Take this thing called "freedom." Take this thing called "democracy." Today they - you - everybody practices democracy. It isn't democracy, it's some kind of socialism. I don't know what kind of a socialism, it's invented all the time. But we're fondly believing that our forefathers fought for democracy. They didn't, they fought for rugged individualism. Well, democracy is different than rugged individualism; democracy is considerably different. Democracy is establishment by the major amount of force in the community, which is to say the most votes.

So, we - they have this muddy picture every time we go into symbols.

This sort of thing led Korzybski to write an enormous tome trying to tell people why no two people could ever converse because everything they said was impurely understood by the other one, so he was - that book called Science and Sanity is undoubtedly a very great work and I'll read it someday. I got past the first page of it one time, but... Have you ever read the first page of Science and Sanity?

Male Voice: Yes.

Tell you what - now, have - you're sure you read the first page? It's a very interesting page - you can't find on it what the book's all about. And the book ends the same way because I read the last page.

By the way, I had an editor friend one time and he used to buy stories and he used to find out what stories he was going to buy simply by taking up stacks of manuscripts as they came in and he'd read the first paragraph and he'd open them up to the middle and he'd read a paragraph and then he'd read the last paragraph, and they integrated into a story, he bought the manuscript without any further questions asked, because practically none of them did.

And if you apply that test to a story in a magazine you'll - and then read the story itself you'll be amazed to discover that it's a quite accurate test. It's a test of the consistency of the story - quite accurate. The story which doesn't do that isn't worth reading to a large degree because it just starts - kind of starts nowhere and goes nowhere and gets no place in the middle.

Well, when you start out to define how nobody can talk to each other and you're using words to do it, you wind up by not talking to anybody - Q and A.

Now, Korzybski has an enormous number of very, very clever ideas. They've been explained to me by my friends and I appreciate it very much. I know quite a bit about Korzybski's works.

Bob Heinlein sat down one time and talked for ten whole minutes on the subject of Korzybski to me and it was very clever. This was a number of years ago and was very, very clever. Of course, I found out later that Bob Heinlein had - that was his viewpoint on what Korzybski should have written and was mostly taken from Hayakawa [1], but that was explained to me by another friend who talked three whole minutes on the subject of Korzybski. But this other fellow was quite accurate and he was very convincing - the number of times he pounded the table with his fist convinced me utterly, and so I know that there is something in there; I'm just sure of it. I haven't read that book but I'm sure there is.

But I am also sure that every time I processed a preclear who was a general semanticist, I practically had to shoot him to get him off the couch. Now, is there some connection between these two data?

I had one little girl who had taken in the university something that was called semantics. I don't know whether they follow Korzybski or who, but this girl had a communication lag that you couldn't have reached in a jet plane in hours. And finally, I tried to figure out what this was all about because I wasn't in communication with this girl. I'd say one thing and she would sort of dazedly look around and wonder if I'd said something else.

So I just took up the whole subject of words, immediately, and just started sorting through words and all of a sudden she looked rather sad about it all. Seemed like the professor had been very good looking and it was his foregone conclusion that no two people could ever find out what each other was saying simply because the words were all completely inexact and carried no exact meaning, one to the other. And she had thought this over carefully and had decided it was true and hadn't talked since. She couldn't communicate. She knew that everybody she talked to got some different meaning out of what she was saying.

So I sat down, I looked at her for a little while and all of a sudden picked up a book and threw it violently against the wall. She looked in that direction. "What do you think just happened?"

She says, "You threw a book at the wall!"

I said, "Did that carry an exact meaning to you?"

"Well, I don't know why you threw the book at the wall."

"No! No! Just the fact that I threw the book at the wall, did that carry an exact meaning?"

"Well, you threw a book at the wall."

'Yeah, you know I did that? Well, could you consider that a communication?"

"Well, I'd hate to receive it. Yes, it - I see, it - what do you - say, there's something here," see.

Of course, we could communicate, and I did it with MEST actions because words are symbols which represent, in every case, the action of the MEST universe. And all language is MEST universe derivation. And it is carried on air particles which vibrate against eardrums. And if people have lived a similar time track - they have lived in one society - or if they have studied the language extremely well against the background of living in a similar society, they know exactly what they're saying; there's no doubt about it at all.

Completely aside from that, here again, is the scientist trying to materialize everything by dematerializing entirely. What he's trying to do is dematerialize - and doesn't realize - is that the only - the only complete spiritualist - the only complete spiritualist in the country is really the leading atomic physicist. See, he doesn't know that he's a spiritualist.

Now, you see here that this similarity of experience brings about an ability to interpret and extrapolate the thought processes of somebody else. You see that that could occur, don't you? What do you know! The fellow that tries to do it that way will go mad. He gets into the same boat of this poor little girl who had been taught General Semantics in college. Because people think they're talking with language!

The amount of conversation in which you engage is mostly pleasant and idle and needn't carry any direct meaning; it's a rather pleasant interchange or a somewhat disagreeable interchange that one has to go through or some such gradient as that.

And it would certainly surprise the living daylights out of you, if you found out that you were making motions with various forms such as larynx, mouth and so on, and the other person's eardrums were violating [vibrating] violently, and that one had interposed this tremendously complex communication system between two beings, so I guess they could be surprised. It's about the only explanation because they don't pick up their meanings that way; practically useless. It's a communication system.

Therefore, this MEST universe gives you various forms on which you can agree and words can be defined from this and it's all very beautiful and all that sort of thing. Well, when it comes down to meaning, thetans, one to the other, depend for their certainty upon action. The interaction of anchor points is about all that carries any meaning.

The more attention one pays to noise as noise, the more attention one pays to words as very meaningful things which have to be studied hard, the harder it is to do anything.

It is absolutely extraordinary, utterly fantastic, that the communication system of the MEST universe can carry on it any message. It is the most - the greatest tribute to a thetan I know of, that he can actually make it work. But as far as communication is concerned, the ability to know what the other fellow was saying or know what the other fellow was thinking, it's only the thetan who can't look that is ever fouled up about it.

