>[!abstract] >Polanyi’s paradox, named after philosopher Michael Polanyi, is the observation that “we can know more than we can tell”: humans rely on tacit knowledge—skills, intuitions, and pattern recognition—that they cannot fully articulate or formalize. In the context of technology and economics, it highlights why many human tasks are difficult to automate: much of what people do depends on implicit know-how that resists codification into explicit rules. The paradox underscores limits of formal knowledge representation and explains both the resilience of certain jobs against automation and the challenge of embedding human expertise into machines. >[!related] >- **North** (upstream): [[Tacit knowledge]] (knowledge that is hard to articulate or encode but can be demonstrated in practice, like riding a bicycle) >- **West** (similar): [[Moravec paradox]] >- **East** (different): [[Explicit knowledge]] (knowledge that can be clearly articulated, codified, and transmitted) >- **South** (downstream): [[Limits of automation]] (areas where tacit, experiential, or intuitive skill resists easy substitution by algorithms or machines)