Discovery Is Felt, Not Formulated: What Agents Could Learn from Einstein's Light Beam
sanmikoyejo · x · 2026-10-29
Part three turns to discovery. Invoking Michael Polanyi's 'Personal Knowledge' — Einstein imagined riding beside a light beam at 16, then spent a decade formalizing relativity — the author argues discovery is felt, not formulated, guided by metaphorical and perceptual reasoning. He parallels this with AI agents: coding agents today circle local optima making minor tweaks, but agents combining articulated knowledge with tacit analogical reasoning might one day 'ride next to the light beam', motivating his paper on measuring tacit knowledge.
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