ERRORS and Gaps of the Scientology Statistic System

[erni]

I have posted this document before on A.R.S, and now I post it here.

=======

At the link below there is a big and very important document I wrote on
free.it.religioni.scientology that deal with Scientology Statistic System
(as described in the chapters 4 and 6 of the book INTRODUCTION TO
SCIENTOLOGY ETHICS) in depth. It contains some graphs.
---
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/free.it.religioni.scientology/ciTUE6woKH8
---
Anybody can copy o publish this work or a part of it, only if the author (me)
is not omitted. Any possible modification must be clearly indicated as such.
This document is very important to understand the various errors and gaps
that are inside the Scientology Statistic System and to know why this system
is UNRELIABLE.
It should be known from every Scientologist or Indipendent Scientologist
all over the world.
The document is in Italian and I ask that somebody translate it in English
(and possibly in other languages).
I cannot do it because this translation may take many months (or one year)
for me, ALSO because I do not know very well English.
================
Anyway, here there are some important points of the document written briefly.

GAP #1
It is not specified how to establish, on a graph, the inclination of the line
that shows the production of a week. It can be done only with sight or with a
goniometer? The method is uncertain.

GAP #2
The Scientology book do not indicate the value of the angle of the lines
that represent the five ethics conditions.
I have misured such angles.

GAP #3 (SERIOUS)
Is not given the concept of AREA or SECTOR of statistic condition.
A statistic condition has an area o sector that represents it.

GAP #4
Is not given the concept of EDGE OF A SECTOR of a statistic condition.
Every sector of a statistic condition has two edges: the upper edge and the
lower edge.

GAP #5
It is difficult or impossible determine from Scientology text both edges
of every statistic condition.
To know BOTH edges is necessary.

GAP #6
It is not specified in which place of the sectors, the lines given in the book representing the five conditions (Non Existence, Danger, Emergency, etc.) are
situated.

GAP #7
It is not specified any method to determine the edges of the sectors of
the statistic conditions.
=======
Now here it is a graph with all the Reference Lines (that represent the
statistic conditions), the value of the angles, the borderlines
between sectors, and the External Edges (edges that cannot be passed).
See the italian documents for more details.
=======

[As the editor of ESMB cuts spaces between commas, etc. in the copy/past
operation, the copy/past of the graph doesn't work.
So, see the graph in the original post in A.R.S.
You may see other graphs in the italian post linked above. ]

=======
Now it follows the errors contained in the Scientology procedure to determine
the the values that represent a ghaph (ERROR #1 to #5).
This procedure calculate:
1. The lower value of a graph.
2. The higer value of a graph.
3. The value of each segment conteined in the y-axis, called "scale" in
the Scientology text.

ERROR #1
It is situad in the step 1 of the Scientology procedure. It is based on a
PERSONAL ESTIMATE, so it is imprecise.
Different persons may give different values, and this may produce different
values of scale.
Different value of scale may produce different inclinations of the graph
lines (except for horizontal lines).
And different inclinations of lines may determine different assignations of
condition for these lines.

ERROR #2 and GAP #8
In the step 1 of the 'correct example' of the Scientology procedure, the
number of days to examine is imprecise.
Are examinated the production values of the 'past 6 months'.
But the period of time 'past 6 months' may vary at least from
181 to 184 days.
This may determine a number of production values to examinate not constant,
depending from wich day of the year it starts the estimation.
The ERROR is in the phrase 'past 6 months' where the number of days is
imprecise.
The GAP is that is not specified from which day of a week start to examine
the 'past 6 months'.
This may vary too the number of production values to examinate.
So, the number of thursdays (days examinated in Scientology) of the
'past 6 months' may vary from 25 to 27.
But, as the Scientology procedure, any value examinated may determine the
lower value of the graph.
If the lower value of the graph change casually, it may change also casually
the value of scale.
And if it change the value of scale, the assignation of the condition may vary
casually.

ERROR #3
In the step 1 of the 'correct example', the value determined is rounded off,
probably to make the calculations easier.
But a rounded off value is an altered value, that may alteres the value of
the 'scala'.
A changed scala may vary the inclination of the lines (except for the horizontal lines).
And this may vary the assignation of the conditions.
The rounding off must be eliminated.

ERROR #4
It is similar to error #1.
The step 2 of the Scientology procedure is based on a PERSONAL ESTIMATE.
So it has the same problem specified in ERROR #1.

