ВЗАИМОСВЯЗЬ ЭФФЕКТИВНОСТИ И БЕЗОПАСНОСТИ
Correlation of efficiency and safety
Борис Иванович Остапенко, к. филос. н., МА
Boris I. Ostapenko, PhD, MA
Аннотация: В статье исследована взаимосвязь эффективности и безопасности научно-технической деятельности с учётом существенных рисков технологий XXI века; обращено внимание на профессиональную и социальную ответственность специалистов, пользователей и политиков за обеспечение безопасности. Исходя из наличия неразрывной связи эффективности и безопасности в научно-технической деятельности, обобщающими для оценивания характера преобразовательной деятельности являются критерии безопасности доминирующего вектора мировоззренческой направленности в обществе и у профессионалов и критерий безопасности специфического научно-технического проекта.
Ключевые слова: мировоззрение, мотивация, намерения, образование, воспитание, ответственность, эффективность, безопасность, научно-техническая деятельность, оценивание эффективности и безопасности.
Annotation: The efficiency and safety of the scientific and technological performance are mutually dependant, especially with the power and risks of the XXI century technologies. It is the best, when efficiency is embedded in safety, while safety is entrenched in the efficiency. At the worst, the efficiency does not hold the safety, while the safety disengages the efficiency. The correlations of the efficiency and safety could achieve the level of the symbiosis — social, functional, and structural interdependency, when directed by humanistic and social vector of the worldview intentions, reflecting successful upbringing of the human beings and educating the professionals to the absolute of the human dignity. Argued concept of the correlation between the efficiency and safety of the science and technology states that general criteria for the qualitative assessment of the human transformative activities are the criterion of the safe dominating vector of the worldview intentions in the society and within the professionals in charge and the criterion of the safety of the specific scientific, technical, and social project.
Keywords: worldview, motivations, intentions, education, upbringing, responsibility, efficiency, safety, science and technology, assessment of efficiency and safety.
Correlation of efficiency and safety
Preface
The global power of XXI century industry reaches the level challenging as much local customs as global stability. Real-time information technology provides media for the fluidity of finances, global communication to command the local affairs, informational intervention to overrun lasting regimes, burning ideas to destroy cultural realms from within. The world feels strategic uncertainty.
Human mind keeps raising concern of the seeds of chaos grown within noble societies. Who will pledge for the safety of human dignity and race?
Run for efficiency, of the financial sort, of marketing kind, of the political domination does define the shape of the World. It is thirsty, indefinitely voracious. Yesterday is no more. Tomorrow is not soon enough. The mankind are the hostages of unrestrained, vicious, and misled ambitions.
Is modern society in despair? Has demoralization become dominating? Someone chant yes. The people of love intone no. Human beings see more than ambitions of superior consumption. The sunshine of love is within them.
It is a task to steer the train of human destiny. It is an objective for modern philosophy to guide people’s intentions for good.
Introduction
Guiding people’s intentions for the best of human dignity and social wellbeing requires analysis of the starting point of individual and collective efforts. That is dominating intention defining the qualitative outcome of any human deeds. People’s motivations settle the moving agent and the vector of deliberate and consistent efforts. Taken into account the matter of motivation arms the philosophy of science and technology with methodology to reveal the responsible agent, the direction, and the decisive social outcome of the scientific and technical project. Therefore, the society acquires vital information for efficient and safe development.
Developing criteria for the public assessment of the specific scientific and technological projects should have a reference point that is efficiency and safety for the society. How correlate efficiency and safety of the scientific and technological projects in human and social dimensions? It is often considered that efficiency has its meaning without correlation with safety. I argue that the lack of safety compromises efficiency taken as a public good.
significance of the vector of dominating worldview
I argue that the vector of the dominating worldview in a society has a decisive significance for its civilizational fate, strategic assurance, and geopolitical positioning. The concept of the dominating worldview in a society represents the role of direction of active motivation that defines character of the outcome of cumulative social efforts. Albeit various motivations working in the society there is a dominating vector of total efforts the social agents craft. While the motivation is complex and multiple, it is possible to observe a qualitative character of civilization the society generates through its efforts. Technogenic or gathering, humane or destructive, win-win or win-lose, the character of civilization reflects the vector of dominating motivation in the society [9].
Comparative analysis of civilizations provides striking information of the difference the societies demonstrate in their dominating values, aims, and the cultural outcome. Contemporary to us societies of Switzerland and Afghanistan represents such a distinctive difference in the character of the societies the people of these countries build. With the all advanced information technology that provides accessibility to the modern scientific, social, and cultural information, why is the difference of such scale? It is known that the professionals of Afghan origin living in Switzerland perform as good as their Swiss colleges. Why the societies comprised of the human being, the species of the same nature and potential, reveal such a dramatic qualitative difference?
