Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Superlative Technocentricity as a Discourse Rather Than a Type

My friend Anne Corwin raises some good points in yesterday's lively Mundi Moot. I'm responding in a post, simply because there is so much material in the Comments at this point that I fear she and others might miss it otherwise.

Anne writes: [A]nyone who partakes in the overt, public amateur psychoanalysis of specific individuals must be wary of assuming that people are "off" in the particular ways that they might initially seem to be.

I definitely agree with you Anne, and I've learned a lot from reading your interventions concerning the neurotypicality assumptions in many technocentric discourses (and even more through the further explorations of disability studies provoked by my engagements with your work). These interventions struck a strong chord with me especially given my readings in the history of the (still ongoing) struggles of queer people for standing, and my awareness of the pathologizing vocabularies that enable authorities to violate free people in the name of science but in the interests of parochial moralizing.

But I do insist that one can engage in symptomatic analyses of historical, organizational, archetypal formations, and so on without engaging in armchair psychologizing of a kind that is meant to eventuate in clinical diagnoses of individuals, surely?

By the mid-twentieth century at the latest psychoanalysis had taken on the dimensions of a popular (indeed, possibly the primary) vocabulary through which millions expressed their moral philosophical convictions. And much of that discourse of the unconscious, neurosis, repression, projection, melancholy, authoritarian personality, inner child, True Belief, and on and on and on is the furthest thing from the kind of rigorous science (or recognizable orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis for that matter) that issues out in sound clinical diagnosis. Nevertheless, its power and breadth as a modern secular moral imaginary is unmistakable, and surely not merely to be decried always only as pseudoscience?

Look what Herbert Marcuse did with this philosophized Freud! And on and on and on. This is, by the way, such a strange place to find myself in, because -- like most people as deeply influenced by Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt as I have been, I would be regarded in my circles as a rather staunch critic of psychoanalysis, even if I will concede the force of especially some subversive feminist and postcolonial appropriations of psychoanalysis (Fanon, Butler, and so on).

I guess the long and the short of it is to say you should be wary of assuming that my own deployment of what might appear to be psychoanalytic categories here and there amounts to the proffering up of would-be clinical diagnoses of individual psychologies. In a way, this seems to me too close to the charge I hear interminably that my analyses ultimately devolve into ad hominem attacks.

Look, one deploys categories, one delineates mechanisms, one attends to associations (logical, causal, figurative, citational, genealogical, and so on), one discerns symptoms -- this is what thinking in a certain analytic register demands of us.

I'll grant that I can be bad-tempered and a tad acid-tongued, but none of that alters the fact that analysis is analysis, and struggling usefully to name things (however provisionally) is not reducible to name-calling, scouting for structural symptoms is not reducible to attributing malign intentions or pathologizing individual agents whose conduct invigorates the structure being so analyzed.

Often times people who feel unfairly maligned by my critiques of Superlative Technocentricity would do well to substitute for what they perceive as an accusation that "you are x" the comradely injunction, "dude, don't be that guy," or, even better, to substitute for what they perceive to be an accusation that "you are x" an expression of the worry that a social formation seems conducive to x, but as for those who individually invigorate while being invigorated through their participation in that social formation exhibiting x themselves, one must always insist, in the absence of actual evidence to the contrary, "if the shoe fits wear it."

Anne goes on to discuss the "particular civil-rights movement [that] is sometimes referred to as "neurodiversity". Neurodiversity is, in my mind, a recognition of the fact that there are multiple, yet equally valid, modes of cognition and perception within the population, and that much of the apparent strife experienced by autistic and other atypical persons is the direct or indirect result of bigotry and status-quo bias (rather than of intrinsic personal deficits).

I agree with Anne that this is an important civil rights movement, I agree with Anne's characterization of it here, and I agree with her diagnosis that bigotry rather than "personal deficit" accounts for much of the suffering experienced by neuro-atypical people in the world. I see all this as a crucial dimension of my own commitments to morphological freedom and prosthetic self-determination and my simple progressive Pro-Choice commitments.

[P]eople making the "neurodiversity is a brain-damage cult" accusations are very fond of taking autistic self-advocates' statements WAY out of context, of resorting to strawman attacks (e.g., "Neurodiversity advocates think autistic children should be able to run wild and do whatever they want without any parenting whatsoever!"), and of accusing self-advocates of really being "schizophrenic", delusional, liars, histrionic, borderline...you name it.

This is the main source of my uneasiness with slapping psychological labels on people...I've seen that technique used far too often to discredit people who are ethical and sincere, and I've seen the damage it can do.


I quite understand this point. Believe me, I've been on the receiving end of no small amount of pathologizing charges of this kind, not only for my queerness, but for my perverse and promiscuous queerness, but, you may well note, also from some Transhumanist-identified and Singularitarian-identified people eager to marginalize as inherently frivolous, dishonest, fraudulent, neurotic, over-sensitive, politically correct thought-policing, sentimentally emotionalist, over-reading and on and on and on my whole mode of thinking is as such. This is a road that goes at least both ways.

But I understand well enough not to assume that anybody who decries a formulation as "too flamboyant" is necessarily engaging in a homophobic attack, for example, and so too I try to understand the larger historical context (Snow's Two Cultures, for example) that drives the uneasiness of some participants in technocentric formations for "humanities" sensibilities. My snap reactions to such things are often defensive, but as a general matter I know it is best for all for us not to take such things too personally, even as we painstakingly explain how discourses function to systematically facilitate certain misperceptions, certain mis-prioritizations, certain misplaced interventions in ways that cause actual individual people to suffer unnecessarily and to no real purpose.

So, while I do think it's important to suss out people's motivations when there is reason to suspect them, merely accusing someone of sinister motivations doesn't mean that your critical work is "done", and that questioning this assessment is evidence of naivete or youthful idealism.

I know that this comment was not necessarily directed at me, but I do want to say that I personally have no trouble at all diagnosing social formations and public discourses as sinister, but I have the strongest possible hesitations about labeling individual people sinister. I believe that radical evil tends to be social, and that it is invigorated primarily by individuals who are more banal than sinister on the whole.

Both viciousness and virtuousness interest me most when they become social circles. Good and evil have always seemed to me deeply personal matters, playing out for the most part in a rather intimate sphere. Criminality is another matter altogether -- but I daresay you'll notice that I haven't accused even Singularitarians of that!

I know few of the people who invigorate the discourses and formations I critique well enough to venture to say whether or not I would think them sinister or wholesome. I've met Michael Anissimov a couple of times and I had a swell time in his company. I wouldn't say he was sinister or ill or whatever -- but I do think Singularitarianism remains an essentially religious, and hence properly a moral/esthetic rather than properly scientific or political or ethical discourse, and the organizations identified with that discourse have seemed to me distressingly expressive of fundamentalist modes of religiosity, and I worry enormously that this discourse and its institutional counterparts look to me to be an especially snug fit for neoliberal rationalizations that I oppose politically in the strongest possible terms. Explicit intentions and malign motives will not necessarily come into it -- any more than one necessarily actively intends or has thought through all the logical entailments of the propositions one affirms as true.

I am not pitching my critique at quite the level some people seem to think, and saying otherwise seems either to indicate a significant misunderstanding of the critique itself or to function as a way to trivialize a critique that is harder to answer on its own terms (I don't think the latter is what you are doing at all, just to be clear, Anne).

Therefore, if you're suggesting that maybe some "superlative" types are helping to perpetuate attitudes that promote genocide, bigotry, human rights abuses, etc., I'm not going to just dismiss that out of hand.

I will admit that I prefer to speak of Superlativity, or Superlative Technocentricity, over "Superlatives" and "Technocentrics." Incredibly enough, the whole business of turning to this term on my part was to avoid some of the hurt feelings that had arisen out of my longstanding anti-transhumanist critiques -- which were likewise reduced to name-calling by many who were made uncomfortable by them. I was initially moved to speak instead of Superlativity to circumvent this perception, which seemed to me to distract people from the force of my point. There simply aren't enough Singularitarians or Transhumanists in the world to exercise my worried imagination too much, except to the extent that they attract undue money and mediation, to the extent that they symptomize broader discursive tendencies, and especially to the extent that the latter articulates the former. The irrational exuberance of the 1990s digirati stood in a structurally symptomatic rather than logically identical relation to the Extropians, for example. It was as a symptomatic discourse rather than as an effective movement that Extropianism was most worthy of analysis in my view. The Critique of Superlativity (which subsumes Extropian-movement, as it happens) is much the same sort of thing.

I have tried to be pretty scrupulous about critiquing Superlative Technocentricity as Discourse rather than Superlative Technocentrics as a Would-Be Bestiary of the Bad, but I know I have fallen into the habit of personalization too often, very often (to be fair to myself) directly as the result of getting caught up in give-and-take with people who are personalizing the critique themselves and engaging with it in these terms. I gain very little by this move, as far as I can see, and lose my own preferred focus, and so I am going to redouble my efforts on this score.

I have no doubt at all that those who feel unfairly maligned by my critiques will continue to accuse me of name-calling, but come what may returning to scrupulous interpersonal generality where the force of my critique is systemic rather than personal is in any case more clarifying for my ends (it is hard to avoid some measure of the personal when I am engaging in a rhetorical analysis in person with an author's individual argument, of course, but I doubt this is the sort of thing you are objecting to).

I really am incomparably more interested in Superlative Discourses and Superlative Formations than in "Superlative Types," whatever that would be, and my concern with evil and injustice is one that is less interested in "those [I] perceive as villainous," as you say, than in discourses and formations that enable and encourage bad behavior and bad effects.

