[HN Gopher] Profession by Isaac Asimov (1957)
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Profession by Isaac Asimov (1957)
Author : signa11
Score : 88 points
Date : 2024-03-10 15:04 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.abelard.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.abelard.org)
| garyrob wrote:
| One of my favorite Asimov stories.
| rnmmrnm wrote:
| Indeed one of my favorites as well. Can't stop thinking about its
| modern angle where for example our industry is full of mediocre
| programmers that only really can do more of what they have
| already seen. I'm really longing for colleagues that actually put
| research effort into their code.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Did you include the eternal pressure from bad managers in
| your... analysis, let's call it generously? Did it occur to you
| that people want to put research into their code but are not
| given time to do so?
|
| And finally, did it occur to you that "just leave and find a
| better company" is not possible for everyone? Not to mention
| that most companies are mediocre-to-bad so the "better"
| companies are a small and very finite pool.
|
| Comments like yours paint a wrong picture and are not helpful
| or productive.
| rnmmrnm wrote:
| I get hurt by managers messing with my scope every day. It is
| a struggle :). Because of it I also find solace in open
| source where I am the boss of everything.
|
| But, I don't give up. I pitch my bosses research trails all
| of the time. 90% they don't hit the mark, mostly because I
| don't try to conform to the whatever roadmap the product team
| has laid out. But once in a while my ambition and their plan
| converge, and this is when I get to play out the really cool
| stuff I do at my job.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Cool, I try to do the same and yeah, my success rate is
| roughly the same. :)
| swatcoder wrote:
| I see the same approach to the craft when people talk about
| personal projects or their own startup efforts.
|
| You seem to have taken the OP's comment very personally, and
| I'm sorry if you're stuck in a job that forces you to
| compromise your practice even when you know better. But
| there's _also_ a (admittedly familiar) problem of a prolonged
| growth boom flooding the industry with bad engineers that
| produce fragile work and have poor foundational knowledge.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Yes, both can be and are true at the same time. It's not an
| either/or.
| northwest65 wrote:
| No, I don't think they do paint a wrong picture, and it is
| helpful for people to say it so others realise they're not
| the only ones thinking it.
| initramfs wrote:
| I think of another modern angle, in that Neura-link tech is
| being promoted, which is a path towards indoctrination, and
| ironically, the AI Safetyists that criticize unregulated
| AI/unregulated tech are somewhat indoctrinators themselves. I
| try to avoid using that term (as it suggests too much). It's
| more out of the question as to when a student has reached the
| ability to think independently, that they no longer need a
| basic amount of instruction to work (and self-study) in other
| fields.
| xw390111 wrote:
| I think it's also a direct consequence of scale and the
| commoditization of most software.
|
| You can't have people on a team of 10 all going in their own
| direction on their own schedule. It's too unpredictable and
| there are deadlines and contracts to fulfill. And for most
| commercial software, I don't need the team to research how to
| do it. We know exactly how to do it. We need the team to
| execute the plan.
|
| It absolutely sucks, but that's the reality of most coding
| jobs. At least in my experience.
| eliben wrote:
| Fantastic story, one of my favorites by Asimov!
|
| What's fun for HN is that his target profession is actually
| Computer Programmer. Interesting correlation to his eventual
| fate.
|
| I wrote a short post about this story w.r.t. job displacement of
| SWEs a couple of years ago:
| https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2022/asimov-programming-and-th...
| bruce511 wrote:
| My favorite Asimov. What particularly resonates with me is the
| idea that creators create. They create because something inside
| makes them do it, it's not about pay, or relationships, or
| people.
|
| It comes out in all kinds of ways. In mundane tasks like
| cooking, or music, or art. Or, in a few cases, programming.
|
| Over a long career I've come to agree with Asimovs premise. You
| cannot simply tell someone to create. They either have it or
| they don't. Equally you cannot tell a creator not to create.
| They will, whether you like it or not.
|
| And yes, it's a very rare attribute. Most people can be trained
| to do a task really well. Very few can create.
|
| Lucky indeed is the creator who gets paid to create. Having a
| job with the freedom to create is the ultimate success.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > Very few can create.
|
| I'm not convinced. I think that several things hold most
| people back from creation:
|
| - the risks that must be taken
|
| - the continual destruction that accompanies creation feels
| like a waste to many of us
|
| - other commitments
|
| I'm convinced that we are allowing vast amounts of creative
| ability to be stifled not merely by stultifying educational
| systems but simply by lack of opportunity.
| xw390111 wrote:
| Probably we need a firmer definition of "create" but I
| think the main thing that holds people back is it takes a
| ton of work and focus to get to state-of-the-art in most
| fields. Many people won't be able to receive that kind of
| training and make that kind of investment in time for many
| reasons. So already it's going to be rare. Then combine
| that with your reasons, and it's super rare. On the other
| hand, the population is big, so it does happen. :)
| zem wrote:
| > Equally you cannot tell a creator not to create. They will,
| whether you like it or not.
|
| for a much darker take on this, check out orson scott card's
| "unaccompanied sonata"
| zem wrote:
| my favourite asimov story[+], because i really love the trope of
| "society may enforce conformity, but then it relies on outsiders
| to advance". mercedes lackey's "the lark and the wren" is another
| good story built around this idea.
|
| [+] joint favourite with "the martian way", an extremely
| underrated story that to me exemplifies the golden age optimism
| around solar system exploration in a way that not even clarke
| manages.
| passion__desire wrote:
| Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective
| zem wrote:
| thanks, that looks like a book i'd enjoy!
| passion__desire wrote:
| "The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and
| Others Don't" I liked this book as well. Here's Max Born
| supporting the mindset.
|
| I believe there is no philosophical high-road in science,
| with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and
| find our way by trial and error, building our road behind
| us as we proceed. We do not find signposts at crossroads,
| but our own scouts erect them, to help the rest.
|
| - Max Born, as mentioned in Experiment and Theory in
| Physics (1943)
| zem wrote:
| kipling's "the explorer" also glorifies (in a positive
| sense) this mindset
| https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_explorer.htm
| - it's literally about geographic exploration, but also
| about exploration of all kinds.
