If one has no familiarity with how a scene (area) ought to be, one cannot easily spot outpoints (illogical data) in it.
This is what also could be called an IDEAL scene or situation. If one doesn’t know the ideal scene or situation then one is not likely to observe non-ideal points in it.
Let us send a farmer to sea. In a mild blow, with yards and booms creaking and water hitting the hull, he is sure the ship is about to sink. He has no familiarity with how it should sound or look so he misses any real outpoints and may consider all pluspoints as outpoints.
Yet on a calm and pretty day he sees a freighter come within 500 feet of the side and go full astern and thinks everything is great.
An experienced officer may attempt madly to avoid collision and all the farmer would think was that the officer was being impolite! The farmer, lacking any familiarity with the sea and having no ideal as to what smooth running would be, would rarely see real outpoints unless he drowned. Yet an experienced sailor, familiar with the scene in all its changing faces sees an outpoint in all small illogicals.
On the other hand, the sailor on the farm would completely miss rust in the wheat and an open gate and see no outpoints in a farm that the farmer knew was about to go bust.The rule is
A PERSON MUST HAVE AN IDEAL SCENE WITH WHICH TO COMPARE THE EXISTING SCENE.
If a staff hasn’t got an idea of how a real org should run, then it misses obvious outpoints.
One sees examples of this when an experienced org man visiting the org tries to point out to a green staff (which has no ideal or familiarity) what is out. The green staff grudgingly fixes up what he says to do but lets go of it the moment he departs. Lacking familiarity and an ideal of a perfect org, the green staff just doesn’t see anything wrong or anything right either!
The consequences of this are themselves illogical. One sees an untrained executive shooting all the producers and letting the bad hats alone. His erroneous ideal would be a quiet org, let us say. So he shoots anyone who is noisy or demanding. He ignores statistics. He ignores the things he should watch merely because he has a faulty ideal and no familiarity of a proper scene.
When the scene is not familiar one has to look hard to become aware of things. You’ve noticed tourists doing this. Yet the old resident “sees” far more than they do while walking straight ahead down the road.
23It is easy to confuse the novel with the “important fact.” “It was a warm day for winter” is a useful fact only when it turns out that actually everything froze up on that day or it indicated some other outpoint.
Most errors in observation are made because one has no ideal for the scene or no familiarity with it.
However there are other error sources.
“Being reasonable” is the chief offender. People dub-in a missing piece of a sequence, for instance, instead of seeing that it IS missing. A false datum is imagined to exist because a sequence is wrong or has a missing step.
It is horrifying to behold how easily people buy dub-in. This is because an illogical sequence is uncomfortable. To relieve the discomfort they distort their own observation by not-ising the outpoint and concluding something else.
I recall once seeing a Tammany Hall group (a New York political bunch whose symbol is a tiger) stop before the tiger’s cage in a zoo. The cage was empty and they were much disappointed. I was there and said to them, “The tiger is out to lunch.” They told those on the outer edge of the group, “The tiger is out to lunch.” They all cheered up, accepted the empty cage and went very happily on their way. Not one said “Lunch?” Or “Who are you?” Or laughed at the joke. Even though it was sunset! I pitied the government of New York!
There are certain conditions necessary for accurate observation.
First is a means of PERCEPTION whether by remote communication by various comm lines or by direct looking, feeling, experiencing.
Second is an IDEAL of how the scene or area should be.
Third is FAMILIARITY with how such scenes are when things are going well or poorly.
Fourth is understanding PLUS POINTS or rightnesses when present.
Fifth is knowing OUTPOINTS (all 5 types) when they appear.
Sixth is rapid ability to ANALYZE DATA.
Seventh is the ability to ANALYZE the SITUATION.
Eighth is the willingness to INSPECT more closely the area of outness.
Then one has to have the knowledge and imagination necessary to HANDLE.
One could call the above the CYCLE OF OBSERVATION. If one calls HANDLE number 9 it would be the Cycle of Control.
If one is trained to conceive all variations of outpoints (illogics) and studies up to conceive an ideal and gains familiarity with the scene or type of area, his ability to observe and handle things would be considered almost supernatural.