ERROR #5
In the Scientology procedure, it is suggested to use "easy values" for the
'scala' as <<5, 10, 25, 50, 100>>.
This is a changing of the original value that may cause unknown changing
of the inclination of the lines of the graph (except for the horizontal lines).
And a changed inclinations may determine changed assignations of conditions for
the lines.
This change must not be done.

ERROR #6
There is a rule that says that when a line go out of upper side of the
graph, it is needed to calculate again the value of the 'scala'.
This can be correct in same cases ma it is wrong in others.
It is wrong in the case of an external favourable factor but unusual,
basically not due to the staff or persons that are producing.
See italian document for more details.

ERROR #7
There is a rule that says, about the x-axis, 'try not to exceed 3 months'.
The error is that it is allowed to vary the time period represented in the
graph.
As the Scientology procedure for the drawing the basic graph, this may
vary casually the 'scale' and so it may vary casually the assignations
of conditions of one or more lines.
See italian document for more details.

ERROR #8
The error is that the Scientology Statistic System do not considers the
changing of the working situation.
For example, if after having calculated and drawed the initial basic
graph, the number of persons in the staff increase to 5 to 10, why keep
the upper and lower value of the graph the same? It is excepted different
values.
And different upper and lower values does it means to calculate again
the value of 'scale'.
But in Scientology this is not considered.

ERROR #9
The condition formulas are fixed and do not work gradually.
One degree more or less on the line of the graph may determine, in
some cases, the change of the assignement of the condition and so
a different execution of a formula.
Just 1 degree.
This not gradual change of actions does not make sense.
The solution is to rewrite the condition formulas in a way to
work gradually according to the inclination of the line.

ERROR #10
The error is in one of the most important principles of the
Scientology Statistic System:
to determine the actions (the formula) to improve or keep high
the production, it must be considered ONLY THE INCLINATION of the
last line on the graph (excepted for the Power condition).
The error is that this principle does not consider the USUAL
PRODUCTION of a job.
EXAMPLE:
We have two staff members that hand out leaflets.
One work with a wrong method and usually hand out 3000 leaflets
per week.
The other work with the correct method and usually hand out
7000 leaflets per week.
The working conditions are the same for them.
If the persons with the wrong method hands out one week 2800 leaflets
and the following week 3400, it may be assigned the condition of
"Normal" or "Abundance" only because the line is rising.
If the persons with the correct method hands out one week 7200 leaflets
and the following week 6700, it may be assigned the condition of
"Emergency" or lower only because the line is falling.
So according to the Scientology Statistic System, the staff member
that produce more is in the worst condition.
This system does not make sense.
The usual production of a job must be considered.

erni.

 

[programmer_guy]

Yes, professional people in economics and investment funds understand and use some of the points made in the above post.

In CofS, staff performance stats are way overly simplistic.

 

[erni]

I have realized the image with the graph with all the Reference Lines (that represent the
statistic conditions), the value of the angles, the borderlines
between sectors, and the External Edges (edges that cannot be passed).

See the italian documents for more details (5 big posts).


In the original posts there are other graphs in character style.

erni.

 

[F.Bullbait]

I don't know if anyone took 'stats' as anything more than a simple-minded attempt to gauge one sort of productivity or another of an individual. You were 'upstat' or 'downstat' and a flat rate of production was discouraged. Stats lacked the necessary rigor to be useful other than that.

 

[freethinker]

you went to a lot of work analyzing formulas that are severely flawed from the outset. Angles, Geometry, space relationships mean very little in the real world as regards changing states of existence. The factors are endless as to what can influence a rise, a level or a decrease. If a guy sells 10 cars one week and only two the next, do you think you can always point to an exact ethics situation that created the danger? I doubt it.

let's say the guy drank himself silly every night. In the week he sold 10 cars he drank himself silly. In the week he sold 2, he drank himself silly. Other than that, he ate right, got to work ontime, wore clean clothes, used the same dialogue, lived with the same wife, kids weren't sick, no bad news in the mail or on TV, paid his bills, walked his dog, had good relations with employees and boss, paid his taxes, on and on yet he went into danger from an affluence. You will say he has some out ethics situation hidden somewhere and you will find it. Meanwhile, while you struggle with this for 3 days, 15 people in the valley decide to buy a new car and he sell them all to them. Whatever you pointed at at the time that occurred you will say that was it but can you really be sure it was because he stroked his cat against the fur that caused it?

That's how ridiculous the conditions are. The whole time you work on them life changes anyway and changing life changed that condition, not the formula. This isn't to say that things aren't influenced, it just means you will never truly know what changed or what factor made the difference.

