Presenting a little different approach to the problem of a man’s worth to Man. Consider two intelligent, extremely able men, for instance — Adolf Hitler and Thomas A. Edison. Both brilliant, both highly successful... but there’s more to a man than intelligence and drive!
Dianometry is that branch of Dianetics which measures thought capacity, computational ability and the rationality of the human mind. By its axioms and tests can be established the intelligence, the persistency, the ability, the aberrations and existing or potential insanity of an individual.
Dianometry is “thought measurement,” derived from the Greek for thought and, unscholarly enough, the Latin for mensuration. It has the virtue, as a word, of being swiftly understood. It has the virtue, as a part of Dianetics, of answering such questions as the following:
By archaic definition, sanity was the ability to tell “right” from “wrong.” In the absence of precision definitions of what was “right” and what was “wrong,” many
Homo sapiens have been imprisoned or executed for crimes which were “virtues” in one society and “criminalities” in another. The confused “definitions” in law were exceeded only by those classifications which existed for “insanity” in the field of medicine. Over fifty widely variant codes of classification exist for the definition of various “insanities”; each one is simply a description;* for not knowing the source, and with scant knowledge of the nature of mental function, those working in the field of insanities were, like those engaged in law, involved in continual controversy.
Insanity can be of two kinds: acute and chronic. An acute insanity we can think of as one which flares into existence for a few moments or a few days and then subsides, leaving a relatively normal person. A chronic insanity is one which, having appeared, does not subside but holds the individual in an abnormal state. Each has the same genesis, the engrams, and each is decidedly harmful to the individual himself and to society.
The acute insanity is most commonly seen in a rage or a tantrum. It is no less an insanity because it subsides. An engram has been momentarily restimulated so that the individual is temporarily bereft of his analytical mind. When so bereft of analytical power he may do numerous things, as dictated by the engram in restimulation. He may even murder or commit mayhem which, afterwards, will cause him to be punished by society.
The chronic insanity is an acute insanity with the time factor lengthily extended.
Most chronic insanities are, of course, complications of several engrams. The more often these insanities are restimulated, the more chronic they become unless they are more or less “permanent” (pre-Dianetics).
Here we have a spectrum at work. Measured by time of restimulation and degree of harmfulness to the individual himself or society we have gradations from intense and perpetual restimulation of engrams, through occasional restimulation— normal — through the dianetic release and to the dianetic clear, the optimum level of rationality. The clear is not subject to “restimulation” because he has no engrams which can be activated.
Degrees of sanity are possible. The term is very loose, however, and is not susceptible to the exact formulation desirable in an exact science. Sanity is too highly relative even for scientific use. For instance, a sailor who, in battle, functions well, obeys orders and kills members of the armed forces of the enemy is sane in battle. He may, however, be so insane ashore that he earns countless courts-martial, creates enormous trouble and may even have to be incarcerated to protect himself and his society. Another sailor may be so eminently sane ashore that he is rated up to petty officer, is given responsibilities, is depended upon by his superiors utterly and is generally looked upon as a model for all recruits. In battle this sailor may take one look at the Kamikaze, desert the gun which might have saved his ship, dive into a magazine full of explosives and be found, some hours later, when people are trying to get the vessel under way again, smoking chain-fashion and lighting his matches on lead azide fuses. The second sailor is sane ashore and insane in action. It depends, when one deals with aberrated persons, what kind of sanity one requires and what kind of insanity will not be detrimental to the job. In a navy which is meant to fight battles, the first sailor is infinitely more valuable than the second, swivel chair bureaucrats to the contrary, but it is the courage, not the aberrations of the first which made him of worth.
Unless one has some idea of mental function, the problem of sanity is a tangle of unpredictable factors. A person who is aberrated may be restimulated into acute insanity in the very environment in which he is ordinarily sane. Viewpoint and changes in the environment itself shift. When one knows mental function, the degree of sanity of a person can be established. In any case, sanity, where one deals with any normally aberrated person, is a relative term. There is a dianometric definition about this:
Sanity is the degree of rationality of an individual.
Rationality is defined as follows:
Rationality is the computational accuracy of the individual modified by aberration, education and viewpoint.
Complete rationality could then be defined:
Optimum rationality for the individual depends upon his lack of aberration and his accurate resolution of problems for which he has sufficient data.
By computation is meant his ability to resolve problems.
The resolution of all problems is a study in rightness and wrongness. Dianetically speaking, there are no attainable absolutes. The formidable Absolutism of metaphysics— which the grammarians with their absolute definitions for “accuracy” or “true” attempt to compel us to use — is a scientific outcast of some duration. The entire problem of getting right answers and wrong answers is a problem of degrees of rightness and wrongness.
