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Profession by Isaac Asimov

111 points by bkudria

by mezyt

0 subcomment

Remind me of a recent discussion we had among Stackoverflow moderator:
> “Think about it,” he continued. “Who discovers the edge cases the docs don’t mention? Who answers the questions that haven’t been asked before? It can’t be people trained only to repeat canonical answers. Somewhere, it has to stop. Somewhere, someone has to think.”
> “Yes,” said the Moderator.
> He leaned back. For a moment, restlessness flickered in his eyes.
> “So why wasn’t I told this at the start?”
> “If we told everyone,” said the Moderator gently, “we’d destroy the system. Most contributors must believe the goal is to fix their CRUD apps. They need closure. They need certainty. They need to get to be a Registered Something—Frontend, Backend, DevOps, Full stack. Only someone who suffered through the abuse of another moderator closing their novel question as a duplicate can be trusted to put enough effort to make an actual contribution”

by spagettnet

2 subcomments

Link to the story without ads
https://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html

by dryarzeg

0 subcomment

I've read this a long time ago, when I was a kid. Back then I thought about the education system and how it sometimes inhibits the creativity within the students. But right now, other comparison comes to mind - I don't know how relevant it is, though, so please don't judge it strictly.
Modern "AI" (LLM-based) systems are somewhat similar to the humans in this story who were taped. They may have a lot of knowledge, even a lot of knowledge that is really specialized, but once this knowledge becomes outdated or they are required to create something new - they struggle a lot. Even the systems with RAG and "continuous memory" (not sure if that's the right term) don't really learn something new. From what I know, they can accumulate the knowledge, but they still struggle with creativity and skill learning. And that may be the problem for the users of these systems as well, because they may sometimes rely on the shallow knowledge provided by the LLM model or "AI" system instead of thinking and trying to solve the problem themselves.
Luckily enough, most of the humans in our world can still follow the George's example. That's what makes us different from LLM-based systems. We can learn something new, and learn it deeply, creating the deep and unique networks of associations between different "entities" in our mind, which allows us to be truly creative. We also can dynamically update our knowledge and skills, as well as our qualities and mindset, and so on...
That's what I'm hoping for, at least.

by bradley13

0 subcomment

Ah, I remember that story. Brilliant. Asimov was a wonderful writer.

by ameliaquining

1 subcomments

This is my favorite Asimov story. It's got a protagonist with compelling motivations, a society that has problems but also convincing reasons why they persist, and a great ending.

by haritha-j

0 subcomment

Such a great ending. Really makes one wonder about the current AI hype of getting the machines to take over our work.

by elcapitan

1 subcomments

Is this still in print, maybe as part of a collection? I tried to find it but couldn't. Many of his other works seem to be available as paperback, including a bunch of story collections.

by bucephalos

0 subcomment

The page linked has some more information available, but its author (abelard?) cites from "Mein Kampf" later, naming the books author as "Adolph" (sic!). Caution is advised.

by jimbob45

0 subcomment

Dr Antonelli said, “Or do you believe that studying some subject will bend the brain cells in that direction, like that other theory that a pregnant woman need only listen to great music persistently to make a composer of her child. Do you believe that?”
Apparently, Asimov was an early critic of the “Mozart in the womb” movement.

by hnroo99

1 subcomments

What the hell that was a good read. Ending was great (though the last line did confuse me)

by Aeglaecia

0 subcomment

one of asimov's finest , a metaphor that continues to find relevance in my day to day existence - that the conclusions we so readily come to are assumptions made in the absence of the awareness of something more

by four-taurus

0 subcomment

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