What's new

esp and the BT

Oh Boy! Those poor misunderstood BT's. Sigh. Or is it just me? I go to VV and see David Touretzky being listed as #16 in the big bad SP list - and a poster has this link: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/StudyTech/ to David's paper on study tech. I'm reading this and grokking how: if you don't understand s/t Hubbard wrote, it's M/U's -- but in reality, what Hubbard's emphasis on M/U's is really saying is: Hubbard was never wrong, everything he wrote is correct, no disagreements allowed, and looking up M/U's is part of the suppression of critical thought, because if you don't understand it, it must be a M/U not a fallacy on Hubbard's part.

I am digging on that because I never understood why posters on this board felt so adamant study tech is evil. And now I am getting it.

Then... I read the following. --And this reminds me of Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant rap where he is in Whitehall street draft board and he turns over the paper, and there - in the middle of the page, apart from everything else on the page, quotated, is the following paragraph:

Kid,
"BTs can get Mis-Us from reading matter, foreign languages, and I
have found BTs that don't speak English. Where it really goes wild
is in auditing, where the BT has a Mis-U on the auditing command or
question. They would then answer the auditing question wrong to
themselves, causing a case hang up right there.

There is also a basic consideration that the Dead would not
understand anything anyway."
-- from NED for OTs Series 46, "BTs with Misunderstood Words",
by L. Ron Hubbard. HCO Bulletin of 22 February 1979.
WTF??

On the OT6 materials it says there is telepathic communication in concepts between the BT and the Solo NOTS auditor which bypasses language barriers. NO F***ING M/US!!!! They understand the telepathically transfered concepts because concepts are (according to Hubbard) the precursor for words. Further, when you audit BT's on OT5 you are also doing it telepathically. You telepath the commands to the BT that the auditor tells you.

Was he F**ing out to lunch or what? He can't even keep his own tech developments straight in his own mind. Jeeze Louise!

You know, maybe there is truth to HH's law of Contradictions after all.

Maybe I am over-reacting - maybe he's not referring to nots and solo nots auditing, but boy, it sure got me going.

Mimsey
 
Last edited:

Smilla

Ordinary Human
..
Numbskulls-Beezer.jpg
 

DagwoodGum

Squirreling Dervish
Oh Boy! Those poor misunderstood BT's. Sigh. Or is it just me? I go to VV and see David Touretzky being listed as #16 in the big bad SP list - and a poster has this link: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/StudyTech/ to David's paper on study tech. I'm reading this and grokking how: if you don't understand s/t Hubbard wrote, it's M/U's -- but in reality, what Hubbard's emphasis on M/U's is really saying is: Hubbard was never wrong, everything he wrote is correct, no disagreements allowed, and looking up M/U's is part of the suppression of critical thought, because if you don't understand it, it must be a M/U not a fallacy on Hubbard's part.

I am digging on that because I never understood why posters on this board felt so adamant study tech is evil. And now I am getting it.

Then... I read the following. --And this reminds me of Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant rap where he is in Whitehall street draft board and he turns over the paper, and there - in the middle of the page, apart from everything else on the page, quotated, is the following paragraph:

Kid,
WTF??

On the OT6 materials it says there is telepathic communication in concepts between the BT and the Solo NOTS auditor which bypasses language barriers. NO F***ING M/US!!!! They understand the telepathically transfered concepts because concepts are (according to Hubbard) the precursor for words. Further, when you audit BT's on OT5 you are also doing it telepathically. You telepath the commands to the BT that the auditor tells you.

Was he F**ing out to lunch or what? He can't even keep his own tech developments straight in his own mind. Jeeze Louise!

You know, maybe there is truth to HH's law of Contradictions after all.

Maybe I am over-reacting - maybe he's not referring to nots and solo nots auditing, but boy, it sure got me going.