Defining the agent that determines the character of the society, the qualitative cultural content of the resulting civilization may provide an effective reference point for human thoughts, social self-understanding, and crafting policies. Some societies stuck in the corner of enigma of their systematic social failure and lag behind own ambitions and the best performing civilizations. What bring such societies behind? Is it historical past, “doomed” country, genetic or racial fatality, or nevertheless the dominating attitude? It is the attitude that defines the qualitative outcome of the cumulative efforts of the people of the society. That is the answer. The character of the culture the society generates is defined by the cumulative dominating worldview intentions. The resulting vector of the people’s efforts does bring the society to the specific qualitative realm named the civilization [9]. Here come Switzerland or Afghanistan societies at the same time of history, scientific and technological knowledge, and global mobile access to the Internet.
Setting the same aim, declaring the same objective does not guaranty the same achievements and success. The performance of the people implementing the declared goal differs. Though, if the declared aims do represent truth and the efforts applied are honest and adequate, the outcome will be positive and the aim will be achieved. Though, there are plenty of cases when the declared social objectives are only to win election and hold the political and wealth power. The actual policies, economic deeds and financial efforts directed toward specific personal or group interests in contradiction and even at expense of the officially proclaimed goals. Here the outcome will be “strangely different”. Much could be told to hide the truth, to avoid revealing the actual motivation and the agents carrying on them. The society may swallow the lie. The character of such society will be as far from the official declared values and goals as the societies consciously uncivilized.
Whatever complex and comprising multiple intentions and various motivations, the society demonstrates a specific civilizational character, the quality reflecting the dominating in the society vector of worldview intentions. An individual in the society may find oneself under the scrutiny of corrupting mores and controversial law. Notwithstanding, it is the people who settle, perform, and re-establish the debasing attitude. The degrading attitude to themselves, to their colleges, their country, and to the life the individuals choose to perform. The seed of the difference lay within individuals, cumulative choice of whom defines the character of the society they comprise. While examples of untypical motivation exist in any society, the total result reflects the qualitative balance of “good and bad” the people choose to pursue.
Already in the early upbringing of human beings the will and capacity or the lack of teaching the truth on possible nature of human motivation, the virtues and the sins people to know and to choose, establish the vector of dominating worldview intentions that defines the character of the civilization the coming generation will craft. Substitution of the knowledge of truthful cause-effect relations in the people’s behaviour with misleading ideologies and pseudo sciences that drag individual and social attention and efforts to the wrong agents and mystified causes nullify even the honest socio-economic and individual efforts. The outcome of such misled society will be a civilizational failure.
Education shall take solemn responsibility to deliver to pupils the truth on the human motivations, the choice between the virtues and the sins given to each individual, and the responsibility for the chosen vector of the worldview intentions the person carry on through life. It is a striking fact that the most successful societies succeeded the best owing to the implementation of such approach in the education. It does work. And it is therefore the method and foundation for any society to craft its civilizational fate for the best of human dignity [5]. Evasion of such approach brings up a generation of morally and spiritually blinded people which society will fail in shame.
Implementation of the education focused on the decisive agent of the fate of the human and society in the ideologically and culturally deformed communities represent significant challenge. To succeed in overcoming debasing inertia the acknowledgement of the issue should be spread in the public informational domain, presented in the scientific community, and supported by the academic professionals. Properly aimed education is the effective method to transform lagging society into the successful civilization.
Whatever education system may be effective, the actual aims that education system teaches pupils are the point for the academic professionals to define. Building on another ideological lie will harm the people and the society again and again. Some may benefit of it, but not the majority and the society per se. That turn the fate even of the beneficiary under the scrutiny of social disorder, because the society built on the debase ideas doomed to ruin from within. Moreover, the geopolitical competition threatens spiritually disgraced society provoking international legal, economic, and security deprivation, and attracting destructive intervention. A nation carried away by false cause-effect views and mired in dishonoured socio-economic practices loses credibility and legitimacy to international community. Therefore, talking on effective education system we should stay focused on the goal to teach pupils the knowledge of virtues and sins, the skills of recognising own intentions, and responsibility of each person for own choices and deeds in any circumstances. That would bring a crucial knowledge for citizens to direct their life and society to the best quality human dignity can entail.
Hence, the knowledge of the vector of dominating worldview intentions represents a value for any human being and society aiming directing own life for the best creative, prosperous and safe destiny.
Criteria of efficiency and safety
Tackling with the public and professional assessment of efficiency and safety of political, scientific, and technical projects the reference point must be the analysis of the vector of intentions in its nature started within human mind and heart and settled as the worldview intention [3, 5]. The strategic outcome of the project is crafted by the vector of intentions of the professionals involved [1, 2, 4, 6, 7]. If hidden intentions are of asocial nature, ignorant to the goods of other people, aimed toward own benefits by any means, the result of implementing the project though officially designed for the public good will bring harm [12, 13]. Therefore, the first and foremost criterion to assess any socially significant project is to examine a vector of intentions carried on by the professionals in charge of the project.
Being revealed, the vector of intentions should be used as a backbone in the further analysis of the human and social value of the scientific and technological project. Talking on epistemological efficiency of the specific scientific project, observing technical value of the industrial venture, all assessments should reference the acquired information to the known vector of the intentions the involved professionals in charge perform [1, 12]. Often scientific and technical values shadow the existential and social meanings of the project. An excitement of innovation may blind the society with the bright pictures of the new knowledge, new functions, and new consumer demands [13]. Market becomes a ruler of thoughts. The society invests into building of expectations. The expectations thrust social and financial investments. The existential human and social outcome of the project becomes hidden from the public intellectual eyes.