Hubbard, L. R. (1953, 29 October). Study of the Particle. First American Advanced Indoctrination Course. Lecture conducted from Camden, New Jersey.

Hubbard may have hit upon some good ideas, but often his writing is no more than satire, as exemplified above, and he shouldn’t be taken more seriously than Bozo the Clown!

We are not Aristotilean (sic) – not brains but fields – consciousness. The inside and the outside must speak, the guts and the blood and the skin; the penis and the vagina, as well as the brain. We must have it all out, the fear and the disgust, the hatred and cowardice, and the beauty, tenderness and courage as well, and balance all. Then we can get at the truth. The mind is an instrument that measures itself with itself and as such a contradiction – an impossibility. But out of this abyss, as we know, we can make significance, but to be cogent it must be significance for the entire field.

Parsons, J. (1949-1950). Letters to Marjorie Cameron. babalon.net. Retrieved 9 July 2010 from http://web.archive.org/web/20020211005039/babalon.net/jwp/camltrs.html

LOGIC, 1. a gradient scale of association of facts of greater or lesser similarity made to resolve some problem of the past, present or future, but mainly to resolve and predict the future. Logic is the combination of factors into an answer. (Scn 8-8008, p. 46) 2. the gradient scale and comparisons of data which work out a smooth network of terminals and communication lines which deliver data in a prediction of future form or theta beingness. (Spr Lect 6, 5303CM25) 3. primitive logic was one-valued. Everything was assumed to be the product of a divine will, and there was no obligation to decide the rightness or wrongness of anything. Most logic added up merely to the propitiation of the gods. Aristotle formulated two-valued logic. A thing was either right or wrong. This type of logic is used by the reactive mind. In the present day, engineers are using a sort of three-valued logic which contains the values of right, wrong, and maybe. From three-valued logic we jump to an infinity-valued logic—a spectrum which moves from infinite wrongness to infinite rightness. (NOTL, p. 17) 4. rationalism, for all logic is based upon the somewhat idiotic circumstance that a being that is immortal is trying to survive. (Scn 8-8008, p. 47) 5. the subject of reasoning. (HCO PL 11 May 70)

Hubbard, L. R., (1975) Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary. Los Angeles: Church of Scientology of California Publications Organization.

INFINITY-VALUED LOGIC, in Dn, there is a new way of thinking about things which underlies a great deal of its technology. Instead of two-valued logic or three-valued logic we have infinity-valued logic. Here is a gradient scale which permits no absolute at either end. In other words, there is not an absolute right and an absolute wrong, just as there is no absolute stillness and no absolute motion. Of course, it is one of the tenets of Dn that absolutes are not attainable but only approachable. (SOS, Bk. 2, pp. 249-250) See also LOGIC.

Hubbard, L. R., (1975) Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary. Los Angeles: Church of Scientology of California Publications Organization.

We will now take up R1-10. R1-10: Route 1-10, an exteriorization drill or process.

Route 1-10 is not solely confined to Route 1. You will find it also over in Route 2. This step is "Have preclear discover things he wouldn't mind occupying the same space with him." Now, that is the idea behind all havingness. You can only have something when you've got a universe or when you've got some space. And to get an individual over the idea of havingness, it's only necessary to ask him many, many times "What wouldn't you mind occupying your same space now? Give me something else that you wouldn't mind occupying your space." He'll tell you air, water, ideas. Anything he tells you, you don't care; you just want the question answered. "What wouldn't you mind occupying the same space with you?" And again, "What wouldn't you mind occupying the same space? What wouldn't you mind occupying the same space?"

Now, this is not a short process. You can keep this process up with an individual for a couple of hours, always with benefit. It can be run on somebody inside or outside. When you run it on somebody who is exteriorized, he's liable to have the devil's own time trying to figure out how he could get something to occupy the same space he's occupying, particularly if he's in good shape. But he's got to manage this. He's got to know what this is all about. Really, he will move around and occupy the same space as other objects for a while, and do all sorts of things. You're not interested too much in what he's doing, you just want to give him the process and get him finally into the idea that things can occupy the same space as a thetan.

What you are knocking to pieces is the basic postulate which makes a universe possible, and you are knocking that postulate to pieces. And this is simply this: the basic postulate is—for any universe which has space and energy—"Two things cannot occupy the same space." Alfred Lord Korzybski did not invent this. It was invented about seventy-four trillion years ago for this universe.

"Two things cannot occupy the same space."

If you will study General Semantics, you will discover that they teach this and it makes madmen out of them. They teach you "Two things cannot occupy the same space! Those two are not the same cigarette; they are two different cigarettes, if only because they are not occupying the same space."

Nah, booey. The space is a postulate. So if you postulate that they can't occupy the same space, they can't. If you postulate they can, they can. It's just a matter of you making up your mind about it.

So if we have somebody having difficulty with his language, difficulty with the universe around him, who is an avid student of general semantics—which is taught in every university in the land now, by the way ... They teach students that nobody really knows what anybody else is talking about, because every word means something different to everybody else.

Aha, I'm afraid that "coffee" means coffee. Of course, it can have associative reasonings to it. You could have an association with coffee, but you've still said "coffee." "Coffee," the fellow says, "plus my associations with coffee"; the other fellow says, "Coffee, plus my associations with coffee"—you're still talking about coffee.

The general semanticist is always thinking in terms of associative lines and masses and definitions and reasons why, you see—significance, significance, significance, significance.

Now, I'm not tramping on general semantics. I'm glad General Semantics was around. I studied it for ten minutes once, and under a very, very good teacher, Robert Heinlein. He told me all about General Semantics, and I was very happy to learn about General Semantics. Several general semanticists since have undertaken my education, and they have quit with horror because they get just up to this point—they are not physicists or they have never studied the physical universe—they get up to this point of they say, "Now, you understand that two things cannot possibly occupy the same space."

