6408C11 SHSpec-35 Study: Evaluation of Information

     Psychologists are working for advertisers in order to find out what makes
people tick: motivational research.  But they are the wrong people to go to,
since they don't know what the real buttons are.  A scientologist could be
much more successful at motivational research, degrading though the use of
knowledge of the mind for such purposes would be.

     In order to live calmly in the midst of confusion, a person must have the
basic answers.  Then the confusion doesn't bother him 90% of the time, and the
other 10% of the time he can do something about it.  Knowledge is achieved by
study.  The subject of words boobytraps a person's efforts to find out about
the world.  The individual generally assigns to the wrong part of the study
material the reason why he can't study it, because the right part is something
that he isn't confronting, and he feels he can't confront it.  So he disperses
and confronts something else.

     Study could mean the same thing as inspection, i.e. observation to find
out something about something.  A person can observe something directly, or he
can get knowledge on a second-hand basis from the printed page.  The second
system speeds up the amount that you can learn, since you don't have to do all
the basic leg-work.  Even when you have direct experience, it is best to have
some fruits of others' observations and experience from which to profit.
Illiterate cultures don't survive as well as literate ones.  Those who do not
know, who do not understand, get overwhelmed and tossed out.

     Between the two extremes of:

     1.  No observation necessary because one knows everything (a dying
         civilization or individual).

     2.  No observation possible (because the words aren't known).

lies the middle ground of knowing the words and staying alert.  Never become
complacent about what you know and you will survive nicely.  This applies
especially to someone who knows more than those around him.  This danger, of
stultifying because of thinking that there is no more need to observe, faces
scientology.

     The person who survives is the one who can observe, understand, and do.
Second hand observation in particular has to be very well understood.  The
understanding has to increase in proportion to the directness of the
observation.  Understanding is a substitute for mass in studying something.
There are two things to understand about second hand observation and
understanding.  The understanding can be indirect because of:

     1.  Time.

     2.  Being relayed by someone else.

The difficulties of second-hand observation are innumerable, so part of our
understanding must be evaluation of the reliability of the information that we
are being given.  That is where the bulk of beings get fouled up.  Evaluating
an information source is a matter of experience, among other things.  You must
be able to go on past something you know you don't understand, being prepared for any misunderstood phenomena and knowing the source of these phenomena.

     What a person studies and the way in which he studies, should depend on
what he wishes to do with the information.  Specialized words are used for
specialized observations.  You can approach a subject at various levels.  You
can think that you know more than you do, if you have had a superficial
contact with the subject.  But how much do you want or need to know about the
subject?  Do you want to be able to discuss it at parties, or to use it for
something, and if the latter, for what do you want to use it?  For instance,
art could be used as a discussion topic, as interior decoration, as
investment, as something that one will teach others to appreciate, or as
something that one will create oneself.

     Study that winds up only in understanding with no activity is OK.  There
is a lot of it around in society.  But don't make a habit of it.  You can
think that you know all about it, when you can't do it.  That is not very
pro-survival.  Neither is the consideration that the subject is too
complicated for you to ever use it.  Doingness does require much more
understanding than lookingness.  If you are studying for doingness, study on a
gradient.  Give the student a series of doingnesses that he can do and have
wins at.  Doingness increases understanding, as well as the other way around.