 

[erni]

So, anyone may translate the 5 posts from Italian to English?

 

[Veda]

Hi erni,

What do you think Hubbard's purpose was (aside from making money) in creating the Scientology system of stats and conditions?

What did Hubbard want?

Hint, from the mysterious little booklet that was recognized over fifty years ago as the blueprint for Scientology:
​

"...operate in an atmosphere of emergency..."

"Asserting and maintaining dominion over thoughts and loyalties... through mental healing."​

 

[Enthetan]

"...operate in an atmosphere of emergency..."

"Asserting and maintaining dominion over thoughts and loyalties... through mental healing."​

Inherent in the statistic system is that an ever-increasing level of production is required from each staff member. Thus, no matter how well you do your job, it will never be deemed good enough. You will be forced to devote every waking hour to your post, "to keep your stats up", and the number of waking hours will necessarily need to increase (at the expense of sleep and personal time), until the staff member has nothing more to give (and is then treated as a lowlife criminal for not giving more).

Every failure to increase production is the fault of the staff member.

Meanwhile, the staff member, no matter how well he does is job, is not owed staff pay. What little pay the staff see, is doled out after other financial demands are met. In normal businesses, the law demands that workers' pay is dispersed FIRST, ahead of other bills, and profit is what remains after the expenses are paid. In Scientology orgs, payments to uplines are extracted first, then bills get paid, and if there's anything left, staff get a few bucks.

 

[F.Bullbait]

 

[Bill]

you went to a lot of work analyzing formulas that are severely flawed from the outset. Angles, Geometry, space relationships mean very little in the real world as regards changing states of existence. The factors are endless as to what can influence a rise, a level or a decrease. If a guy sells 10 cars one week and only two the next, do you think you can always point to an exact ethics situation that created the danger? I doubt it.

let's say the guy drank himself silly every night. In the week he sold 10 cars he drank himself silly. In the week he sold 2, he drank himself silly. Other than that, he ate right, got to work ontime, wore clean clothes, used the same dialogue, lived with the same wife, kids weren't sick, no bad news in the mail or on TV, paid his bills, walked his dog, had good relations with employees and boss, paid his taxes, on and on yet he went into danger from an affluence. You will say he has some out ethics situation hidden somewhere and you will find it. Meanwhile, while you struggle with this for 3 days, 15 people in the valley decide to buy a new car and he sell them all to them. Whatever you pointed at at the time that occurred you will say that was it but can you really be sure it was because he stroked his cat against the fur that caused it?

That's how ridiculous the conditions are. The whole time you work on them life changes anyway and changing life changed that condition, not the formula. This isn't to say that things aren't influenced, it just means you will never truly know what changed or what factor made the difference.

Definitely true! Hubbard's "Management Technology" does not work and is, at its core, really stupid.
"Management by Statistics" is stupid. It only works in specific situations. Hubbard declared that it worked in ALL situations and it simply does not. The intention of "Management by Statistics" is to remove humans, knowledge and experience from management. Why? Because Hubbard did not like or trust people. He always thought he could replace people with systems, formulas and "technology".

Most jobs cannot be accurately evaluated by some statistic. I always found that good management was easy if you simply paid attention to your staff. Statistics removes one from that.

Hubbard's "Condition Formulas" are useless. They are "one size fits all" that don't fit. When you listen to LRH's lecture on the condition formulas you hear Hubbard make up the one unique, imaginary situation for each formula where his formula would work. Real life need not apply.

One-size-fits-all is not the way to manage people. Each person and each situation is different. It doesn't take some genius "formula" to handle things, just normal intelligence.

I agree that evaluating Hubbard's "Management Technology", conditions and formulas, is a waste of time. It's like analyzing exactly what is more shitty in a pile of shit. It's all shit.

 

[programmer_guy]

Bill,

Yes! Hubbard was way overly simplistic on this topic.

For example, as a software engineer, should my stats be number of lines of code that I wrote for that week?

In the beginning of design for a new feature I would have zero lines of code written until engineering mgmt approved my design.

If my new design was based on acceptance from prospective customers then my stats would also be dependent on effective marketing/sales.

 

[Bill]

Bill,

Yes! Hubbard was way overly simplistic on this topic.

For example, as a software engineer, should my stats be number of lines of code that I wrote for that week?

In the beginning of design for a new feature I would have zero lines of code written until engineering mgmt approved my design.

If my new design was based on acceptance from prospective customers then my stats would also be dependent on effective marketing/sales.

