Profession by Isaac Asimov (1957)

https://www.abelard.org/asimov.php

by signa11 • 2 years ago

144 74 2 years ago

garyrob• 2 years ago

One of my favorite Asimov stories.

rnmmrnm2• 2 years ago

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.

pdimitar4• 2 years ago

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.

rnmmrnm2• 2 years ago

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.

swatcoder• 2 years ago

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.

northwest65• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

xw3901112• 2 years ago

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.

kjs32• 2 years ago

I think one modern angle would be the certification scam, where if they're looking for, say, a Windows Server 2022 admin, but you cert is for Server 2019, you never get through the HR regex filter.

eliben• 2 years ago

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...

bruce5115• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

zem6• 2 years ago

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"

bryanrasmussen2• 2 years ago

Pretty much every human can create, leaving out those with specific mental disabilities.

Many humans never get in a situation where there is an interesting enough problem for them to create a solution or where a need or benefit is seen for them to create to fill that need or derive that benefit.

For the humans that do most of them only do so once or incredibly maybe even twice, think people who essentially make one thing - like Italo Marchiony who created the ice cream cone and I don't think much else other than a business to exploit his creation.

The people who are thought of as creators are able to create quickly and a lot and often seemingly at will. This is essentially their primary skill and what sets them apart from others. Because of this skill they may even use it as the proverbial hammer looking for nails.

I've written some on my views on creativity - https://medium.com/p/1484652bcc97 - generally in relation to writing and criticism probably the most relevant article is this one "A Theory As To Why Art Is Created" https://medium.com/p/b0a2538416e3

qwertywert_• 2 years ago

There are lots of reasons why some people don't think about "creating", maybe they had childhood issues or are too stressed, too mentally drained with other areas in life, never got nourished to love creativity or never had an inner self belief that they can create.

Or they simply got "stuck" in something, never to get out and find some passion. What even is creating, some people (unlike many programmers or scientists) create social groups, organisations, humor.

I think your idea that there are special "creators" and "regular people" is way off and honestly just a way to feel special and unique. I know people that finally found passion after they retired.. but they were too bogged down to ever figure it out earlier in life.

hnthrowaway0328• 2 years ago

That is always my refute to people who think that money alone can buy creators. Real creators do not give a fuck about money, they just have to.

zem6• 2 years ago

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__desire2• 2 years ago

Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective

zem6• 2 years ago

thanks, that looks like a book i'd enjoy!

ducttapecrown• 2 years ago

Does anyone know of an earlier example of the trope of having a magic box choose your class in a novel?

kouru225• 2 years ago

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.

zem6• 2 years ago

no magic box, but your comment made me think of this father brown short story: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0201021h.html#story4

class3shock2• 2 years ago

Brave New World but the magic box is selecting the class before you are even born in that case.

Animats3• 2 years ago

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.

iancmceachern2• 2 years ago

"Prefabricated Coca-Cola bottling plants"

Sun Tsu, an army marches on it stomach!

marcosdumay• 2 years ago

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.

Animats3• 2 years ago

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...

fuzzfactor2• 2 years ago

It wasn't just for the soldiers, it was for the masses too.

The Americans are here, they're not just liberating, they come equipped.

And people get to drink Coke now.

dredmorbius2• 2 years ago

I'm not aware of any active piping of petroleum over the Atlantic.

There were major pipelines built both on the American mainland (the Big Inch and Little Big Inch pipelines), due to an overwhelming toll of German Kriegsmarine U-Boat attacks on US domestic oil shipments (New Orleans to New Jersey, largely, Project Paukenschlag).

And there was Operation Pluto which ran a 9" pipeline across the English Channel, delivering fuel from Britain to the European mainland.

Trans-Atlantic oil shipments however were by tanker to the best of my knowledge.

I'm relying strongly on Daniel Yergin's account of the oil industry during WWII (along with WWI, an absolutely fascinating episode), covered in his 1990 book The Prize. Despite differing strongly with Yergin over the future of oil and the oil industry, I unreservedly recommend this book as a masterful history of its past.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Inch>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pluto>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prize:_The_Epic_Quest_for_...>

Animats3• 2 years ago

Sorry, across the English Channel.[1] Very detailed info about how the pipe was assembled.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIYS_9EI5j0

walterbell• 2 years ago

China Miéville'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 Beszél in eastern Europe, Inspector Tyador Borlú 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 Beszél but whose inhabitants studiously ignore any sign of overlap.

kuchenbecker• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

roca• 2 years ago

My favourite novel.

Cheer2171• 2 years ago

Profession, copyright ©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 attaché, 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

glompers• 2 years ago

Not sure if this is the correct copyright law citation as IANAL. If correct, then the story's copyright expired before Abelard posted it.

304. Duration of copyright: Subsisting copyrights

(a) Copyrights in Their First Term on January 1, 1978.—

(1)(A) Any copyright, in the first term of which is subsisting on January 1, 1978, shall endure for 28 years from the date it was originally secured.

https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap3.html

incompatible• 2 years ago

Not if the copyright was renewed. She the Hirtle chart:

Published in the US, 1929 through 1963, Published with notice and the copyright was renewed, 95 years after publication date.

https://guides.library.cornell.edu/copyright/publicdomain

XavierYak2• 2 years ago

"Under current U.S. law, the copyrights for his works published before 1978 will not expire until 95 years after the copyrights were obtained, and those published from 1978 onward will remain in effect for 70 years after his death. Thus, these copyrights will remain in effect until dates ranging from 2034 (for his [Asimov's] first story published in 1939), through 2072 (for works published in 1977)" From https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/197287/when-does-t...