Oh, I'm afraid that we're at a divergence right at this point. That's the way you make a universe solid. That's how these general semanticists get ridges around. That's why they get tongue-tied and go out of communication. They get this repostulated, repostulated, repostulated—that two things can't occupy the same space—and that makes an energy mass, that makes terminals, that makes all sorts of weird things, see?

That gives you a universe. In addition to this fellow having a physical universe, you're asking him to build a universe again around himself, in his mind.

Words, to a general semanticist, become lumps of lead. Everything takes on a mass form. It naturally would, because that's how you make mass, isn't it? "Two things cannot occupy the same space," you say. Therefore, by postulate, that terminal is over there and this terminal is here. You have to first say, however, if you're going to get these terminals apart, "Two things can't occupy the same space." You have to say that, see; you have to postulate that. "These two things are apart and they cannot occupy each other's space."

This will make them, each one of them, a unit object. We've got two unit objects now, and we've got individuation. See? We say these two things are entirely separate. Each one has a personality. Why? They've got to go on having a personality to the end of time. Why? Because they can't occupy the same space.

This is a very important thing to know in processing, because your fellow who is sitting there having a lot of difficulty—he is a thetan exteriorized, and he's got big masses of energy around him—there's only one common denominator to the things he's convinced of. Of course, he's convinced they're energy, convinced there's space and so forth, naturally, but much more important than that postulate is this basic consideration—this basic consideration: He considers that two things cannot occupy the same space.

For instance, he does not believe that he and his wife could occupy the same space. She is an individual, he is an individual. Oh, wait a minute. You'd have to be way downstairs in kindergarten not to have gone in somebody else's head and pulled a couple of motor controls, one way or one time or another.

Sure, he as a thetan can occupy somebody else's space, but it's only by postulate that his body and his wife's body cannot occupy the same space; that's what makes them two different individuals. You break that postulate down and Lord knows what's going to happen. Actually, you get freedom, because it's the basic restriction.

All aberration is, is restriction. And that is the fundamental common denominator of all restriction: Two things cannot occupy the same space.

All right, how important is this? Why are we stressing it? Is it an important theory? No. I tell you, I have enough theories ... I have a file in here which is called "Old Cuffs," and there is enough theory and speculation and so forth on those—so much so that we decided to start to photostat them on the backs of the wasted pages of the PABs. You know, just have them shoot an "Old Cuff" at random.

Boy, is that going to take some of these boys who figure-figure out in the field and throw them for a loop, because some of these things are not sequitur to anything we're doing—you know, they're just suppositions and so forth.

Theories: nobody will ever have to remedy my havingness in terms of theories. There's no scarcity of them. There are just billions of theories. That's the one thing I'm perfectly willing to agree on—that there could be more theories than there are coyotes. And that's a lot of theories. Any-how...

When we have this postulate in the bank, a person who firmly believes it, cannot believe that he can exteriorize. Because if he believes two things cannot occupy the same space, then it becomes impossible for him to assume that he is one thing and the body is another thing. Now, do you follow me? So he will have to tell you, if he's sitting in a body, that he is a body. You got that?

See, "Yeah, I'm right here! And two things can't occupy the same space, so I can't be occupying the same space as a body, can I?"
That logical? Well, it sounds logical enough to him so he won't exteriorize. And this is also your common denominator of non-exteriorization.

If you were to take R1-10, as a good process, how would you remedy his interiorization? You just keep asking him this question for hours and hours and hours and hours: "Give me some more things that could occupy the same space you're occupying. Some more things. Some more things. Some more things."

And all of a sudden he gets the creepy notion—because it's just a postulate on the track, you see; it's just a consideration like "ice cream is good" or "ice cream is bad"; it's just the same order of magnitude—all of a sudden he gets the sneaky notion that "You know, I'm sitting here occupying the space something else is occupying. But then, of course, I am no mass at all. Well, I am mass, and I don't quite ... But there's something here about this." And the next thing you'll know, he'll be three feet back of his head looking at himself.

So as an example of the workability of this particular process, the hold-outs (which is to say, the few who would not exteriorize cleanly) in the Advanced Clinical Course in London are reported to have exteriorized.

All the holdouts—you know, I think that he had maybe three or four there that were just dead in their heads, right there at the last. He exteriorized this whole unit, by the way. And he got down to R2-22. That was the total processes used—all of R1 and R2-22. That exteriorized everybody in that unit, I think, in the first two weeks of its teaching.

Now, the holdouts, the people who were having difficulty, blew on this one: "Give me something you wouldn't mind occupying your same space. Give me something you wouldn't mind occupying your same space. Give me some-thing else that you wouldn't mind occupying your same space." See? And they finally blew out of their heads.

It's obvious to an individual who is interiorized that he is his body, be-cause he knows two things cannot occupy the same space. That's the first thing you want to learn about that.

Hubbard, L. R. (1954, 10 October). Route 1 Step 10. Route One Lectures, (5410C10). Lecture conducted from Phoenix, Arizona.

It is quite natural that with the advance of experimental science some generalizations should appear to be established from the facts at hand. Occasionally, such generalizations, when further analysed, are found to contain serious structural, epistemological and methodological implications and difficulties. In the present work one of these empirical generalizations becomes of unusual importance, so important, indeed, that Part III of this work is devoted to it. Here, however, it is only possible to mention it, and to show some rather unexpected consequences which it entails.

That generalization states: that any organism must be treated as-a-whole; in other words, that the organism is not an algebraic sum, a linear function of its elements, but always more than that. It is seemingly little realized, at present, that this simple and innocent-looking statement involves a full structural revision of our language, because that language, of great pre-scientific antiquity, is elementalistic, and so singularly inadequate to express non-elementalistic notions. Such a point of view involves profound structural, methodological, and semantic changes, vaguely anticipated, but never formulated in a definite theory. The problems of structure, 'more', and 'non-additivity' are very important and impossible to analyse in the old way.