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| Does anyone know of an earlier example of the trope of having a
| magic box choose your class in a novel?
| kouru225 wrote:
| Oo good question.
|
| I guess you could arguably say Plato's Republic touches on
| this, but its not the same. Makes me think there must be
| earlier examples of this though.
| Animats wrote:
| It's a very 1950s story. Everything is very organized. Many
| stories about that period were about organization, good or bad.
|
| This came from WWII, especially the European theater. Heroic mode
| had failed at Dunkirk and Dieppe. For the next round, D-Day,
| things were more organized. Way more organized. General
| Eisenhower came from logistics. He delayed D-Day a year while the
| Allies got ready. Really ready. Overwhelmingly ready. Huge
| numbers of special landing ships. Mobile instant ports. Giant
| spools of pipe to get fuel across the Atlantic. Special tanks
| that could grind up minefields. Prefabricated Coca-Cola bottling
| plants. When the invasion came, the backup was there behind it to
| put a huge army into Europe, fight through an entrenched army,
| and grind on to Berlin.
|
| That kind of thinking dominated the 1950s and 1960s, with the
| Apollo program being the last gasp of that approach.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| >"Prefabricated Coca-Cola bottling plants"
|
| Sun Tsu, an army marches on it stomach!
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There have recently been a series of posts about ancient time
| army logistics here. This used to be much more true than it
| is today.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. Prefabricated Coca-Cola bottling plants. Eisenhower
| ordered 10 bottling lines and 6,000,000 bottles per month. To
| start. By the end of the war, Coca-Cola had over 60 bottling
| lines in war zones.[1]
|
| [1] http://www.nww2m.com/2011/08/coca-cola-the-pause-that-
| refres...
| svat wrote:
| [delayed]
| walterbell wrote:
| China Mieville's _" The City and the City"_ 2010 novel and 2018
| UK TV adaptation, which popularized the term "unsee", includes a
| similar theme related to the crime of "breaching" the boundary
| between two virtual cities that occupy one physical city,
| https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/apr/07/the-cit...
| The City and the City is set up as a straightforward crime novel:
| in the dilapidated city of Beszel in eastern Europe, Inspector
| Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad is trying to solve what
| initially looks like a routine case. But as he looks deeper into
| the murder of a mysterious woman, he discovers that she has links
| to Ul Qoma, a city that exists in the same physical space as
| Beszel but whose inhabitants studiously ignore any sign of
| overlap.
| kuchenbecker wrote:
| Never heard of tha but definitely going to check it out.
|
| I kinda feel like that's how cities are today and will
| increasingly be so as we get further into the future where
| people are interacting digitally first and physically second
| interaction starts to stratify.
|
| I imagine a holo-lens future where it's quite literally
| possible to have a city to yourself or only see the set of
| people you want to with all the good and bad. Imagine social
| media bubbles but in the real world, with all the good bad bad
| that comes.
| 48864w6ui wrote:
| I've heard that in "the south" they don't care how close you
| get when you don't get too rich, but in the north they don't
| care how rich you get when you don't get too close.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| > Profession, copyright (c)1957 [...] Used by permission of
| Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
|
| This is my first encounter with abelard.org. While it is
| delightful in a kind of early internet culture way, I sincerely
| doubt Random House, Inc. gave permission to reproduce this in
| full to this pseudonymous author who writes in the persona of a
| space alien who is the reincarnation of an 11th century
| philosopher monk and, well, I'll just share their words: [1]
|
| > abelard is thought to live in a ger on the steppes of outer
| mongolia, surrounded by an indeterminate number of yaks, husbands
| and wives... and vast hordes of children preparing for the
| cultural conquest of the world... abelard is known to have long
| conversations with the good fairy. it is rumoured that abelard
| arrived on a cultural troubleshooting mission to this planet from
| a star system approximately 40 light years away: this prior to
| the earth being offered probationary membership of The Galactic
| Anarchy (some call it The Culture).
|
| > as abelard is from an advanced culture, this entity has to
| communicate in rather simple language in order to be understood
| by the savages... consequently there are various rumours... one
| is that The Culture have forgotten all about this attache, who
| often gets homesick and pissed off with living in such a
| primitive backwater. another is that this entity is a
| reincarnation of another Abelard born in 1079.... both of these
| rumours are true to a related degree.
|
| [1] https://www.abelard.org/choose/choose.htm
| ozim wrote:
| I think of this piece of literature every time I see people
| criticizing universities for not having "useful on the job
| curriculum" or schools not teaching "useful skills".
|
| Useful skills might stop being useful quick, general
| knowledge/intelligence goes further.
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