Mimsey
Interesting! I speculated on how would a BT understand auditing commands in languages that didn't exist 75 million years ago, let alone 10,000 years ago! When I posted that I was refered to the OT6 crap about they respond to the f***ing concepts, not the words. Well that leads to my arguement against endless word clearing. Maybe some of us respond to concepts and are not anal at all about words either. Scientology is a "science" of contradictions, all part of the machinations of each trap residing inside of another trap ad infinitum...
 
Interesting! I speculated on how would a BT understand auditing commands in languages that didn't exist 75 million years ago, let alone 10,000 years ago! When I posted that I was refered to the OT6 crap about they respond to the f***ing concepts, not the words. Well that leads to my arguement against endless word clearing. Maybe some of us respond to concepts and are not anal at all about words either. Scientology is a "science" of contradictions, all part of the machinations of each trap residing inside of another trap ad infinitum...


Fair point. However the point of word clearing is to clear the concepts. The fact is that words most often reflect multiple concepts and that many people have confusions over how they are being used. Often this results in completely irrelevant substitutions in meaning being made for key or important concepts. Clearing such misconceptions where they are found is an important aspect of increasing understanding generally and specifically with regard to any educational or training program.

This practice is abused within the church where often the tech of word clearing is used as a means of limiting understanding and enforcing a specific interpretation of the materials being studied.


Mark A. Baker
 
This practice is abused within the church where often the tech of word clearing is used as a means of limiting understanding and enforcing a specific interpretation of the materials being studied.
Except for the 3 swing F/N definition, because rhythm "can't" happen in less than three swings, that has never been done to me. I was always allowed to study as many def's of a word, in as many dictionarys as I cared to look at to understand what was being said.

Mimsey
 

Demented LRH

Patron Meritorious
I suppose, word clearing is used for better understanding of the concepts, although in many cases unknown words could be easily understood from the context.

In Scientology word clearing does no good because Hubbard was using self-contradictory concepts or the concepts that contradict one another.

No wonder why so many Scientologists tried to clear the Hubbard words but failed to do so.

The Hubbard word that dogged me most was "as-isness", if I rember it correctly. I tried to clear the damn word, which was a pain in the ass, but could not. Finally I changed it to "existence" which was a half-victory for me, but I knew that it was just an approximation of the original monster word.
 

DagwoodGum

Squirreling Dervish
Fair point. However the point of word clearing is to clear the concepts. The fact is that words most often reflect multiple concepts and that many people have confusions over how they are being used. Often this results in completely irrelevant substitutions in meaning being made for key or important concepts. Clearing such misconceptions where they are found is an important aspect of increasing understanding generally and specifically with regard to any educational or training program.

This practice is abused within the church where often the tech of word clearing is used as a means of limiting understanding and enforcing a specific interpretation of the materials being studied.

Mark A. Baker

All great ponts. Mine basically is that people all too often get lost in the process and never get to the product, meaning the conceptualization of the words themselves gets lost in the process. The words thereby become part of the trap rather than part of the way out of the trap.
Mark A. Baker[/QUOTE]
 
I suppose, word clearing is used for better understanding of the concepts, although in many cases unknown words could be easily understood from the context.
If only that were true. There are many words that are just not understood from context. I was going to post examples, but I'm sure you can think of some easily.

Mimsey
 

Gib

Crusader
Fair point. However the point of word clearing is to clear the concepts. The fact is that words most often reflect multiple concepts and that many people have confusions over how they are being used. Often this results in completely irrelevant substitutions in meaning being made for key or important concepts. Clearing such misconceptions where they are found is an important aspect of increasing understanding generally and specifically with regard to any educational or training program.

This practice is abused within the church where often the tech of word clearing is used as a means of limiting understanding and enforcing a specific interpretation of the materials being studied.


Mark A. Baker

If one has an exact science of the mind and the universe, IE scientology, then why not give the exact definition one should use to run a process? Sp as to avoid any confusion whatsoever, since we are talking about an exact science of the mind and life?
 