If this generalization be accepted - and on experimental, structural, and epistemological grounds we cannot deny its complete structural justification - some odd consequences follow; that is to say, odd, as long as we are not accustomed to them. For instance, we see that 'emotion' and 'intellect' cannot be divided, that this division structurally violates the organism-as-a-whole generalization. We must, then, choose between the two: we must either abandon the organism-as-a-whole principle, or abandon accepted speculations couched in el verbal terms which create insoluble verbal puzzles. Something similar could be said about the distinction of 'body' versus 'soul', and other verbal splittings which have hampered sane advance in the understanding of ourselves, and have filled for thousands of years the libraries and tribunes of the world with hollow reverberations.

The solution of these problems lies in the field of structural, symbolic, linguistic, and semantic research, as well as in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, psychiatry, because from their very nature these problems are structural.

Korzybski, A. (1933). Science and Sanity, pp. 64-65. Brooklyn, NY: Institute of General Semantics.

Science and Sanity Linguistic revision Page 93
I accept the many-valued, more general, structurally more correct 'logic of probability' of Lukasiewicz and Tarski, which in my non-el system becomes infinite-valued (oo-valued) semantics.
I use the term infinite-, or oo-valued in the sense of Cantor as a variable finite.
http://www.rodsmith.org.uk/alfred-korzy ... 200293.htm

Page 94
I accept the propositional function of Russell.
I accept the doctrinal function of Keyser, and generalize the system function of Sheffer.
I introduce the four-dimensional theory of propositions and language.
I establish the multiordinality of terms.
http://www.rodsmith.org.uk/alfred-korzy ... 200294.htm

A Non-Aristotelian Language Mathematics and the Nervous System
Because the nervous system is an abstracting, integrating mechanism, all human psycho-neurological reactions and, particularly, psychological, to be similar in structure, must be based on the mathematical theories of statistics and probability. On the objective level, we deal with absolute individuals, and so all statements, or higher order abstractions, can only be probable. Historically, mathematicians have elaborated not only both theories, but Boole, in his Laws of Thought, extended the mathematical approach to 'logic' in connection with the theory of probability.

Finally, the difficulties of the law of excluded third have been solved by Lukasiewicz and Tarski in their 'many-valued logic', which, when N increases indefinitely, merges with the mathematical theory of probability, a result reached independently by a different type of analysis in the present system. Any possible future scientific A, non-el 'logic', which I call general semantics, must be built on this structurally more correct foundation. It should be noticed that the notions of probability are very flexible, and entirely cover our structural needs, the field of degrees of probability ranging from impossibility to certainty. This new semantics involves entirely new affective attitudes, and underlies new and better balanced s.r.
http://www.rodsmith.org.uk/alfred-korzy ... 200510.htm

Dianometry
Your Ability and State of Mind
L. Ron Hubbard

Presenting a little different approach to the problem of a man’s worth to Man. Consider two intelligent, extremely able men, for instance—Adolf Hitler and Thomas A. Edison. Both brilliant, both highly successful. . . but there’s more to a man than intelligence and drive!

Dianometry is that branch of Dianetics which measures thought capacity, computational ability and the rationality of the human mind. By its axioms and tests can be established the intelligence, the persistency, the ability, the aberrations and existing or potential insanity of an individual.

Dianometry is “thought measurement,” derived from the Greek for thought and, unscholarly enough, the Latin for mensuration. It has the virtue, as a word, of being swiftly understood. It has the virtue, as a part of Dianetics, of answering such questions as the following:

1. Are you “sane”?
2. What is your native and inherent ability?
3. How long will it take to restore your native ability by dianetic processes?
4. What will be your status when cleared?

By archaic definition, sanity was the ability to tell “right” from “wrong.” In the absence of precision definitions of what was “right” and what was “wrong,” many Homo sapiens have been imprisoned or executed for crimes which were “virtues” in one society and “criminalities” in another. The confused “definitions” in law were exceeded only by those classifications which existed for “insanity” in the field of medicine. Over fifty widely variant codes of classification exist for the definition of various “insanities”; each one is simply a description;* for not knowing the source, and with scant knowledge of the nature of mental function, those working in the field of insanities were, like those engaged in law, involved in continual controversy.

Insanity can be of two kinds: acute and chronic. An acute insanity we can think of as one which flares into existence for a few moments or a few days and then subsides, leaving a relatively normal person. A chronic insanity is one which, having
appeared, does not subside but holds the individual in an abnormal state. Each has the same genesis, the engrams, and each is decidedly harmful to the individual himself and to society.

The acute insanity is most commonly seen in a rage or a tantrum. It is no less an insanity because it subsides. An engram has been momentarily restimulated so that the individual is temporarily bereft of his analytical mind. When so bereft of analytical power he may do numerous things, as dictated by the engram in restimulation. He may even murder or commit mayhem which, afterwards, will cause him to be punished by society.

The chronic insanity is an acute insanity with the time factor lengthily extended. Most chronic insanities are, of course, complications of several engrams. The more

_________________________________________
* “. . . the work of the psychiatrist was taken up mainly with describing and classifying symptoms. This procedure has been strongly criticized by some students on the ground that it leads nowhere and encourages a false pretense of understanding where there is none. Giving a name to something does not increase our understanding of it.” Introduction to The Psychology of Abnormal People, John J. B.Morgan, Ph.D., a standard pre-dianetic textbook.

[This article first appeared in Astounding Science Fiction magazine, January 1951.]
Copyright ©1951 by L. Ron Hubbard. All Rights Reserved.

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often these insanities are restimulated, the more chronic they become unless they are more or less “permanent” (pre-Dianetics).

Here we have a spectrum at work. Measured by time of restimulation and degree of harmfulness to the individual himself or society we have gradations from intense and perpetual restimulation of engrams, through occasional restimulation—normal—through the dianetic release and to the dianetic clear, the optimum level of rationality. The clear is not subject to “restimulation” because he has no engrams which can be activated.

