Situation awareness is not knowledge (some prefer situational awareness). Knowledge is pipes, situation awareness is sensory information flowing through those pipes.
If it decays to worthless in any time range from minutes to a few years, it’s probably pure situation awareness.
Conversation
Longer than a few years, the medium/message coupling and co-evolution is too strong to be a;proximately separated. If it doesn’t fade to zero value in 3-4 years at most, it’s probably reshaping the knowledge pipes and persistent mental models need to be updated.
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A good example is VC and startups. The time constant is about 3-4 years. I was clued in enough to have true situation awareness for about a year twice in my life: ~2009, and ~2014. I am in a trough now. I can read startup news and parse it, but not really interpret it.
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Jargon like seed/A/B, ‘liquidation preference’, ‘convertible debt’, ‘pari passu’ etc is structural knowledge. It doesn’t decay but is useless without SA.
SA: Knowing what they map to in a given year: ranges, which parts are flush versus starved, which firms are leading etc.
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Generalizing, vocabulary elements are knowledge. Proper names, numbers, rankings are situation awareness. They co-evolve. New jargon might emerge (“pre-seed”), universe might expand (Kickstarter). Stuff might go from SA to knowledge if institutionalized, like regulation (GDPR).
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Another example is climate change/action.
“Duck curve” is knowledge
Is a 3000 MW grid storage battery replacing a canceled gas peaked knowledge routine stuff or a significant thing? Being able to judge that is SA.
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SA is easily recovered if lost. But knowledge decay (pipes rusting and leaking) is not.
If you’re out of a game for 3y you can get back in with a few weeks of catching up at most.
If you’re out for 10, it might take years to get back in or be impossible. Too much pipe change.
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Replying to
Are you familiar with ’s ‘pace layering’ models from HOW BUILDINGS LEARN and THE CLOCK OF THE LONG NOW? There might be a similar dynamic for different sorts of knowledge decay.
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Yep! I was focusing on individual knowledge which is constrained by mortality. For potentially immortal institutions, the knowledge vs situation awareness yin-yang is fractally present at all time scales and Stewart’s model is a useful gestalt view of the result

