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> Mostly you look at things for what "they are" or "how they look" but not "how they work" or "their potential uses"

Say more. I feel I'm the exact opposite if I understand you correctly.

The actual quote, from the OP, is "Pirsig proposes that to become expert at keeping anything in good repair, you need to understand it in two ways—how it works and how it’s made"

This seems intuitively sensible for mechanical / physical objects, although I'm not sure how well it applies where the broken thing is software, with deep complexity and multiple layers of abstraction.

I read the book long before I went to work in tech. In my mind, it really helps with troubleshooting software issues as I feel better qualified to "fix the thing that's wrong" if I have a complete understanding of all the moving parts. So many people i work with freeze if a restart doesn't work. They don't consider at all the overall design of "the thing"

I think the more macro point is that these are all different, equally valid, and differentially useful ways to slice the world. It's good to have a lot of different ways to slice the universe and to use them consciously and explicitly for what they're each good at.

I.e. ontologies exist in consciousnesses, not in the universe, and they're really powerful tools

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