All great ponts. Mine basically is that people all too often get lost in the process and never get to the product, meaning the conceptualization of the words themselves gets lost in the process. The words thereby become part of the trap rather than part of the way out of the trap.
...

That is definitely the way the church appears to use study tech in training. The result is substitution of the 'stable data' of 'command intention' in place of actual understanding of the concepts embodied in the subject of scientology. It makes people more tractable to doing what they are told rather than that which they understand for themselves.


Mark A. Baker
 

Infinite

Troublesome Internet Fringe Dweller
Fair point. However the point of word clearing is to clear the concepts. The fact is that words most often reflect multiple concepts and that many people have confusions over how they are being used. Often this results in completely irrelevant substitutions in meaning being made for key or important concepts. Clearing such misconceptions where they are found is an important aspect of increasing understanding generally and specifically with regard to any educational or training program.

This practice is abused within the church where often the tech of word clearing is used as a means of limiting understanding and enforcing a specific interpretation of the materials being studied.


Mark A. Baker

That may well be the PR version of the overall point of word clearing. The effects of the process in Scientology, as you mention, is to manufacture agreement with the concepts. I imagine its the same in the FreeZone in that further "progress" is stymied until there is agreement with the concepts; afterall, a person can't possibly have Engrams removed until such time as they agree that Engrams exist.

In wog world, the effect of Method 3 Word Clearing is to stunt understanding of concepts by atomising the overall message and hampering the ability to discern meaning via context. Also, I can tell you that as someone who only became "functionally literate" in my late 20s, Method 7 Word Clearing would have slowed my learning considerably. Being constantly interrupted when stumbling or "frowning" as I "sounded-out" the tricky words, would have derailed my concomitant train-of-thought and I would've (and still now) quickly lost interest in the subject.

Another point of word clearing - see Method 3 and Method 9 Word Clearing - is to correct a student displaying a lack of enthusiasm, yawning, doodling, or day-dreaming. According to L Ron Hubbard, such behaviour indicates a misunderstood word:

. . . There is one always; there are no exceptions. It may be that the misunderstood word is two pages or more back, but it is always earlier in the text than where the student is now . . .

So much for "no absolutes" and any possibility that the student might just be tired and fed-up with reading rubbish.

And what's with the peculiar order of: Method 3, Method 9, and Method 7? I see from HCOB1 July 1971R, (revised 11 January 1989), “The Different Types of Word Clearing“ Methods 1, 2, 4, and 5 involve the use of the e-meter . . . <sigh> bloody typical, yet another aspect of Scientology where it never is as it first appears.

DoF - you out there? Is Word Clearing really about furthering an understanding of the concepts being read?
 

LongTimeGone

Silver Meritorious Patron
I believe that you can have MU's and still understand the concept.

How many people do you know who say "One foul swoop" when the correct sentence is "One fell swoop"?

They get the concept and are actually shocked when you point out the correct expression.

LTG
 
And what's with the peculiar order of: Method 3, Method 9, and Method 7? I see from HCOB1 July 1971R, (revised 11 January 1989), “The Different Types of Word Clearing“ Methods 1, 2, 4, and 5 involve the use of the e-meter . . . <sigh> bloody typical, yet another aspect of Scientology where it never is as it first appears.
It's KSW baby - can't alter the tech. Hubbard wrote a word clearing series, and method 3 comes from the 3rd bulletin in the series, method 7 from the 7th etc. This makes no sense whatsoever when they use the same names in the study books that Applied Scholastics gives out to schools.

