Some 2500 years before that, Confucius had made a similar observation when he said, “It's a great art to know how to sell wind.” But it's even a greater art to know how to recognize wind when you hear it or read it. 

And so as a public service, we undertook to provide you with just such a “device.” We call it InfoTest. As far as we know, it's the first ever analytical engine for verbal information on the Web. Which means that for the first time you have a tool available to you that can help you differentiate between valid information and garbage — i.e., between information that's meaningful, true (or, at least, credible), relevant, and useful from information that's not. 

Use it in good health. 

You see, scuba divers can be taught; surfers can only be entertained. And I am a teacher, not someone whose mission in life is to amuse others, although I'm told I can be very funny at times. 

But please know that this site will do more for you in the long run than will most “cool” (in quotation marks because I haven't the foggiest notion what that word means except in the context of temperature) sites. 

In this regard, my philosophy is much like President Reagan's when he made the observation that if you feed someone by giving him or her a fish to eat, you'll have to give that someone a fish every day. But if you teach that someone how to fish, then he or she will be able to feed him or herself from then on without help from anyone. 

I can teach you how to (1) correctly analyze and digest information, (2) think clearly and innovatively using that information, and (3) effectively communicate the results of that thinking to others. If you learn these skills — and you can, believe me, if you want to — not only will you be able to feed yourself every day, but you'll be able to put on a banquet at the same time and feed others as well until they, too, learn how to “fish.” 

You have my word. 

Now to continue.

Words, words, words
You can’t get away from words. It doesn’t matter what your age is. Or your gender. Or what you do for a living. Or anything else. You’re always dealing with words. Words you hear and words you read. 

In print. On TV and radio. On the Internet. 

At company meetings, family gatherings, cocktail parties, community get-togethers, campus classrooms and lecture halls, seminars, trade and professional association confabs, schmoozing sessions, religious services, and in your own mind when you talk to yourself. 

In news reports, advertisements, advisory service reports, company reports and memoranda, magazine articles, recipe books, manuals of all kinds, newsletters, research studies and reports, book reports, reviews, criticism, political rhetoric, position papers, and opinion polls. 

All expressed in words, words, words. 
 

You’re almost always processing verbal information
Which means that you’re almost always processing information — while awake, anyway — trying to give meaning to information being offered to you and then trying to evaluate that meaning in terms of truthfulness, relevancy, and usefulness.*

* Whenever I wanted to supplement things that I had just said — to make observations, to provide additional information that was relevant but not critical to the point being made, to offer applicable anecdotes or suitable parables, and so on, the kind of information that is usually put in footnotes — I put that material immediately after the subheading or paragraph to which it relates. Following is the first such item. 
 
From this point forward, whenever I use the word “information,” I mean verbal information — i.e., information in the form of words, the form in which most information comes to you, unless you're a computer programmer, mathematician, composer, or other user of a specialized, nonverbal language.

Also, there are cases in which there can’t be a determination of truthfulness or falsity, either because the event involved hasn’t as yet taken place, or, if it has, you have no way of knowing about it. In such cases whenever I use the word true in any form — say truthful or truthfulness, etc. — I mean the word credible itself, or in a related form, such as credibility.

Meaning: A reaction in the mind/brain mechanism to an external stimulus, the reaction usually being in the form of a thought or feeling. So by definition, information has meaning for you if hearing or reading it causes either a thought or feeling to arise within you. Conversely, if there is no thought or feeling in response to information that you hear or read, then that information is meaningless as far as you’re concerned. 

If you're going to be a superior processor of verbal information, it's critical that you understand the relationship between language and thinking.

To begin with, they're inseparable — it's not possible to think without using a language of some kind as a medium, any more than it's possible for a painter to express him- or herself without using paint or some such substance as a medium.

And second, there are people who try very hard to corrupt your thinking by corrupting the language in which the information they feed to you is couched.

In his book, 1984, George Orwell painted a picture of the US in which democracy had been replaced by dictatorship. Not the bully-boy type that we usually associate with the name Adolph Hitler. But with a much more insidious type — rule by guile, rather than by fist, by the perversion of language, rather than by the jack boot.

To accomplish this, Big Brother, America's ruler, developed what Orwell called Newspeak, such as “Slavery is Freedom!” and “War is Peace.” Big Brother did it because, as Orwell explains in the book: “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. . . . The purpose of Newspeak is to make all other modes of thought impossible.”

My purpose in creating InfoTest is to make all other modes of thought possible.

Credible: Worthy of trust, believable, plausible, probable. Please note that where credibility is concerned, there’s no certainty of truth; only its likelihood. 

Relevant: Bearing upon, or properly applying to, the case at hand; of a nature to afford evidence tending to prove or disprove a matter that’s in issue; pertinent. 

Useful: Serviceable for an end or object; helpful; capable of a beneficial use. 
 

The problem is . . .
However, when you can’t give meaning to information or you can’t evaluate it in terms of truthfulness, relevancy, and usefulness, you’re in the soup. Big time. 
 