Old Aristotle reputedly held out for two-valued logic — at least that is the way he is interpreted. However, the world received quite an advance when Aristotle resolved and formulated some of the problems of logic. Before Aristotle there was one-valued logic, the will of the gods. Man acted because he was forced to act. Aristotle, a wild- eyed radical, came along and insisted Man had a right to be right or wrong according to the dictates of circumstance. Man had a choice. If Aristotle went off into that mathematician’s land of Never-Never, the syllogism which, in abstracts, seeks to evaluate concrete entities and proves only what it assumes, he still advanced ideas about thinking. Lately Man has considered logic to have three values — right, maybe, and wrong. None of these systems of logic begin to encompass what the fabulous computational ability of the mind encompasses minute by minute. Logic could best be explained in terms of an infinity of values. From the theoretical but unobtainable ABSOLUTE WRONG, solutions can be graded through a theoretical midpoint of neither right nor wrong to a theoretical but unobtainable ABSOLUTE RIGHT. (See graph.)
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The mind computes on the yea-nay principle. It resolves numbers of simultaneous equations by running each one, evidently, on at least three computers at once. It runs as many as a thousand factors at once. And it does it, apparently, upon the simple formula A> B = A, B >A = B. Thus if eating an apple is less right than not eating an apple, the decision is to not eat the apple. If not eating an apple is less right than eating an apple, the decision is to eat the apple. There is no ABSOLUTE RIGHT or ABSOLUTE WRONG about eating an apple. On the sole consideration that a worm might be in the apple, a two-valued, right, wrong equation breaks down. Around one simple act the mind may run fifty or a hundred computations or may draw upon a past computation’s conclusion which, however, was once run. Acts or solutions are either more right than wrong — in which case they are right. Or more wrong than right — in which case they are wrong. Right and wrong greater-than less-than computations are run off on hundreds or thousands of variables by the mind to make up one solution.Life is a complex affair. Computation has to be close to as complex as life or survival would long ago have ceased for Man, that high organism who depends for progress and weapons upon his mind. Thus his mental processes are constant evaluations of data in relation to their importance to the immediate solution, and constant evaluations of these conclusions to formulate decisions. Thus his computer is in constant action, thus he is continually involved in re-evaluation of both old data and old conclusions in the light of new data and new conclusions. The principle of how he thinks is simple. It is only that he handles so very, very many computations at once that makes the principle seem complex.
Now the only reason we take account of logic here is to orient the problem of rationality and how one goes about determining whether or not a man is rational.
An ultimate wrongness for the organism would be death, not only for the organism itself but for all involved in its dynamics. An ultimate rightness for the organism would be survival to a reasonable term for himself, his children, his group and Mankind. An ABSOLUTE WRONGNESS would be the extinction of the Universe and all energy and the source of energy — the infinity of complete death. An ABSOLUTE RIGHTNESS would be the immortality of the individual himself, his children, his group, Mankind and the Universe and all energy — the infinity of complete survival. Ultimates, in this sense, are attainable and there are various ultimates of greater or lesser importance. Any ultimate would contain some destruction or some construction.
Viewed in this way, the problems of logic compute easily and well. A scientific truth would be something which was workably and invariably right for the body of knowledge in which it lay.
One of the reasons very right, slightly right, very wrong, slightly wrong, very true, rather true are used here instead of circumlocutions with new words — such as, for very right, “containing more right factors” — is that the scientist who, after all, fairly well runs this present world, has long since cleaved from metaphysics. Hegel, great man though he was, and Kant, with their metaphysical ABSOLUTE went so far as to deny Piazzi’s discovery of the eighth planet, inhibited the acceptance of Ohm’s law, proved Newton “wrong” and generally did things which, if they were necessary to maintain the Great God Absolute, nevertheless hindered scientific progress. “Truth beyond the realm of human experience” sounds well and is an authentic route for some things, but it doesn’t make washing machines run or raise better chickens or send any rockets to Mars: in short, Absolute Truth is a foreign substance in this highly integrated scientific society. Grammar lags back with the metaphysician’s Absolute Truth. The modem scientist is prone to apologize because his data is workable, rather than true. If the data is uniformly workable, it most certainly is true. Grammar, in trying to hold with metaphysics, impedes, as did metaphysics, science. So there are things very right, very true, very real, very accurate and very variably relative in general. Until a bright mind discovers a way to obtain and use data which cannot be sensed, measured or experienced, grammar had better regulate itself to the driving force of the society, science.