Profession was published in 1957. The copyright protection will expire in 2052.

In 2000, abelard.org negotiated with Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. and purchased the rights to publish the novella Profession by Isaac Asimov as part of the website, abelard.org.

ozim2• 2 years ago

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.

smeej3• 2 years ago

The problem seems to be how many universities are trying to do both, but therefore failing to do either well.

If you need to support yourself based on what you learn in a university, you don't want a liberal arts degree from a mid-rate university. You want some degree with a heavy practicum component. Or maybe you want a trade school.

If you have the chops to make it as an independent thinker, get your liberal arts degree somewhere that actually churns out high-level thinkers. If you can't get in, reconsider whether you have the chops at all.

If you're not dependent on income, though, study whatever you want. It's one of the reasons I'd love to see retirees studying things like philosophy, because they're not trying to instrumentalize it for a career, and they have enough life experience not to be hopelessly naïve about it.

ozim2• 2 years ago

I don’t blame universities. There is too much written university should do this or that.

For me issue is that people want to be taught like in the story of Asimov they want some magic upload to the brain and no effort.

Where in reality university can only go so far with making knowledge available and fun… Because hard things will be hard regardless.

ViktorRay2• 2 years ago

To me this part was the most interesting:

For most of the first eighteen years of his life, George Platen had headed firmly in one direction, that of Registered Computer Programmer. There were those in his crowd who spoke wisely of Spationautics, Refrigeration Technology, Transportation Control, and even Administration. But George held firm.

Why did Asimov in 1957 write as if Refrigeration technology would be so prominent in the future? Most people nowadays find the fridge to be a fairly boring technology.

So I googled it.

Apparently the fridge was only used by around 8 percent of American households in the early 1930’s. It didn’t become a standard part of American household life until the end of the 1940’s.

So by the time this story was published the fridge was only commonly part of your life for the past 7 years probably.

Curious.

Kinda like so much of science fiction nowadays fixates on phones. Or has smartphone analogues taking up a bunch of detail. Science fiction stories tend to be written so that recent tech advances continue to be mind blowing and awe inspiring centuries in the future.

Meanwhile only a few decades after this story was published the fridge became a standard boring part of life.

kragen5• 2 years ago

refrigeration technology isn't limited to the household fridge; it also encompasses air conditioning (which lee kuan yew thinks was the single most important technology enabling singapore to go from being one of the world's poorest countries to one of the richest within living memory, calling it 'the greatest invention of the 20th century': https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/09/asia/air-conditioning-sin...) and cryocoolers, which are necessary for all practical superconductors so far (including nmr medical imaging machines and the josephson junctions used to define the volt) and for all ultra-high vacuum applications, including the euv lithography used for current chips (a dependency which goes both ways, since high-performance cryostats demand ultra-high vacuum)

the entire fresh food supply chain, including military logistics, is structured around refrigeration, and human diets have changed dramatically as a result. before refrigeration, if you wanted to eat pumpkin in the spring or peas in the fall, your options were canned pumpkin or pickled pumpkin. when refrigerated shipping became available (about 60 years before asimov's story, not 7), within about fifteen years, argentina went from being a poor rural country fighting off raids, and shipping small amounts of unpalatable salt beef overseas, to being one of the world's richest countries from selling fresh beef; nowadays, of course, it's unthinkable to ship meat from the slaughterhouse to the butcher shop without refrigeration

refrigeration is also fundamental to the current medical system; many vaccines won't keep without refrigeration, and of course tissue samples and organ transplants rely heavily on refrigeration to preserve them

the entire technological and scientific world is built on precise metrology, and aside from the josephson junctions i mentioned before, air conditioning is important to precise metrology; virtually every phenomenon used to maintain a metrological standard over time varies with temperature, so metrological labs are invariably maintained at a precisely controlled temperature, usually to within half a degree and sometimes to within a hundredth of a degree. moreover, that temperature is usually 20°, because for historical reasons that's the temperature most of those standards are designed for; but you can't maintain a 20° temperature year-round without air conditioning in most of the human-inhabited world

refrigeration technology in the form of air conditioning consumes a quite significant share of human world marketed energy consumption, so improvements in its efficiency are economically very important and currently avidly pursued by many avenues. and, as the cnn article above mentions, refrigerant leaks from vapor-compression refrigerative air conditioners are a significant contributor to global warming, though far from the majority

there are numerous sbir grants available in the usa for improvements in various kinds of refrigeration technology, including things like cryostats and dilution coolers

so every facet of your life is profoundly shaped by refrigeration technology, even if you aren't aware of it

rnewme• 2 years ago

Wonderful comment, ty. I recommend hyperspace pirate on YouTube, building diy systems with intention of ultimately building a cryocooler

ViktorRay2• 2 years ago

Wow thanks for sharing. I didn’t know about this stuff.

I guess refrigeration is much more interesting than I assumed! I definitely need to read up more about all this.

walexander• 2 years ago

My C Instructor assigned us this in college in 2005, during a brief period where the dotcom bubble was still felt and the social network hadn't come out yet. At the time, there was a lot of talk about how programming was a dead in job in the the US and that all those jobs would just be outsourced, anyway.

I've thought about it a lot over the years, and especially came back to it last year with the rise of ChatGPT.

class3shock2• 2 years ago

The story is wonderful but the website is an even funner find. Talk about a throwback with lots of oddball connections.

Profession by Isaac Asimov (1957)

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