A quote form Dave Touretzky's paper which is a good read for those trying to understand how study tech manipulates critical thought etc.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/StudyTech/

Study Tech's focus on misunderstood words is not just some arbitrary
bit of educational dogma. It is an intentional and effective device
for suppressing critical thought. If one expresses disagreement with
the material one is studying in Scientology, that's taken as evidence
of a misunderstood word. And each M/U must be located and cleared
before moving on to other material. Hence, unless a student of
Scientology wants to be stuck reading the same page over and over
again, looking up definitions in a dictionary ad nauseum, he must keep
any negative feelings about the content to himself. If he expresses
dislike for a subject and a desire to stop studying it, that is taken
as further evidence that he has a misunderstood word. The idea that
one can have a legitimate disagreement with something written by
"Source", as L. Ron Hubbard is referred to in Scientology, is simply
not on the table. All disagreement is dismissed as misunderstanding
-- a dangerous attitude for an educational system to promote.

After the appearance of the July 1997 LA Times story about Linda
Smith's charter school proposal, Joe Harrington, who was active in
Scientology for 24 years, wrote the following in a posting to the
alt.religion.scientology newsgroup:

The fundamental tenet of Hubbard's "study tech" is that ANY
disagreement with the subject matter being studied, ANY inability to
apply the materials, and any non-comprehension of the materials stems
ONLY from "misunderstood words" in the "Source" materials. With this
mechanism, Hubbard made his "source" materials infalliable. In the
Scientology "study tech" mindset, there can be NO dissent with
Hubbard's utterances and ANY difficulty the student is having with the
subject or the organization stems ONLY from misunderstood words he
went past.

Using Hubbard's notion of the "misunderstood word", one could
introduce a "Source" textbook on geology, written by the President of
the Flat Earth Society and have every student who disagreed with the
materials look up all the "misunderstood words" they went past, until
harmony with the Source material was in place.

Harrington's characterization seems accurate. When I asked Heidrun
Beer, at the time a devoted Scientologist, what she would do if she
found a Hubbard policy she could not agree with, her reply was: "I'd
go back and find my misunderstood word." Beer has since broken with
the Church.

Mimsey
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
DoF - you out there? Is Word Clearing really about furthering an understanding of the concepts being read?

It depends who is using it. That is how I used it, although virtually the only method of word clearing I personally used on students when I had free choice in the matter was Method 3, like in the write-up at http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?684-Student-Hat-Vs-Student-Hat&p=6566&viewfull=1#post6566. The intro to that write-up is also useful, and I will paste it here:

It depends how robotic a Scientologist is. I don't agree 100% with everything in the word-clearing series of HCOBs, far from it. That a student should have power of choice over data is covered by Hubbard in the Study Tapes; Method 4 Word-Clearing procedure--exactly as written--implies that behind any disagreement is a misunderstood word, which is ludicrous (as you point out) and violates that Study Tapes point.

The sweeping statement that the misunderstood word lies at the base of ever single one of that little list of horrors is probably just one of Hubbard's over-broad generalizations, but impossible to disprove. But that bit of likely hyperbole does not negate the fact that people do have misunderstood words that hang them up, and that clearing up the m/u can get them going again. Equally, people can have misunderstood words that DON'T hang them up, and to find and clear random mu's on people does not help them much.

That last point is what makes Method 3 Word Clearing so powerful, which zeroes in on THE word to clear. Another post from my archive: <snip>


The Method 4 HCOBs seem to be aimed at enforcing obedience to authority, i.e. Hubbard is always right whatever he says. It is possible that things sometimes got cleared up for the person, although it's main use seemed to be that one could say one has M4'd the issue (as if that meant that it was understood properly).

If you pick and choose there are some useful things in Scn word-clearing, but of course "Scientology word-clearing" is the whole lot and if you cherry-pick it it's not Scn any more.

Paul
 
... If you pick and choose there are some useful things in Scn word-clearing, but of course "Scientology word-clearing" is the whole lot and if you cherry-pick it it's not Scn any more.

Paul

Arguable depending on which definition for scientology is used. Your remarks suggest the one hubbard settled on as his basis for operational control. Other less rigid views exist based on earlier materials.


Mark A. Baker
 

Johnd

Patron with Honors
Interesting. I never got past ot5, so the ot 6 crap is almost interesting.