So here we have the formidable article, logic. It is computed, not dreamed and intuitively plucked from some ether. If a man, a group, a race or Mankind does its thinking on a sufficiently rational plane, it survives. And survival, that dynamic thrust through time toward some unannounced goal, is pleasure. Creative and constructive effort is pleasure. Some pleasure destroys more than it creates and so it is “immoral” (and by future prejudice becomes irrationally immoral, traveling as a social aberration; superstition is a parallel channel with immorality, no other proof of harm than prejudice). Some pleasure creates more than it destroys and that is “moral” or good pleasure. If a man, a group or a race or Mankind does its thinking on a sufficiently irrational plane — out of lack of data, warped viewpoint or simply aberration — the survival is lessened; more is destroyed than is created. That is pain. That is the route toward death. That is evil.
Logic is not good or bad in itself, it is the name of a computation procedure, the procedure of the analytical mind or collective analytical minds in their efforts to attain solutions to problems.
The process of logic consists of:
As outlined above — and on the graph — in one problem, the arrow of decision swings back and forth, back and forth until, by greater-than and lesser-than computations, it finally comes to rest with an answer. Here is a problem: “Shall I pull trigger of shotgun?”
Formulation question: What will happen if I pull the trigger? Formulation of questions for solution: Is it right or wrong to pull trigger?
Obtaining data: Gun is cocked. I am in closed room. I am in a hurry to get to dinner.
Leaving gun cocked weakens spring. It will take over a minute to open breech.
Evaluating data: Gun is cocked — arrow moves far right. I am in closed room and guns go off sometimes — arrow moves far left, but is restrained by already having moved far right. I am in a hurry to get to dinner, been duck hunting all day and I’m starved. (Arrow moves to right but restrained again, two evaluations having been computed.) Leaving gun cocked weakens spring and this is a good gun — arrow moves a little farther to right. Breech in poor shape.
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New data: Footfalls in room overhead, calling attention to existence of other persons in house. (Arrow moves left.)
New data: Got to clean gun anyway after supper. Can inspect its chambers then when I’ve got time to look. (Arrow moves to left.)
Answer point of arrow is well to the left.
Solution: Lay gun on bed, cocked. Action: Goes out door. New data: Little boy laughing down hall.
Evaluation of data: Boy very inquisitive. No lock on door.
New formulation of problem: Is it right or wrong to leave gun unsecured?
New data: Wife’s voice urgent from dining room. Stomach growling. Meat frying.
Evaluation of data: Wife’s voice — small motion of arrow to right. Stomach growling — another motion to right. Boy in danger — surge of arrow far, far to left.
Action: Returns, wrestles with faulty gun breech — whole new set of right-wrong series. Finds breech was empty. Puts cartridges on top shelf, moves chair away from shelf where boy can’t easily get it, hangs shotgun out of reach on wall.
Goes to dinner.
This is a simplified solution. Actually each datum was evaluated for the problem by a separate computer! There were many other data and conclusions and computers used in the computation. And it was all completed in a few seconds and the action fully accomplished in two minutes. The solution was based on a datum which made the problem, as formulated, so wrong that additional precautions were taken.
Thought goes on a network of such computations. Almost none of the computations are examined by “I” no matter how stylish it has been to ponder and vocalize and stew with datum after datum. (This adage that slow thought is good thought stems, most likely, from the propaganda of some fellow who wanted an excuse because he could never think fast. The mind works solutions in milliseconds and then aberrations snarl and alter transmission so that hours and days are required to get the solution from some part of the computer to “I”.)
The mind can compute in any terms, real or abstract. In dealing constantly with data which can be sensed, measured and experienced — real data — the mind is fundamentally acquainted with the nonexistence of Absolute Precision. It handles problems about the bigness of big bicycles and the warmness of a drink and the prettiness of beauty and the quantity of companionship in a dog with swift and relatively accurate evaluations. It measures time, distance and space and energy interrelationships as handily as it weighs the thoughts, ethics and potentialities of other minds and all these things are qualitative and quantitative measurements and evaluations which are and cannot be otherwise than approximations. The mind only requires, like the scientist, a workable accuracy. The plus or minus margins of error in finite analysis must be kept within bounds of usefulness. Precision, then, can be defined as the maximal accuracy required for the problem’s solution and demands a minimal margin of error which will not make the solution unworkable. No instrument of Man, including his mind, no matter how cunningly or delicately constructed, can measure time, space, thought or energy with Absolute Precision. There exists in any sensing, measuring or experiencing minute errors. And even if these errors are so tiny that Absolute Precision apparently exists, the errors are nevertheless present. Absolute Precision might occur by accident in the evaluation of an electric current, a temperature or the weight of a flake of gold but no instrument exists fine enough to detect that the Absolute Precision had existed, thus it could not be repeated. Understand that such errors can be so minute — and generally are — that they exceed the requirements of the problem in which the evaluation is needed, but this does not make them any the less errors.