Degrees of sanity are possible. The term is very loose, however, and is not susceptible to the exact formulation desirable in an exact science. Sanity is too highly relative even for scientific use. For instance, a sailor who, in battle, functions well, obeys orders and kills members of the armed forces of the enemy is sane in battle. He may, however, be so insane ashore that he earns countless courts-martial, creates enormous trouble and may even have to be incarcerated to protect himself and his society. Another sailor may be so eminently sane ashore that he is rated up to petty officer, is given responsibilities, is depended upon by his superiors utterly and is generally looked upon as a model for all recruits. In battle this sailor may take one look at the Kamikaze, desert the gun which might have saved his ship, dive into a magazine full of explosives and be found, some hours later, when people are trying to get the vessel under way again, smoking chain-fashion and lighting his matches on lead azide fuses. The second sailor is sane ashore and insane in action. It depends, when one deals with aberrated persons, what kind of sanity one requires and what kind of insanity will not be detrimental to the job. In a navy which is meant to fight battles, the first sailor is infinitely more valuable than the second, swivel chair bureaucrats to the contrary, but it is the courage, not the aberrations of the first which made him of worth.

Unless one has some idea of mental function, the problem of sanity is a tangle of unpredictable factors. A person who is aberrated may be restimulated into acute insanity in the very environment in which he is ordinarily sane. Viewpoint and changes in the environment itself shift. When one knows mental function, the degree of sanity of a person can be established. In any case, sanity, where one deals with any normally aberrated person, is a relative term. There is a dianometric definition about this:

Sanity is the degree of rationality of an individual.

Rationality is defined as follows:

Rationality is the computational accuracy of the individual modified by aberration, education and viewpoint.

Complete rationality could then be defined:

Optimum rationality for the individual depends upon his lack of aberration and his accurate resolution of problems for which he has sufficient data.

By computation is meant his ability to resolve problems.

The resolution of all problems is a study in rightness and wrongness.

Dianetically speaking, there are no attainable absolutes. The formidable Absolutism of metaphysics— which the grammarians with their absolute definitions for “accuracy” or “true” attempt to compel us to use—is a scientific outcast of some duration. The entire problem of getting right answers and wrong answers is a problem of degrees of rightness and wrongness.

Old Aristotle reputedly held out for two-valued logic—at least that is the way he is interpreted. However, the world received quite an advance when Aristotle resolved and formulated some of the problems of logic. Before Aristotle there was one-valued logic, the will of the gods. Man acted because he was forced to act. Aristotle, a wildeyed radical, came along and insisted Man had a right to be right or wrong according to the dictates of circumstance. Man had a choice. If Aristotle went off into that mathematician’s land of Never-Never, the syllogism which, in abstracts, seeks to evaluate concrete entities and proves only what it assumes, he still advanced ideas about thinking. Lately Man has considered logic to have three values—right, maybe, and wrong. None of these systems of logic begin to encompass what the fabulous

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computational ability of the mind encompasses minute by minute. Logic could best be explained in terms of an infinity of values. From the theoretical but unobtainable ABSOLUTE WRONG, solutions can be graded through a theoretical midpoint of neither right nor wrong to a theoretical but unobtainable ABSOLUTE RIGHT. (See graph.)



The mind computes on the yea-nay principle. It resolves numbers of simultaneous equations by running each one, evidently, on at least three computers at once. It runs as many as a thousand factors at once. And it does it, apparently, upon the simple formula A> B = A, B >A = B. Thus if eating an apple is less right than not eating an apple, the decision is to not eat the apple. If not eating an apple is less right than eating an apple, the decision is to eat the apple. There is no ABSOLUTE RIGHT or ABSOLUTE WRONG about eating an apple. On the sole consideration that a worm might be in the apple, a two-valued, right, wrong equation breaks down. Around one simple act the mind may run fifty or a hundred computations or may draw upon a past computation’s conclusion which, however, was once run. Acts or solutions are either more right than wrong—in which case they are right. Or more wrong than right—in which case they are wrong. Right and wrong greater-than less-than computations are run off on hundreds or thousands of variables by the mind to make up one solution.

Life is a complex affair. Computation has to be close to as complex as life or survival would long ago have ceased for Man, that high organism who depends for progress and weapons upon his mind. Thus his mental processes are constant evaluations of data in relation to their importance to the immediate solution, and constant evaluations of these conclusions to formulate decisions. Thus his computer is in constant action, thus he is continually involved in re-evaluation of both old data and old conclusions in the light of new data and new conclusions. The principle of how he thinks is simple. It is only that he handles so very, very many computations at once that makes the principle seem complex.

Now the only reason we take account of logic here is to orient the problem of rationality and how one goes about determining whether or not a man is rational.

An ultimate wrongness for the organism would be death, not only for the organism itself but for all involved in its dynamics. An ultimate rightness for the organism would be survival to a reasonable term for himself, his children, his group and Mankind. An ABSOLUTE WRONGNESS would be the extinction of the Universe and all energy and the source of energy—the infinity of complete death. An ABSOLUTE RIGHTNESS would be the immortality of the individual himself, his children, his group, Mankind and the Universe and all energy—the infinity of complete survival. Ultimates, in this sense, are attainable and there are various ultimates of greater or lesser importance. Any ultimate would contain some destruction or some construction.

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Viewed in this way, the problems of logic compute easily and well. A scientific truth would be something which was workably and invariably right for the body of knowledge in which it lay.

