"Appreciate" is a weird word. At least for me (not an English speaker) it has a positive connotation so with that in mind I sure hope nobody appreciates the importance of optics. The concept is dumb but it is important and we have to play the game to achieve anything.
Why did you read that as 2 though? Is there a context clue I'm missing or is there some grammar rule I don't know of? Honest question, I'm Polish.
For me there's a huge gap between 1 and 2 so it might cause misunderstandings when used in a sentence. I despise a lot of things I fully understand and if I said I "appreciate" them - sounds weird.
It's heuristics, not grammar. You usually appreciate a noun or noun phrase in a transitive sentence (X appreciates Y).
Case 1: If it's something useful (e.g. 'your help', 'what you did') then it's more likely about being thankful.
This use of 'appreciate' is also a social action. You say it to make someone feel good for helping.
Case 2: If it's an abstract thing (e.g. 'the importance of', 'the difficulty of') then it's more likely you're talking about understanding.
Usually when you talk about this usage it's because the _fact_ of understanding is important to the speech act. If someone explains the law of gravity you don't say "I appreciate that", you say "I understand that". But if you fell from a height and hurt yourself you can say "I didn't appreciate the law of gravity".
Case 3: If it's intransitive and it's about money ('the car appreciated in value', 'the house appreciated in value').
It's a pity that heuristics are not mentioned in most language books or dictionaries. At least I wasn't taught any in school (10+ years ago). This should be next to the word definition.
Similar is "enjoy", which is almost always possible but sometimes can be used in a more... detached sense? "Perspectives in nature we rarely enjoy" as seen in The Far Side here, for instance.
Optics are not dumb. Corporates are very noisy. It is difficult to extract the signal from the noise if you're not working on a project full-time (as most people are, except for you, the tech lead), and it will definitely not happen by accident. That's why you need to manage optics.
I agree that they are very important but I still call it dumb in a "it's stupid that we have to do this because we suck as a human species" kind of way.
I think that's what the word "appreciate" is hinting at in the phrase: "most engineers..don't appreciate the importance of optics."
Optics is subjective and often superficial, a performative illusion for the sake of whoever is looking at you. But that doesn't mean it's not valuable or useful in a social context.
Here, I read the word "appreciate" to mean, to recognize the value of a thing even if you disagree with it.
For example, someone could be a pacifist and still appreciate the need for weapons for national defense. They may not agree with the means but still admit it has value and effect.
