Michael Schwern

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Michael Schwern commented on Crap Is Gold ’metis’ is used in the book ’Seeing Like A State’. It’s a Greek word which the author uses to mean ’the knowledge that can only come from practical experience.’ An example he uses is a meteorologist vs a sea captain. The meteorologist, with a lot of computers and data, can make accurate, broad predictions and explain all the hows and whys of the weather. But put them both on a ship in the captain’s home waters and the sea captain is the one who can look at the sky and tell you if there’s a storm coming. It means local, subjective knowledge. An example of its application: its convenient to dice up fields into rectangular plots and say ’plant corn in this one, beans in this one...’ but if you stand in the field you know that there’s the little dip over there that always fills with water when it rains and kills the corn. And there’s the spot over there that gets less sun because of a nearby hill. Metis is messy. It’s specific to your situation (that a farmer has a muddy hollow in his field doesn’t help anyone else). It’s observation-based. It often doesn’t know *why* a thing happens (the sea captain can’t tell you why its going to rain, just that is will) but it often fits the situation much better than cookie-cutter knowledge handed down. It happens a lot in programming, especially in questions of style. Good style might say to do one thing, but the individual programmer, who knows their situation, might decide that ’good’ style would actually be bad in their situation. That is an application of metis (and hubris). 8 months ago
Michael Schwern commented on Amazing Holes "Amazing Holes", porn or documentary? You’ll have to read it to decide. And yes, there is a "glory hole" in this show. The lame political message at the end mars an otherwise interesting show. 2 years ago