One of the reasons very right, slightly right, very wrong, slightly wrong, very true, rather true are used here instead of circumlocutions with new words—such as, for very right, “containing more right factors”—is that the scientist who, after all, fairly well runs this present world, has long since cleaved from metaphysics. Hegel, great man though he was, and Kant, with their metaphysical ABSOLUTE went so far as to deny Piazzi’s discovery of the eighth planet, inhibited the acceptance of Ohm’s law, proved Newton “wrong” and generally did things which, if they were necessary to maintain the Great God Absolute, nevertheless hindered scientific progress. “Truth beyond the realm of human experience” sounds well and is an authentic route for some things, but it doesn’t make washing machines run or raise better chickens or send any rockets to Mars: in short, Absolute Truth is a foreign substance in this highly integrated scientific society. Grammar lags back with the metaphysician’s Absolute Truth. The modem scientist is prone to apologize because his data is workable, rather than true. If the data is uniformly workable, it most certainly is true. Grammar, in trying to hold with metaphysics, impedes, as did metaphysics, science. So there are things very right, very true, very real, very accurate and very variably relative in general. Until a bright mind discovers a way to obtain and use data which cannot be sensed, measured or experienced, grammar had better regulate itself to the driving force of the society, science.

So here we have the formidable article, logic. It is computed, not dreamed and intuitively plucked from some ether. If a man, a group, a race or Mankind does its thinking on a sufficiently rational plane, it survives. And survival, that dynamic thrust through time toward some unannounced goal, is pleasure. Creative and constructive effort is pleasure. Some pleasure destroys more than it creates and so it is “immoral” (and by future prejudice becomes irrationally immoral, traveling as a social aberration; superstition is a parallel channel with immorality, no other proof of harm than prejudice). Some pleasure creates more than it destroys and that is “moral” or good pleasure. If a man, a group or a race or Mankind does its thinking on a sufficiently irrational plane—out of lack of data, warped viewpoint or simply aberration—the survival is lessened; more is destroyed than is created. That is pain. That is the route toward death. That is evil.

Logic is not good or bad in itself, it is the name of a computation procedure, the procedure of the analytical mind or collective analytical minds in their efforts to attain solutions to problems.

The process of logic consists of:

1. Finding out what one is trying to solve.
2. Formulating the question for solution.
3. Obtaining or recalling the data for the question and solution.
4. Evaluating the data to be used in the solution.
5. Comparing data with data, new conclusions with old conclusions.
6. Evolving a new answer or confirming an old one or deciding there is no immediate answer. All answers in terms of relative rightness or wrongness.
7. Action or conclusion.

As outlined above—and on the graph—in one problem, the arrow of decision swings back and forth, back and forth until, by greater-than and lesser-than computations, it finally comes to rest with an answer. Here is a problem: “Shall I pull trigger of shotgun?”
Formulation question: What will happen if I pull the trigger?
Formulation of questions for solution: Is it right or wrong to pull trigger?
Obtaining data: Gun is cocked. I am in closed room. I am in a hurry to get to dinner. Leaving gun cocked weakens spring. It will take over a minute to open breech.
Evaluating data: Gun is cocked—arrow moves far right. I am in closed room and guns go off sometimes—arrow moves far left, but is restrained by already having moved

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far right. I am in a hurry to get to dinner, been duck hunting all day and I’m starved. (Arrow moves to right but restrained again, two evaluations having been computed.) Leaving gun cocked weakens spring and this is a good gun—arrow moves a little farther to right. Breech in poor shape.
New data: Footfalls in room overhead, calling attention to existence of other persons in house. (Arrow moves left.)
New data: Got to clean gun anyway after supper. Can inspect its chambers then when I’ve got time to look. (Arrow moves to left.)
Answer point of arrow is well to the left.
Solution: Lay gun on bed, cocked.
Action: Goes out door.
New data: Little boy laughing down hall.
Evaluation of data: Boy very inquisitive. No lock on door.
New formulation of problem: Is it right or wrong to leave gun unsecured?
New data: Wife’s voice urgent from dining room. Stomach growling. Meat frying.
Evaluation of data: Wife’s voice—small motion of arrow to right. Stomach growling—another motion to right. Boy in danger—surge of arrow far, far to left.
Action: Returns, wrestles with faulty gun breech—whole new set of right-wrong series. Finds breech was empty. Puts cartridges on top shelf, moves chair away from shelf where boy can’t easily get it, hangs shotgun out of reach on wall.
Goes to dinner.

This is a simplified solution. Actually each datum was evaluated for the problem by a separate computer! There were many other data and conclusions and computers used in the computation. And it was all completed in a few seconds and the action fully accomplished in two minutes. The solution was based on a datum which made the problem, as formulated, so wrong that additional precautions were taken.

Thought goes on a network of such computations. Almost none of the computations are examined by “I” no matter how stylish it has been to ponder and vocalize and stew with datum after datum. (This adage that slow thought is good thought stems, most likely, from the propaganda of some fellow who wanted an excuse because he could never think fast. The mind works solutions in milliseconds and then aberrations snarl and alter transmission so that hours and days are required to get the solution from some part of the computer to “I”.)

The mind can compute in any terms, real or abstract. In dealing constantly with data which can be sensed, measured and experienced—real data—the mind is

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fundamentally acquainted with the nonexistence of Absolute Precision. It handles problems about the bigness of big bicycles and the warmness of a drink and the prettiness of beauty and the quantity of companionship in a dog with swift and relatively accurate evaluations. It measures time, distance and space and energy interrelationships as handily as it weighs the thoughts, ethics and potentialities of other minds and all these things are qualitative and quantitative measurements and evaluations which are and cannot be otherwise than approximations. The mind only requires, like the scientist, a workable accuracy. The plus or minus margins of error in finite analysis must be kept within bounds of usefulness. Precision, then, can be defined as the maximal accuracy required for the problem’s solution and demands a minimal margin of error which will not make the solution unworkable. No instrument of Man, including his mind, no matter how cunningly or delicately constructed, can measure time, space, thought or energy with Absolute Precision. There exists in any sensing, measuring or experiencing minute errors. And even if these errors are so tiny that Absolute Precision apparently exists, the errors are nevertheless present. Absolute Precision might occur by accident in the evaluation of an electric current, a temperature or the weight of a flake of gold but no instrument exists fine enough to detect that the Absolute Precision had existed, thus it could not be repeated. Understand that such errors can be so minute—and generally are—that they exceed the requirements of the problem in which the evaluation is needed, but this does not make them any the less errors.