There is the story of the navigators. A ship had, amongst other officers, an assistant navigator, a senior watch officer and a navigator. The admiral came into the chartroom and desired to know the ship’s position. The assistant navigator was present; he was very young, fresh from school and lacking in any experience. He eagerly plotted the dead reckoning, sharpened his pencil exceeding fine and made a tiny point on the chart. “Admiral,” he said, “we are right there!” At this moment the senior watch officer, a grizzled lieutenant, came in and had the question put to him by the admiral for confirmation. The senior watch officer figured for a moment, running up the dead reckoning, and then drew a small circle on the chart. “We’re right about there, sir,” he said. The navigator, hearing the admiral was in the chartroom, came in and in his turn was asked for the position. The navigator had been to sea for a long time, he had navigated many ships. He glanced at the course changes in the quartermaster’s notebook, looked at the chart and then, slapping his huge hand down upon it said, “If I’m not mistaken, admiral, we’re some place around there!”
The margin of error allowable for a problem can be very wide or very small. It has its self-limiting factors. In navigation, the young assistant above might have been expected to take a sextant sight and then go below to calculate down to the last foot his ship’s position. That would be unnecessary accuracy. First, the position of the ship is not needed in terms of feet when off soundings but is “accurate” with a margin of error of a mile or two. Second, the sight cannot be more accurate than the error in the sextant and the chronometer. Any sight so taken can be calculated with a precision much greater than it can be shot. If the required accuracy of position is a mile or two, if the sextant sight is accurate within a quarter of a mile, there is no use calculating it down to feet. To do so would be to introduce a new error, the error of the Delusion of Accuracy and that can be the most dangerous error of all. One has to know, reliably, the margin of error. If it is falsified by an enthusiasm to make data look good, the data may lead to serious mistakes. The most serious observer error which can be made is to enter in a Delusion of Accuracy for those who depend on the data are thus led astray and they cannot know in which direction or how much the data was wrong and are not informed that it was falsified.
The Bureau of Standards, for instance, gives methods of measuring power at radio frequency and the error of each method, announcing it to be two, three or five percent in certain ranges as the case may be. This is reasonable accuracy; greater precision may sometimes be desirable but is not generally used.
In the real Universe, then, the entities of time, space, distance, energy and thought cannot be computed with Absolute Accuracy. All data is evaluated with the precision necessary or attainable. Good data is usefully accurate data. Even when the margin of error is so tiny that no known instrument can measure it, it still exists.
In abstract terms only can evaluation be Absolutely Precise. If, in the real Universe, Absolute Precision is unobtainable, Absolute Precision can be assumed and is a useful analogic tool for computation. The mind computes in various ways and one of those ways is to set up analogues. Arithmetic is such an analogue. The schoolboy writes 2 + 2 = 4 and is satisfied that this is a real evaluation. It is not. It is an abstract evaluation. Absolute Precision has been assumed where none exists. This does not invalidate the equation by any means. The mind uses and needs such equations in its computations. To say that two apples plus two apples equals four apples is of great help to the shopper and the grocer. They accept the equals because they do not need any accuracy greater than two apples plus two apples equals four apples. But both the shopper and the grocer would admit, if the problem were presented to them, that two Winesaps plus two Delicious did not equal four wormy crab apples by any means. The shopper on the receiving end of this equation would object and, getting no redress, would take his trade elsewhere. Two apples plus two apples are the same four apples and in this alone is there an approximation between the real and the abstract. Nothing equals anything with Absolute Precision. Two Winesaps, ever so carefully measured and weighed could be shown to be similar to each other even if they “looked” exactly alike. No two Winesaps in the world are exactly alike save by an accident which, again, would not be a detectable Absolute Precision, since nothing weighs that fine or measures that close.