By way of conclusion I want to turn very quickly to something Anne mentioned in passing near the beginning of her comment, about whether I might should have worries about being sued for libel.

If only someone would try -- I could pay off my student loans years in advance of schedule!

But to be serious, it seems to me that to a certain extent gossip, ridicule, parody, tenuous diagnoses of psychological, social, institutional, medical malaise and so on are all part and parcel of the ongoing messy public collective contentious effort of human beings to make sense of what is happening in the world and among their fellows, to reconcile their histories with their hopes.

Given the chilling effect of efforts to police or sue or pressure or taboo some expression (the secrecy of corporate-military formations, for example, the relentless PR policing of cults like Scientology, for example), I actually find it a bit ominous that the specter of the libel suit has appeared in my in-box on more than one occasion from people who feel maligned by my critiques of Superlative and Sub(cult)ural Technocentricity.

Only the iceberg tip of my intellectual life is visible online -- I devote most of my intellectual energies to my students and their work, to my lectures on critical theory and technodevelopmental deliberation, and so on. An enormous amount of my argumentative energy is also devoted to more mainstream democratic-left politics, and I daresay the things I say in my appalled contemplation of the Killer Clowns of the Bush Administration and the neoliberal/neoconservative corporate-militarist madhouse-slaughterhouse are incomparably more personalizing than anything I say about the few thousand marginal transhumanist-identified techno-enthusiasts I analyze in my critiques of Superlativity and so on.

Given this, I will say that it seems to me somewhat... indicative... that of all these intellectual contexts and in the face of all these modes of critique it is from the discursive knot of technocentricity alone that I receive accusations of fraud and intellectual dishonesty, occasional threats to sue, failures to distinguish critique from defamation, or to distinguish structural analysis from the attribution of conscious intentions (as though any close reader worth his salt thinks authorial intention is the most interesting thing to scout for in trying to think through the meanings available and at work in a text's dynamic course through the diversity of the world).

There are rich literatures available to which one can make sensible recourse to better understand that sort of thing, literatures documenting the authoritarian tendencies of ideological pan-movements, the dynamics of cult formations, the long history of reductionism mistaken for science, and so on. It would seem very strange indeed to suggest (and as a matter of fact I emphatically do not think Anne is making this suggestion, and I am not directing these final comments to her -- her raising of this worry triggered a broader concern I have had for a long time) that taking these literatures seriously earmarks one's interventions as always only a kind of name-calling or even libelous utterance.

To be blunt: Cults behave that way.

I make no accusations.

Just don't be that guy.

Or, you know, if the shoe fits. Wear it.

14 comments:

jimf said...

Dale wrote:

> [A]s for those who individually invigorate while being invigorated
> through their participation in that social formation exhibiting x themselves,
> one must always insist, in the absence of actual evidence to the contrary,
> "if the shoe fits wear it."

Ah yes, The Cinderella Principle.

I heartily endorse it! ;->

Dale also wrote:

> But to be serious, it seems to me that to a certain extent gossip,
> ridicule, parody, tenuous diagnoses of psychological, social, institutional,
> medical malaise and so on are all part and parcel of the ongoing messy
> public collective contentious effort of human beings to make sense of
> what is happening in the world and among their fellows, to reconcile their
> histories with their hopes.

From _Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed,
and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend_ by Barbara Oakley,
Chapter 12, "The Sun Also Shines on the Wicked":

How Can You Tell?

The very rarity of Machiavellians at most social levels can make
them difficult to pick out. . . Gossip can be surprisingly helpful here.
While a Machiavellian's hoodwinked supervisor, for example, may rave
about the Machiavellian's sincerity and talent, coworkers, underlings,
janitors, roommates, teammates, cellmates, or simple acquaintances
may have a very different story -- if you happenchance on their
confidence. (That's why books on hiring often recommend, after
all the high-level interviews have taken place, seeing what the
secretary thinks of a candidate.) . . .

Intellectuals may snicker at journalism's bad boy
Matt Drudge or at publications like the
_National Enquirer_, but there is a reason that totalitarian regimes
such as the People's Republic of China ban similar reporting
within their borders. (Perhaps surprisingly, the _Drudge Report_
is **the** must-see Web site for top-ranked journalists, while the
_National Enquirer_ carries an excellent reputation among those
same journalists for investigative reporting.)

jimf said...

Dale wrote:

> I would be regarded in my circles as a rather staunch critic
> of psychoanalysis, even if I will concede the force of especially
> some subversive feminist and postcolonial appropriations of
> psychoanalysis (Fanon, Butler, and so on).

BTW, the diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as
listed in the DSM, has **nothing** to do with (Freudian)
Psychoanalysis, per se. Though Freud did publish a paper in
1914 entitled "On Narcissism: An Introduction".

The DSM is a tome cooked up and revised by (a panel? a
committee? who knows.) of shrinks every few years so they
can all agree more or less on where the paint-buckets
are. And so they have diagnostic codes to give the insurance
companies.

The DSM (current version: DSM-IV-TR) is an American
concoction. The international version is something called
the ICD-10, issued (or at least ratified) by the World
Health Organization.

I do not own a copy of the DSM; I've never even laid
hands on one, except at the bookstore.

It took me more than a year to find out about NPD from the
point at which I first began to feel that there was something
"off" about some of the >Hists I knew (and the tone
of the community in general).

Even though, BTW, I have a psych minor from NYU (my major
was computer science, completed in 1989), the bulk of my
psych courses occurred in the early 1970s at the University
of Delaware. So I took Social Psych and Personality and
even a course in Abnormal Psychology. But I never found
out anything about what are now called the "Axis II"
personality disorders. (Though I did learn about psychopathy.
And even about what Barbara Oakley calls "Machiavellianism" --
Oakley mentions that Richard Christie -- who invented the
concept -- had a collaborator named Florence Geis, and by
golly if that name didn't ring a bell. Geis was either
teaching at, or visiting, the University of Delaware while
I was taking my psych classes, and she lectured to us once,
and tested all the undergrad students on her Mach Scale
[no I didn't find out my score ;-> ]).

No, to satisfy my curiosity about what was "going on" with
the >Hists I started with the Myers-Briggs (which I'd found out
about at NYU), then on to the Enneagram (via Don Richard Riso's
_Personality Types_). These are more-or-less "feel good"
(or at least don't make anybody feel bad!) personality typologies,
though (although Riso's book equates "unhealthy" levels of
the Enneagram types to DSM personality disorders -- so that's
where I first heard about **them**).

Then I stumbled across an (expensive!) tome in the bookstore
entitled _Personality Disorders in Modern Life_ by Theodore
Millon, and it was on to the big time. This gave me the
keywords I needed to do some Web research. Then I found
Sam Vaknin's (**self-published**, make no mistake -- author
of _Malignant Self-Love_) stuff, and everything became pretty
clear.

I found Mike Darwin's article (and Paulina Borsook's stuff) after
**that**.

BTW, another Web commentator independently (of me) linked
>Hism and narcissism (much to the consternation of the >Hists,
some of whom actually attempted to "set him straight" on his
"misunderstanding" in e-mail) just last year:
http://mthollywood.blogspot.com/2006/05/transhumanism-and-narcissism-i.html

Anne Corwin said...

Dale: I acknowledge (and appreciate) your disclaimer regarding my intentions...it was actually fairly obvious from your preceding narrative that you were discussing the general concept of the whole "suing for libel" issue and not saying anything in particular about what I'd said.

I know what it's like to see words on the screen (written by someone else) and have them trigger an association to something that is perhaps tangentially relevant -- in following those tangents I sometimes end up accidentally making people think I'm responding directly to them, when I'm really just using whatever they said as a sort of "jumping-off point". In other words, no worries.

But just as an FYI, my statement, "In addition to worries about being sued for libel, anyone who partakes in the overt, public amateur psychoanalysis of specific individuals..." was simply an acknowledging response to Jim's anecdote about Martha Stewart suing a tabloid for describing her behavior as "borderline personality".

Frankly, I don't think most "regular folks" (e.g., people who aren't wealthy celebrities) tend to have much luck suing others anyway, regardless of what is said or written about them.

And I'm pretty sure that most of the "I'll sue you!" yammering that passes back and forth between Internet arguers trading ad-hominems like baseball cards amounts primarily to "My dad can beat up your dad!" posturing.

But...there are still some interesting power dynamics to consider in all this. Maybe I'll get into that at a later time, but for now, I'll just say that the most malicious, harmful gossip I've come across has been directed not at actual cults or even corporations (or rich celebrities), but at people with comparatively little power (as in, children under the age of ten, and people who are neither rich nor powerful in any real sense).

jimf said...

Anne Corwin wrote:

> But just as an FYI, my statement. . . was simply an acknowledging
> response to Jim's anecdote about Martha Stewart suing a tabloid for
> describing her behavior as "borderline personality".

As reported in Barbara Oakley's recent book, which is where I
read about it. Also, according to Oakley, Stewart ended up
dropping the suit.

> Frankly, I don't think most "regular folks" (e.g., people
> who aren't wealthy celebrities) tend to have much luck suing
> others anyway, regardless of what is said or written about them.

Except that cult gurus, and cult members, are not "regular
folks" anymore.

------------------------------------------------------
Penthouse: Before you filed your lawsuit and began
speaking openly about Scientology, there was very little
news of it in the media. Why do you think there has
been so little investigation of Scientology?

