A very nice story, and an interesting reflection on the education system.
Also, and this is just an aside, but “the protagonist who is too special for the sorting hat” is a bit of a trope in young adult literature at this point. Is this the first real instance of it? 1957. That’s a while ago! I don’t even know if the “sorting hat” trope was established enough to subvert at the time.
No one would have recognized any tropes in 1957 beyond Shakespeare. Even Joseph Campbell wasn’t popularized until decades later.
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”
For some reason Safari's reader view skips a part of the page.
Thanks - the OP’s site was a truly horrible experience
I dunno I just copied it into emacs. Another free short story to keep in my digital collection.
I haven't seen any ads on the site - I guess AdNauseum works well :)
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 They may have a lot of knowledge, even a lot of knowledge that is really specialized, but once this knowledge becomes outdated or they are required to create something new - they struggle a lot.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.
I am sort of questioning my use of LLMs again after, first reluctantly, starting to use them multiple times a day. This story seems like it was intended to be an allegory for LLM-use though I know it couldn't have been.
It's an allegory about trusting "best practices", standardized bodies of knowledge¹, and "that's the way it's always been done". Not that those things necessarily don't work, they do in the story as well as in real life, but they need to adapt to change and the story illustrates what happens when they harden from best practice into unquestioned dogma.
¹ There's even a BoK for software developers, the SWEBOK, but I've never met anybody who's read it.
There's a similar story about a progression of robot repair devices --- which has to end in a "Master Robot Repairman" profession which is the folks who repair the robots which repair other robots.
Blanking on author and title, but read it a _long_ while ago, and it had a distinctly golden age feel --- maybe Murray Leinster?
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.
Two other Asimov stories that are similarly relevant to much of what is discussed on HN for similar reasons are “In a Good Cause—” and “The Dead Past”.
I don’t know of a link for the first. Here’s one for the second.
mine too, because one of my favourite sff tropes is that the more you regiment society, the more you rely on outsiders and those pushed to the edges for any real innovation.
People stuck following the rules are going to struggle to deal with, or come up with solutions too, problems that are outside the rules.
What motivates you all to learn when you know that information about anything is easily accessible from anywhere ?
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.
I have it in print. As part of Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories Volume 1 (Published by Harper Voyager)
Thanks, just went and bought it!
It's collected in Nine Tomorrows, most recently reprinted in 1989 per Wikipedia. Used copies may be found online.
Such a great ending. Really makes one wonder about the current AI hype of getting the machines to take over our work.
Ah, I remember that story. Brilliant. Asimov was a wonderful writer.
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.
It isn't to make a composer out of a baby but to expose a growing brain to complex music. We have no proof it benefits brain development, but we also have no proof it does not.
I studied classical music and came from a challenged background which to be honest is a rarity in that field. Almost everyone I studied with has parents who specifically encouraged music education and had the means to help make that happen. I got mine from some gifted vinyl as a child and fell in love with the orchestra. If I was in this story I'd probably not have been recommended to be a Professional Composer (if social expectations were the equivalent of what Asimov is saying here.)
So yeah, I'm pro 'play Mozart to your baby' :)
I don’t think you can assign that meaning here one way or another. The context in the story at that point (IIRC) is that he’s sort of lying to the protagonist, or at least misleading him.
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.
He is very odd. The name is presumably a reference to Peter Abelard who was not a nice man (very clever, of course).
Nothing wrong per se with citing what someone you are writing about said about themselves. He has some very odd historical, economic and political theories, but a lot of them are rooted in common misconceptions.
What the hell that was a good read. Ending was great (though the last line did confuse me)
Previously in the story it is mentioned that George as a child was curious about the etymology of the Olympics event and asked his father, only to be dismissed.
The callback at the end symbolizes his renewed curiosity. He is no longer ashamed of the way his mind works and if it makes him look different.
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
[deleted]
[dead]
The core point of the story, that intellectual curiosity is a prerequisite for creative thought and human achievement, is spot on and timeless.
Everything else about the story does not age well at all. The sexism and racism are hard to ignore. The angry white guy who was treated unjustly his whole life was actually right that he was the ubermensch all along? This needs a 21st century remake.
Perhaps you should review the "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances", "Avoid generic tangents." and related sections of the HN guidelines. They're linked at the bottom of the page.
Go create something original instead of tryingto destroy the greatness "created by a white guy" in the past.
