[HN Gopher] Profession (1957)
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Profession (1957)
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 54 points
       Date   : 2022-09-10 14:22 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.abelard.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.abelard.org)
        
       | sam_lowry_ wrote:
       | This, and Ask A Foolish Question by Robert Sheckley [1] are my
       | all-time favourite Sci-Fi works
       | 
       | [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33854
        
         | 082349872349872 wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | georgecmu wrote:
       | Link to a PDF with good typesetting:
       | http://employees.oneonta.edu/blechmjb/JBpages/m360/Professio...
        
         | Archelaos wrote:
         | Let's say: better readability. -- The first paragraph has
         | already two typesetting flaws: A space between " and Tomorrow
         | and two " at the end.
        
       | 082349872349872 wrote:
       | cf (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.
        
       | bruce511 wrote:
       | Nightfall 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.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-09-10 23:00 UTC)