The optimal system of science
Historical conditions of the reform
Subjects and mechanisms of the reform
The article's main ideas :
Fundamental science is an artificial system with low efficiency.
Science functions optimally effectively in the hierarchical structure of associations of scientists and federations of these associations.
The main function of the national scientific federation will be to obtain public resources and distribute them among sectoral federations and associations.
The second function of scientific federations and associations will be coordinating and planning research directions and scientific projects.
The third function will be to organize interactions of their members.
The criterion of the scientific character of any activity is compliance with the classical principles of epistemology.
Compliance with these principles optimizes the efficiency of science but increases intellectual stress, increases the labor intensity of scientific activity, facilitates detecting errors, plagiarism, and trivialities of scientific works.
Therefore, the overwhelming majority of scientists deny and sabotage compliance with these principles.
This sabotage significantly reduces the efficiency of scientific activity.
The original, root, fundamental cause of global social catastrophes of the 20th century was brain laziness, anti-scientific and harmful rhetoric, provocative demagogy of academic communities.
By the beginning of the 3rd millennium, the academic community was still unable to create the theory of social systems and design adequate, productive recommendations for the development of society.
Because of this, in the 21st century, Western civilization is systemically degrading, and the economies of Western countries are weakening.
Therefore, the amount of resources directed by societies to science is decreasing.
We can launch the process of reforming fundamental science.
Just a few actions in the media and social networks will launch a self-developing process of dissemination and discussion of the principles of epistemology.
Business associations will promote compliance with these principles in corporate and public management and will sponsor projects of new scientific associations.
The self-organized academic community that adheres to the principles of epistemology will be able to design optimal, productive solutions to all social problems that will quickly stop the degradation of Western civilization, restore its effective development, and minimize the threat of wars.
Fundamental science is an artificial social system.
Every system has a certain efficiency.
The main factor determining this efficiency is the correspondence of the artificial, invented properties of this system to its objective, immanent properties.
Discrepancy causes low efficiency of the system.
( A car with square wheels, fueled with “donkey urine”, drives poorly, even if it is beautifully painted.)
All existing social systems do not correspond to their immanent properties and, therefore, function ineffectively.
Existing fundamental science is also inadequately organized.
Therefore, the efficiency of its functioning is relatively low.
Fundamental science functions optimally effectively in the hierarchical structure of associations of scientists and federations of these associations.
Therefore, the academic community must consolidate and self-organize into such a structure.
All elements of this structure will operate continuously via the Internet.
The main function of the national federation of fundamental sciences will be to obtain public, primarily state, resources and distribute them among lower-level sectoral federations and associations of researchers.
The efficiency of resource distribution by self-governing academic communities is much greater than the low efficiency of a wasteful grant system.
Federations and associations of researchers will make decisions through voting by their members.
The varying weight of the vote of each member of the federation and association is dynamically determined by the collective decisions of the remaining members of the corresponding federation or association based on the current weights of their votes.
At the start of the dynamic process of determining the weights of the votes of the members of the associations, each PhD holder has the same weight of the vote.
During the iterative calculations, the votes of researchers with PhDs receive dynamically changing weights.
At the start of the dynamic process of determining the weights of votes of federation members, each collective member (federation or association) has a vote weight equal to the number of PhD holders in this member.
During iterative calculations, the votes of collective members (federations and associations) receive dynamically changing weights.
The second function of scientific federations and associations will be coordinating and planning research areas and scientific projects, according to which federations and associations will distribute their resources to their members.
The third function of federations and associations will be the organization of interactions between their members.
The main type of scientific interactions is the discussion of errors in scientific papers – incorrect terms, logical contradictions, and inconsistencies with facts.
Discussion platforms of associations and federations will operate much more effectively than archaic peer-reviewed journals and will replace them.
The second type of interactions will be the creation and use of collective AI knowledge memory bases, which will find scientific papers by their semantic content.
