0fc66fedcb
Standardize draft articles with YAML frontmatter including title, date, topics, related, and abstract. Expand README drafts section into a table listing all drafts with topics. Add "Testing Telos" to published articles.
14 lines
971 B
Markdown
14 lines
971 B
Markdown
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title: "Tacit Knowledge and the Testing Checklist"
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date: 2026-04-20
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topics: [philosophy, craft, epistemology]
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related: []
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abstract: >
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Polanyi's claim that "we know more than we can tell" is the best available account of why experienced testers catch what juniors and certifications miss. Phronesis cannot be handed to a new hire via checklist, and certainly cannot be handed to a language model.
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---
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Tacit Knowledge and the Testing Checklist. Polanyi's The Tacit Dimension[^1] — "we know more than we can tell" — is the best available account of why experienced testers catch things that junior ones (and ISTQB certifications) miss. This dovetails neatly with your Competent Tester / Spolsky post and gives you ammunition against the Claude-first mandate you've worried about elsewhere: phronesis cannot be handed to a new hire via checklist, and certainly cannot be handed to an LLM.
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[^1]: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo6035368.html
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