L. Ron Hubbard, Jr.: It's very simple. Scientology has
always had a "fair-game doctrine" -- a policy of doing
absolutely anything to stop an investigation or publication
of a critical article in a magazine or newspaper. They
have run some incredible operations on the several people
who have tried to write books about Scientology. It was
almost like a terror campaign. First they'd try throwing
every possible lawsuit at the reporter or newspaper. We
had a team of attorneys to do just that. The goal was to
destroy the enemy. So the solution was always to attack,
full-bore, with every possible resource, from every
angle, instantaneously it can certainly be overwhelming.
A guy would get slapped with twenty-seven lawsuits, and
our lawyers would start depositioning absolutely anybody
who ever knew the man, digging up dirt while at the same
time putting together an operation that would get him
into further trouble. I know of one case, concerning
Paulette Cooper, who wrote a book called _The Scandal of
Scientology_, in which they spent almost $500,000 trying
to destroy her.

Penthouse: So you think the press was intimidated?

Hubbard: Oh, absolutely. All the way through, since the
fifties. I found this very sad. It seemed very much like
Germany in the thirties. The freedom of the press seemed
buried. They got scared. They thought. "Well, who wants to
go through ten years of lawsuits, just because we printed
the name L. Ron Hubbard?" I'm delighted to see that _Penthouse_
has the balls to print this interview.

Penthouse: Why do you think it's so risky?

Hubbard: My father drilled into all of us: Don't go to court
thinking to win a lawsuit. You go to court to harass, to delay,
to exhaust the enemy financially, physically, mentally. You file
every motion you can think of and you just lock them up in
court. The courts, for my father, were never used to seek justice
or redress, put to destroy the people he thought were enemies,
to prevent negative stories from appearing. He just wanted complete
control of the press -- and got it.

-- _Penthouse_ magazine interview with L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
(son of the founder of Dianetics/Scientology), from 1983
http://www.lermanet.com/scientologynews/penthouse-LRonHubbardJr-interview-1983.htm
------------------------------------------------------

And see also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology)


------------------------------------------------------
My fellow Scientologists! Our prophet has finished his
new doctrine, and will now read some passages before making
it available to you all for a nominal fee. [the crowd cheers]
I give you... the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard!
[two officials bow and then spread roses before Stan's feet
as he walks down a red carpet towards a marble stand with
"SCIENTOLOGY" engraved along the front. Stan is dressed
in toga and laurel. The crowd cheers wildly]

Stan: Uh, thanks. So, first of all, I've written that the
brainwashed alien ghosts are actually from a galaxy called Nubanon.

Crowd: Ohhhh.

Man: Nubanon.

Stan: And uh, oh, [hopeful faces look back at him]
...I ...I can't do this.

President: Huh, what?

Stan: Look, everybody, we're all looking for answers, you know
We all want to understand who we are and where we come from,
but... sometimes we want to know the answers so badly that we...
believe just about anything.

Man 2: Huh?

Woman: What?

Stan: [takes off his laurel] I'm not the reincarnation of
L. Ron Hubbard. And... Scientology is just a big fat global scam.

Brian: Oh! We are gonna sue you!

Stan: What??

President: Yeah, you think you can say our religion is a lie?!
We'll sue you, buddy!

Stan: YOU told me it was a lie!

President: Ho, now you're puttin' words in MY mouth! You are sooo sued!

Man 3: You can't make fun of Scientology, kid!
We are gonna sue your ass AND your balls!

Crowd: Yeah, that's right!

President: How dare you mock our faith, you little punk?!
You'll be hearing from our lawyers tomorrow!

Field Reporter: We've just had an incredible development here, Mitch.
Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and R. Kelly, have **all**
come out of the closet!
[The three of them come out the front door and Cruise
releases R. Kelly, who moves off and out of view.]

Cruise: [approaches Stan] So you're NOT the prophet, huh?!
You made me look stupid! I'm gonna sue you too!

Stan: Well fine! Go ahead and sue me!

Cruise: I will! I'll sue you in England!

President: You are so sued, kid!

Stan: Well go on, then! Sue me!

President: We're going to!

Stan: Okay, good! Do it! I'm not scared of you! Sue me!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
-- _South Park_ episode "Trapped in the Closet"
http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/southpark/season9/southpark-912.htm



A Scientology pep-talk:

http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?p=110940&sid=5b2fcc3e06ab8bd58c8aece6ea0470f8
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, the basic on this unhandled sit is obviously m/u's.
If it weren't for your m/u's, you wouldn't be wog-wogging
and waffling around looking for a WHY, nor be so ARC broken
with the WHO, and you'd be able to put in your KRC,
Tone 40 this to an EP, complete those targets and put
a head on a pike instead of Dev-T'ing this forum with your HE&R.

Unless, of course, it's a red-tagged S&D. Now if that's the flub,
it could be because it was a Type 2 PTS, or it could have been
an A to J sit, which would mean it was really a false PTS,
and actually you're out ethics.

Whatever it is, it's BANK!

Now I've been looking over the KRs in your file, and really,
we must handle your off-lines originations, your downstats,
your service facs and case on post. While your auditor and
C/S are in cramming, you will report to I&R for an investigation
and a program to handle this terminatedly.

Expect to complete a full o/w writeup, conditions from confusion
on up, and a suitable amends project. As a downstat ethics-bait
dilettante, you're off enhancement until you get handled.
You can help with the all-hands letters-out we're doing tonight;
but that won't count as your effective blow when you've worked
up to liability.

If you're OUT-ethics, chances are you're also OUT-tech and
OUT-admin, as well as OUT-manners, OUT-finances, OUT-TRs, OUT-PR,
OUT-comm, OUT-KSW, and OUT-2D! And even though there are some
people who seem to think this forum is an OUT-house, that's
no excuse for being in the condition of OUT-to-lunch!

We want you winning! We know you can be UP-tone, and an UP-stat,
and if you're not UP for it, well then UP-yours!

We want your ruds IN! We want your Tone-40 TRs IN! We want you
IN-ethics, IN-session, IN the closet, and IN the proper discussion
thread!

We want you ON-lines, ON-purpose, ON-Source, ON the f'ing Bridge,
ON the bus and ON-topic!

Now get the CI off the lines and get those postulates sticking!
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Glossary:


unhandled sit
A "situation" is a major departure from an ideal scene,
e.g., a lost lawsuit, a large media story
that is critical of Scientology, a long-term unhandled critic, etc.
Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology would be an
unhandled situation, for example.
Handle
To fix something up or solve a problem. "Helena Kobrin and
Elaine Siegel were assigned to handle the situation in ars
[alt.religion.scientology]."


m/u's
Misunderstood words or symbols.
M/U, Mis-U, or MU
A misunderstood word, meant to cause everything from blows
(sudden departures) to overts and withholds, and actually being
the root cause of S[uppressive]P[erson]s. Because of the centricity
of "MUs" and their destructive potential it is a crime to go by
them when studying, and subjects the student to the risk of getting
a kangaroo "court of ethics". The cult is fanatical about not going
by one, and insists that everyone look things up endlessly in
dictionaries and go through every definition. This becomes quite
tedious with words like "to", "set", and "be." Extensive pieces of
the "tech" are devoted to "word clearing", qv, and so the hapless
student ends up trapped in a arbitrary system which may punish or
help, punish or help, alternately with the word clearing or the
ethics actions. The very definition of "MU" is mutable and arbitrary
in that it is a word that makes one frown or blink or stumble on or
slow down on reading, etc., as spotted by others - all of this
adds to the coercive, conforming, and group-pressure nature of
the beast. See M3, M4 for more on this topic. "Look up your M/Us
and quit your nattering Mister, or I'll have you busted down to Ethics!"
M/U Phenomena
The emotional upset leading to Blows, disappearances from the
organization, that follows going by a misunderstood word, according
to the cult's "study tech." M/U Phenomena is the only reason someone
gives up on Scientology, according to Hubbard. If you think it is
all nonsense, it is because you went by a word you didn't understand.
If you think it is dangerous, and that the RPF (Rehabilitation Project Force;
the cult's gulag) is repressive and sick, you just have an M/U. If you
think the Purification Rundown is bizarre, you have an M/U, and it
is your problem. Get it?


wog
A non-Scientologist, a civilian, an ignorant or
uninitiated person.
[L. Ron Hubbard used the word WOG in the same elitist
sense used by Caucasian sailors in the British navy.
Although Hubbard was not in the British navy, he was in
the U.S. Navy for a brief period during WWII, and his
father was a career Naval officer. The term WOG was made famous
by the British as an epithet, for whom it meant "n*gger" or "sp*c" or
any of dozens of terms meant to convey "an inferior person of color."
The "inferior" adjective is the meaning generally conveyed by
Scientologists when they use the term. More accurately,
a WOG is a non-Scientologist who has not incurred the
wrath of Scientology. People who actually reject the teachings
of Scientology are considered even WORSE than WOGS. They're
suppressives, PTS, 1.1s, or a part of the evil psych conspiracy.
In short, they are enemies of Scientology. WOGS are simply
ignorant of Scientology and so are not judged as enemies, but
as potential future members (i.e. raw meat).]
Wog
A derogatory and racist term the cult co-opted from British
slang, and now uses to refer to people outside of Scientology's
purview.
Wog world
The mundane society away from the totally free supermen inside
the cult of Scientology, seen as an aberrated sea of insanity
and criminality to be feared and avoided.