That's one example (of many) where statistics can only make things worse. "Lines of code"? The inevitable result of that statistic is bloated code. Does it work? Does it do the job effectively? Meet specs? Error handling? Buggy? Good commenting? None of that can be effectively measured by counting something. And statistics only make for bad code. Nothing beats paying attention and knowing what is supposed to happen.

 

[F.Bullbait]

 

[TheOriginalBigBlue]

Inherent in the statistic system is that an ever-increasing level of production is required from each staff member. Thus, no matter how well you do your job, it will never be deemed good enough. You will be forced to devote every waking hour to your post, "to keep your stats up", and the number of waking hours will necessarily need to increase (at the expense of sleep and personal time), until the staff member has nothing more to give (and is then treated as a lowlife criminal for not giving more).

Every failure to increase production is the fault of the staff member.

Meanwhile, the staff member, no matter how well he does is job, is not owed staff pay. What little pay the staff see, is doled out after other financial demands are met. In normal businesses, the law demands that workers' pay is dispersed FIRST, ahead of other bills, and profit is what remains after the expenses are paid. In Scientology orgs, payments to uplines are extracted first, then bills get paid, and if there's anything left, staff get a few bucks.

Exactly! This must be one of the early red flags for staff. Scientology administrative training quickly introduces us to the concept that there are fixed expenses which get paid before anything else. Paying 10% for promotion instead of paying the staff enough to want to stay so they can continue to promote makes no sense. By doing this you end up with promotion for promotion's sake instead of effective promotion or just doing things that have a positive promotional effect. It reminds me of the California state budget. They have permitted so many things to get locked into the budget by percentages that other things get locked out so it removes common sense and prioritization from the process and those locked in things no longer need to perform efficiently to compete.

In the real world staff are paid first even if the owner has to dip into savings or borrow it. Otherwise the staff leave. In Scientology world Hubbard gets his cut first forever and always and the staff take up the slack for poor management. So where is the incentive for Hubbard to be efficient?

 

[TheOriginalBigBlue]

That's one example (of many) where statistics can only make things worse. "Lines of code"? The inevitable result of that statistic is bloated code. Does it work? Does it do the job effectively? Meet specs? Error handling? Buggy? Good commenting? None of that can be effectively measured by counting something. And statistics only make for bad code. Nothing beats paying attention and knowing what is supposed to happen.

You just made me imagining Hubbard creating the Scientology statistical system while he was being paid a penny per word as a Science Fiction writer in the 30s.

 

[TheOriginalBigBlue]

The OP is correct, that there can be problems with the axes being too steep or low. We quickly learned that by fudging this we could change the conditions assignments but it gets found out eventually.

Hubbard ranted against stat pushes but the whole system promotes exactly that. The focus of Scientology management is always very short term. They apply conditions based on 3 week trends. If you want to take an LOA (Leave of Absence) your CSW (Completed Staff Work) request must show that you have at least a Normal Condition for the prior three weeks. And if you don't maintain that upper condition until you leave you may lose your LOA and if it is down when you return you are punished. Often the punishment for returning to a lower condition isn't worth the LOA and so you find Sea Org members who don't take LOAs for many years.

The Scientology stat system is not there for data analysis like Hubbard would have us believe. If it were they would improve upon the things that work and eliminate the things that don't but it is a completely intractable culture. It's main purpose is asset stripping so in that context it makes complete sense. If you provide the logistics and resources and good decision making for a person to perpetually improve their productivity then this might make sense but in Scientology the goal is to deprive the staff member and the post what it needs to perpetually improve. If someone demonstrates a high level of performance in an area they are Peter Principled to another post, area or org until they fail. Those who remain must take up the slack and try to rebuild until the next predation. Scientology management is a study in self cannibalism.

Even if you perform well on your post you have sociopaths in OSA and elsewhere shitting where they sleep so the whole world becomes acutely aware of how your stats deserve to be crashed. But somehow the lowly staff member is supposed to be responsible for a greater sphere of influence than their immediate area and able to overcome all this self destructive behavior through sheer force of will while they are now working 80 to 130 hour weeks, subsisting on rice and beans and repurposing newspaper ...not to just clean windows.

There is so little reward built into the system that eventually reward becomes being punished or deprived less.