The third type will be the establishment of collective assessments of scientific works based on the results of their discussions, taking into account the weights of readers' votes, their associations and federations for the introduction of these assessments into the catalogs of works and the AI memory bases.
Classical epistemology has established the principles of scientific activity, the observance of which optimizes its efficiency, – world.kamerton.global/node/369
However, the observance of these principles increases the required intellectual effort, increases the labor intensity of scientific activity, facilitates detecting errors, plagiarism, and trivialities of scientific works.
Therefore, the overwhelming majority of scientists deny and sabotage the observance of these principles.
This sabotage significantly reduces the efficiency of scientific activity, especially collective interactions.
Therefore, federations and associations must oblige their members to observe these principles, first of all, when conducting formalized discussions.
The criterion of the scientific nature of any activity is the observance of the principles of epistemology.
Since the end of the 19th century, many Western scientists supported the propaganda of the need to change social systems, including revolutionary methods.
However, the denial of the principles of epistemology deprived them of the opportunity to create productive scientific concepts of such changes.
The resulting intellectual vacuum was filled with utopian, destructive doctrines – communism, anarchism, socialism, chauvinism, clericalism, etc.
The denial of the principles of epistemology eliminated the possibility of scientifically proving the falsity and lethality of these doctrines.
Moreover, many scientists supported the dissemination and implementation of these doctrines.
The intelligentsia, including the academic, contributed to the spread of the opinion that talkativeness and graphomania are intellectuality, among all classes of the public.
The anti-scientific, counterproductive, and harmful method of rhetorical thinking dominated the minds of the intelligentsia.
“Streams of consciousness” were considered scientific knowledge.
The respectable and pleasant professors preached demagogic doctrines that destroyed the morality and stability of societies.
As a result, the ensuing chaos launched self-developing processes of universal hostility and the genocides that naturally followed.
Thus, mass scientific impotence caused all the wars and revolutions of the 20th century.
Therefore, the popular idea that the villainous political leaders – Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and others are the main historical culprits of these wars and revolutions is false.
The original, root, fundamental cause of the global social catastrophes of the 20th century was brain laziness, anti-scientific and harmful rhetoric, provocative demagogy of academic communities.
The 20th century confirmed Lenin's harsh aphorism – “The intelligentsia imagines itself to be the brain of the nation. In fact, it is not a brain but shit”.
History is the criterion of truth and does not forgive mistakes.
A significant part of the academic community suffered in these catastrophes and even died.
These victims are partly the just punishment of History's Fate for the intellectual laziness, meaningless rhetoric, and utopian demagogy of the academic communities of the 20th century.
The past 100 years have confirmed that “History teaches that it teaches nothing”.
Scientific communities continue to deny and sabotage the classical principles of epistemology.
This paradoxical phenomenon reduces the effectiveness of physics by 1.5-2 times, biology and medicine by 5-7 times, and nullifies the semantic productivity of humanitarian and social pseudo-sciences.
However, the overwhelming majority of the academic community do not understand the need and obligation to follow the objective laws of Knowledge.
The majority of scientists believe that bad politicians refuse to create good political systems.
Perhaps they infantilely hope that God will send angels to political posts, or aliens from Alpha Centauri will arrive and reveal the true design of the good political system to earthlings.
In reality, designing productive political systems is a purely scientific function that the academic community is obliged to perform.
Alternatives are impossible.
The absence of such systems, the erroneousness of all political decisions, and the misfortunes of the peoples caused by them are the fault and responsibility, first of all, of the academic community.
Education has instilled in the social elites that the Earth is round, and in general, the World is not what it seems at first glance.
This has broken the conservative common sense of the elites.
However, the denial of epistemology by university professors has prevented the formation of scientific consciousness of the elites.
As a result, the elites have lost common sense, but have not acquired scientific thinking.
Due to weakened common sense and lack of scientific thinking, they easily perceive harmful myths, think in utopian ideas, and strive to implement them.
In the 1980s, Soviet pseudo-intellectuals actively participated in “Perestroika” and contributed to its failure.