Why
By a series of steps one comes down to find the "Why" of the situation.
The right Why, Hubbard says, will "open the door to handling." The Why is
followed by the steps needed to handle the situation and turn things
around.
Why
A reason to explain why something happens; a cause. "We need to find
the why behind the failure of Operation Snow White."


ARC
A word made from the initial letters of Affinity, Reality and
Communication which together equals understanding.
ARC is pronounced as three letters A-R-C.
ARC
Affinity, Reality, and Communication; when a cultie meets a cultie,
a comin' through the rye. ARC is used as a synonym for love or like
or general warmth to be applied to raw meat marks (green Scientologists)
to smooth the earlier stages of brainwashing. ARC = understanding,
according to L. Ron Hubbard. The ARC triangle is inferior to the
KRC triangle, which stands for Knowledge, Responsibility, and Control...
which equal money. "Use a little more ARC when you reg people in, Sam."

ARC Break: (ARC brk:)
1) A sudden drop or cutting of one's affinity, reality, or
communication with someone or something. It is pronounced by its
letters "A-R-C break".
2) A sudden drop or cutting of one's affinity, reality or communication
with someone or something. This is in common language known as an
upset or a condition of being shocked, disappointed, surprised, offended,
etc. The A-R-C break gives an inside look in the anatomy of what is going on.

ARC break or ARC-X
A break in affinity, reality or communication between two people
causing upset, anger or tears.

ARC breaky
Describing someone who is prone to ARC breaks, qv.

ARC break Assessment:
Reading a prepared auditing list which applies to the activity.
The list is read to the PC while on a Meter. In the ARC Break Assessment
the Auditor only locates and then indicates the charge found to the PC.
It is used on very upset PCs where actual auditing is not possible.
If auditing is possible you can do Auditing by Lists. The same list
can be used but here you actually run a process to handle each read
to F/N VGIs.

Katie and Tom are prone to ARC breaks when Katie insists
on being downtone.


Who
Every Why has a Who, or a group of Whos. They become the target
of the handlings. If it is an in-the-organization eval, the Who
might be the top executive of a section. (When in-the-org, the why
will usually be some non-application of Hubbard technology. It is
NEVER NEVER NEVER due to the application of Hubbard. Never!
Not in the org or outside of it.)


KRC
knowledge-responsibility-control
The KRC triangle is the upper triangle in the Scientology symbol.
The corners stand for Knowledge, Responsibility and Control. As with
other triangles in Scientology, Hubbard employed a Rosicrucian principal
of the philosophical triangle: in addressing one corner of the triangle,
the other two corners are simultaneously affected.
The KRC triangle is a symbol of the fact that knowledge, responsibility
and control act together as a whole entity. In order to handle any area
of one’s life, it is necessary to know something about it, take some
responsibility for it and control it to the degree necessary to achieve
the desired result. This triangle interacts best when used with high ARC,
thus it interlocks with the ARC triangle.
KRC
Knowledge, Responsibility, Control. The senior of the two Scientology
triangles, ARC/KRC (ARC stands for Affinity, Reality, and Communication.)
Control is senior to Affinity, get it?


Tone 40:
Intention without reservation or limit; an execution of intention.
Tone Forty or Tone 40
The top of the emotional tone scale, seen as a godlike state of
command and control of others; see Intention, Postulate

Tone Forty Command, an order given at Tone Forty, and therefore
filled with mystical OT, Operating Thetan intention that must be
instantly obeyed. [who came first, L. Ron Hubbard, or
Frank Herbert? Bene Gesserit?]

Tone Scale, the list of all human emotional states, arranged beside
an arbitrary scale number from -40 (total failure), through 0
(death), to +40. "SPs are at 1.1, Covert Hostility, on the Tone
Scale."


EP
End Phenomena
Those indicators in the PC
[pre-clear, a low-level student of Scientology]
and Meter
[E-meter ("electropsychometer"), the skin galvanometer
(lie-detector) used in auditing]
which show that a Chain
[a series of incidents of similar nature or similar
subject matter. When running a Chain the PC is sent
earlier and earlier until the Chain fully handled]
or process
[a specific technique used in auditing (processing).
There are many processes. They consist of carefully worded questions
and commands. The are used by an Auditor in a formal session to help
his Preclear]
is ended.
In Engram running
[Engram: a mental picture of an experience containing pain,
unconsciousness, and a real or fancied threat to survival.
It is a recording in the Reactive Mind
{the portion of the mind which works on a stimulus-response basis
(given a certain stimulus it will automatically give a certain response)
which is not under a person's volitional control and which exerts
force and power over a person's awareness, purposes, thoughts, body
and actions. The Reactive Mind never stops operating. Pictures of the
environment, of a very low order, are taken (recorded) by this mind
even in some states of unconsciousness}
of something which actually happened to an individual in the past
and which contained pain and unconsciousness, both of which
are recorded in the mental picture called an Engram. It must,
by definition, have impact or injury as part
of its content. These Engrams are a complete recording, down to the last
accurate detail, of every perception present in a moment of partial
or full unconsciousness].
End Phenomena show that basic
[the first incident (such as Engram, Lock, overt act, or traumatic experience)
on any Chain. The first experience recorded in mental image pictures of
the type of pain, sensation, discomfort, etc. Every Chain has its basic]
on that Chain and flow
[A stream of energy between two points. An impulse or direction
of energy particles or thought or objects between terminals.
In processing the Auditor works with four main flows:
FLOW 1: something happening to self. Another doing something to you.
FLOW 2: doing something to another. You doing something to another.
FLOW 3: others doing things to others. You see it happen as a spectator.
FLOW 0: self doing something to self. You do something to yourself]
has been erased.
EP
End Phenomenon. The result of a Scientology processing action.
"The EP for OT 15 is cause over the universe."


Targets
Target One
Clearing the earth.
The vital targets on which we must invest most of our time
are:
T1. Depopularizing the enemy to a point of total obliteration.
T2. Taking over the control or allegiance of the heads
or proprietors of all news media.
T3. Taking over the control or allegiance of key political
figures.
T4. Taking over the control or allegiance of those who monitor
international finance and shifting them to a less precarious
finance standard.
T5. Generally revitalizing the societies in which we are operating.
T6. Winning overwhelming public support.
T7. Use all other similar groups as allies.
These, of course, are very long-range targets. But it is
what must be done to continue the longevity of our organizations.
-- L. Ron Hubbard, 1969 (reissued 1987)
Target Two
The expansion of scientology to other worlds (clearing the
rest of the galaxy).


Put a head on a pike
A Hubbardian policy learned apparently from Vlad the Impaler to
intimidate critics by taking their leader and doing their worst
to him or her through harassment, lawsuits, frame-ups, etc. in the
hope that this will scare others off. "OSA and RTC have really put
a head on a pike in the media industry with Time/Warner being sued
for 400 million dollars; the libel chill should make other magazines
think twice before writing about Scientology."


Dev-T
Developed traffic. A particle (a person or form) sent unnecessarily
to the improper terminal; a waste of time or an item which slows
down the all-important production inside Scientology.


HE&R
Human emotion and reaction


red tagged
red tagged is when someone has an auditing session.
And if they do not do well, they don't have what is called
a floating needle at the end of the session, they are
not doing well, they are not happy, they are red tagged,
which is a note that is put on that PC, preclear. It has to
be taken care of within 24 or 48 hours to where they are,
you know, feeling good, their needle is floating and they
are happy about the session.
The end phenomenon of every process in auditing consists of three
things: 1) a floating needle on the E-meter ("FN"), which is a
reaction that is supposed to indicate that the preclear's mind is
free with regard to that subject; 2) an insight, or "cognition" ("Cog"),
as it is called in Scientologese; and 3) Very good indicators ("VGIs"),
which basically means that the PC looks happy. When the PC has attained
the end phenomenon of a particular process, the auditor can then go
on to another process or end the session. Each grade consists of many
processes. After each session, the PC is checked out on the E-meter
by another person, called the examiner. The examiner notes the E-meter
reaction, which should be a floating needle and how the PC looks.
The auditor then writes up a full report of the session (including a
running record of what the PC said in session that was recorded by
the auditor during the session), attaches the exam report and sends
it to the case supervisor ("CS"), who evaluates the session and
decides what the next action should be. If the PC has VGIs and an FN
at the exam and the auditor has run the processes correctly, the
CS gives the session a "Very Well Done". If the PC looked unhappy
at the exam (referred to as a "bad exam report" or "BER") or had
any E-meter reaction other than a floating needle, it is always
assumed that the auditor did something wrong and is sent back to
review the materials. This is called cramming. The CS would write
in the instructions, "Flunk, Auditor to Cramming" and list what
materials must be studied. The folder is then red-tagged and
the PC must be taken back in session with in 24-hours and the
"mistake" corrected. If the auditor makes too many mistakes,
he can be sent back to redo the course and is sometimes sent to
an ethics officer, the person who is in charge of the disciplinary
aspect of Scientology.


S&D
Search and discovery
There are many acronyms that have to do with the "technical"
processes of auditing, such as: VBIs (very bad indicators),
VGIs (very good indicators), C/S (case supervisor),
F/N (floating needle), BPC (bypassed charge), TA (tone arm action),
EP (end phenomena), TR (training routine), and
S&D (search and discovery) -- to name a few.


Flub
A mistake made in the auditing "therapy."
Flubless
Perfect auditing without errors; a "star-high goal" that is
never achieved, as numerous therapy "repairs" point up.


PTS
Potential Trouble Source. Someone who is in contact with
an SP, a Suppressive or anti-Scientology person, and therefore
may cause trouble for the cult. "Mary is a PTS Type III."
Adjective; "She is PTS to that Wholetrack SP on her lines."
See also individual types of PTS - 1 to 3, and A to J, SP, Disconnection.

