Chapter 37: Negentropy and Crisis Information Gathering

“…With our nation growing ever stronger and as an important part of all human civilization. We do indeed have the necessity to bear the responsibility of sustaining the entire civilization for the long term.”

“Some things really don’t need to have an effect immediately, but we cannot be without them.”

The Senior Leader thought for a moment, then said this to Qin Yu.

Actually, asking Qin Yu earlier about the institute’s name was already the same as agreeing to set up such a research institute.

What this Senior Leader was saying now was truly one of the main reasons for the approval above.

If it were a small country, there would really be no need to consider such matters.

Worrying about the overall fate of human civilization was a luxury only big countries could afford.

After all, to be concerned about how a crisis for all human civilization might affect your country, you also need your country to still exist by that time.

It was like a person. If they only lived for seventy years, there really was no need to think about things hundreds of years later.

This was true for individuals, and also for groups.

“Professor Qin, how about we first put Research Institute 011 and the Doomsday Gene Bank you previously managed under the Negentropy Research Institute? How does that sound to you, Professor Qin?”

The Senior Leader spoke again,

“Besides this, within the Negentropy Research Institute, what other institutions or research units would you wish to set up, Professor Qin?”

Professor Qin Yu had no opinion about the first suggestion and nodded.

As for the second question, Qin Yu gave an answer:

“Set up a ‘crisis information gathering and summary department.’ Historically speaking, signs often appeared well before large-scale disasters and crises. Certain events might have already happened in different corners of this world, but due to scattered information, it’s only when we put them together that we might realize something is going on.”

After saying this, Qin Yu paused briefly.

“Or, under another name: ‘Information Screening, Denoising, Intelligent Research Institute.’ In human society, especially after we entered the information age, massive amounts of information are generated every single moment. This sea of information creates huge ‘information noise,’ burying a lot of valuable information beneath it. The work of the Information Denoising Intelligent Research Institute might provide some crucial information for the development of our civilization and society, offering help for making and executing super long-term plans.”

Creating an information gathering department within a research institute seemed functionally inappropriate.

So it was better to make it a research institution focused on information processing technology and intelligent technology.

Besides, achieving the level of information gathering Qin Yu described would certainly require intelligent programs, big AI models, and artificial intelligence. Relying just on people was probably impossible.

However, the goal of developing this Artificial Intelligence would be information gathering and screening, not personal interaction.

The Senior Leader looked at Qin Yu and slowly nodded.

Indeed, many existing departments, research units, and teams already overlapped in function with the kind of crisis information gathering and summarizing department Qin Yu described.

For instance, geological disasters would be monitored by relevant geological departments in each region.

Like meteorological disasters; weather departments would surely be keeping an eye out.

Like astrophysical disasters; observatories everywhere would surely be watching for changes in space.

This itself involved many different areas and required a complete system; it couldn’t be done independently by a single unit.

However, just as Qin Yu said,

these departments and research units mainly focused on changes within their own specific fields,

and often, monitoring crises was just a by-product of their primary research work.

Having a separate research institute specifically for summarizing cross-field crisis information sounded quite good.

It could let us see, on a much bigger scale, more completely, what potential crises existed on this planet both in the recent past and at this very moment. It could allow for much longer-term forecasts of the future.

Of course, that would only happen if the institute truly achieved the results Qin Yu described.

“Professor Qin, we agree to this. We can coordinate some experts in the fields of information, computing, and intelligence for the Negentropy Research Institute. At the same time, we can arrange for different departments to grant the Negentropy Research Institute permission to access relevant information.”

The Senior Leader agreed.

Actually, compared to arranging for experts and researchers in those related fields,

this latter support was probably even more important for this ‘Information Denoising Intelligent Research Institute’.

To summarize and filter information, you first need to have that information available for summarizing.

And some of that information was itself classified.

“Thank you.”

Qin Yu said a word of thanks.

Even without support from above, he would have probably still ended up establishing this ‘Negentropy Research Institute’.

But at least on the matter of information gathering, it would have become much more troublesome.

Gathering crisis information was actually a crucial personal need for Qin Yu himself right now.

He also lacked a broader, more comprehensive channel for gathering information.

If he could grasp a more comprehensive, panoramic view of the potential crises facing future human civilization and Earth,

he could also do better; he could prepare in advance and make some decisions earlier for the sake of human civilization’s long-term survival.

“Professor Qin, you are willing to contribute your time and energy to this great cause. It is we who should be thanking you.”

The Senior Leader shook his head.

For Qin Yu himself, his actions were entirely based on his own considerations.

But from others’ viewpoints, Qin Yu’s wish to establish the Negentropy Research Institute truly didn’t seem driven by any personal gain.

Whether or not Professor Qin was influenced by his special ‘Apocalypse Anxiety’,

this was always a great undertaking done for the benefit of all human civilization.

His Super Brain allowed Qin Yu to clearly understand what this Senior Leader and others were thinking.

Regarding that, Qin Yu had nothing else to say.

“Professor Qin, besides this Information Denoising Research Institute, is there anything else you need?”

Qin Yu shook his head.

“For now, this is enough.”

Qin Yu had no intention of trying to become huge overnight, of blowing up the Negentropy Research Institute into a massive entity immediately.

As a starting point, having these three within the Negentropy Research Institute now – Research Institute 011, the Information Denoising Intelligent Research Institute, and the Doomsday Gene Bank – was already sufficient.

…

Regardless of how things turned out for the Negentropy Research Institute in the future.

