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elharo comments on Open Thread, July 1-15, 2013 - Less Wrong
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I've been thinking about tacit knowledge recently.
A very concrete example of tacit knowledge that I rub up against on a regular basis is a basic understanding of file types. In the past I have needed to explain to educated and ostensibly computer-literate professionals under the age of 40 that a jpeg is an image, and a PDF is a document, and they're different kinds of entities that aren't freely interchangeable. It's difficult for me to imagine how someone could not know this. I don't recall ever having to learn it. It seems intuitively obvious. (Uh-oh!)
So I wonder if there aren't some massive gains to be had from understanding tacit knowledge more than I do. Some applications:
What do you think or know about tacit knowledge, LessWrong? Tell me. It might not be obvious.
Uh-oh indeed. Like most statements involving the word "is", this is probably one of those questions that should be dissolved. Thus I will ask:
What do you mean when you say document? I.e. what are the characteristics that a document has which a JPEG file does not, and which a PDF does have? Why is it wrong for something that is an image to also be a document?
This seems to be actively running away from the point. Also, see the other response re: my lack of interest in this particular ontological discussion.
In my example, there's also a concrete reason to distinguish between images and documents. The image is going to be embedded on a webpage, where people will simply look at it. Meanwhile, the document is going to be printed off as an actual physical document. Their respective formats are generally optimised for these different purposes.
I'll try: You don't need OCR to get the words out of the document. An image is just dots and/or geometric shapes. (Which would make a copy-protected PDF not a document.)