and designed around this since the 1950s (the Macy Conferences are filled with this nonsense). This destructive idea factors into racism and the valuing of human labor. Into education and class, the devaluing of manual anything. And it's now become the root idea behind the destruction of the USs legacy of hands on skills and (I hate this word) entrepreneurship, the starting up of lots of little businesses to solve whacky problems. The destruction of US culture -- already way beyond stopping now -+ is rooted in this fucked up mind/body nonsense. My friend Simon Penny writes books about embodiment and ramifications etc and it's like an uphill battle. Oh well.
(DIR) Post #AxqPTqCcWw3ZvtRCfg by davebauerart@mastodon.social
2025-09-03T23:27:09Z
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@tomjennings Very interesting! I know I learned everything by doing, but did in fact have a social learning career totally online for about 20 years. The hopping from job to job picking up skills is a major theme for many of the people who inspire me most, so much I have a podcast about it.