As a mage, I just want to pursue the truth

Chapter 388

The benefits publicly displayed by the Science City alone are enough to attract talents from all over the world.

Perhaps the image that China has created for its scientists is that they are indifferent to fame and fortune and are selfless and devoting themselves to their work.

In fact, there is not a high correlation between scientists and these eight words. Because of their developed brains, their desires are even stronger than ordinary people.

Especially in Western countries, their maritime culture and the evolution of thought after the Renaissance have determined that they must put their own feelings first.

As for national and ethnic concepts, they may exist, but when it comes to self-interest, they can be absent.

Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many German scientists and former Russian scientists who were recruited in large numbers by America after failing in their own countries.

These scientists had already gone to America and other Western countries before their own countries failed.

The most attractive benefit of the Science City, in addition to extending your life, is the artificial intelligence assistant that can help you verify many ideas and write papers.

An assistant who can take charge of almost all your daily and research work, and with the use and running-in, can understand your intentions almost 100%.

For someone who is passionate about scientific research, he can focus all his energy on exploring unknown areas rather than on trivial matters.

The number of people around the world applying to become permanent residents of Science City has increased year by year, from two million in the first year to 20 million this year.

If you are applying on your own, you must at least be a PhD candidate.

However, for the talents with real potential and qualifications identified by Zheng Li through scanning with virtual reality equipment, there is no academic requirement.

Since 2000, the number of highly educated talents in the world has been growing rapidly. Even though doctoral degrees are scarce, the number of doctoral degrees in the world is still a considerable number.

In China and America alone, the number of new doctoral degrees added each year is around 70,000.

Of course, a degree does not equal ability, but for a position where supply exceeds demand, it is still necessary to set a certain threshold.

Are jobs in large companies really only available to those from 985 and 211 universities?

Obviously not.

In the first twenty years of the 21st century alone, large state-owned enterprises hired top consulting firms, such as McKinsey, to help them transform their businesses.

The core demand is to break down the business of the enterprise into pieces, so that it can be done even if all the people are replaced by high school graduates.

Therefore, the larger the company, the more standardized its business is, and the lower the requirements for individual abilities are actually.

This is also why the code of large companies is easier to maintain than that of small companies, because large companies have their own set of standards for code writing.

Since the larger the company, the simpler the work content, why should we set a threshold?

Because there are too many people who want to come, the explicit threshold of academic qualifications is used to screen out individuals who do not meet the requirements.

But there are also gods who do not conform to the explicit rules.

Generally speaking, when you see a list of new employees, most of them are from Tsinghua University and Peking University, and there are only a few local second-tier universities like Yenching University in between. You should have an idea of ​​what this is.

The Science City sets a PhD as a threshold not because there are not enough positions, but because the job pays too well and lacks an obvious management and assessment mechanism.

Scientific research itself is a process of accumulation and development. If the problem you are working on is too difficult, even if you think about it every day, you may not get any results in your lifetime.

Like Zhang Yitang, if he had not made achievements in twin prime numbers, no one would know that he is an outstanding mathematician.

In Science City, there is no such thing as a three-year promotion or leave. If you don’t get any results, you have to leave.

Even during the three-year assessment period, you are only asked to talk about some of your thoughts and interim results over the past three years.

The three-year assessment period is to verify your ability and potential, not to require you to publish certain articles or achieve a certain impact factor.

Such weak constraints inherently avoid result-oriented and meaningless scientific research.

Science City has been in operation for about five years.

During these five years, the outside world has gained a general understanding of the operation of the Science City.

More and more scientists want to join the Science City. One of the experts wrote in his personal blog:
“I would love to work in Science City in Singapore.

The treatment and special environment of Science City are just one of the factors that made me want to go there, but not the decisive factor.

The fundamental reason why I really want to work in Science City is that their assessment mechanism is not result-oriented.

In the modern academic system, there is complete result worship.

No one cares about your grades in high school, and no one cares which school you graduated from.

Perhaps the only thing that is somewhat useful is which supervisor you followed during your doctoral studies.

What people care about is what papers you have published, in what journals they were published, and what the impact factor is.

As for whether these papers themselves are meaningful, not many people care.

Whenever a new direction is discovered, everyone is concerned about how many papers can be published in this direction and how much benefit can be gained from it.

As for truth, not many people care about the spirit of science itself.

Most researchers are pursuing writing a paper that will be accepted for publication rather than producing something valuable.

Although in reality most papers do have no practical use, in today's era, such a phenomenon is becoming more and more common, and the spirit of pursuing truth is gradually lost.

Einstein once said: If a person is forced to write a lot of scientific works, then his academic career will run the risk of superficial knowledge.

I have come into contact with many talented researchers in various academic forums. Their thinking logic is very sharp. During the conversation, they were able to keep up with my thoughts and give me some very inspiring suggestions.

But after I went back and looked through their papers, most, if not all, of them made no sense, just a boring pile of numbers.

Their papers and the individuals themselves left me with completely opposite impressions.

Similar accusations have been made over the years, although academics have always defended such criticisms by saying:
Basic research is difficult and incremental, like the blood transfusions used in MRI scans and the blood transfusion methods mentioned in a paper published in an obscure academic journal in the 1800s.

We need a lot of repeated experiments to get sufficiently valuable results.

These useless results can pave the way for sufficiently useful results.

