This a simple example of one of the greatest problems people face! Making decisions… but not just making a decision but a decision based on “Relative Importance’.
In school and university information is drummed into us and not clearly evaluated in terms of its relative importance, one fact to another. As Ron says below …
“So education would take into effect – as opposed to schooling – the relative importance of the data being taught. That’s very, very important. The relative importance of the data being taught, by which one would say, the relative applicability of the data being taught – the applicability. Now, schooling as opposed to education has in actual fact no thought, no real thought of applicability, no such thought.”
LRH, “A Summary of Study”, Student Hat Course lecture of 4 August 64, from the study Tapes. page 27
A very valuable technology in Scientology is data evaluation. The Data Evaluators Course and the Data Series should be right up on the top of your to do “Wish List”.
Instinctively being able to spot “Out Points” and evaluate the relative importance of just every-day situations can be lifesaving. Logic is a great tool if applied; too often people make unevaluated decisions both in business and personal relationships… “He has such a nice smile I just know he is the one … !”
LOGIC
Therefore logic must have several conditions:
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- All relevant facts must be known.
- Events must be in actual sequence.
- Time must be properly noted.
- The data must be factual, which is to say true or valid.
- Relative importances amongst the data must be recognized by comparing the facts with what one is seeking to accomplish or solve.
NOT KNOW – One can always know something about anything. It is a wise man who, confronted with conflicting data, realizes that he knows at least one thing – that he doesn’t know; grasping that he can then take action to find out. If he evaluates the data he does find out against the five things above, he can clarify the situation. Then he can reach a logical conclusion.
HCO POLICY LETTER OF 11 MAY 1970 Data Series 2 LOGIC
Data evaluation is something that can be learned, and in an ideal world would be taught in the early days of schooling. What a difference that would make to the young men and women growing up in a confusing world!
Now, you can get so all-fired-good at evaluation that you can take an isolated indicator and know immediately where it fits into because you know it fits into the plan of things and because you know it is or isn’t part of an ideal scene. It’s better than the existing scene or it is too far from an ideal scene. You can pick up an indicator in this way – and it sometimes probably looks magical to you how I will suddenly pick up an isolated instance and look down the line and we find a roaring hot situation at the other end of it.
Now, that is done out of an economy of data. It is done because one has not the time to investigate or read all of the data which might exist on this particular subject being investigated. So one learns to do something that looks absolutely intuitive, and when you’re terrifically hot at this it is called “flair.”
Prediction from data is an essential part of evaluation. “This datum is an outpoint – it shouldn’t be, peculiar.” Now it will predict more data.
You have to be so hot that you will notice something is an outpoint – it’s a wild outpoint of some kind or another – except its magnitude, size of datum. How important is this datum?
The evaluation of importance is one of the more difficult things people do. They have a tendency to consider things a monotone importance. You have to train yourself out of that.
L Ron Hubbard Data Series 41RA EVALUATION: THE SITUATION (Extracted from an LRH talk to Staff Aides on 2 Jan. 72)