As an abstraction, arithmetic is useful. The mind uses many abstractions. The retired colonel, telling of his battle, grabs some walnuts, some napkin rings and the sugar tongs and says, “Now here was the Seventh Foot”—lining up the walnuts—”and here”—picking up and laying down the napkin rings—”was the enemy artillery. And here”—putting down the tongs with a clang—”was I, mounted on my charger. Now
....” He has done a mathematical analogue of the problem of the battle and he is saved much reidentification, as he tells his tale, for his listeners know that walnuts “equal” the Seventh Foot, napkin rings “equal” the enemy artillery, and sugar tongs “equal” the colonel and his horse. Einstein working out new equations of relationship amongst time, space, and energy forms and manifestations may be telling more truth than the colonel and is serving a higher usefulness by far, but the colonel and Einstein are both dealing in analogue computation. Users of the data of either the colonel or Einstein must allow for a reasonable margin of error when real entities are substituted for the abstractions in the equations.
It would be far better, of course, in mathematics, if the word “equivalent” or “represents” was substituted for “equals” in all mathematical equations. The actual function of mathematics would then be preserved. The word “equation” should be changed in meaning — for it means “act of making equal”—or should be exchanged for “abstraction” if mathematics are to be better understood. For the mind, by establishing the abstractions which we call mathematics, sought only to improve its ability to handle real entities. The abstractions are nothing in themselves but assistants in mental process. A skilled mathematician has, in mathematics, a part of a servo system in which his own mind is the chief agent. He evaluates by abstractions real entities of the real Universe. Then, by processes exterior to the mind — scratch pad or electronic computer — he computes with abstractions alone until he achieves a solution. This solution he then “translates” back into the terms of the real Universe.
So far have mathematics strayed from their intended purpose, from time to time, that they seem to possess entity value of their own. Some esoteric mathematicians have in the past so far departed from the fundamental purpose of mathematics that they have, like priests around an idol, sought to deify their servo systems, declaring them to be beyond all human experience. And so they can be!
In metaphysics, Absolute Truth, Absolute Mensuration, and Absolute Thought became a sort of mathematics by which some men tried to locate data beyond the realm of human experience. In German Transcendentalism, Absolute Truth was considered to surpass all human experience. This is quite valid since it is very definitely the case. This was a mathematics, an effort to reach, by abstractions, a higher set of data. It became abhorrent to the scientist because metaphysicians seemed to use this mathematics as a height from which they could assail and snub human experience with impunity; by using wide and obscure terms and being rather grand about it all, the metaphysician so snarled the wits of his attackers that these have not taken metaphysics for what it is, a species of mathematics. The metaphysicians themselves would hotly deny this, as would the mathematician, that he uses daily some of the fruits of metaphysics. There is a battle there; meanwhile evaluations both in abstract and real terms go on, not only in the giant electronic brain in some university but in the grocery store. The mind simplifies its problems by posing abstractions to represent them, retranslates the answers back into real terms and so computes the solutions of existence. It computes in various ways, is a computer in itself; it invented numerous mathematics to assist in computations and today it builds gigantic computers to relieve it of some of its burdens.
These two processes of computation, the comparison of real data with real data and the approximating of real data by using abstract symbols, combine into a multitude of manifestations of thought processes. By such combinations of computation the individual mind derives the highest attainable correctness possible for it in its answers. It allows its admissible margins of error and places the solutions into action or a file for future use.
The basic principle of operation is relatively simple. Two things, however, are not simple — the power of the mind to evaluate data and resolve problems and the structure of the mind which permits such magnificent computation.
If one does not believe the mind capable of handling large numbers of very variable variables and achieving swift solutions, let him plot out all the mental computations — as contained in the seven steps above — for one mile of automobile driving on a crowded highway: and in addition to the computations will be the execution of the solutions. One cannot dismiss all this as “training pattern” for if a training pattern were all that was required to drive a car, then any automatic pilot could navigate any stretch of complex and crowded roadway; but automatic pilots cannot be made at this time which would perform the feat which any “moron” considers ordinary.
The structure which two billion years of biological engineering evolved can be understood, with Dianetics, in its functional aspects. No adequate technology exists today to explain the structural blueprint of the mind. Knowledge of structure can be expected to develop in any field only after a knowledge of function and purpose is acquired. But structure or no structure it remains that the mind operates with a precision which is fabulous, well above that of the machines it builds.
Thus the processes of rationality. Good reasoning is good computation. The better the computation, the better rationality; for rationality, after all, is a synonym for right answers.
There are, however, as delineated in the broad field of Dianetics, ways of reducing the computational accuracy of the whole mind. All these ways sum into the one generality of bad evaluation of data — disregarding, of course, the organic reductions which delete parts of mental equipment, occasioned by pathology or accidents or psychiatric surgery. Looking at the logic graph, it is easily seen that erroneous evaluations of data interfere seriously with rationality for they give improper weightings to factors used in mental equations. If the analytical mind cannot properly re-evaluate or check the evaluation or establish the