D
Death to Smoochy
- Jan 1, 1970
- 0
Does anybody know of a web site that publishes the design parameters of the
Scientologists' e-meter?
Scientologists' e-meter?
Death said:Does anybody know of a web site that publishes the design parameters of the
Scientologists' e-meter?
Does anybody know of a web site that publishes the design parameters of the
Scientologists' e-meter?
It is same as the one for b-meter.
Google is your friend. e-meter schematic.
It's really a g-meter, measuring galvanic skin response.
The schematic is trivial. I want the ranges of the sensor and the
amplifier.
Does anybody else think $795 is too expensive for a two cans and a volt
meter?
BullshitWhat does the 'b' stand for?
Maybe that should be bs-meter.
Decades ago I moved into an apartment where the previous tenant had
apparently been a member of some substantial standing. A catalog
appeared in my mailbox. This wasn't sealed and I paged through it.
It provided a list of all the levels of classes for members to work
through and gave all the prices. $795 is a TINY fraction of the cost,
even two decades ago!
Maybe that should be bs-meter.
Death to Smoochy said:[email protected] (Don Taylor) wrote in [email protected]:
Scientologists have an unpleasant reputation for gouging their members
for their "services." Their offer of the option of working off your
debt directly leads to their reputation as cultists, because their
classes run up yur debt so fast that everybody gets in waay over their
heads.
So Scientology has become the domain of the wealthy only, in this case
Hollywood actors. If you can afford it, you just pay your bills and get
your "psychotherapy," but if you're poor, you're caught in their
spider's web.
The sad thing is that their auditing seems to work. Its basis is to
interview subjects hooked up to g-meters, while asking probing questions
about the subject's youth and relationships with important people. They
probe until they find all your sensitive spots and then start working at
them.
I don't know what sort of coaching they give, but they coach and probe
and coach and probe until you stop overreacting to having your buttons
pushed. Then you're pronounced "clear," which is just their proprietary
jargon for mentally healthy.
It seems to me that the normal mental health industry could learn a lot
from those guys. Real publications in psychology journals are long
overdue, and should have been done in the fifties.
But for an honest price of $800, they could hook their g-meter up to an
oscilloscope and record time data of the interview, like polygraph
examiners do. They seem to be falling behind the times.
Their usurious prices inhibit the technological advancement of their
machinery, by pricing most customers out of the market. It destroys
incentive to retain market share by improving the product.
express.com:
Jeez, I hope they're not listening.
I didn't want to say anything critical about them.
If I remember, I think the catalog did describe a lower cost option
where beginners practiced on each other, and the high priced option
where you paid for the attention and services of more experienced
people. But neither of those were free. However, that was a long
time ago and I have no knowledge what things might be like today.
And again, I not a critic. Just reporting now ancient information.
I think that in more conventional therapy lots of ideas seem to work
well enough that people keep doing them. Martin Seligman has an
interesting paragraph in "What You Can Change and What You Can't"
about how even if someone questions your methods in court it is
likely that you can find someone who will defend your practice.
I think I recall multiple new levels being named above "clear",
perhaps because enough had gotten there and needed new heights to
achieve.
We certainly need some substantial advance in the therapy business.
And pharmacuticals aren't yet the answer to all these problems.
This makes me think of the diet industry in this country, the
customers can't get out of it and just keep paying, in cash and
otherwise.
Subject line changed for obvious reasons
Death to Smoochy said:[email protected] (Don Taylor) wrote in
You may need to protect yourself with a clever alias.
Are you a therapist?
Nothing about oscilloscopes?
I don't follow.
Could we build a plausibly priced gadget that would reliably tell a vet
whether a pet was in pain or not, perhaps even where?
Could we build a cheap garage prototype microtesla magnetic field
generator, ala Dr. Michael Persinger, but which would have a much
greater degree of control over the shape and position of the field than
what he has thus far published?
