Advertising is mind control? This is probably the saddest/ funniest thing I have read in a really long time.
No accounting for taste, I suppose. Those stories ran in Unknown as well as some other good ones which I’ve never seen collected, including one, hilarious now, about a guy who is cursed with having to spend $100 a night in Manhattan on frivolous things.
I don’t dispute his ignorance of science. The only long thing I. remember from Astounding was Final Blackout which, though quite good and prescient, had no science content. I have a collection of Ole Doc Methusaleh stories which, though I read them ages ago, I remember as trying and failing to be standard sf and quite bad. They are most similar to Leinster’s Med Service stories but not a tenth as good.
Still, he never claimed to be anything other than a pulp writer (before Dianetics, at least.) I seem to recall Moskowitz saying that he had a special typewriter with a key for “the” to go faster, and that he always stopped writing in the middle of a sentence to make it easier to start again, which isn’t a bad idea actually.
But it puts Stan’s earlier quote in a new light: the main point is that Scientology uses advertising.
Martin Gardner tells this story, too, along with the one about Hubbard writing on endeless rolls of paper to eliminate the bother and interruption of changing sheets. I haven’t read anyone who actually saw these things, and I strongly suspect it’s Hubbard’s fabulation kicking in again. The man was an irrepressible teller of tall tales (or Liar, depending on how forgiving you are).
L. Sprague de Camp was supposed to have a special typewriter with diacritrical marks on it. I’m much more willing to believe him, and this might even be where hubbard got the idea from.
I’ve heard this claim before, and it usually refers the more manipulative type of advertizing. It involves misleading people in ways that aren’t illegal, like, say, running an ad with a lot of sexual imagery, thus implying that the project will help you in sex. In other words, basic advertising techniques and logical fallacies.
These people believe that these are the weaker forms, and that, in person, you can accomplish a lot more. What has been described in this thread sounds a lot like what they would call mind control. It’s just manipulating people to think things that are untrue, so they do what you want them to do.
That’s just what they want you to think!
I think the point of the story is that he was concerned with speed, not quality. Anyone can do this trick today with a function key, and since I don’t think it is very popular, I doubt it works well.
I have tried the stop in the middle of the sentence trick myself, and it is sometimes handy, but I seldom if ever get blocked.
The point of my story is that I think Hubbard made it up. I reads like Hubbard bragging about how fast he wrote – and the story as Gardner tells it isn’t limited to a “the” key, but included other common words, like “and” – and doesn’t refer to quality at all. I doubt if Hubbard would spread a tale that implied that his writing was of low quality. Since the story was spread in the early 1950s, it’s not a case of a computer “function” key, but requires that he would’ve had to have a typewriter fitted with special typefaces.
It’s amazing how many people whom you would never believe could have those shortcomings actually do. Many people are very adept at sensing these traits in others. You don’t have to be educated to have the ability to see it. I worked at a high end strip club for a few years and I was dumbfounded at the number of beautiful women who had unbelievible insecurities regarding thier looks combined with low self esteem that left them easy prey to pimps or just low life guys. Pseudo religion is no different. I too am intrigued about Scientology and its ability to seduce highly intelligent people. I’ve also heard Chick Corea is a Scientologist.
Here’s a review of recent literature that may point the curious to a better understanding of the topic.