[...]

Hubbard. (1951, January). Dianometry Your Ability and State of Mind Technical Bulletins 1950-1953 (1976 ed., Vol. 1, pp. 68-83). (1991 ed., Vol 1, pp. 94-114.) Los Angeles: Church of Scientology of California.

Thanks again Caroline! This has to be one of the most convoluted definitions of "logic" ever. I have never read the 1951 article you posted: Dianometry
Your Ability and State of Mind by L. Ron Hubbard

Even now after I am out of Hubbard's cult that article gives me chills. Following Hubbards logic every thing bad that ever happens anywhere is all your fault because you didn't follow and pay for Hubbard's useless advice. What a total psychological slam to a parent who loves their child more than life itself to tell the parent that if anything happens to their child it is all their own fault and they MUST pay for dianetics to prevent your sins and abberations from affecting your child.

The most serious observer error which can be made is to enter in a Delusion of Accuracy for those who depend on the data are thus led astray and they cannot know in which direction or how much the data was wrong and are not informed that it was falsified.

Hubbard. (1951, January). Dianometry Your Ability and State of Mind Technical Bulletins 1950-1953 (1976 ed., Vol. 1, pp. 68-83). (1991 ed., Vol 1, pp. 94-114.) Los Angeles: Church of Scientology of California.

I accept the many-valued, more general, structurally more correct 'logic of probability' of Lukasiewicz and Tarski, which in my non-el system becomes infinite-valued (∞-valued) semantics.*
_________
* I use the term infinite-, or ∞-valued in the sense or Cantor as a variable finite.

Korzybski, A. (1933). Science and Sanity, p. 93. Brooklyn, NY: Institute of General Semantics.

Of what must a science of mind be composed?

1. An answer to the goal of thought.

2. A single source of all insanities, psychoses, neuroses, compulsions, repressions and social derangements.

3. Invariant scientific evidence as to the basic nature and functional background of the human mind.

4. Techniques (the art of application) by which the discovered single source could be invariably cured, ruling out, of course, the insanities of malformed, deleted or pathologically injured brains or nervous systems and, particularly, iatrogenic psychoses (those caused by doctors and involving the destruction of the living brain itself).

5. Methods of prevention of mental derangement.

6. The cause and cure of all psycho-somatic ills, which number, some say, 70 percentof Man's listed ailments.

Such a science would exceed the severest terms previously laid down for it in any age, but any computation on the subject should discover that a science of mind ought to be able to be and do just these things.

A science of the mind, if it were truly worthy of that name, would have to rank, in experimental precision, with physics and chemistry. There could be no "special cases" to its laws. There could be no recourse to Authority. The atom bomb bursts whether Einstein gives it permission or not. Laws native to Nature regulate the bursting of that bomb. Technicians, applying techniques derived from discovered natural laws, can make one or a million atom bombs, all alike.

After the body of axioms and technique was organized and working as a science of mind, in rank with the physical sciences, it would be found to have points of agreement with almost every school of thought about thought which had ever existed. This is again a virtue and not a fault.

Simple though it is, dianetics does and is these things:

1. It is an organized science of thought built on definite axioms: statements of natural laws on the order of those of the physical sciences.

2. It contains a therapeutic technique with which can be treated all inorganic mental ills and all organic psychosomatic ills, with assurance of complete cure in unselected cases.

3. It produces a condition of ability and rationality for Man well in advance of the current norm, enhancing rather than destroying his vigor and personality.

4. Dianetics gives a complete insight into the full potentialities of the mind, discovering them to be well in excess of past suppression.

5. The basic nature of man is discovered in Dianetics rather than hazarded or postulated, since that basic nature can be brought into action in any individual completely. And that basic nature is discovered to be good.

6. The single source of mental derangement is discovered and demonstrated, on a clinical or laboratory basis, by Dianetics.

7. The extent, storage capacity and recallability of the human memory is finally established by Dianetics.

8. The full recording abilities of the mind are discovered by Dianetics with the conclusion that they are quite dissimilar to former suppositions.

9. Dianetics brings forth the non-germ theory of disease, complementing bio-chemistry and Pasteur's work on the germ theory to embrace the field.

10. With Dianetics ends the "necessity" of destroying the brain by shock or surgery to effect "tractability" in mental patients and "adjust" them.

11. A workable explanation of the physiological effects of drugs and endocrine substances exists in Dianetics and many problems posed by endocrinology are answered.

12. Various educational, sociological, political, military, and other human studies are enhanced by Dianetics.

13. The field of cytology is aided by Dianetics, as well as other fields of research.

This, then, is a skeletal sketch of what would be the scope of a science of mind and of what is the scope of Dianetics.

Hubbard, L. R. (1950). Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (2007 ed., p. 9-11). Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, Inc.

The field covered by this enquiry is very wide and involves unexpectedly special suggestive contributions in diverse branches of science. To list a few for orientation:

1. The formulation of General Semantics, resulting from a General Theory of Time-binding, supplies the scientists and the laymen with a general modern method of orientation, which eliminates the older psychological blockages and reveals the mechanisms of adjustment;

2. The departure from aristotelianism will allow biologists, physiologists, etc., and particularly medical men to 'think' in modern colloidal and quantum terms, instead of the inadequate, antiquated chemical and physiological terms. Medicine may then become a science in the 1933 sense;

3. In psychiatry it indicates on colloidal grounds the solution of the 'body-mind' problem;

4. It shows clearly that desirable human characteristics have a definite psychophysiological mechanism which, up till now, has been misused, to the detriment of all of us;

5. It gives the first definition of 'consciousness' in simpler physico-chemical terms;

6. A general theory of sanity leads to a general theory of psychotherapy, including all such existing medical schools, as they all deal with
disturbances of the semantic reactions (psycho-logical responses to words and other stimuli in connection with their meanings) ;

7. It formulates a physiological foundation for 'mental' hygiene, which turns out to be a most general preventive psychophysiological experimental method;