Could we find a way to confirm or refute my hypothesis that most of
tinnitus is a failure in the automatic gain control system that is
built into the auditory system?
Could we find a way to modestly speed up or slow down nerve conduction
in the limbs only on one side of the body, that would be constant and
could be applied for a relatively long period of time and would not
cause any other changes?
I didn't want to say anything critical about them.
I think I recall multiple new levels being named above "clear", perhaps
because enough had gotten there and needed new heights to achieve.
But I'm not cricizing scientologists, I don't want to go there.
John Woodgate said:I read in sci.electronics.design that Don Taylor <[email protected]>
wrote (in <[email protected]>) about 'E-Meter?', on
Tue, 22 Mar 2005:
Current methods work reasonably well for the higher vertebrates. For
insects, Arachnidae and fish - good luck!
What's this about? Magnetic fields are (one of) my field. What shape and
position would you like? (;-)
Failure of the AGC manifests as 'recruitment', I think. But I agree that
the ear/brain system can be quite reasonably modelled as an array of
narrow-band amplifiers with AGC, and defective amplifiers can become
noisy in many ways.
I think you need a tricorder to do that.
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
There are two sides to every question, except
'What is a Moebius strip?'
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk
wrote (in said:Really. Limiting this to higher vertebrates, what are the "current
methods" that you are thinking of? Having observed this a bit, maybe
I've just missed something someone is using.
You look at a cat, the cat doesn't seem like it wants to tell you if
something is hurting or where it is hurting,
unless you start prodding with your fingers and look for a flinch,
or perhaps withdraw and go wash the blood off your fingers as one vet
did when trying this on Jack for the first time.
That seems a lot less than would be interesting to know.
Persinger is applying varying low level magnetic fields to the temporal
region and publishing a variety of results. But he admits in print
that the current techniques of a handful of reed relay coils strapped
to the head, a short iron rod slipped into the core of each and a few
d-to-a to drive these still means it is prodding in the dark. I don't
know how fine a "probe" could be constructed to try tickling particular
regions.
Being able to put a field of a few microtesla, varying in what looks to
me a lot like a pseudorandom pattern, in an area perhaps the size of a
pencil or perhaps the size of your finger, and move that around slowly
in the temporal region would probably be a great start.
Short term exposure to loud noise shows temporary tinnitus like
symptoms afterwards. Long term can result in some being labelled
tinnitus. But an accepted and testable mechanism for tinnitus, other
than very special unusual sub-cases, doesn't seem like it has been
found yet. If we could pretty clearly point to evidence of a
particular mechanism, even in one or a few subjects, maybe someone
could think of a cute method to counteract that. But without any
mechanism we are still groping.
Naaa... no need to invoke Star Trek to say something can't be done.
I have a few papers buried here somewhere, one where they were able to
fuse amphibian embryos at the 4 cell stage and end up with some normal
adult amphibians, where 1/2 the body was from one embryo and the other
from the other. Slip in a mutation for thinner or thicker myelin on
the nerves and that would be one way.
But there might be some better way than that, less open to questions
about other changes being induced at the same time. There are external
things we can do to a limb that can change nerve conduction rate in one
limb but they leave the door open for the same questions. Looking for
a really cute solution, that can be measured and used consistently.
Not trying to abuse test subjects, well other than perhaps myself, with
any of this.
I remember a guy who almost made a career of publishing little teaser
articles on his study of bat ultrasound production. Every paper gave a
tiny bit of information, with promises that the next paper would reveal
the real scoop. None of them seemed to really provide the answers.
But worse, in my opinion, the things he tried didn't seem to have that
elegant brilliant idea to narrow this down, at least until he thought
of having the bat breathe a bit of helium and then measure the
frequency. That seemed like the first really cute idea that he had,
and it didn't even carve up any more little guys in the process. And I
believe the helium paper was actually surprising because it didn't give
the change in frequency you might expect if this was a resonant cavity.
But it has been a while and I may have mixed up the details.