Many who begin to use “illogics”, who have not drilled on them so they can rattle them off, choose errors instead of out-points.

An error may show something else. It is nothing in itself.

An error obscures or alters a datum.

Example: Asking someone to spot the out-points in a Russian passenger vacation cruise liner in a foreign port, the answers were “The hammer and sickle are upside down.” “The courtesy flag is not flying right side up.” These aren’t out-points. The hammer and sickle weren’t backwards so saying it was an out-point. The actual out-point was passenger vacation cruise liner. There is no Russian idle class. It was too big to be giving cruises to winning tractor drivers. Russian and vacation cruise liner just don’t go together. Either the reports of Russian refusal to let Russians travel is false or it wasn’t a vacation cruise liner but it was. Hence it’s an out-point. An omitted datum. Two contrary data means one is false. Investigation disclosed it was Russian all right and a vacation cruise liner all right. BUT IT WAS CHARTERED TO AN ITALIAN COMPANY THAT SOLD CRUISES TO ITALIANS!

But this leads to a new out-point. How come the workers’ paradise is building huge ships for capitalist pleasures?

If anyone like a Martian was tracing down what’s out on this planet, this one out-point would lead to others.

A situation analysis would indicate an investigation of Russia where out-points abound and the Martian would know a lot of what’s wrong on the planet.

In doing so he would find a lot of capitalistic out-points which would lead him to investigate the so-called West and he would have the basic “cold war” of Communism versus Capitalism.

This would lead him into new data the two have in common (economics) and a data analysis of economics would discover the screwiest bunch on the planet, the International banker playing off both sides.

He would have analyzed the planet.

Given that he knew or could translate languages, it might take him a week, starting with a Russian Luxury Cruise Liner, to run down the planetary bad spot.

Now if he reversed his investigation and used PLUS-POINTS he would arrive with a situation analysis of what group would be strong enough to handle the down spot and by investigation possibly pinpoint what could tip over the bad spot.

If he just used “errors” he would get no place.

The ideal he would have to be working from would be a planet at peace where individuals could go about their affairs and be happy without threats of immediate arrest or destruction. It would be a very simple ideal or it would be based only on how planetary populations and cultures survive and that is already laid down in an earlier rule in this series.

Ask somebody to look at a table used for meals at the end of a meal and indicate any out-points. Usually he’ll point out a dirty plate or crumbs or an ashtray not emptied. They are not out-points. When people finish eating one expects dirty plates, crumbs and full ashtrays. If none of these things were present there might be several out-points to note. The end of a meal with table and plates all clean would be a reversed sequence. That would be an out-point. Evidentially the dinner has been omitted and that would be quite an out-point! Obviously no meal has been served so there’s a falsehood. So here are three out-points!

It is best to get what out-points are down pat. One does this first by thinking up examples and then by observing some body of data and then by looking at various scenes.

It will be found that out-points are really few unless the activity is very irrational.

Simple errors on the other hand can be found in legions in any scene.

Child’s games often include “What’s wrong with this picture?” Usually they are just errors like a road sign upside down. But if you had a brown rabbit in winter holding down a man with its front paws and a caption “Japanese parasols attack” you’d have some real out-points.

A lot of people would try to figure it out and supply new out-points (being reasonable). A learned professor could point out the symbolism. Some would laugh it off. Some would be annoyed by it. And the reason anybody would do anything about it is that it is sort of painful to confront the irrational so instead of seeing its is-ness of illogics an effort is made to make it logical or to throw it away.

The reason misunderstood words or typographical errors were not regarded as a barrier to study was that people converted them or not-ised them. In actual fact a word one does not understand made a missing datum. Reasonableness or non-confront enter in and one drops the book.

Errors do not count in plus-points either.

That a factory has a few errors is no real indicator. A factory has plus-points to the degree it attains its ideal and fulfills its purpose. That some of its machinery needs repair might not even be an out-point. If the general machinery of the place is good for enough years to easily work off its replacement value there is a plus-point.

People applying fixed or wrong ideals to a scene are only pointing up errors in their own ideals not those of the scene!

A reformer who had a strict Dutch mother looks at a primitive Indian settlement and sees children playing in mud and adults going around unclothed. He forces them to live cleanly and cuts off the sun by putting them in clothes — they lose their immunities required to live and die off. He missed the plus-point that these Indians had survived hundreds of years in this area that would kill a white man in a year!

Thus errors are usually a comparison to one’s personal ideals. Out-points compare to the ideal for that particular scene.