Student of Trinity
Silver Meritorious Patron
In one way Study Tech isn't all bad, but in another way it's misleading to say that. The parts that are harmless or even beneficial are basic common sense. Hubbard's only original contributions ARE the over-emphasis, over-simplification, and exaggeration. And some of the seemingly beneficial parts have hidden limitations, that you may never even notice if all your studying uses Study Tech. They're like training wheels on a bike, that make it easier to stay up at first, but prevent you from learning to balance. I think Study Tech can put a sort of glass ceiling on your mind, so that you just never reach higher levels of thought, and never even know what you're missing. You might think you're 'knowing how to know' when in fact you're just being dumb. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect: incompetent people often have the illusion that they are highly competent, to the point of being more confident than truly competent people, because the incompetent people don't know what they're missing.
The only way I really see Study Tech helping is in getting some people to read more, who wouldn't otherwise read at all, by telling them that it'll be easy for them to become geniuses. They just have to follow Hubbard's formula. It's like one of those exercise machines that promises you a fantastic body from only ten minutes a day. People who fall for the promises may order one and use it for a little while. A few may even keep on occasionally doing a ten-minute stint now and then for years on end. So they do get a bit more exercise than they otherwise would have. They never actually get fit, because getting fit just isn't really that easy. And if the stupid ten-minute machine lets them kid themselves into doing nothing more than ten minutes a month, when they might otherwise have gotten serious about exercise at some point, then the machine's net effect is really a big negative, even if using it is still a bit better than just being a couch potato.
The only way I really see Study Tech helping is in getting some people to read more, who wouldn't otherwise read at all, by telling them that it'll be easy for them to become geniuses. They just have to follow Hubbard's formula. It's like one of those exercise machines that promises you a fantastic body from only ten minutes a day. People who fall for the promises may order one and use it for a little while. A few may even keep on occasionally doing a ten-minute stint now and then for years on end. So they do get a bit more exercise than they otherwise would have. They never actually get fit, because getting fit just isn't really that easy. And if the stupid ten-minute machine lets them kid themselves into doing nothing more than ten minutes a month, when they might otherwise have gotten serious about exercise at some point, then the machine's net effect is really a big negative, even if using it is still a bit better than just being a couch potato.