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: 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.
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.
> 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.
You don't have to be a chef to be a creator. Creators create rubbish, only through constant failure do sparks of greatness arrive.
A creator can be anyone, greatness comes from anywhere.
To a home cook it starts by wondering what will happen if I add this, or change that. What if the recipe can be ignored. What if I add wine, or take away the tomato. Every time I'm prepared to make it worse, I allow it to be better.
The great musicians throw away 10 songs for every one they keep. We see their success, but perhaps in seeing their failure we would be better encouraged.
Being a creator has nothing to do with your circumstance. Opportunities to create are all around us in every mundane thing we do.
Incidentally I am not saying creators are better than anyone else. I'm not saying that they are somehow more-worthy. Yes they are rare, but rare doesn't mean special.
I'm not sure we are all born to create, that every child is a natural creator, but if we are all latent creators then all I can do is encourage everyone to try.
Perhaps though we are not all born to create. Maybe the willingness to be mocked, to fail, to suffer, to lose, is in but a few. Perhaps those few create because they have to, in spite of the obstacles.
In Profession George asks why. Why not tell everyone this is a possibility. Why not make creating an honorable job?
“And those who don’t? The ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine that don’t? We can’t have all those people considering themselves failures. They aim at the professions and one way or another they all make it. Everyone can place after his or her name: Registered something-or-other. In one fashion or another every individual has his or her place in society and this is necessary.”
" It won’t do to say to a man, ‘You can create. Do so.’ It is much safer to wait for a man to say, ‘I can create, and I will do so whether you wish it or not."
The cool thing about art, in any form, is that it can speak to different people in different ways. When asked "what does it mean?" an artist often replies "what does it mean to you?". Ultimately you may love, or hate, the art, but at least you feel something.
So maybe it's elitist to see a world where only a minority create. If so let me accept that badge with honor.
As you say, all children create. Somewhere, somehow, most of them lose that burning urge. Perhaps it is the convenience of modern life. Perhaps it is in the willingness to fail. Perhaps because they are prepared to risk more.
Yes, perhaps our education, wherever you are in the world, plays a part. It prepares us for a future, and we eagerly milk it for the future we see for ourselves. And clearly even more than education our parents, society and culture, and gently or firmly pushing in the direction of a stable quiet life with a "real job".
The musician, poet, painter knows that you can't make a living doing those things - by and large creators are not well paid.
So a day job there is, but the creator creates. He writes at night, he plays in a band on weekends, he paints the sunset from an exotic holiday shore.
Today tech allows for even more - and blessed are those that find a way to make creating pay and through the work can keep their creation joy. There are more aspiring film makers on YouTube, more aspiring rock stars on Spotify, more aspiring Writers on any blog platform.
The audience is closer, yes, the route to full-time is more achievable than ever. But for every megastar there are 100 dad-bands, with 5 followers, creating music because that is its own reward.
In our society today its not that the elite are the only ones "allowed" to create. Creation has never been so accessible, our lives never before so overflowing with free time.
If I am elitist for creating, then I wear the badge with pride. I encourage others to join me. Creation is open to anyone who cooks a meal, types on a phone, can wield an instrument, who can grasp a pen.
And yet so few do. So few are prepared to fail, to risk inconvenience, to expose themselves to public ridicule. It just isn't them. (and that is perfectly OK.) Creators are easy to spot though, it's in everything they do. They create. You can't make them stop.
I wanted to respond to the cult of ignorance link separately, because I think a different point is being made here.
Since Asimov has written this I think life has changed somewhat, and yet not at all.
So much of his essay rings true, but today the slogans for the masses happen as much in the written as on the spoken word.
Social media shows that people can read. That they can write.
Indeed exposing your thoughts in a written tweet can have major implications for your future self.
The root of populism is not the failure to read, it is the desire to conform. You accept the limitations of your tribe, and toe the party line, because to do otherwise leaves you alone in the wind.
The politician who stands on principle against the tide is swiftly consumed by it.
If you dare to think for yourself then you are an Elitist, that worst of all badges.
If you dare to have a politically incorrect thought, if a past version of you is imperfect, if your contrition is not sincere enough, your penance incomplete, then the faceless mob awaits.
There is safety in a quiet life, keep your head down and chant with the rest.
Yes things have changed, but things are the same. Turns out the learning to read does not make us better people.
What social media have you found where people are conversing with a "thousand consecutive words" (probably a little, but not much, shorter than Asimov's single page essay?) "some of which may be trisyllabic"?