Alt link of text only - no cruft http://employees.oneonta.edu/blechmjb/JBpages/m360/Professio...
A very nice story, and an interesting reflection on the education system.
Also, and this is just an aside, but “the protagonist who is too special for the sorting hat” is a bit of a trope in young adult literature at this point. Is this the first real instance of it? 1957. That’s a while ago! I don’t even know if the “sorting hat” trope was established enough to subvert at the time.
No one would have recognized any tropes in 1957 beyond Shakespeare. Even Joseph Campbell wasn’t popularized until decades later.
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”
Link to the story without ads
https://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html
For some reason Safari's reader view skips a part of the page.
Thanks - the OP’s site was a truly horrible experience
I dunno I just copied it into emacs. Another free short story to keep in my digital collection.
I haven't seen any ads on the site - I guess AdNauseum works well :)
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.
I am sort of questioning my use of LLMs again after, first reluctantly, starting to use them multiple times a day. This story seems like it was intended to be an allegory for LLM-use though I know it couldn't have been.
It's an allegory about trusting "best practices", standardized bodies of knowledge¹, and "that's the way it's always been done". Not that those things necessarily don't work, they do in the story as well as in real life, but they need to adapt to change and the story illustrates what happens when they harden from best practice into unquestioned dogma.
¹ There's even a BoK for software developers, the SWEBOK, but I've never met anybody who's read it.
There's a similar story about a progression of robot repair devices --- which has to end in a "Master Robot Repairman" profession which is the folks who repair the robots which repair other robots.
Blanking on author and title, but read it a _long_ while ago, and it had a distinctly golden age feel --- maybe Murray Leinster?
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.
Two other Asimov stories that are similarly relevant to much of what is discussed on HN for similar reasons are “In a Good Cause—” and “The Dead Past”.
I don’t know of a link for the first. Here’s one for the second.
https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dead-past/
mine too, because one of my favourite sff tropes is that the more you regiment society, the more you rely on outsiders and those pushed to the edges for any real innovation.
People stuck following the rules are going to struggle to deal with, or come up with solutions too, problems that are outside the rules.
What motivates you all to learn when you know that information about anything is easily accessible from anywhere ?
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.
I have it in print. As part of Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories Volume 1 (Published by Harper Voyager)
Thanks, just went and bought it!
It's collected in Nine Tomorrows, most recently reprinted in 1989 per Wikipedia. Used copies may be found online.
Such a great ending. Really makes one wonder about the current AI hype of getting the machines to take over our work.
Ah, I remember that story. Brilliant. Asimov was a wonderful writer.
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.
It isn't to make a composer out of a baby but to expose a growing brain to complex music. We have no proof it benefits brain development, but we also have no proof it does not.
I studied classical music and came from a challenged background which to be honest is a rarity in that field. Almost everyone I studied with has parents who specifically encouraged music education and had the means to help make that happen. I got mine from some gifted vinyl as a child and fell in love with the orchestra. If I was in this story I'd probably not have been recommended to be a Professional Composer (if social expectations were the equivalent of what Asimov is saying here.)
So yeah, I'm pro 'play Mozart to your baby' :)
I don’t think you can assign that meaning here one way or another. The context in the story at that point (IIRC) is that he’s sort of lying to the protagonist, or at least misleading him.
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.
He is very odd. The name is presumably a reference to Peter Abelard who was not a nice man (very clever, of course).
Nothing wrong per se with citing what someone you are writing about said about themselves. He has some very odd historical, economic and political theories, but a lot of them are rooted in common misconceptions.
What the hell that was a good read. Ending was great (though the last line did confuse me)
Previously in the story it is mentioned that George as a child was curious about the etymology of the Olympics event and asked his father, only to be dismissed.
The callback at the end symbolizes his renewed curiosity. He is no longer ashamed of the way his mind works and if it makes him look different.
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
[dead]
The core point of the story, that intellectual curiosity is a prerequisite for creative thought and human achievement, is spot on and timeless.
Everything else about the story does not age well at all. The sexism and racism are hard to ignore. The angry white guy who was treated unjustly his whole life was actually right that he was the ubermensch all along? This needs a 21st century remake.
Perhaps you should review the "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances", "Avoid generic tangents." and related sections of the HN guidelines. They're linked at the bottom of the page.
Go create something original instead of tryingto destroy the greatness "created by a white guy" in the past.