You might be right but I'm not inclined to give the author the benefit of the doubt. From the abstract, the author clearly says:
"The article further argues that ... computers are not in the world."
The specific quote you mention is in a larger paragraph which says:
"Computers are not in our world. I have earlier said that neural networks need not be programmed, and therefore can handle tacit knowledge. However, it is simply not true, as some of the advocates of Big Data argue, that the data “speak for themselves”. Normally, the data used are related to one or more models, they are selected by humans, and in the end they consist of numbers."
My reading of this is that "tacit" is used as a kind of dog whistle to dualists. It's ambiguous enough so that the author can claim they meant "learned" while still suggesting an underlying dualism.
Regardless of the meaning of "tacit" in this context, the author pretty much flat out says they're a dualist by repeatedly claiming "computers are not in our world" and "in the end they consist of numbers".
I think you're giving the author too much credibility that they aren't making a plea to mysticism.
I don't think the author makes a strong argument, and I disagree with their conclusion.
But the author's argument actually appears to be mostly that science itself is insufficient to understand the world. This argument is outlined in the section starting "But the replacement of our everyday world by the world of science is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. Edmund Husserl was one of the first who pointed this out, and attributed this misunderstanding to Galileo."
I think it's a pretty weak argument and I'm surprised Nature published it - the author wouldn't last 2 minutes trying to defend it on HN.
I do think that a better articulated version of his argument would be something like this (which attempts to capture what he means by "not in the world"): "despite all the advances in neural networks encoding tacit knowledge, it still takes a deeper human-level set of tacit knowledge in a wider context to make these neural networks useful. While we have surpassed human skills in-the-small, science based benchmarks, we seem no closer to achieving embodied human-level intelligence from machines in-the-large."
Again, I think you're giving the author the benefit of the doubt when it's not warranted. Your paraphrasing "science itself is insufficient to understand the world" is code for dualism.
I forgot to add the reference in the comment above but tacit means what I said it meant. I quoted directly from Wiktionary [1]. I'll do so again here:
Adjective
tacit (comparative more tacit, superlative most tacit)
1. Expressed in silence; implied, but not made explicit; silent.
tacit consent : consent by silence, or by not raising an objection
2. (logic) Not derived from formal principles of reasoning; based on
induction rather than deduction.
I chose the "logic" interpretation as it seemed the most appropriate given the context.
I don't have any strong opinion about if the author is a proponent of dualism. I'd note that Quantum Bayesianism[1][2] (discussed the other day on HN) seems much more mystical than this, and yet is usually considered within the realms of science.
I build neural networks in my day job. They encode tacit information because they are "based on induction rather than deduction". But that's not anything mystical - it's just learning from data, and it's not a dog whistle towards mysticism either.
"The article further argues that ... computers are not in the world."
The specific quote you mention is in a larger paragraph which says:
"Computers are not in our world. I have earlier said that neural networks need not be programmed, and therefore can handle tacit knowledge. However, it is simply not true, as some of the advocates of Big Data argue, that the data “speak for themselves”. Normally, the data used are related to one or more models, they are selected by humans, and in the end they consist of numbers."
My reading of this is that "tacit" is used as a kind of dog whistle to dualists. It's ambiguous enough so that the author can claim they meant "learned" while still suggesting an underlying dualism.
Regardless of the meaning of "tacit" in this context, the author pretty much flat out says they're a dualist by repeatedly claiming "computers are not in our world" and "in the end they consist of numbers".
I think you're giving the author too much credibility that they aren't making a plea to mysticism.