Words, words, words, choices, choices, choices 
You see, you’re always making choices. From the time you wake up in the morning to the time you fall asleep at night. 

Some choices are made instinctively — swerving to avoid a pothole, for example. Some choices are made with very little thought — such as choosing to buy chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla. And some choices are made after much deliberation — whether or not to change jobs, make a specific investment, undergo suggested surgery, go into business for yourself, or go back to school, etc. 

And the choices you make determine the course of your life. Indeed, what your life is like today is the result of countless choices you’ve made in the past. And what your life will be like in the future will be the result of choices that you're making today and will make tomorrow. 

With all due respect to George Bernard Shaw, it’s not the way you speak that keeps you down, as Henry Higgins opined to Colonel Pickering in Pygmalion — people who speak ungrammatically, who mumble, who stutter or stammer can be just as successful in life as those who don't. It’s the choices you make, instead, that keep you from rising in life.

If your information is meaningful, true, relevant, and useful, you’re likely to make good choices. If it’s not, you’re likely to make bad choices. It’s as simple as that. 
 

Knowledge or belief?
Fundamentally, there are  two kinds of information — information flowing from your own experience and information given you by others, either orally or in writing. 

Information flowing from your own experience rarely gives you trouble when used as a basis for making choices. It’s knowledge. It’s something you know to be true.  And so choices made on the basis of knowledge usually turn out to be good ones in the long run. 

The greatest asset you have when making choices is your own experience. But many people are faked out by so-called experts. So when they’re told something that doesn’t square with the lessons they’ve learned in life, they tend to submerge their own judgment to the judgment of others and choose accordingly. Bad idea. Paraphrasing  John Locke: “Let us put the ideas of . . . [others]. . . just as we put things of the laboratory, to the test of experience.” And the only experience you can use in that procedure is your own.

It can also be irrelevant or useless.

Verbal maps
Because (1) understanding the difference between knowledge and word information is critical to understanding InfoTest, and (2) to help break the hypnotic effect that printed words tend to have,  I’m going to at this point introduce you to the concept of the verbal map, a term more or less synonymous with the term word information. 

Generically speaking, a map is a graphic representation, usually on a flat surface, of a specific area, with markings in the form of lines, patterns, colorings, and graphic symbols. Its purpose is generally to convey the salient features of an area to people at a distance from it. Or to those who have never seen it so that they may become familiar with that area. Or to those who intend to traverse the area involved and who would use the map to find their way. 

Analogously, a verbal map is constructed of words as markings rather than the usual lines, patterns, colorings, and graphic symbols that one finds on a conventional map. Its purpose is to convey the salient features of an event that took place in the real world to people at a distance from that event. So newspapers, TV and radio news reports, and news magazines are filled with verbal maps. 

For example, the statement offered on the evening news that “The rebels advanced on the president’s palace today in Guatemala” is a verbal map. 

A verbal map identifies for others what its maker claims to be the features of a specific event and the relationships among those features. The message is conveyed by way of the map; the words in the message are the markings on the map. 

OK, so far? 

Here are some things you should know about verbal maps if you’re going to develop a feel for the reliability or unreliability of word information: 

A verbal map is not the same thing as the event or incident involved. 

A competent, reliable, and honest verbal-map maker will identify on his map only those features of the event involved that he knows to be true. He never identifies on his map features that he wants you to believe are true. Which means that he must know those features from first-hand experience. A great rarity. 

When one makes a statement about an event, she is in effect offering her verbal map of that event. It may be an interesting map, a pretty map, a colorful map, a neatly drawn map. But unless it’s an accurate map in terms of the event’s features and the relationships among those features, it’s a useless map. 

Whenever one makes a new statement about an event, he’s in effect updating all previous verbal maps that he’s made relating to that event. 

Because a verbal map is of an event that took place in the real world, its accuracy as a map can be verified or it can be shown to be false. 

It’s not uncommon for a verbal map purportedly made of a specific event to be of another verbal map rather than of the event itself. 

There are far more experts on verbal maps than there are experts on events. 

Using verbal ghosts as the markings on a verbal map is like making a topographic map for which there is no topography. 

If each of two people makes a verbal map of the same event, and the maps differ, to determine which is the correct map, if, indeed, either one is, both maps must be checked against the event involved. If it is not possible to do so, for whatever reason, disputing which of the two verbal maps is the accurate one constitutes completely irrational behavior on both their parts. 

Those with street-smarts usually make more accurate verbal maps than do those with school-smarts. 

The greater the percentage of all words used by a verbal-map maker that are concrete words, the greater the likelihood is that he or she is trying to inform you of something and the lesser the likelihood is that he or she is trying to persuade you of something, or just plain BS you. 
 

1. I could pick up the dog, bring it to you, extract a couple of fleas from the dog’s hair, call your attention to them by pointing, and then gesture in such a way as to clearly relate the fleas to the dog.

