Ask HN: Update Heinlein’s “Competent Man” | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Update Heinlein’s “Competent Man”

9 pointsNoRagrets8 comments

[..]A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.[..] - Time Enough For Love, Robert A. Heinlein

This famous Heinlein quote uttered by Lazarus Long is almost half a century old.

How would you update Life Skills of The Competent Man for the next 50 years? Of course, meant for all genders etc.

Shouldn’t include the words: ‘money’ or ‘coding’. (And variations thereof..esp not Bitcoin or NFTs)

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It's largely figurative anyway so it's still valid. But, if I were to change it, one thing that's dramatically different from the era of Heinlein's youth is that the world is a much smaller place that it once must have seemed. Global communication is trivial, cultures are blending together, travel to anywhere is within the reach of the general population, and the activities of civilization are great enough to affect the ecology of the planet as a whole. So the two new additions I'd add are "survive and thrive in any culture" and "understand civilizational trends", whether they be political, ecological, technological, or otherwise.

Heinlein was critiquing (or at least lampooning) the use of the "competent man" in literature. It's what today we might call a "Mary Sue".

The specific items on the list are not important. The point is that no one can possibly know how do to all those things. You might think you can, but you won't really know if you can die gallantly until the time comes.

A more gentle interpretation of this quote might be aspirational; that the competent man is always improving and pushing his boundaries. I personally prefer that interpretation, but I don't think that is how Heinlein meant it.

I don't think it needs 'updating' much, but there are a few oversights in the original.

Heinlein has 'write a sonnet', but doesn't say anything about reading a book, or writing a letter or essay (and no, those skills are not implied).

As for setting a bone, that can be important if you are far from help, but resuscitation is a more urgently needed skill, and needed more often.

I'd also add in 'communicate wordlessly', 'learn a language', 'teach a skill', 'sketch an idea', 'negotiate honestly', 'spot a swindle', 'make a friend', 'speak publicly', 'improvise', 'follow the rules', 'stand up to authority', and possibly a few others that Heinlein missed or skipped.

In terms of actual updates, skills that an omnicompetent today would have that weren't really a thing 50 years ago for the general public, the ones I can come up with are mostly things like 'evade surveillance', 'communicate privately', and 'buy contraband', and a few that just reflect the democratizing effect computers have had on various skills that used to be extremely specialized and non-computer-related like 'take a good photo', 'edit a video', and 'publish globally'.

Seems good as it is; we haven’t changed much in several tens of thousands of years, let alone fifty.

Wouldn't update it at all. The "payload" is the last sentence, with the preceding list just broad examples, none of which needs updating.

I think being able to plan an invasion, literally or metaphorically, is a master skill. Putin in Ukraine, protesters in Ottawa, and market-disrupting visionaries can change the world in ways few of us think ourselves capable of, but grasping greatness is just a matter of unlearning learned helplessness and taking the first step toward it when the whole world says no.

That's pure bias, that important change is always found where there is resistance. Most important change is found where people are just too comfortable to change themselves, which is the harder version of change to implement. Six months playing revolution vs. a lifetime of sacrifice.

Here's one I wrote up previously:

A human being should be able to decide to take a life-saving vaccine without needing input from literal government-overthrow types, evaluate their own government's ongoing invasions for credibility, make conscious diet choices, avoid road rage, design a life plan, write a journal entry for internal meditation/peace, manage and plan for long-term financial stability in the face of change, connect a device to the internet, evaluate another person's general physical and emotional state, know some first aid, comfort the dying, contextualize and integrate feedback, offer and design feedback, cooperate, act alone while understanding the risks of subjective mindsets, know where they can go to get help with math, list and organize the various aspects of a new problem, test a CO2 or smoke detector, sign up for texts from local authorities, evaluate a meal for balance, fight creatively, and make plans to die with supportive friends around.

(...though this "should" thing is a real pain in the neck. Do we say that means "in order to get my approval", which turns the entire thing into a fractal mansplain, or "ideally, in order to face today's pressures"? I like the latter better as it encourages a more open approach to the way we judge other humans and their capabilities, especially if we feel a need to map our own competencies onto everyone else...)

Context: I learned how to do all of Heinlein's things with the possible exception of building design, which I only studied at a conceptual level, albeit alongside an expert in conceptual & environmental design. I doubt conceptual work is what Heinlein had in mind, because he himself did conceptual design to pay the bills and IMO therefore unfortunately rated it lower in terms of a subjective ideal. In my opinion he rated workaday tasks highly because of his wide-ranging mind; those wise ones with workaday schedules on the other hand will tend to rate wide-ranging mental tasks higher to those who listen. Heinlein also vastly underrated the information age if this quote is to be taken as wisdom for our time.

In the process of learning that Heinlein-list stuff I earned an Eagle Scout award and had some other wild experiences. A lot of fun was had, but there were some clear issues with his list that became way more clear when I started offering training and coaching. He clearly included his higher-self ideal in the standard and fell into the standard-setter's trap of outright exclusion of swaths of people and what they can be reasonably taught & expected to do.

And if you come from a family where it's common to pitch manure (or just about anything really bad, even counting things like being stooped over inside a fuselage all day as an aerospace engineer), they may still want you to remember your horse sense, but they are definitely going to want you to use your intuitive side and write some poetry if that'll keep the following generations out of the tough-labor biz.

Based on the list contents I don't think he meant to sound like an idealist but that's where his list puts him--learn to do the things on the list then invite others around you to do the same and you'll know what I mean.

It's interesting to think about that aspect, too--Heinlein didn't even attempt to provide a measurement framework for these items. It's a serious-sounding list but it's hard to believe he cared too much about others completing it. Logically it makes more sense as a condemnation of the late course of human civilization. This is really unfortunate because had a measurement framework been attached, had a real effort been made to offer more than critique, it could have been huge.

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