This Great Xerox Machine

~woland

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Rant

This is not just some rant from an angry (former) student. This is a

feeble attempt at a manifest to save knowledge from the vulture-like

claws of the universities and publications. The universities have

turned themselves into a great xerox machine; publishing one research

after the other and printing the degrees much the same and handing

them out to those who help sustain this unhealthy cycle of academic

regurgitation. This foul cult of submission. This regime of scholar

workers of the machine has poisoned and violated the chronicles of

critical thinking and academic innovation.

The researches encouraged by the universities and their agents of

normalization (professors) are those that are built upon a priori works.

That makes sense, a research must draw credit from somewhere and show

the ability to cast a new meaning from them or academically sort,

decipher, study and analyze them. The problem occurs when said a priori

masterpieces of a field are exactly the ones that at their own time,

where discarded and humiliated! There are many examples of this,

Nietzsche, Derrida, Schopenhauer and et cetera

Some History

Universities and publications are a control system. They filter what

knowledge gets out and how it gets out. But we can't be against it

all, without an assessment and validating mechanism we cant have good

research. Historically researches were self-centered, meaning that if

a scholar had something to prove, he would either prove it

empirically, with logic and arguments or he would fail at it. The

main problem in academic research has always been simultaneous

discoveries and priority in research. Meaning that if five scholars

discovered the same thing at the same time, there would be endless

dispute regarding who did it first and who were to receive the

credit. According to Dr.Merton "The decline in contested claims for

priority in research discoveries can be credited to the increasing

acceptance of the publication of papers in modern academic journals".

Problem

But my problem with the current state of this practice is that it has

become quantitative. Nowadays students and scholars are forced to

construct their ideas and their research with and through the previous

works of others instead of giving credit where credit is due. The

universities care more about the quantity of citation rather than

their quality and their importance in the research and in the field.

One could argue that my mindset is akin to that of the The Royal

Society, (formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural

Knowledge) and one wouldn't be so wrong to assume that. The royal

society remained loyal to their initial incentive which was "science

could only move forward through a transparent and open exchange of

ideas backed by experimental evidence".

But I'd like to add to that.

Decentralize Knowledge

A decentralized knowledge model might just be what we need. In today's

world where internet plays such a crucial role in spreading

information (and of course misinformation) we can escape the tyranny of

the publications and research manuals. This research and publication

model might be best suited for researches that are not acceptable by

the publications and research manuals. The decentralize research model

will not follow any of the common standards but it will follow a given

set of rules. The researches conducted must give credit to their

sources and follow a logical research model where the problem is

explained, questions asked and answers are provided in the end. The

difference will be in what is allowed to be published. Anything! As

long as basic rules of logical scholarly work is followed any research,

article and idea may be published freely by the author. This way,

there will be no need for diplomatic prudence or the common timid tone

in most scholarly work.

How Gemini comes in

I think Gemini can be just the platform for something like this!

I am trying to get a flounder capsule for this very purpose, so if

anyone is interested (or knows a better way) you can contact me at

telegram with the username @inlovewithapenguin or on matrix at

@iconclast_666:matrix.org. Or you can email me at =>isitjuicyisitfresh@tutanota.com