Do bts have misunderstood words is a tempting conundrum, but sort of like how many tooth faeries could you get dance on the head of a pin if they don't speak your language? One could go into the problems of how you're defining what and is there a language of pure meaning without symbol, etc. Too deep for me.

Generally speaking, using a dictionary is just a very good idea. I guess we get most of our vocabularies in some wondrous way from verbal, emotional, physical context. But there's a lot more that we don't get that way--at least that's true in my case. So I try to be honest when I'm reading and look up words I really don't get. This is why some very smart, hard working people created elaborate and thorough dictionaries. I think we should be grateful to these people and use what they've given us. (Sometimes I'm too lazy though.)

The brilliant and benevolent purpose of dictionaries is defeated (I think) when:

1. Defining words is taken to an absurd extreme and overdone, way past the point of conceptual understanding, as in 'study tech.'

2. Dictionaries are used to validate bogus research and imaginary technology.

3. When 'word clearing' is made so paramount that it shoves aside judgement of whether assertions bear out in reality, looking at things from different perspectives, applying logical tests of evidence, etc.

4. When using a dictionary is made into a torture so f*&^ing tedious and soul squashing that you feel sick at the thought of using one.

APOLOGY

On the BT thing: If there are bodyless spiritual beings around, and you can read English, I would like to apologize for any degrading characterizations of spirits I may have gone along with, for ANY hint or implication that I was somehow the victim of spiritual beings. These were crazy ideas fed to me by a lunatic I mistook for a wise man and I'm ashamed of ever having engaged in practices that implied that spirits were the cause of anything I was suffering
from. Actually, I know nothing about you. Hope you are well.


john
 

Winston Smith

Flunked Scientology
Interesting. I never got past ot5, so the ot 6 crap is almost interesting.

Do bts have misunderstood words is a tempting conundrum, but sort of like how many tooth faeries could you get dance on the head of a pin if they don't speak your language? One could go into the problems of how you're defining what and is there a language of pure meaning without symbol, etc. Too deep for me.

Generally speaking, using a dictionary is just a very good idea. I guess we get most of our vocabularies in some wondrous way from verbal, emotional, physical context. But there's a lot more that we don't get that way--at least that's true in my case. So I try to be honest when I'm reading and look up words I really don't get. This is why some very smart, hard working people created elaborate and thorough dictionaries. I think we should be grateful to these people and use what they've given us. (Sometimes I'm too lazy though.)

The brilliant and benevolent purpose of dictionaries is defeated (I think) when:

1. Defining words is taken to an absurd extreme and overdone, way past the point of conceptual understanding, as in 'study tech.'

2. Dictionaries are used to validate bogus research and imaginary technology.

3. When 'word clearing' is made so paramount that it shoves aside judgement of whether assertions bear out in reality, looking at things from different perspectives, applying logical tests of evidence, etc.

4. When using a dictionary is made into a torture so f*&^ing tedious and soul squashing that you feel sick at the thought of using one.

APOLOGY

On the BT thing: If there are bodyless spiritual beings around, and you can read English, I would like to apologize for any degrading characterizations of spirits I may have gone along with, for ANY hint or implication that I was somehow the victim of spiritual beings. These were crazy ideas fed to me by a lunatic I mistook for a wise man and I'm ashamed of ever having engaged in practices that implied that spirits were the cause of anything I was suffering
from. Actually, I know nothing about you. Hope you are well.


john

Ha, I got you beat, I never attested to Level 0, and I am proud of that :biggrin:
I was however a prisoner of FCDC from 71 to 73, working my self silly for $16 a week.

I am sorry DOF and other devotees of study tech, Word Clearing is mostly bravo sierra. However it is fascinating that LRH evidently came up with the idea that BTs have misunderstoods thus raking in the cash for gawd who knows how many hours. Yes we were all fools.

I think I should retire from the board again as I am beginning to hang my head and shake it in disbelief.
 
Top