Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c72IR // #c72Synthesis

“We know more than we can tell.”

— In our words · Source: The Second Machine Age (Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee)

[Use when]

When someone claims their job is safe because it needs 'human judgment.'

[Why it matters]

Polanyi's line was the great defense of human work — tacit knowledge that can't be boiled down to rules can't be computerized. The book's twist: machines learned pattern recognition anyway, and the defense is collapsing task by task.

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