5 ms·

It's an evocative quote, but it's also nonsense. The selection of skills is a bit scattershot, but let's look at some examples: "butchering a hog" takes a year

It's an evocative quote, but it's also nonsense. The selection of skills is a bit scattershot, but let's look at some examples: "butchering a hog" takes a year to learn, well, butchery to a professional standard, because someone who can butcher hogs but not cows sounds awfully 'specialised', some places even say that a butchery apprenticeship takes 24 months. (And I personally wouldn't trust an unqualified butcher to process meat I'd be eating.) Building a wall is easier, you can get a bricklaying certification in 8 weeks. Learning to "Fight efficiently" and "take orders" takes US army recruits 22 weeks (and we can throw another 12 weeks of officer training for giving orders and generously allowing this to count as 'planning an invasion'). Computer programming, sonnet-writing, account balancing, cooking and solving equations are actually part of general education, so let's ignore those. Basic first aid only takes a few days, and pitching manure can be learnt in under an hour. But then we get to "design a building" and "conn a ship" (not a boat, a ship). Conning a ship is a bachelor's level qualification in of itself, and designing entire buildings is a job for a chartered engineer, which requires years of experience and another bachelor's degree, so we're taking probably ten years of full-time training for those two alone. And I would not want to be on a ship piloted by someone who'd been on a 3-day course or live in a tower block designed by someone who'd read a couple of Wikipedia articles. Then we'll throw in a 4-year degree in whatever they're actually doing, and you're looking at a society whose adults don't start entering the workforce until their mid-thirties, and a newbie doctor or research scientist or some other field which requires postgraduate qualifications is probably in their early forties. This isn't even remotely viable as a way to run a society. And it's also implied that that list isn't even exhaustive, so the real numbers are even worse if there's some other complex safety-critical thing that Heinlein also felt should be on the list, like 'fly an airliner' or 'manage a chemical plant'. Maybe with sci-fi anti-aging techniques that mean people can still be expected to be healthy and productive in their nineties, but in the real world, Heinlein's generalist utopia is pure fantasy.

ajkjk 4y ago
I think they're talking about butchering a hog at the skill level of a person who grew up near people who owned hogs, ie, definitely a "I did this with somebody at a barbecue a few times" and not "24 months of training". Giving and taking orders likewise doesn't remotely require army training, it just requires growing up around human beings and being part of anything -- theater, bands, church groups, service groups, clubs. Fight efficiently means, I believe, fistfight, aka, take some boxing lessons and you can check that one off. I think you've really misunderstood the quote. Or maybe I have.
- zikduruqe 4y ago
  Well, Lazarus Long was supposedly over 2000 years old, so he had the time to learn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Long
- YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
  I notice you ignored all the actually difficult items on the list there. You know, the ones where the Dunning-Kruger brigade are a liability and mistakes mean people die.
  - ajkjk 4y ago
    I didn't ignore all the difficult ones. But fine. Bricklaying is a few days to learn on the job, tops. Conning a ship almost certainly means captaining a boat which takes some experience for sure, probably a few months. Basic first aid, including setting a bone, is a week long course. Etc. I can't imagine why you went to the trouble of trying to make them all sound like complicated many-year projects, but it's a ridiculous take and I doubt anyone else will read it that way.
    - YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
      Are you seriously suggesting that Robert A. Heinlein, former naval officer, wouldn't care about the distinction between a ship and a boat? And you still ignored the two most difficult ones.
      - ajkjk 4y ago
        I think he knows the difference, but surely meant the life skill of captaining something rather than the literal many-years-to-acquire technical skill of doing so, because the former makes sense and the latter doesn't. Which two? Designing a building I see I skipped. That seems pretty attainable, he obviously didn't mean 'be a trained architect and building engineer' like you interpreted it. People in charge of organizations sometimes have to design buildings (probably much moreso in the past though). So like, 'kitchen goes here' etc level stuff. I'm not saying I agree with the whole quote. I just don't see the point of misinterpreting it so aggressively.
analog31 4y ago
My take is that Heinlein was trying to write literature, not documentation. So a colorful exaggeration makes sense.
- YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
  People, including the poster I was replying to aren’t generally writing literature when they quote it though, and they like quoting that a lot.
  - hogbutcher 4y ago
    How about you actually try to learn butchering a hog and stop complaining how hard it is? It took me about two hogs and a good teacher to get it sufficiently right, and I was a ten-year old kid back then. Claiming that simple things like that take years to learn is writing rich literature. Earning a living doing skill X takes a lot longer, but learning those skills is not a big trouble. If you've had an active rural childhood with good parents most of those skills are "completed" very early. Writing a good poem and planning an invasion takes some maturity, but those should be interpreted similarly. Learn about basic logistics and doing projects and then you can plan an invasion. Making things more complicated than they are is just another way to do nothing at all. Learning takes some time and effort, if it's too much for you I understand, but don't discourage others with your weak excuses while thinking that you must become a specialist in every field to become a generalist.
  - BlackFly 4y ago
    You missed the forest for the trees: > He was a bit pro-military for my tastes, but I hope you get the idea. I was trying to emphasize the point being made to you: the particular skills listed aren't relevant to the point of the need for general skills (the idea I hoped you would get) but instead relevant to all the people around the protagonist in the novel (which has a military slant due to the author). I'm quoting literature to show evidence that the debate is old, that was the entire point of my post; what am I supposed to quote except something that someone wrote? People like quoting literature for reasons like that: evidence that an idea is general, old and timeless, that our ancestors were grappling with the same ideas, that it isn't settled and probably never will be.
ryandrake 4y ago
The point of the quote is not that those specifically called-out skills are more valuable to know than other skills. The author could have picked 21 entirely different skills to list, and the point is exactly the same. He's also not saying people should have PhD-level knowledge or master-level training in every skill they know--quite the opposite.
tengbretson 4y ago
That's absurd. You can learn how to butcher a hog in an afternoon (I'm not including curing ham or bacon in this statement).