PTS Type One
A person who has an SP in contact with them, trying to help them
get out of the cult.

PTS Type Two
A person who has an SP in their past who they can't name.
A catch-all for people who don't improve using the unworkable quack
therapy of Scientology.

PTS Type Three
A person suffering a psychotic breakdown due to connection with
an anti-Scientologist or psychiatrist, supposedly. Often this label
is applied to people who flip under the incredible strain of Scientology's
paranoid bullshit. PTS Type Three's are then placed on the Introspection Rundown,
where they are locked up to hide them from authorities, who don't like
to see people driven round the bend by the cult, and may make waves.

PTS Type A
People intimately connected with SPs through family or marital ties who
are likely to have help getting out of the cult or be exposed to the other
side of the question.

PTS Type B
Criminals.

PTS Type C
People who make legal threats against the cult, or who publicly
attack Scientology.

PTS Type D
People who believe that Scientology is responsible for what it
did to them, who won't buy the line that they are completely responsible
for all the destructive things the cult does and won't accept that the
victim is solely to blame for any mishaps.

PTS Type E
People who are forced into being audited by others. To be effective,
the impetus must seem to come from within, then they only have themselves
to blame.

PTS Type F
People who aren't certain that Scientology's quack therapy works, and
want to test it.

PTS Type G
Rich or influential people who want free quack auditing "therapy"
based on their status.

PTS Type H
Open minded people who aren't certain and 100% dedicated to Scientology,
as the cult demands.

PTS Type I
People who do not believe that they can get better using the cult's quack
therapy, thus the placebo effect will be weakened.

PTS Type J
People who are likely to have a critical bent regarding Scientology, who
may not swallow the BS in one big gulp - judges, boards, newspaper reporters,
magazine writers, etc.


A to J sit
A situation (problem) involving a PTS (Potential Trouble Source) of
types A through J.


False PTS
False PTSness means the person displays symptoms of being PTS,
but it does not resolve with PTS tech. In this case a number of
other factors should be looked into. As a matter of fact a skilled
Ethics Officer worth his title will always look over these
'other factors' as they cause the pc to go effect of the environment
or his own case and routinely are part of the whole picture.
Not knowing one's duties, basic skills and responsibilities can
play a role. Ignorance of basics for handling life, such as ARC,
the comm cycle, handling a confusion, good manners and other things
that will cause the environment to come down on the pc. It can also
be personal Out-ethics, which causes the pc to go effect of things
and his own mishandled messes in the environment. By teaching such
a person the skills of his trade and how to deal with people,
pressures and confusions he will become enough cause and enough
of a stable terminal so he won't appear PTS any more. Basic training
and possibly "Way to Happiness" auditing are suggested actions.
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:jjMh6qadv_QJ:www.freezoneamerica.org/Clearbird/ethics2004/book/pts_pheno.htm+%22False+PTS%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
Sounds funny, but consider this: Gains from auditing are only stable
if a person is not PTS. PTS-like phenomena can have a second type
of reason though - not a suppressive person being present or
restimulated. It's called "False PTS-ness" and - amongst other
points - would be expected if a person is continuously committing
present time overts.
If we further look into the various definitions of "overt", we find
that there exists a thing called "overt of omission". If we further
plot any possible overts against the dynamics (of which our own body
is one), we have the following chain of causation to consider:
Careless handling or neglect of body (including socially
accepted "civilization cripple" errors like bad diet, no
exercise, abuse of "legal" drugs or accumulation of toxic
substances) = continuous present time overts of omission.
Continuous present time overts of omission against the body
(1st or 5th dynamic, depends on viewpoint) = false PTSness.
False PTSness = spiritual wins from processing not stable,
will get lost, rollercoaster etc. etc.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.clearing.technology/msg/dbe8985d8c980fea


Ethics:
Rationality toward the highest level of survival for the
individual, the future race, the group and mankind. Ethics is
reason and the contemplation of optimum survival.
In terms of administering auditing, Ethics is defined this way:
1) The purpose of Ethics is to remove counter intentions from the
environment. And having accomplished that the purpose becomes
to remove other-intentionedness from the environment. What we
have then, in Ethics, is a system of removing the counter-efforts
to the activity.
2) All ethics is for, is that additional tool necessary to make
it possible to get technology in. That's the whole purpose of
Ethics; to get technology in. When you've got technology in,
that's as far as you carry an Ethics action.

Ethics Officer: (E/O:)
A person who handles ethics. The Ethics officer counsels PCs to
sort out their lives in a practical manner so they can receive
auditing with the full benefit. E/Os routinely handle PCs who have
a PTS situation or other problems of a physical universe nature
that needs a physical universe handling. This can include schedules,
relationships, unethical habits or routines, bad situations and
involvements that take PC action to straighten out. These situations
are 'out-rudiments' of a physical nature that needs to be handled to
enable the PC to be fully in session and benefit from the auditing.
Ethics has to be in for auditing to work.

Out-Ethics
Not obeying like a good little slave. Welcome to the exciting world
of the totally free. "She is so Out-Ethics, she has to be declared
to get the Tech in on her." See also In-Ethics, Ethics.


Bank:
Reactive Bank; Reactive Mind; Engram Bank.
The mental image picture collection of the Preclear. It comes from
[1950s] computer technology where all data are in a "Bank";
portion of the mind which contains Engrams, Secondaries and Locks.
The reactive mind; supposedly packed with "overts," or
undisclosed acts, and engrams or moments of pain and unconsciousness.
Also, anything negative seen as coming from the reactive mind.
"All you'll find on alt.religion.scientology is just bank talking."


KR, K/R, Knowledge Report
Knowledge Report, a write-up of a cult member's supposed "crimes"
given to the Ethics division; cult members are encouraged to report
each other's transgressions a la Orwell's "1984."


Off-lines
Not paying and taking Scientology training or "therapy". See lines.

Lines
The cult's auditing ("therapy") and academy (training) services.
"Ken isn't on lines at Flag anymore."


originations
Origination:
In auditing: A remark or statement from the PC, that concerns his ideas,
reactions or difficulties. It is something he says, that is important to
him, but isn't an answer to the Auditor's question. It usually comes
unexpectedly. It is different from a comment, that is defined as an
attempt to distract Auditor or an attempt to blow session. An Auditor
is trained in handling originations on TR-4.
Any distracting behavior on the part of a pre-clear being
audited, including verbal remarks, or attempts to chat
or socialize with the auditor.
"The most usual use of TR-4
[TRs: Training Routines. Designed to train the auditor
"therapist" to be unresponsive to the PC patient.
Side effect is creating a cold and distant "thousand-mile stare"
in Scientologists' eyes.]
is to understand and acknowledge
originations and return the PC to the process. But, TR-4
is not limited to returning a PC to the process that
elicited the origination. Sometimes the PC's origination
concerns a PTP [Present time problem]
which requires a session break; e.g., putting money
in a parking meter, or having to urinate or defecate. Sometimes
the origination is actually a cognition which signals that
the process has completed."
"If you don't shut up with your originations of what you think a
Fall means, I'm sending you to Ethics for spouting Verbal Tech!"
[Verbal Tech: the cardinal sin of describing the cult's "tech" by
word of mouth, or through one's own writing, deemed a "High Crime."]


[Hence,] off-lines originations
Personal opinions, gossip, idle chit-chat, indulged in
when you should be taking more Scientology courses or
working for the organization.


Downstat or Down Stat
1. Describing the horrible condition of losing that all-important
production statistic; also, a general term of derogation.
"My local Class V looks so Down Stat; it is dark, dingy, dirty,
and squalid, not to mention grotty."
2. Noun; referring to Down Stat individuals; people who are
not doing well in a Scientological sense, that is, cranking out
enough product. "Farnham is a real downstat; look at how miserable
he looks on post. Route him to Ethics." See Up Stat.

Stats
Statistics. Each Scientologist has to monitor his or her success,
which is transmitted to control organs, e.g. the EO, Ethics Officer.
Stats must be up every Thursday by two (pm), or the hapless cult
indoctrinee is punished by being made to do Conditions or extra work.
See also Upstat, Downstat, Conditions.

Thursday at 2:00, the end of the week of production and making
money in the cult of Scientology. "The Execs are adding up our
week's statistics now; you better hope you're upstat by Thursday at
2:00."