Right at this moment, its establishment seemed to cause no significant impact or major change.

The serious weight the higher-up placed on setting up the Negentropy Research Institute was largely because it was Qin Yu who proposed it.

The only immediate, concrete changes after the Negentropy Research Institute was founded were:

The researchers at Research Institute 011 learned that their institute now had a parent research institute, the Negentropy Research Institute, above it.

But since the Negentropy Research Institute was also headed by Professor Qin Yu, for them, this basically meant no change.

Besides that, the institute’s other unit, the Information Denoising Intelligent Research Institute, would also work within their premises.

It practically meant that additional professors and researchers specializing in information and intelligence fields were being coordinated to come work within Research Institute 011 from other domestic research units.

However, these new experts in intelligent and information fields would be solely responsible for another research project, which wouldn’t overlap with our own research.

Given the current state of the Negentropy Research Institute, it clearly didn’t need a separate stand-alone location.

As for the newly transferred professors and researchers for the Information Denoising Intelligent Research Institute,

The first research task they received, which was also the task they would work on for a long time in the future, was to develop an artificial intelligence for actively collecting, summarizing, removing noise, and analyzing crisis information.

The professors and researchers adapted quickly, since they had been working in related fields before coming here.

Of course, it might take a long time to make the Negentropy Research Institute work as well as Qin Yu hoped, to bring together all the world’s information and spot crises early.

At the same time, this might not be something the Negentropy Research Institute could solve on its own in the end.

It might need the whole human civilization to make progress in related areas.

But the start is always hard, and Qin Yu was not too worried about it.

For the researchers already at Research Institute 011, maybe two other big events or projects mattered more, besides the start of the Negentropy Research Institute.

And these two projects were directly led and overseen by Qin Yu.

First, there was the study on “environmental transformation plants or more adaptable crops.”

Because originally, most researchers in the field of life sciences at Research Institute 011 worked on human-related things, or at least studies on animals.

So to start this project, Research Institute 011 moved people from many places, under higher-level agreements.

This process was easy, just as the senior leader said—they told people they would work under Qin Yu, and most researchers agreed right away.

Even though Qin Yu’s earlier work in life science was very different from this new project.

But at least, it was not like going from philosophy to life science?

And even if some had doubts when they came,

after starting the project at Research Institute 011, they lost those doubts.

For every new researcher,

Professor Qin felt like a ‘deep hole’ that you could never see the bottom of.

Basically, no one could keep up with Professor Qin’s thinking or his wide knowledge.

All the known stuff in the related study areas was like simple facts to Professor Qin Yu, and he connected ideas easily.

People who became professors or top researchers in their fields were once top talents,

but now, facing Qin Yu, they started to question their own lives.

“Professor Qin, I’m surprised that those in Research Institute 011 working on human studies haven’t thought of ‘opening’ your brain to see what its structure is like,” a researcher in plant studies said while looking at Qin Yu.

Of course, some researchers thought differently,

“If anyone should ‘open and study’ it, it should be Professor Qin Yu himself—who else could be better at that?”

“I think Professor Qin would really be great at teaching in a university. He sees things from a high place, and his big-picture thinking makes everything clear for learners and researchers in the field.”

And after moving from self-doubt to feeling Research Institute 011’s ‘usual way of pushing research forward,’

the researchers and professors became even more hooked.

No researcher could resist the thrill of seeing their study move ahead super fast.

And no researcher could turn away from the feeling of not needing ‘to think too much,’ just following Professor Qin’s steps and focusing on their own small task, to break through study barriers.

The study on “environmental transformation plants and more adaptable crops” was a broad idea.

The whole project was big and could split into many smaller tasks.

With Qin Yu’s help,

the research teams at Research Institute 011 picked a goal first.

It was mainly for a ‘new kind of drought-proof plant that helps change the environment.’

The main aim of this task

was to find or change a plant

that could live, spread widely, and grow fast in dry places like deserts formed later,

that could improve the soil in desert and rocky areas, and be cheap to grow.

If such a plant appeared,

it could help a lot in dry lands in the Huaxia Nation and around the world.

If all those dry lands came back to life,

it would mean more space for human civilization to grow.

Even for natural deserts that always existed,

there was no need to change them, since they were part of Earth’s balance, and in areas with too little rain.

But without counting those natural deserts,

there were still huge dry lands with enough rain each year that could be brought back.

Before this,

different countries had ways to deal with dry land areas on Earth.

The Huaxia Nation had done very well in this.

But for what Qin Yu wanted to achieve,

earlier ways to fix deserts took too long and cost too much.

To solve land dryness on a bigger scale for good,

they needed a cheaper, faster, and better way.

That was the goal of this plant study at Research Institute 011 now.

Looking at the needs for this plant—each part seemed okay alone, but all together it felt like wishing for too much—it was clearly not easy.

But after working at Research Institute 011 for a while under Professor Qin Yu,

the researchers in related fields felt confident.

Professor Qin Yu acted like no problem could stop him,

which gave everyone a strong feeling.

Even if they doubted themselves, they trusted Professor Qin Yu.

Even if the plant they were studying needed things like a wish,

under Professor Qin’s lead, it might happen.

It just might take more time.

In the year 32 of the Common Era,

Research Institute 011, now part of the Negentropy Research Institute, started new projects.

The researchers at Research Institute 011 were very proud.

Because each one knew and felt sure they were doing great work for the world.

After the Human Reproduction Device, they were doing studies that could change the world again.

Research Institute 011 would change the world again one day.

History would remember them, remember Research Institute 011.