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Nooscope: The Strange Device Of Putin's New Man Anton Vaino

Vardoger

Vardoger

Make mine a 99
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Yeah sure. A device which can tap into the global consciousness:
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Nooscope mystery: The strange device of Putin's new man Anton Vaino

Russian President Vladimir Putin's new chief of staff Anton Vaino has reached the top shrouded in mystery.

He does not appear to have given any press interviews in his past career, and his official biography reveals little, beyond a steady rise over many years of service to the Kremlin.

Before his Kremlin promotion the Estonian-born high flyer served as a diplomat, including a stint at the Tokyo embassy.

But an investigation by BBC Russian into Mr Vaino's academic work reveals intriguing details about him and may offer clues about his worldview.

Like many officials of his generation, reports say he has a master's degree in economics and has contributed to various scientific publications.

In 2012 an article appeared in a specialist journal called Economics and Law written by an "AE Vaino" - widely believed to be one and the same person as Mr Putin's new chief of staff.

It was titled "The capitalisation of the future".

Levers of power
Written in a dense academic prose - which many Russian commentators this week said they found almost impossible to understand - and accompanied by even more complex charts and diagrams, the article outlines new ways of organising and understanding society.

Mr Vaino argues that the economy and society in general have become too complex to manage by traditional means. Governments need to seek new ways of regulating and controlling them.

The article describes a new device called a "nooscope" which, it says, can tap into global consciousness and "detect and register changes in the biosphere and in human activity".

The "nooscope" bewildered many in Russia this week. Does the device really exist, they asked. What does it actually do? Is Mr Vaino really serious?

BBC Russian tracked down Viktor Sarayev, an award-winning economist and businessman who has co-authored a number of articles with Mr Vaino.

He described the nooscope as "a device that scans transactions between people, things and money", and claimed it was an invention of parallel significance to the telescope and the microscope.

But he was less forthcoming about whether it actually existed, or was still under development.
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More text at link...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37109169
 
I did wonder wether to post that here. Perhaps it's an attempt at psychohistory.
 
Some blogs (etc.) in the region (Ukraine for sure; not sure about Russia ... ) are already satirizing Vaino and his Nooscope whatever-it-is ...

22744857dbf79b6306d84d1abec3878e5e74943c.jpg
 
Intriging, but insubstantial, as indeed is the case for most of political 'science'.

Putin, Trump, Hillary, Obama, all, simply vary in the differing media images they project, and the relative believability of their selected henchmen.

I do appreciate the naive style of Russian politics, as depicted. It's much more entertaining, and straightforward, than western efforts. It's usually harder to spot the factual cracks and gaps over in this part of the world

https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/nooscope-54991
The piece about “nooscope” — whoever did in fact write it — has nothing to do with science, says Kirill Martynov, a philosophy professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. “It is not even clear to which area of expertise we can attribute it. Basically, it’s nonsense. In terms of Russian language, the words in it make sense, but in terms of science — they don’t,” Martynov told The Moscow Times.

The article lacks many of the formal characteristics of a piece of scientific work, like coherence, logic and the facts being attributed to sources. “Instead, the article uses semi-mystical terms and facts that cannot be verified or proved,” the philosophy professor says. “For example, it says that ’nooscope’ has 50 patents, but there is no attribution to any of them.”

This falls into a trend called “aboriginal science,” according to Martynov. “In aboriginal science people imitate scientific activity, using platforms that have nothing to do with international science, but are convenient for achieving their goals,” he says.

The article is far from being scientific, agrees Alexander Etkind, a renowned culture historian. At the same time, resembles a Utopia as a genre. “There is hope in the article that new will change the quality of government. The new device, developed under mythical protocols and patents, is supposed to control things that can’t be controlled: Internet, market, life,” Etkind told The Moscow Times.

Earlier on Monday BBC Russia reached out to one of Vaino’s co-authors, Viktor Sarayev, and asked about the “nooscope.”

The response was elliptic. “[Isaac] Newton invented the telescope, [Antonie van] Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope, and we invented the nooscope — a device of the material Internet that scans transactions between people, things and money,” Sarayev wrote back to the BBC. He declined to give more details about the device.

The bigger question is whether Anton Vaino, president’s chief of staff, really wrote it, says Mikhail Gelfand, a prominent biologist and co-founder of Dissernet.

“If he is really behind this delirium, then it’s quite scary,” Gelfand told The Moscow Times. “If, he’s just signed off on other people’s work, we have another problem. That means we’re living in a country where head of the presidential administration can sign off on an absurdity with his eyes closed”
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"This falls into a trend called “aboriginal science,” according to Martynov. “In aboriginal science people imitate scientific activity, using platforms that have nothing to do with international science, but are convenient for achieving their goals,” he says."

Reminds me of another current thread on this MB! :twisted:
 
rynner2 said:
"This falls into a trend called “aboriginal science,” according to Martynov. “In aboriginal science people imitate scientific activity, using platforms that have nothing to do with international science, but are convenient for achieving their goals,” he says."

Reminds me of another current thread on this MB! :twisted:
Click to expand...
The Supernatural thread?
 
So not the one about aboriginals then.
 
I expect Vaino will be giving a TED talk about it next. :)
 
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