Ser Fac
Service Facsimile.
A mental image picture the PC (Preclear or patient) uses to make
himself or herself right and others wrong, help him dominate others
and himself escape domination, or to enhance his own survival and
injure that of others. At least, that's what the tech says;
in reality, the term is applied to people who are not "up-stat" -
running around like a chicken with their head cut off to make money
fast for the cult. If someone is moping, looks depressed, is making
excuses, saying "oh, poor me", justifying their errors and generally
"acting the victim" and trying to get sympathy instead of being
100% dedicated and "making it go right", they are said to be
ser fac'ing (pronounced FACKing). In other words, if someone isn't
living up to the fascist ideals of Scientology, they're said to be
dramatizing their ser facs."If you keep pulling down stats in my
area with your Ser Facs, I'll write a KR on you!" Grade 4 deals
with auditing this type of engram out of the mark. See Grade 4.
1. these are called "service facsimiles." "Service" because they
serve him. "Facsimiles" because they are in mental image picture form.
They explain his disabilities as well. The facsimile part is actually
a self-installed disability that "explains" how he is not responsible
for being able to cope. So he is not wrong for not coping.
Part of the "package" is to be right by making
wrong. The service facsimile is therefore a picture containing an
explanation of self condition and also a fixed method of making others
wrong. (HCOB 15 Feb 74)
2. this is actually part of a chain of incidents which the individual
uses to invite sympathy or cooperation on the part of the environment.
One uses engrams to handle himself and others and the environment after
one has himself conceived that he has failed to handle himself, others
and the general environment (AP&A, p. 7)
3. it is simply a time when you tried to do something and were hurt
or failed and got sympathy for it. Then afterwards when you were hurt
or failed and wanted an explanation, you used it. And if you didn't succeed
in getting sympathy for it, you used it so hard it became a psychosomatic
illness. (HFP, p. 89)
4. every time you fail, you pick up this facsimile and become sick
or sadly noble. It's your explanation to yourself and the world as to
how and why you failed. It once got you sympathy. (HFP, p. 89)
5. that facsimile which the preclear uses to apologize for his failures.
In other words, it is used to make others wrong and procure their cooperation
in the survival of the preclear. If the preclear well cannot achieve survival,
he attempts an illness or disability as a survival computation. The workability
and necessity of the service facsimile is only superficially useful. The
service facsimile is an action method of withdrawing from a state of beingness
to a state of not beingness and is intended to persuade others to coax the
individual back into a state of beingness. (AP&A, p. 43)
6. that computation generated by the preclear (not the bank) to make
self right and others wrong, to dominate or escape domination and enhance
own survival and injure that of others. (HCOB 1 Sept 63)
Ser Fac, service facsimile. (HCOB 23 Aug 65)


Case
The sum of one's problems, bad memories, Engrams (moments of pain
and unconsciousness), BTs (Body Thetans or evil spirits infesting
the body), Overts (undisclosed harmful acts), Etc. "My Case has really
improved by doing the Sunshine Rundown." See Bank, Reactive Mind.


on post
on duty


[Hence,] case on post
problems with work, performance problems


Auditor
The person who uses an E-Meter (a simple, ineffective lie detector
used in Scientology with a needle and soup cans for electrodes) to find
Overts (undisclosed acts) and Engrams (incidents of pain and unconsciousness)
and audits them out of the person receiving auditing or preclear.


C/S:
(CS:)
Case Supervisor, case supervision, Case Supervisor's written instruction


Cramming
An action taken to remedy a small Scientology tech "outpoint",
a failing of some kind. "I had a cram cycle on my metering after failing
to get VGIs on my PC."


I&R
Inspections & Reports


terminatedly
Utterly and completely, to the bitter end, sparing no
effort, until a goal is accomplished in toto.
"Hubbard's safety was paramount, and he would have
been notified immediately of the danger. Hubbard would
then have immediately alerted his G.O. executives
to handle 'terminatedly' any threat to him!"


handle terminatedly
To so deal with an enemy of Scientology that they'll
never be a problem again.
"The 'major target' Is described as: 'To handle terminatedly
the Humanist publication Zetetic and the Committee for Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal so that they
never attack Scientology or Dianetics again.'"
"Not since 1956 has an Org been lost or closed down. It gives
one a secure sense of achievement and stability of position to
know that there has not been one situation which proved impossible
to handle. Over the years, there have been many which would have
caused the demise of lesser groups. While others may hold on
by a string inventing new ways to avoid directly tackling situations
in their path, Church leadership has striven to handle terminatedly -
and then even improve upon their handlings."
"Dear Millie,
I have just learned that you and my father are connected to
Mayo's Suppressive Squirrel Group. I urge you most strongly to
go immediately to the MAA
[MAA, Master At Arms: A Sea Org (highly indoctrinated
Scientologists who sign billion-year contracts) Ethics Officer,
responsible for keeping Ethics in (keeping the all-important
production up; someone who produces well in Scientology is almost
always regarded as being in-Ethics; the ends justify the means
is policy.) Theirlower org equivalent is called an Ethics Officer,
or EO.]
at AOLA
[Advanced Organization of Los Angeles - this org has had at least
three different locations in LA over the last 30 years, and is currently
at the Cedars complex.]
and handle this situation. Your entire future as a being is at stake.
Until such time as you have handled this association terminatedly -- i.e.,
disconnected, handled any Ethics program assigned by the MAA, and
are in good standing with the Church of Scientology, I will not give
or receive communications to or from you. I disconnect."


O/W
Overts and Withholds, undisclosed naughty (anti-Scientology)
acts and the attempt to hide them from public view.
Also called O/W "tech".


"conditions from confusion on up"
Conditions
The Ethics formulas of Scientology. They are, in descending order,
Power, Power Change, Affluence, Normal Operation, Emergency, Danger,
Non-Existence, Liability, Doubt, Enemy, Treason, Confusion.
All the conditions have formulas, and they are designed to get
cult members to produce more, ie, make more money for Scientology.
Thus, conditions are deemed very important, and Scientologists
are often seen scurrying about trying "improve their condition."


Amends Project
A way for a down-stat (not producing enough or looking less than
fixedly happy) Scientologist to get back in good graces. Usually
involves long hours scrubbing toilets and such, followed by a mass petition
collecting signatures of completion to break down the willpower
and personality of the cult indoctrinee based on group rejection/acceptance,
peer-pressure and milieu control. "Jan's doing an Amends Project,
as part of his Ethics Cycle; I'm not signing his petition until he
cleans my room to white-glove standards."


"downstat ethics-bait dilettante"
Unproductive, not really serious about Scientology, and
just begging for disciplinary action.


"off enhancement"
Not getting "paid".
Full-time staff are supposed to be on "enhancement." This is
in addition to the 60+ hours spent working on post. The
"enhancement" (either on-course learning Scientology or
getting Scientology counseling) is considered the "benefit"
they get for working on staff: free or discounted training
or auditing. Of course, there are various factors which can
prevent you from getting this "benefit" such as illness,
having to moonlight to make enough money to pay your rent,
your post statistics being down, ethics "handlings,"
sleeping late after working all night in an all-hands
project, etc.


"until you get handled"
Until official acknowledgment that you've gotten your
act together.


all-hands
(as in "all hands on deck") An emergency work schedule.
"Typical Hill 10: the org rent needs to be paid or the org
will be evicted. So what happens? The org executives impose an
"all hands" schedule, which means working into the wee hours
of the weeknight and all day and all evening on Saturdays
and Sundays. (And please note, you are still expected to
be on time the next day and be "studentable" or "sessionable",
i.e., have enough sleep and proper nutrition for your
"enhancement"--it is a no-win situation.). . .
And to further the degradation of the staff's physical, mental,
and spiritual welfare, the "all-hands" schedule usually coincides
with "no pay" or "low pay" periods, because the all-hands schedule
is needed to "out create" the "Hill 10." So when a full-time staff
member needs to go out into the "wog" world the most to make money
to pay his own rent, he is imprisoned by an impossible schedule.
And if he "blows" (an unauthorized leave, i.e., you have to get
permission to not be at the org when scheduled, and permission
is usually never granted, especially during a Hill 10), he can
be declared a suppressive person and expelled from the
"church." So for all you public Scientologists that may read this,
that is why you are sometimes called at 1:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m.,
etc. (in addition to the normal 3 or 4 calls per day) to come
in for services. They are desperate.
And if you don't comply with the schedule? You are threatened
with (what is euphemistically called) "ethics" and further non-compliances
can result in a suppressive person declare. An "SP Declare" is a
formal expulsion (ex-communication) from Scientology. Considering
this "church" has deceived its devoted members into believing that
it holds the keys to spiritual freedom, an "SP Declare" is a very
powerful tool employed by the "church" to get total, unquestioning
loyalty."
"Maureen Bolstad, who was at the base for 17 years and left
after a falling-out with the church, recalled a rainy night 15
years ago when a couple of dozen Scientologists scrambled to deal
with "an all-hands situation" that kept them working through dawn.
The emergency, she said: planting a meadow of wildflowers for
[Tom] Cruise to romp through with his new love, [Nicole] Kidman.
We were told that we needed to plant a field and that it was to
help Tom impress Nicole," said Bolstad, who said she spent the night
pulling up sod so the ground could be seeded in the morning.
The flowers eventually bloomed, Bolstad said, 'but for some
mysterious reason it wasn't considered acceptable by Mr. [David] Miscavige.
So the project was rejected and they redid it.'"


letters-out
Writing letters to lapsed erstwhile Scientology recruits.
"All that matters is the 'stats' (weekly statistics) so they will
count you as a 'body in the shop', 'new name to central files',
'letters out', 'promo sent', 'call-in, calls out'...etc, etc."
"The Office of Special Affairs (OSA) turns in their stats too.
There must be a stat for number of evil SPs routed from internet
newsgroups because the various cult operatives increase their
postings in order to have 'up stats' by week ending. Unfortunately for
Kind Readers, these postings take on the quality of letters written
by staff and public who are forced to get the Letters Out stat up.
It is called a Stat Push. These are low quality letters, like:
'I see that you bought a book. Did you read it?' Or, 'You haven't
been in the org in 25 years. When are going to go Up the Bridge?'
No important or interesting content, just a determined effort to
jack up the Usenet postings to a.r.s. or whatever."
"I have continued to get promo from the 'Church' of Scientology,
despite being a declared SP and Expelled. So someone is counting
those letters out as a real stat, when they are TOTALLY false."


effective blow
To "strike an effective blow against the enemies of Scientology"
is a way to make up for an ethics violation.
"Before a Scientologist does a 'liability formula', s/he must
first have violated the rules of the group of Scientologists.
Well, the rules that I violated included holding 'material hostile
to Scientology in my possession unbeknownst to my fellow Scientologists',
and having 'read this material'. . . I was required to turn this material
over to the Director of Special Affairs of my Org, and later was told to
write an account of every piece of entheta
[Enturbulated theta. Bad Vibes. "This Usenet newsgroup is so full of
entheta that it is restimulating my bank."]
material I had held regarding Scientology and to explain precisely
how I had disposed of it, had I not turned it over to the DSA.
[The Department of Special Affairs, an office that acts as the local
outlet for OSA in Class V orgs. See OSA.]
When a Scientologist is put into "lowered conditions" s/he is
not allowed, per L. Ron Hubbard's policy, to receive auditing -- amongst
other penalties pertinent to the condition assigned. . .
[A]s Scientology auditing is one's "route to total freedom", . . .
without Scientology one is doomed to "shivering, agonizing darkness" for
the next trillion years. . .
The Executive Director recommended that I write letters to the editors of
various papers in the vicinity to strike an effective blow to the
enemies of the group of Scientology- written on behalf of the Task Force
for Freedom and Responsibility on the Internet, a Scientology front
group. That was because my infractions against the group of
Scientologists had been in part due to my reading material from
alt.religion.scientology."