At the same time, the successful monitoring of the vector of intentions should not diminish importance of the scientific and technical analysis of the project [11]. The professionals are to provide thorough observation of all potential and benefits of the scientific and technological innovations. Especially valuable are avant-garde innovations providing breakthrough and leadership in science, technology, and wellbeing. Avant-garde knowledge in science and technology should be examined with additional diligence not to overlook the breakthrough potential that may be hidden behind the established paradigm. It should be avoided diminishing the professional expertise of the projects because of unspecific, unproved, unsupported accusations of the potential danger of the project. The conclusion of the expertise on the project should be argued professionally and specifically [7].
Speaking on the criteria of efficiency and safety, it is important to emphasize the methodological role of the category “worldview intentions” for defining the social preferences on the meaning of efficiency and safety. Different vector of the worldview intentions would bring different assessment of the value of the same project. It could be considered socially desirable or vice versa unnecessary depends on the reference point – different dominating in the society worldview. Even more, the society may be hindered by the lack of proper information, while misled by the deliberate disinformation. The outcome could be destructive for the society to the point of complete disintegration. Here is the importance of the precise and responsible and always combined scientific, technical, and social analysis of any sound project along the reference point of the dominating worldview intentions settled in the society. Thus, the vector of intentions of the professionals responsible for the project would be rigorously assessed in conformity with the vector of dominating worldview of the society.
Here comes the importance of the qualitative characteristics of the dominating worldview in the society, the intention and the vector of it. If dominating is the individual material consumption and profit, the cumulative vector of social efforts and methodological paradigm frame the criteria of efficiency and safety by the momentum of the profitability. The strategic social wellbeing would be settled behind or dropped altogether. Therefore, the efficiency and safety would have a very specific qualitative character giving any scientific, technological, and social project free hands to extract maximum profit by all means. The society sooner or later will face a clash between the established criteria of efficiency and safety, which is for the efficient profit and the safety of the individuals in power, and the efficiency and safety of the society per se [8]. The flight of the finances and the individuals in power offshore resolves the safety challenge they may encounter within the society directed by such vector of worldview intentions.
Though specifically differentiated, the criteria of efficiency and safety are linked in correlation. At the best, efficiency is embedded in safety, while safety is entrenched in the efficiency. At the worst, in the contrary, the efficiency does not hold the safety, while the safety disengages the efficiency. Therefore, the correlation of the efficiency and the safety has a symbiotic nature: social, functional, and structural interdependency. Where the exquisite symbiosis of the efficiency and safety starts? The symbiosis starts within a professional mind directed by the humanistic and social orientation of the vector of the one’s worldview intentions. It is the worldview intentions of the professional mind that entrenches the safety into the efficiency and embeds the efficiency in the safety.
Therefore, the correlations of the efficiency and safety could achieve the level of the symbiosis when directed by the humanistic and social vector of the worldview intentions, reflecting successful upbringing of the human being and educating the professional to the best of the human dignity. Corruption at any level of the upbringing and education as well as corrupting dominating worldview intention in the society compromise the safety and consequently the efficiency preventing the professional to establish the symbiotic relations of safety and efficiency in his mind and on a drawing board. Hence, the decisive role of the dominating worldview intentions in the society confirmed.
the value of the concept of the symbiosis of efficiency and safety
Developed in this paper concept of the correlations between the efficiency and safety has methodological value for the professional education and social and human development. The concept argues for the defining role of the dominating vector of the worldview intentions on the character of scientific and technological activities prevailed in the society; asserts the decisive role of the dominating worldview on the commanding criteria of evaluation of the efficiency and safety; confirms an inextricable correlation between the efficiency and safety; emphasizes the dependence of the civilizational position of the society on the nature of the dominating in the society intentions and legally asserted safety of science and technology [1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13].
The concept establishes the vital criteria of the assessment of the existential and social safety of the scientific and technological projects by the analysis of the vector of worldview intentions of the professionals in charge; settles an important objective for the education and academic systems to develop humanistic and social worldview in students and professionals; reveals the symbiotic correlations between the efficiency and safety when implemented at the best.
To conclude, the concept of the correlation between the efficiency and safety of the science and technology states that general criteria for the qualitative assessment of the human transformative activities are the criteria of the safe dominating vector of the worldview intentions in the society and within the professionals in charge and the criterion of the safety of the specific scientific, technical, and social project.
Conclusion
The power of the avant-garde science and technology rises in the XXI century to the level of the systematic breakthrough knowledge, leading ingenuity, whilst apocalyptic potential demanding professional, social, and political responsibility and sufficient public awareness on the correlation of the efficiency and safety. The modern creative potentials of the avant-garde science and technology mired by their existential risks demand a systematic approach in the research and development processes the society performs that entrenches the safety into efficiency and embeds the efficiency into the safety. This determines the academic and social agenda to educate and motivate people to be self aware, capable to understand the vector of their own motivation, and learn the reference point of the absolute values of the human dignity.
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