Concept · Seed idea · last reconsidered August 17, 2026
Tacit knowledge
Know-how that a person has but cannot fully put into words or explicit rules.
- Territories
- Skill
Source
Tacit knowledge, following Michael Polanyi's usage, is knowledge that is difficult to transfer through explicit statement — the kind of know-how present in skilled practice but hard to fully articulate.
Interpretation
This project is interested in tacit knowledge as a category especially vulnerable to automation and delegation, since it resists exactly the kind of explicit specification a system typically needs.
Caution
Invoking "tacit knowledge" can become an unfalsifiable way to claim a skill matters without demonstrating it; this project will try to be concrete rather than rely on the term alone.
Connected ideas
has example
- ExpertiseConcept
Professional expertise is a concrete example of tacit knowledge accumulated through practice.
is questioned by
related to
- DelegationConcept
- We know more than we can tellClaim
This is the concept's origin.
Continue exploring
- QuestionWhich abilities should remain ours?A question about which skills are worth keeping even when a tool could do them for us.
- ConceptExpertiseReliable, practiced skill in a domain, built through sustained exposure to its problems.
- ClaimWe know more than we can tellPolanyi's claim that skilled recognition outruns the criteria anyone can state for it.
- ConceptDelegationHanding a task to another person or system to perform on one's behalf.