"worked up to liability"
Accumulated ethics violations to a punishable level.


Out:
Things which should be there and aren't or should be done
or aren't are said to be "out," i.e., "Enrollment books are out."

Out Tech
Out technology; means that ST is not being applied or is not being
correctly applied.
Non-orthodox Scientology.
"FALSE DATA STRIPPING TRAINING - This is a technique to ferret
out and remove out tech (Non-orthodox Scientology) ideas and to
replace the out tech ideas with Hubbard's information."


Out Admin
In violation of Church of Scientology policy directives,
or behind in your auditor's reports.
Admin: (Administration:)
A contraction or shortening of the word "administration". "Admin"
is used as a noun to denote the actions involved in "administrating"
an organization. The clerical and executive decisions, actions
and duties necessary to the running of an organization such as
originating and answering mail, typing, filing, sending memos
and emails, applying policy, and all those actions, large and small,
that make up an organization.
Admin: (in auditing) is also used about the action or fact of
keeping Auditor's reports, summary reports, worksheets and other
records related to an auditing session. "He kept good "admin""
meaning that his summary report, Auditor's report and worksheets
were neat, exactly on pattern, in proper sequence and easily understood,
as well as complete.
Admin
Administration. Detailed bureaucracy taken to new heights;
thousands of green on white issues written by L. Ron Hubbard
(Hubbard Communication Office Policy Letters) cover the design
of this monumental testament to inefficiency that would make
IBM proud. The OEC Vols (Organization Executive Course
or Green Volumes) cover most of the Admin policy.


Out manners
Ill-mannered.


Out finances
broke.


Out TRs
In violation of official training procedures.


Out PR
Failing to attack or counter criticism
of Scientology vigorously enough.
PR
Public Relations. A central theme in the cult with several drills
and many written policies. The whole idea is to make Scientology out
to be something good, something great, and to attack all sources of
criticism vigorously with an end to silencing them. Many of the low-level
Scientologists will go into PR mode automatically and wax enthusiastic
about the wonderful "gains" they are having and so forth without
realizing the false picture of Scientology they are creating. High-level
Scientologists engage in outright lying and distortion of facts,
such as calling modern Germany a "Nazi state" or saying that psychs,
(psychiatrists) are behind some global conspiracy, or turning
failed lawsuits into "big wins" with bland propaganda and so on.
See Freedom.


Out comm
Nobody's talking to you.


Out KSW
Failing to abide by L. Ron Hubbard's policy directives on
Keeping Scientology Working.
KSW
Keeping Scientology Working. A series of HCOPLs, Hubbard Communication
Office Policy Letters, designed to ensure Scientology lasts for hundreds
of years, and also that Hubbard's fondest wish, that his name be smashed
violently into the history books, becomes a reality. (Didn't Manson
have a similar desire?)


Out 2D
Illegal or immoral (in cult terms) sex. (2D as in "second dynamic")
[Dynamics: The eight Scientological subdivisions of life. 1=Self,
2=Sex, 3=Group, 4=Mankind, 5=Animals and Plants, 6=Universe, 7=Theta, 8=God.]


Uptone: (Up-tone:)
At a high level of survival or state of Being, plotted on the
tone scale. A person who is uptone, or high-toned, has a greater
ability to handle his facsimiles, to control his environment and
has a greater degree of survival than someone who is downtone,
or low-toned.


Up Stat
Describing a condition of having the all-important production
statistics going up, indicating increased output and more money
coming in. Also, a general term of goodness or cleanliness, showing
a kind of Scientological glow. After all, what could be better than
having more money? "You should see the new ASI
[1. Author Services Incorporated: A Scientology front-group whose
purpose is to skim money out of the organization and channel it to
the person at the top. 2. Applied Scholastics International,
a cult educational front group]
offices in LA; they are so incredibly Up Stat it would blow your mind."
See Down Stat.


ruds
Rudiments: First principles, steps, stages or conditions.
The basic actions done at the beginning of a session to set up the
PC for the major session action. The normal rudiments are
ARC breaks (upsets), Present Time Problems (worries) and
Withholds (something PC feels he shouldn't say) - they are
explained under each heading.


In-session
Doing your enhancement, your auditing sessions.


In the closet
If you're going to be Out 2D, at least do it in private.


On lines
Taking courses and paying money.


On purpose
Working efficiently to accomplish the targets of the Church of Scientology.
"By polarised thinking, I am referring to extremist thought patterns,
which could even be compared to totalitarian rigidity. Things are
either ALL good, or ALL bad, a person is either TOTALLY evil,
or TOTALLY good. . . .
This style of thinking. . . is not exclusive to Scientology - there
are many ideologies and societies which manifest these traits. . .
In Scientology, as any former Scientologist will immediately recognise,
a person is either "Up-stat", or "down-stat". The Ethic conditions
define that any person in a condition of "Normal" or up, is "up-stat",
and therefore acceptable within the Scientology community. Anyone below
the condition of "Normal", is down-stat, and therefore unacceptable
to the Scientology community. They are either "in-ethics", or "out-ethics".
One or the other. People are viewed either as "Social", or "Anti-social"
(Suppressive), according to the Scientology definition of what these are.
A "Social" person can become temporarily "potentially anti-social" (PTS),
but this is a condition to be "handled" - the person is not allowed to
remain in this state. If it is not "handled" according to Scientology's
satisfaction, then the person is classified as "Anti-social".
In addition, according to the Tone Scale, Hubbard's list of the emotional
"vibrations" of humans, one is either "up-tone", or "down- tone". If one
was a staff-member, or a Sea Org member, one was either "On-purpose",
or "Off-purpose". In applying Scientology doctrine, one was either
"On-policy", or "Off-policy". Further on up in the so- called OT Levels,
and NOTS, processes of polarities are actually run on the person, such
as "have - not-have; create - uncreate", etc. Hubbard described the world
as a "two terminal universe". For him, there was no in between, no
middle ground, no shades of grey - only black and white."


On source
Staying familiar with the words of the Master (LRH).
Source
L. Ron Hubbard is the Source (capitalized) of Scientology;
his written orders in the form of Policy and Tech, and his
spoken words on tape are Source. "I feel so much better after
getting back on Source."


On the bridge
Progressing along Scientology's spiritual path.
Bridge
The bridge to total freedom; the list of auditing actions needed to
get to the highest OT (operating thetan) level, currently OT 8.
The Bridge costs roughly $300,000 US, and is depicted on the
Gradation Chart of Human Awareness and Abilities. L. Ron Hubbard's
"Bridge to total freedom" has two sides. One is auditor or therapist
training classes or classifications, the other is receiving auditing
or "therapy" such as Grades and OT levels, qv. At the lower levels
the grades and classes or classifications correspond, this pretty
much stops after Class 6 (Saint Hill Special Briefing Course).


CI
See Counter-intention, Intention.
Counter-intention
Resistance to authority, disobedience; the last thing an SO
[Sea Org, the commanding and controlling element in the cult]
member would want [in response to] to Command Intention
{What upper management wants done; meant to imply that Scientology's
management is able to "make it go right", infallible, and quite
apable of achieving anything. The peons only worries are seeing to
it that they jump high enough when ordered}]
"Any more CI on my lines from you, buster, and I'm routing you
to Ethics to get your overts standardly handled."


[Hence,] "get the CI off the lines"
Suppress any resistance or disobedience shown by "patients"
during auditing, or students in Scientology courses.
( http://www.xenu-directory.net/glossary
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:-9u5CQB8algJ:www.freezoneamerica.org/Prometheus04/files/main_gloss.htm+Scn+ruds&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.religion.scientology/msg/3eaa9735977c1215
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/us-08.html )


"get those postulates sticking"
Start making things happen in your life -- get your next
starring role, buy that mansion in Beverly Hills, whatever --
and start making things happen for Scientology.
Postulate
To wish into existence; a supposed OT super-power along
the lines of Tone 40 and Intention, qv. "David postulates
that the Psyches will all be destroyed by the year 2000;
our program of dead-agenting them will make his postulate
stick." Ted Mayett: "I have a definition for Postulate. -
body english on a bowling ball."
--------------------------------------------------------------------


Scientology™: (Scn:)
(Scn): An applied religious philosophy. It deals with the study of
knowledge, which through the application of its technology can bring
about desirable changes in the conditions of life. (Taken from the
Latin word scio, knowing in the fullest sense of the word, and the
Greek word logos, to study.) A body of knowledge which, when properly
used, gives freedom and truth to the individual. It was originally
founded by the German philosopher A. Nordenholz, who in 1934 published
a book "Scientologie" in Munich, Germany. In it's present form it is
based in its entirety on L. R. Hubbard's work, who saw it as his purpose
to gather wisdom and truth from many sources, refine it and make it
into one body of work. L. R. Hubbard called his main body of work for
Scientology™.