But these piled-up useless results are purely fine-tuning the methods. Is it really necessary to let PhDs or even professors do the repetitive data over and over again in order to get the desired data?
Now that a large number of jobs in the manufacturing and service industries are being replaced by artificial intelligence, can the academic community provide some low-end jobs for ordinary people so that more people can participate in academia?

Science City fully respects individuals. It is not paper-oriented or result-oriented. I think it is a place that is conducive for scientists to think about some truly valuable problems. "In fact, it is paper-oriented. All researchers pursue publishing papers, not what problems I am interested in. I want to explore the truth and push the boundaries of my understanding of the world further.

The most fundamental reason is that performance appraisal in academia requires a mechanism to evaluate how well professors, researchers and doctoral students are doing.

If science is a towering tree, then the lower fruits have almost all been picked by our predecessors, and most of the remaining fruits are very difficult to pick.

For example, it might take me only three to five years to think through a valuable problem and come up with a solution, which is exactly the cycle for a PhD student from enrollment to graduation.

During these five years, I was able to produce a valuable result, publish a meaningful paper, and graduate successfully.

But now I also have to publish my doctoral thesis in about five years, but the fruits that can be harvested in five years are gone, and the other fruits may take fifteen years or even longer to harvest.

At this time, I was faced with the time pressure of graduation.

Then I can only choose some results that are meaningless but can be published in papers.

After graduating with a Ph.D., you become a postdoctoral fellow or a teaching assistant. Almost every title is accompanied by performance appraisals and time pressure.

This is also why it seems to be increasingly difficult to produce good results in academia, with a large number of meaningless papers flooding various journals.

The difficulty of scientific research has changed, but the assessment mechanism has not changed.

This problem is not unique to China, but a common challenge faced by the global academic community.

The only better thing compared to China is that after graduation, foreign academics enter universities and become members of the tenure-track examination sequence, and the pressure of performance appraisal will not be very great.

At the same time, after completing the program, you will be able to get a position and become a tenured professor.

Not only is the performance appraisal system in China very stressful, but it is also possible that even if a certain appraisal task is agreed upon, the conditions for you may suddenly change because better young teachers are recruited in the following years.

If there are two positions abroad, then recruit two people and develop a tenure-track assessment plan.

There are two positions in the country, so I will recruit two hundred people. These two hundred people will fight each other out. I may replace the winner.

In such an environment where people breed poison, it would be strange if people did not engage in data modification or paper-based discussion.

If you spend time working on valuable problems, then just wait for three years without producing any results and then be graduated.

After the Science City officially started operating, the largest number of applicants came from China.

The assessment mechanism of the Science City is too easy for those who have fought their way out of the Gu-raising business.

Moreover, for Chinese scientists, as long as you become a professor, you can work in multiple places at the same time.

Like the former dean of the School of Economics of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Dybvig, who won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Economics, only came to Southwestern University of Finance and Economics for one month each year when he was working there.

The constraints on the Science City are very weak, almost non-existent.

They can work in their own country and come to Singapore when they want.

Being a researcher in the Science City is actually equivalent to an entry qualification. Once obtained, one can enter the Science City at any time and enjoy corresponding welfare benefits.

Zheng Li doesn't care where you achieved your results.

Whether you produce good and valuable research results in China, America, or England, the Science City will recognize them.

Of course, the research results here must be done by you yourself, and your contribution must be at least 50%.

Since the final certification of the results needs to be carried out back in Science City, Zheng Li had already developed a truth system for China to use more than ten years ago, not to mention in his own nest.

It is wishful thinking to try to infringe on other people's academic achievements through deception and want to get away with it in the face of artificial intelligence.

In 2039, many universities or institutions will recognize the judgment made by Science City.

That is to say, young scholars in their school who are waiting to obtain regular positions, even if they have not yet completed the relevant assessment tasks, have passed the assessment of the Science City and become formal permanent residents.

Then the college or institution will automatically recognize their appointment and make them a full-time teacher.

For young scholars, this is also an additional path.

The college's Gu-raising scroll is not as good as the other scroll kings, but maybe it can carve out a bloody path from the Science City.

In the last year of the 1930s of the 21st century, even China can provide relatively complete basic welfare protection for the grassroots people.

At the same time, wages in the service industry have increased significantly, resulting in most people working three months and playing for nine months.

That is, without considering the future, they can work only three months a year.

In fact, it’s not that I don’t consider the future. I still consider the future.

They just put their expectations and fantasies about the future in the virtual world, hoping to gain something in the virtual world with the help of the remaining nine months.

This is the case in China, and even more so in other developed countries.

In countries like Northern Europe, there is not much difference between working and not working, because the government pays for it anyway.

Some radical politicians have even suggested that no one should work, and that everyone will have to pay to go to work after they come to power.

As for where the money comes from, all companies are owned by the state, and a small number of people from the third world are hired to work.

Of course, it is still too radical for now, because to maintain the basic operation of the city, some service industries still need real people to do it.

But for food delivery, Musk's Tesla claims that it will solve this problem through robots within five years.

In such an era, the quality of life of the lower classes has never been higher.

There are still a large number of Chinese people who believe that learning is the only way out and are determined to embark on the academic path.

Most of the people who are involved in this academic field abroad are wealthy people. They either do it out of spontaneous interest or are guided by their families.

Upper-class families abroad are keenly aware that the future is actually a world where power is shared between traditional human authority and foreign wizards.

As for the wizard, the only one that is known is Merlin.

Merlin's tendency was clearly to particularly respect academics, so they tried to invest some insignificant manpower in this area.

(End of this chapter)