In the 1990s, in Russia, pseudo-intellectuals actively supported the establishment of the super-presidential, dictatorial regime of President Yeltsin, which then naturally turned into the autocratic, militaristic KGB regime of V. Putin.
All 40 post-Soviet years, to this day, the Russian academic community, including its members in the West, freed from KGB repression, has demonstrated an inability to offer productive projects for the development of the Russian Federation and, moreover, even a productive project for the structure of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
It is only capable of gushing out hysterical calls to repeat in the Russian Federation the social-liberal model of modern Western civilization, the degradation and impotence of which clearly prove its utopianism and falsity.
Therefore, the original Historical culprit of the tragedy of modern Russia is not the villain Putin but the Russian academic community, which is too lazy to strain its brains for a scientific understanding of the transformation of Russian society.
In the second half of the 20th century, at the start of the scientific and technological revolution, the countries of Western civilization produced a lot of resources.
They generously directed some of these resources to fundamental science.
In conditions of abundant funding, fundamental science functioned quite productively, despite its low systemic efficiency.
In the 1990s, the destruction of the USSR and the system of pro-Soviet underdeveloped countries opened up large sources of cheap natural resources for Western economies.
The rapid development of reformed China created a planetary “factory” with a billion-strong, very cheap and hard-working workforce.
The disappearance of the Soviet Army significantly reduced the defense spending of the West.
The computer revolution that took place gave trillions of income to Western corporations.
The new political elites abolished traditional financial “taboos” and began to make trillion-dollar monetary emissions and debts according to the principle “after us – even the deluge”.
These circumstances created euphoric illusions of eternal, easy, stress-free prosperity of Western civilization and the possibility of realizing a new socialist utopia.
The chorus of “fukuyamas” announced “The End of History” and the achievement of “earthly paradise”.
In the 2000s, Western pseudo-intellectuals – professors, the press, bohemians, lawyers, officials – with their characteristic mythological thinking, happily believed in this myth, staged a social-liberal revolution, and created the humanistic Civilization without stresses and distresses – the civilizational “almshouse”.
By the beginning of the 3rd millennium, the academic community was still unable to create a theory of social systems and design adequate, productive recommendations for the development of society.
In the 2000s, when the new socialists began to promote social liberalism, the academic community was unable to recognize and convincingly prove the utopian nature and harmfulness of this doctrine.
As in the early 20th century, the majority of the academic community actively supports the new utopian doctrine.
In the 2010s, the favorable circumstances of the 1990s were exhausted.
The utopian civilization-“almshouse” turned out to be incapable of functioning effectively, providing for its hypertrophied needs and, moreover, successfully developing.
As a result, Western civilization is systemically degrading, and the economies of Western countries are weakening – world.kamerton.global/node/379
During national and, especially, civilizational crises, states save resources and, first of all, reduce expenses that are not required for the current functioning of society.
Fundamental science is the first on the list of unnecessary functions.
Therefore, the amount of resources directed by societies to fundamental science is decreasing and will decrease in the foreseeable future.
Therefore, increasing the efficiency of using dwindling resources is becoming an increasingly important condition for scientific activity.
The current spread of AI technologies is changing the technology and organization of scientific and educational activities.
The effectiveness of personal AI teachers exceeds the archaic lecture method by tens of times.
Therefore, lecture teaching in universities will be minimized.
These circumstances will stimulate the separation of educational and scientific functions of universities.
The main function of universities will be to form students' basic practical skills.
Scientific activity will take place mainly in research institutes.
Talented students capable of science will practice in these institutes.
In these circumstances, universities and institutes will fire many teachers and researchers and reduce the salaries of those who remain.
However, the coming pauperization will not be the most serious problem of the academic community.
The "Moment of Truth" has arrived.
The social-liberal degradation of Western civilization has accelerated and worsened.
The systemic weakening of economies is accompanied by an increase in public, corporate, and private debts, rising prices for natural resources, natural disasters, deterioration of public infrastructure, deterioration of buildings, deterioration of the population gene pool, decreased fertility, excessive medical costs, demographic extinction, deintellectualization of the population, loss of defense capability.