ajkjk 4y ago

I think they're talking about butchering a hog at the skill level of a person who grew up near people who owned hogs, ie, definitely a "I did this with somebody at a barbecue a few times" and not "24 months of training". Giving and taking orders likewise doesn't remotely require army training, it just requires growing up around human beings and being part of anything -- theater, bands, church groups, service groups, clubs. Fight efficiently means, I believe, fistfight, aka, take some boxing lessons and you can check that one off. I think you've really misunderstood the quote. Or maybe I have.

zikduruqe 4y ago
Well, Lazarus Long was supposedly over 2000 years old, so he had the time to learn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Long
YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
I notice you ignored all the actually difficult items on the list there. You know, the ones where the Dunning-Kruger brigade are a liability and mistakes mean people die.
- ajkjk 4y ago
  I didn't ignore all the difficult ones. But fine. Bricklaying is a few days to learn on the job, tops. Conning a ship almost certainly means captaining a boat which takes some experience for sure, probably a few months. Basic first aid, including setting a bone, is a week long course. Etc. I can't imagine why you went to the trouble of trying to make them all sound like complicated many-year projects, but it's a ridiculous take and I doubt anyone else will read it that way.
  - YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
    Are you seriously suggesting that Robert A. Heinlein, former naval officer, wouldn't care about the distinction between a ship and a boat? And you still ignored the two most difficult ones.
    - ajkjk 4y ago
      I think he knows the difference, but surely meant the life skill of captaining something rather than the literal many-years-to-acquire technical skill of doing so, because the former makes sense and the latter doesn't. Which two? Designing a building I see I skipped. That seems pretty attainable, he obviously didn't mean 'be a trained architect and building engineer' like you interpreted it. People in charge of organizations sometimes have to design buildings (probably much moreso in the past though). So like, 'kitchen goes here' etc level stuff. I'm not saying I agree with the whole quote. I just don't see the point of misinterpreting it so aggressively.

analog31 4y ago

My take is that Heinlein was trying to write literature, not documentation. So a colorful exaggeration makes sense.

YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
People, including the poster I was replying to aren’t generally writing literature when they quote it though, and they like quoting that a lot.
- hogbutcher 4y ago
  How about you actually try to learn butchering a hog and stop complaining how hard it is? It took me about two hogs and a good teacher to get it sufficiently right, and I was a ten-year old kid back then. Claiming that simple things like that take years to learn is writing rich literature. Earning a living doing skill X takes a lot longer, but learning those skills is not a big trouble. If you've had an active rural childhood with good parents most of those skills are "completed" very early. Writing a good poem and planning an invasion takes some maturity, but those should be interpreted similarly. Learn about basic logistics and doing projects and then you can plan an invasion. Making things more complicated than they are is just another way to do nothing at all. Learning takes some time and effort, if it's too much for you I understand, but don't discourage others with your weak excuses while thinking that you must become a specialist in every field to become a generalist.
- BlackFly 4y ago
  You missed the forest for the trees: > He was a bit pro-military for my tastes, but I hope you get the idea. I was trying to emphasize the point being made to you: the particular skills listed aren't relevant to the point of the need for general skills (the idea I hoped you would get) but instead relevant to all the people around the protagonist in the novel (which has a military slant due to the author). I'm quoting literature to show evidence that the debate is old, that was the entire point of my post; what am I supposed to quote except something that someone wrote? People like quoting literature for reasons like that: evidence that an idea is general, old and timeless, that our ancestors were grappling with the same ideas, that it isn't settled and probably never will be.

ryandrake 4y ago

The point of the quote is not that those specifically called-out skills are more valuable to know than other skills. The author could have picked 21 entirely different skills to list, and the point is exactly the same. He's also not saying people should have PhD-level knowledge or master-level training in every skill they know--quite the opposite.

tengbretson 4y ago

That's absurd. You can learn how to butcher a hog in an afternoon (I'm not including curing ham or bacon in this statement).