Profession (1957)
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Profession (1957)
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Re: Profession (1957)
#2cf (1959 submission to ARPA) https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/10/20/169899/isaac-asi...
note also Feynman's advice that if one continually practises re-deriving known results, at some point one is bound to mess up and "re"-derive something which was hitherto unknown.
Re: Profession (1957)
#3Link to a PDF with good typesetting: http://employees.oneonta.edu/blechmjb/JBpages/m360/Professio...
Re: Profession (1957)
#4This, and Ask A Foolish Question by Robert Sheckley [1] are my all-time favourite Sci-Fi works
Re: Profession (1957)
#5Nightfall is widely considered to be his best work (and with justification) but Profession stuck with me the first time I read it.
When I first read it in my teens I saw it as a comment on education - a system that churned out little robots to feed the economic machine with robot workers.
Later in life, with more life experience I've come to understand it as both the rarity of creators, and of the need to create. You do not tell a person "go create something", the creator creates because it's impossible not to.
It takes training and experience to make creations useful, and valuable, but creators create - it's what they do.
I used to think everyone was s creator, but observation shows me that while many dream of creating, for most it's only dreams. A tiny fraction write music, or books; poetry or programs. They paint and sculpt, architect and design.
Dreamers dream, creators create. They can't help it, and you can't make them stop.
Re: Profession (1957)
#6Link to a PDF with good typesetting: http://employees.oneonta.edu/blechmjb/JBpages/m360/Professio...
Let's say: better readability. -- The first paragraph has already two typesetting flaws: A space between “ and Tomorrow and two ” at the end.
Re: Profession (1957)
#7This, and Ask A Foolish Question by Robert Sheckley [1] are my all-time favourite Sci-Fi works [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33854
Re: Ask A Foolish Question, an application of antimatroids as a model of "knowledge spaces" (eg. the tech tree in a strategy game) suggests that concepts/skills which have multiple prerequisites are likely to be easier to acquire/teach than concepts/skills which have a unique prereq. In the former case, one "just" has to combine things one already knows how to do, "all at the same time". In the latter case, one has to figure out some kind of jump that allows doing the old thing in a new way.
Re: Profession (1957)
#8One of the best books by Asimov goes along with Profession fairly well, the non-fiction work Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimov%27s_Biographical_Encycl...
Re: Profession (1957)
#9Nightfall is widely considered to be his best work (and with justification) but Profession stuck with me the first time I read it. When I first read it in my teens I saw it as a comment on education - a system that churned out little robots to feed the economic machine with robot workers. Later in life, with more life experience I've come to understand it as both the rarity of creators, and of the need to create. You…
> I've come to understand it as both the rarity of creators, and of the need to create.
That's an elitist attitude and probably the opposite of what Asimov intended [0]. Any child can create. Give a child a pen and paper or clay or bricks or anything and they will create. It takes years of schooling to drum that instinct out of them, to make them give up because they've been taught about someone else who did it better, to convince them to follow someone else's path, an established profession. Profession presents a dystopia where only the elitist of the elite are allowed any creativity.
[0] See, e.g., "A Cult of Ignorance" https://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_C....
Re: Profession (1957)
#10Nightfall is widely considered to be his best work (and with justification) but Profession stuck with me the first time I read it. When I first read it in my teens I saw it as a comment on education - a system that churned out little robots to feed the economic machine with robot workers. Later in life, with more life experience I've come to understand it as both the rarity of creators, and of the need to create. You…
> I've come to understand it as both the rarity of creators, and of the need to create. That's an elitist attitude and probably the opposite of what Asimov intended [0]. Any child can create. Give a child a pen and paper or clay or bricks or anything and they will create. It takes years of schooling to drum that instinct out of them, to make them give up because they've been taught about someone else who did it bette…
I agree with the parent but I also think Ratatouille stated it best,
“Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist can come from anywhere”
Give me some ingredients and I can make something edible. But no one would confuse me with a chef.
https://www.ranker.com/list/best-ratatouille-quotes/movie-an...