ZARZUELAZEN said...

Here are some quotes especially pertinant to the 'Singularitarian' folks:

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

- Mark Twain

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

- Yeats, The Second Coming

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

- Brandeis

"The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act."

- Tara Ploughman

"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute."

- Abelson & Sussman, SICP, preface to the first edition


"But the audience is right. They're always, always right. You hear directors complain that the advertising was lousy, the distribution is no good, the date was wrong to open the film. I don't believe that. The audience is never wrong. Never."

- William Friedkin, in a NYT interview

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming."

- Donald Knuth

ZARZUELAZEN said...

Dale,

Isn't the libel thing pathetic. The very people who do it to others are the first to complain at the slightest hint someone else might be doing it to them If there's a case for libel its against spme the Singularitarians, given for instance the vitriolic messages designed to ridicule and totally destroy my reputation on SL4 and elsewhere.

I'd just love to show the lawyers all the past posts of the SL4er's on various mailing lists... all about how only they are fit to rule the world etc etc and how they are designing artificial intelligence specifically to (in the words of Wilson): 'overthrow all current legal systems' (ie take over the world. Theres a whole file on those guys that believe me would be very vey embarassing for them if SIAI ever got famous.

My advice to Singularitarians: Don't push your luck.

Anonymous said...

Hi Marc, I think I know one of those SL4 dudes.

Narf, What are we gonna tonight Brain?

The same thing we do every night Pinky, try to take over THE WORLD!!

You know the rest :)

Michael Anissimov said...

Not sure how posting about ten pages of Scientology lingo into the comments box says much about Singularitarianism!

SIAI and its supporters have no secret code, no clandestine meetings, no unquestioned guru, no secret handshakes, no isolation from the rest of society, no adherence to any particular path... the only thing we're arguing is that by engineering AI in advance (making it "Friendly") we can tilt the odds of survival in our favor. The alternative is to 1) pretend AI will never happen, 2) let it happen but invest nothing in trying to make it happen well.

The cult accusations are incredulous. You guys spend more time obsessing over Singularitarianism than I do! A fanatic is someone who won't change his mind and won't change the subject. I change my mind and the subject all the time, as do all the other so-called Singularitarians.

I think what causes the cultishness accusation is the mere *grandiosity* of the whole endeavor, along with Eliezer's sometimes unusual behavior and statements that I myself take with a grain of salt. But you can't take A and B and infer C, D, E, F, G, and F with some obscure psychoanalytic scheme you found in the corners of a dusty library. Here's a book I recommend for you: "House of Cards" by Robyn Dawes. It goes into detail about how the psychologizing of our society is largely a sham.

All you folks have something personal against Eliezer, because you have sparred with him at length on public fora. This is old news. But look where he is today -- blogging on Overcoming Bias, a popular and successful blog with dozens of educated commenters. He was quoted in the front-page article in the SF Chronicle on the Singularity Summit. James and Jamais both got to give talks in SF in front of 900 people because of SIAI. Meanwhile Marc (and at least partially Dale, though I have more confidence his message is born of impersonal analyzing) is stewing in his personal vendetta, desperately trying to find partners to bad-mouth SIAI with. I don't know what James F.'s vendetta factor is, but by the devotion and ferocity he gives to bad-mouthing SIAI, I wouldn't be surprised if he's been personally annoyed by Eliezer many times as well.

The transhumanist community obviously won't declare war on SIAI because the transhumanist community welcomes SIAI (and Singularitarians) as members. So you guys attack transhumanism as a whole..?

Let me remark that at least I see insight in Dale's critiques, because he has laid out his case in detail.

And btw, many people in the SIAI community are even a little shy and withdrawn, not narcissistic as you claim.

Attack attack attack. It's a whole lot of negativity. Yes, I know I have an interest to lament the negativity because I'm the target of it, but seriously, I wouldn't put half this much effort towards maligning any group or cause, even Scientology. (Which caused my friend Keith Henson to be arrested.)

Dale Carrico said...

I'm sure there's some truth in some of what you say Michael, however much I disagree with you on basics here. I do agree that it is probably time to put this thread to bed and move onto another one -- no doubt just as contentious! I'll only quibble with the very last bit:

Attack attack attack. It's a whole lot of negativity.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. What must look like "negativity" from the perspective of those hellbound good intentions may well do the good that does the measure of "positivity" available to us. I like positive proposals as much as the next person and have offered up my share of them, but I know well the value of criticism and know that criticism is critical (in more ways than one).

Those who would always only accentuate the positive -- as the old song goes -- are forced into the terms of the status quo. And yet those who would influence the future must inspire the imagination of the next generation -- and inspiration is the work of the hopeful more than the fearful. Both of these things are true, and they are not easily reconciled (you haven't grasped the paradox until you grasp its difficulty).

Best to all, I find I'm not in a very good mood today.

jimf said...

Michael Anissimov wrote:

> Here's a book I recommend for you: "House of Cards"
> by Robyn Dawes. It goes into detail about how the psychologizing
> of our society is largely a sham.

That's a too-easy cop-out in this case.

And BTW -- I find it astonishing how many of the folks who claim to be
figuring out how to make artificial minds (and Friendly ones
at that) are willing to dismiss any scholarship about
**human** minds that comes under the heading of "psychology"
as "bunk".

Are you **sure** you guys aren't really Scientologists after
all? :-/

Michael Anissimov said...

Most of psychology is definitely a sham, but not all. Drugs like Prozac do actually work, but with side effects of course.

The problem is that psychology is a lot like religion -- the point is that you're paying money to feel better. Studies have shown that talking to a professional shrink does no more good for our mental condition than talking to a trusted friend. This heavily implies that shrinks are full of psychoanalytic nonsense and garbage. It's like astrology and spiritualism -- as long as they can make up a convincing-sounding reason for your problems and come up with a solution, you are satisfied. You hand them a $100 check for the day's session, and off you go.

True psychologists do something called PERFORMING EXPERIMENTS. These are the cognitive psychologists. Their data is valuable, but because the human mind is so complex and it's hard to eliminate all the wild variables, sometimes even these studies contradict each other. I find evolutionary psychology to offer far, far more convincing explanations for human behavior than most pop psychology.

Pop psychology is garbage. Go to the psychology section of a bookstore and most of it is trash. Your experience shows us that all one can do is wait and pick which diagnostics we like (such as the "narcissism" definitions you give which are completely non-empirically-based), and selectively ignore the rest. By picking out any arbitrary combination of psychology texts, one can prove practically anything about anyone. Our society has been doing this for almost a century already.

Without experimental support, "psychological analysis" is pseudoscience. A way for smug academics and their young acolytes to feel like they have it all figured out.

jimf said...

Michael Anissimov:

> Most of psychology is definitely a sham. . .
> [P]sychology is a lot like religion. . .
> [S]hrinks are full of psychoanalytic nonsense and garbage.
> It's like astrology and spiritualism. . .
> Pop psychology is garbage. . .

Well, that's putting your cards on the table!

The DSM-IV, though, isn't exactly "pop psychology".

> True psychologists do something called PERFORMING EXPERIMENTS.
> These are the cognitive psychologists. . .

You seem to me a little naive about what constitutes "true"
science.

This whole post sounds like someone else's voice. BTW,
wasn't that Robyn Dawes book on Eliezer's book-of-the-month
club list?

> Without experimental support, "psychological analysis" is
> pseudoscience. A way for smug academics. . . to feel like
> they have it all figured out.

That's **you**, of course, Dale. ;->

jimf said...

An anecdote:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/horgan-mind.html
---------------------
Another high-profile Freudophile is Gerald Edelman,
who won a Nobel prize for his work in immunology,
switched later to neuroscience, and now directs
the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California.
Edelman dedicated _Bright Air, Brilliant Fire_, a
popular account of his theory of the mind, to
"two intellectual pioneers, Charles Darwin and
Sigmund Freud. In much wisdom, much sadness."
Edelman remarked in a chapter on the unconscious:

"My late friend, the molecular biologist Jacques Monod,
used to argue vehemently with me about Freud, insisting
that he was unscientific and quite possibly a charlatan.
I took the side that, while perhaps not a scientist in
our sense, Freud was a great intellectual pioneer,
particularly in his views on the unconscious and its
role in behavior. Monod, of stern Huguenot stock, replied,
'I am entirely aware of my motives and entirely responsible
for my actions. They are all conscious.' In exasperation
I once said, 'Jacques, let's put it this way. Everything
Freud said applies to me and none of it to you.'
He replied, 'Exactly, my dear fellow.'"
---------------------

jimf said...

Michael Anissimov (or whoever he's channelling) wrote:

> True psychologists do something called PERFORMING EXPERIMENTS.
>
> I find evolutionary psychology to offer far, far more
> convincing explanations for human behavior. . .

Ah, yes. Evolutionary psychology.

A **quintessentially** experimental science. :-/