The ideological conflict between the conservative classes and the liberalized “pseudo-educated class” escalated to the point of irreconcilability and violence.
In the 20th century, Humanity was divided into two warring ideological camps – capitalism and socialism.
The defeat and disappearance of socialism gave hope for the future unity of Humanity.
However, the social-liberal revolution in Western civilization caused a new world ideological confrontation – authoritarian conservatism led by China and Russia and utopian liberalism led by the USA and Europe.
Ideologists of modern authoritarianism use the obvious degradation and decay of the West and the lack of factors and prospects for the reversibility of its systemic destruction for the doctrinal justification of dictatorial regimes.
The dramatic weakening of the liberalized Western civilization, which has become an impotent, obese “Mega-almshouse”, has raised the hopes of China and underdeveloped countries to deprive the Western “golden billion” of its opportunity to exploit the resources of the entire Earth.
China and Russia are laying claim to the economic and military capture of this opportunity and the subsequent colonization of Western countries.
With a probability of more than 40%, the global struggle of the East against the West may escalate into a global thermonuclear war in the coming years.
In the conditions of civil and international conflicts, the life of scientists accustomed to the comfort of academic “ivory towers” will be very painful.
As in the 20th century, these life's hardships will be a new punishment of History to academic communities for their intellectual laziness already in the 21st century.
Let's assume a 60% probability that Western civilization has not yet reached the “point of no return” in the processes of degradation and incitement of wars.
In the hope of realizing this probability, we can launch the process of reforming fundamental science.
First of all, it is necessary to determine the main subjects of this process – public groups that will carry it out motivated and effectively.
The first group is scientists who are passionate about science.
The second group is patrons of scientific projects and organizations.
The third group is corporations and business associations.
The first action of the reform should be the formation of an Internet team of scientists, primarily physicists and mathematicians, to promote the principles of epistemology in the specified public groups – world.kamerton.global/node/328
Just a few actions in the media and social networks will launch a self-developing process of dissemination and discussion of the principles of epistemology.
Scientists who adhere to these principles will create associations and centers – world.kamerton.global/node/365
Patrons will minimize funding for projects that do not comply with these principles and will sponsor, first of all, projects supported by new, effective scientific associations.
Business associations will promote the observance of these principles in corporate and public management and will sponsor mainly projects of new scientific associations.
The methods and forms of collective interactions of scientists, the components of which are scientific information systems, primarily peer-reviewed journals, remain archaic and have long been inconsistent with the capabilities of modern information technologies.
The methods of collective scientific activity will be qualitatively changed.
Peer-reviewed journals, the ineffectiveness of which in modern conditions is generally recognized, will be replaced by formalized discussion systems of scientific associations based on the principles of epistemology.
The overwhelming majority of existing public organizations of scientists, including those whose names contain the word “association”, are not real associations.
In fact, they are organized and operate as charitable organizations.
Their managements control connections with patrons, receive their money, appropriate 50-90% for themselves, and hold some rare, useless events - meetings, awards, celebrations, and also publish some magazines.
New scientific associations will be self-governing and function as described above.
They will unite into federations.
Gradually, the flows of state and sponsor money intended for fundamental sciences will be directed to these federations, distributed among associations, and will replace the ineffective grant system.
The hierarchical structure of the academic community is natural and the most effective.
Therefore, it will be formed by the best scientists, spontaneously and quickly.
This process will be sabotaged by quasi-scientific parasites who make careers by compiling, plagiarism, speculation, falsification, intrigue, slander, and are interested in maintaining the status quo.
The denial of epistemology and the disorganization of the academic community are the root causes of the erroneousness and harmfulness of all political projects.
A self-organized academic community that adheres to the principles of epistemology will be able to easily and quickly design optimal, productive solutions to all social problems.
These solutions will quickly stop the degradation of Western civilization, restore its effective development, and minimize the threats of wars.
E. Gershman
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