We can ask, did Hubbard actually get the kind of information from his stat system to know how to manage things correctly assuming he wanted to manage things correctly? I think in order for that to happen the people around him would need to be free to speak truth to power. By the time you worked directly with Hubbard you had to pass through such a gauntlet of indoctrination that you would be his clone. You would know intimately what he wanted, liked or hated and his responses to these things so you tell him what he wants to hear and hide what he doesn't. I think he had to be very isolated from what was really happening and the way Miscavige was able to take control of his communication lines and assume power speaks to this. Within Scientology indoctrination there is a whole alternate reality of what things are, what they mean, what is causality that just do not translate into the real world. Scientologists deal with these stats day in, day out, for their entire lifetime. They get in an ideological rut. If stats crash it's an SP. That's the easy analysis that will be approved by their seniors. Fire a mission to find and handle the SP. Go through all the staff and public files. If their ethics file is too thick or too thin they are suspect. Sec-checks all around. There is no room for common sense. Even if there were it could only be applied to that three week window. Real conditions in life take time. If you don't allow for time then the conditions you are applying are being applied to too small of a window to understand all the variables that need to play out. The internet is a perfect example of how Scientology PR policy was based on a system of censorship and intimidation from a conditions assignment that didn't account for time. They are squirrels on a squirrel wheel hating squirrels because squirrels represent going round and round without getting anywhere because they don't have workable solutions to life's problems and they keep doing the same wrong thing.

To understand Scientology statistics and conditions formulas you have to ask what their purpose is. They are for control (cue The Matrix). They are not for understanding. They are deliberately designed to be arbitrarily interpreted to reward and punish.

 

[TheOriginalBigBlue]

BTW, I am convinced Hubbard ripped off the Data Series from William J. Reilly. We like to find where he found all these things that no other person in human history found before - which he then contorted into Scientology and this has to be one of them.

You can just see Hubbard trying to reinterpret the common sense philosophy popular in the business world predating 1950 into his own policy letters. The Twelve Rules even contains the origins for the notorious CSW almost verbatim. This school of thinking was specifically intended to eliminate magical thinking from business management but Hubbard turned it into a philosophy of common sense business management for magical thinkers.

Any Messengers out there who remember seeing this on Ron's book shelf?

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL6511699M/The_twelve_rules_for_straight_thinking

The twelve rules for straight thinking
applied to business and personal problems
by Reilly, William J.
Published 1947 by Harper & Brothers in New York and London . 


 

[Koot]

Inherent in the statistic system is that an ever-increasing level of production is required from each staff member. Thus, no matter how well you do your job, it will never be deemed good enough. You will be forced to devote every waking hour to your post, "to keep your stats up", and the number of waking hours will necessarily need to increase (at the expense of sleep and personal time), until the staff member has nothing more to give (and is then treated as a lowlife criminal for not giving more).

Every failure to increase production is the fault of the staff member.

Meanwhile, the staff member, no matter how well he does is job, is not owed staff pay. What little pay the staff see, is doled out after other financial demands are met. In normal businesses, the law demands that workers' pay is dispersed FIRST, ahead of other bills, and profit is what remains after the expenses are paid. In Scientology orgs, payments to uplines are extracted first, then bills get paid, and if there's anything left, staff get a few bucks.

And, "moonlighting"(getting a job to support yourself after supporting the org ) is frowned on!! Go figure. You might think that the execs didn't want staff to survive!!

 

[Enthetan]

And, "moonlighting"(getting a job to support yourself after supporting the org ) is frowned on!! Go figure. You might think that the execs didn't want staff to survive!!

Moonlighting may be frowned upon now, it wasn't in the 70's and 80's.

Back when I was on staff, I worked my regular job in the day, then staff nights and weekends. Finally got burned out after a while.

I get the impression that they currently discourage having married couples where one works and the other is on staff, which seems one of the only ways to survive long term.

 

[TheOriginalBigBlue]

Moonlighting may be frowned upon now, it wasn't in the 70's and 80's.

Back when I was on staff, I worked my regular job in the day, then staff nights and weekends. Finally got burned out after a while.

I get the impression that they currently discourage having married couples where one works and the other is on staff, which seems one of the only ways to survive long term.

Looking at pictures of LA Org staff before it converted to Sea Org gave me the impression that most were significant others of non-staff. In those cases the assets are being stripped of the supporting partner or parents. This would be a strong incentive for Scientology to define relationships.

I'm assuming that even that model wasn't successful enough to keep it from being converted to Sea Org (read: slave labor). They spend under 30.00 a week on food for a Sea Org member. Just compensating a non-Sea Org member for the cost of non-institutional wog world food would be a much larger expense, let alone everything else.