[maerF0x0]

Granted it's been about 10 years since I read it...

In addition to what electrondood said. It helped me understand that there are some people who just want their technology to work. Not to understand it's qualities. John Sutherland (the character with the BMW). Many Apple users are like that. They want the defaults to work for them. They want to remain clueless and it "just works" ...

[phist_mcgee]

And I think getting to the end of the book, and seeing Pirsig descend into a pretty dark place in understanding quality being undefinable in any actionable way, I guess sometimes it's easier to just let go, and not understand something. A lot of times, understanding just makes us more miserable. Fantastic book, read it as a teenager and it deeply affected me.

[maerF0x0]

A gross paraphrase I got was "I cant define quality, but I know it when I see it".

[phist_mcgee]

That's a great one! Something that can be validated yet not easily calculated. Kind of like hashing!