8. It shows the psychophysiological foundation of the childhood of humanity as indicated by the infantilism in our present private, public, and international lives;

9. In biology it gives a semantic and structural solution of the 'organism-as-a-whole' problem;

10. In physiology and neurology it reformulates to human levels the Pavlov theory of conditional reflexes, suggesting a new scientific field of psychophysiology for experiments;

11. In epistemology and semantics it establishes a definite non-elementalistic theory of meanings based not only on definitions but also on undefined terms;

12. It introduces a new development and use of 'structure';

13. It establishes structure as the only possible content of knowledge;

14. It discovers the multiordinality of the most important terms we have, thus removing the psycho-logical blockage of semantic origin and helping the average man or scientist to become a 'genius', etc.;

15. It formulates a new and physiological theory of mathematical types of extreme simplicity and very wide application;

16. It offers a non-aristotelian solution of the problem of mathematical 'infinity';

17. It offers a new non-aristotelian, semantic (from Greek, to signify) definition of mathematics and number, which clarifies the mysteries about the seemingly uncanny importance of number and measurement and throws a new light on the role, structural significance, meaning, and methods of mathematics and its teaching;

18. In physics, the enquiry explains some fundamental, but as yet disregarded, semantic aspects of physics in general, and of Einstein's and the new quantum theories in particular;

19. It resolves simply the problem of 'indeterminism' of the newer quantum mechanics, etc.

I realize that the thoughtful reader may be staggered by such a partial list. I am in full sympathy with him in this. I also was staggered.
As this enquiry claims to be scientific, in the 1933 sense, I must explain how, in spite of great difficulties and handicaps, I was able to accomplish the work. [...]

Korzybski, A. (1933). Science and Sanity, pp. 8-10. Brooklyn, NY: Institute of General Semantics.

The Heinlein Society
Heinlein’s connection with Korzybski and with General Semantics has gained much notice in the SF world and among General Semantics people, but—until Steve’s cataloguing effort—the documentary record has been overlooked or neglected. Steve looked through Korzybski’s correspondence files and the folders for those two seminars and found a few minor and inconsequential Heinlein letters—but he also he found the Heinleins’ completed application forms, including photos (reproduced here with the kind permission of the IGS). Steve Stockdale has already publicized the find to the General Semantics community, via a passing mention in an article in the Spring 2002 issue of ETC: A REVIEW OF GENERAL SEMANTICS (Volume 59, Number One):
http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/hist ... sInfo.html

The Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Archive General Correspondence 1948-1951, Section 1
Part 2, 310 pages, continuing similar correspondence. H. Highlights include: Extended correspondence with L. Ron Hubbard, including Hubbard talking about some of the concepts that would come to form the backbone of Dianetics in a letter to Heinlein in March, 1949, pp226-232. Later letters discuss the writing/publication history of "Dianetics" and the formation of "The Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation" and "Hubbard College" in Wichita, KS. Family correspondence of the Heinlein clan.
http://www.heinleinarchives.net/upload/ ... ductId=882

W.H. Bade
June 19, 1953

Dear Bade:

[...]

Korzybski's work interested me, too - but I never read Science & Sanity through. Look, my business is being an editor. As an edi­tor, in many years of reading, I've learned a very useful principle. If a man's thinking is so disorganized as to produce the first four or five pages in a disjointed, verbose and redundant state, it's highly probable his mind is that disorganized the rest of the way. Turn down the story.

Korzybski couldn't write clearly, or state his ideas succinctly. That in itself indicates his thinking was still in an unclarified state.

Lord, man, the whole New Testament wasn't l/10th as verbose as Science & Sanity. It doesn't take a book that big to change the course of world history - and in fact, it's the short ones that have done most.
The Prince isn't very long either, you know.

When I finally get my philosophy worked out, I figure it should be expressible in about 5000 words.

I learned about Korzybski's work by letting other people abstract his ideas for me, and cross-comparing what they got from him. van Vogt got the most -- roughly $4800.

I have trouble with Joe Winter, at times, because he is still rather sold on Korzybski.

[...]

Anyhow, Korzybski never seemed to me to have the business of abstraction worked out right. That's OK though; the Class of All Men Who Understand Abstraction is, to date, a class of No Members. Korzybski is in the very well populated Class of All Men Who Don't Know What Creative Thinking Is.

But he made a very real contribution; he shook up enough people's thinking so that they started achieving something. Ron Hubbard did the same; he didn't have the answers, as he thought he did, but he did get a lot of people thinking! [L. Ron Hubbard did go on to uncover and to communicate answers not available to John W. Campbell, prior to Campbell's death: Ed.]

Chapdelaine, P. (1993). The John W. Campbell Letters with Isaac Asimov & A.E. van Vogt (Vol. II, pp. 646-648). Franklin, TN: AC Projects, Inc.

J. A. WINTER, M.D., was the first medical director of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation. After leaving this post, he specialized in psychosomatic medicine, applying his own variations to the methods and techniques of dianetics.

The manner in which the patient is asked to conduct him­self in therapy is, in short, the exact antithesis of the training-pattern which the general semanticists hold up as the ideal. The disciples of Korzybski, when asked a question, are sup­posed to pause in order to obtain sufficient time for thalamico-cortical integration. We encourage our patients to respond as rapidly as possible in order to tap the region of the mind wherein the emergency, non-analytic functions seem to lie, for it is within this region that we find the failures of dif­ferentiation and the roots of aberrated behavior.

At the same time, one should be careful not to permit the patient to give only what he thinks the therapist wants. The psychoanalysts are very familiar with the patient who free-associates beautifully, yet obtains a minimum of therapeutic benefit from his analysis. We see a similar situation in dianetics, where the patient brings up "engrams" with the greatest of ease, yet manifests no beneficial change in his reaction-pattern.

Winter, J. A., MD. (1951). Dianetics: A Doctor's Report (1987 ed.). New York, NY: The Julian Press, Inc.