I was under the impression that the new shiny had improved on the old shiny by requiring no words to contribute (instagram, tiktok, etc.)...
Elitism doesn't mean thinking for yourself or being a creator or doing something better than anyone else. Elitism is the idea that only members of an elite (e.g., people of the right class or those who went to the right schools) can or should do those things.
One of the best books by Asimov goes along with Profession fairly well, the non-fiction work Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology:
14 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 41.6 ms ] threadnote 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.
[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33854
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.
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....
“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...
A creator can be anyone, greatness comes from anywhere.
To a home cook it starts by wondering what will happen if I add this, or change that. What if the recipe can be ignored. What if I add wine, or take away the tomato. Every time I'm prepared to make it worse, I allow it to be better.
The great musicians throw away 10 songs for every one they keep. We see their success, but perhaps in seeing their failure we would be better encouraged.
Being a creator has nothing to do with your circumstance. Opportunities to create are all around us in every mundane thing we do.
Incidentally I am not saying creators are better than anyone else. I'm not saying that they are somehow more-worthy. Yes they are rare, but rare doesn't mean special.
I'm not sure we are all born to create, that every child is a natural creator, but if we are all latent creators then all I can do is encourage everyone to try.
Perhaps though we are not all born to create. Maybe the willingness to be mocked, to fail, to suffer, to lose, is in but a few. Perhaps those few create because they have to, in spite of the obstacles.
In Profession George asks why. Why not tell everyone this is a possibility. Why not make creating an honorable job?
“And those who don’t? The ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine that don’t? We can’t have all those people considering themselves failures. They aim at the professions and one way or another they all make it. Everyone can place after his or her name: Registered something-or-other. In one fashion or another every individual has his or her place in society and this is necessary.”
" It won’t do to say to a man, ‘You can create. Do so.’ It is much safer to wait for a man to say, ‘I can create, and I will do so whether you wish it or not."
So maybe it's elitist to see a world where only a minority create. If so let me accept that badge with honor.
As you say, all children create. Somewhere, somehow, most of them lose that burning urge. Perhaps it is the convenience of modern life. Perhaps it is in the willingness to fail. Perhaps because they are prepared to risk more.
Yes, perhaps our education, wherever you are in the world, plays a part. It prepares us for a future, and we eagerly milk it for the future we see for ourselves. And clearly even more than education our parents, society and culture, and gently or firmly pushing in the direction of a stable quiet life with a "real job".
The musician, poet, painter knows that you can't make a living doing those things - by and large creators are not well paid.
So a day job there is, but the creator creates. He writes at night, he plays in a band on weekends, he paints the sunset from an exotic holiday shore.
Today tech allows for even more - and blessed are those that find a way to make creating pay and through the work can keep their creation joy. There are more aspiring film makers on YouTube, more aspiring rock stars on Spotify, more aspiring Writers on any blog platform.
The audience is closer, yes, the route to full-time is more achievable than ever. But for every megastar there are 100 dad-bands, with 5 followers, creating music because that is its own reward.
In our society today its not that the elite are the only ones "allowed" to create. Creation has never been so accessible, our lives never before so overflowing with free time.
If I am elitist for creating, then I wear the badge with pride. I encourage others to join me. Creation is open to anyone who cooks a meal, types on a phone, can wield an instrument, who can grasp a pen.
And yet so few do. So few are prepared to fail, to risk inconvenience, to expose themselves to public ridicule. It just isn't them. (and that is perfectly OK.) Creators are easy to spot though, it's in everything they do. They create. You can't make them stop.
Since Asimov has written this I think life has changed somewhat, and yet not at all.
So much of his essay rings true, but today the slogans for the masses happen as much in the written as on the spoken word.
Social media shows that people can read. That they can write. Indeed exposing your thoughts in a written tweet can have major implications for your future self.
The root of populism is not the failure to read, it is the desire to conform. You accept the limitations of your tribe, and toe the party line, because to do otherwise leaves you alone in the wind.
The politician who stands on principle against the tide is swiftly consumed by it.
If you dare to think for yourself then you are an Elitist, that worst of all badges.
If you dare to have a politically incorrect thought, if a past version of you is imperfect, if your contrition is not sincere enough, your penance incomplete, then the faceless mob awaits.
There is safety in a quiet life, keep your head down and chant with the rest.
Yes things have changed, but things are the same. Turns out the learning to read does not make us better people.
I was under the impression that the new shiny had improved on the old shiny by requiring no words to contribute (instagram, tiktok, etc.)...
(~60 words, quadrisyllabic or fewer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimov%27s_Biographical_Encycl...