2.  I could use a language of some kind to convey to you the idea that my dog has fleas.

When I use words to tell you that my dog has fleas, what I’m doing is stringing together symbols — the word “my” symbolizes possession, the word “dog” represents a specific species of carnivorous, domesticated mammal, the word “has” stands for possession, and the word “fleas” represents a kind of hard-bodied, wingless, bloodsucking insect. 

Words, then, are intended to act as symbols — that is, each is intended to stand for something other than itself. For a word per se is nothing more than a strange noise if you speak it or a funny-looking squiggle if you write it. 

However, there are many words that are not symbols, either because they’re not supposed to be — words such as “and,” “because,” “but,” “nevertheless,” “whereas” — or because they are verbal ghosts.
 

Referents 
Every symbol needs a referent if it’s to be a symbol, just as every shadow needs an object to cast it if it’s to be a shadow. A referent, therefore, is what it is that a given symbol is intended to represent. 

For example, the referent of the word “floor” is the horizontal surface we stand on when inside a building, of the word “ceiling” the horizontal surface overhead in a room, and of the word “window” the kind of opening we look through while in a building but don’t normally use as a way of leaving the building. 

But the word is not the thing it's intended to represent. Or put another way, a symbol is not its related referent. They are separate and distinct entities. Just like a shadow and the object casting the shadow are separate and distinct entities. 

This is critically important to any understanding of how language works. Here’s why. 

By agreement, the word “square” represents a  . But it could also stand for a   or a  or a  or a  or even a . All we have to do is agree that it does. 

But no matter what word-sound we agree represents something, say a , it will have no effect on that something. We can continually change the word for a ,  or substitute another word for it, and it will still remain a .  A  will change over time, to be sure, but not because we change the symbol for it. To believe otherwise is to believe in word magic — that is, to believe that it’s possible to change a referent by merely changing its related symbol. And a belief in word magic is no less a superstition than is the belief held by some aborigines that revealing someone’s name will result in the loss of his soul. 

H. L. Mencken: “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” Yeah! Like the people who insist that everyone use the words they deem to be proper (read politically correct).

World of no-words
The world of no-words is what is usually referred to as the real world, the world outside the mind. It’s a world composed of persons, plants, animals, and things that we can sense, some without the aid of magnifying instruments and some with. In the first category are cars, trains, mountains, fish, and so on. And in the second bacteria and blood cells, the moons of Jupiter, sound vibrations beyond 20,000 cycles per second, ultraviolet rays, and the heartbeat of a fetus. 

Here are five characteristics of the world of no-words: 

Every referent that exists in the world of no-words has tangible characteristics, meaning that it can be measured or quantified in some way. Which means that there are no thoughts or feelings in the world of no-words. 

The world of no-words is the world of the absolute. There’s nothing in it that’s relative, because relativity exists only in minds. So there’s nothing very good, nothing very bad, nothing very tall, nothing very short, nothing very beautiful, nothing very ugly, in short, nothing very anything in the world of no-words. Nor is there anything that’s troublesome or catastrophic or flawless or serene or exciting or dull.

The world of no-words is the world of the unrelated. Everything in it just is, and is what it is. Therefore, cause and effect relationships do not exist in the world of no-words. 

The world of no-words is the world of the “what is.” It’s not the world of the “what should be” or the “what could be” or the “what might be” or the “what ought to be.” So neither problems nor solutions exist in the world of no-words. Paraphrasing Shakespeare: Nothing is either a problem or not a problem but thinking makes it so. 

And the world of no-words is a public world, because everything in it is available for sensing by everyone. 

Words in the world of no-words 
Words in the world of no-words in and of themselves are not symbols but only noises when spoken or funny little markings when written. We must first make symbols out of them if they’re going to be anything other than noises. 

Here’s an analogy to help you understand this. 

Pieces of colored cloth sewn together in the world of no-words are nothing more than pieces of colored cloth sewn together. But if we agree that a specific combination of pieces of colored cloth sewn together stands for something — a country, a city, an airline, a university — then that combination of pieces of colored cloth sewn together becomes a flag. But without that agreement, it would remain just pieces of colored cloth sewn together. So there are no flags in the world of no-words, only pieces of colored cloth sewn together.

Analogously, unless we agree that certain noises constitute words, and unless we agree to what each of those words stands for, they remain nothing but noises in the world of no-words.
 

Outer-world words
From here on, I’m going to call words whose referents exist in the world of no-words “outer-world words.” I may also refer to them from time to time as “concrete words.” 
 

Worlds of words
Worlds of words are imaginary worlds, purely mental, populated only by thoughts and feelings generated by words.

I’m not sure that feelings take place in the mind, but let’s assume for the purpose of this treatise that they do.

However, there are characteristics common to all such worlds: 

Referents that exist in worlds of words — e.g., referents for words such as love, hate, beauty, courage, ethics, and the like — can’t be felt, seen, touched, tasted, or smelled. They are intangible. Therefore, they can’t be measured or quantified.

Worlds of words are worlds of the relative. There’s nothing in them that’s absolute. And so they are the realm of such things as cause and effect relationships, problems and solutions, inferences, judgments, opinions, and hypotheses. 

Because no one can read another person’s mind, worlds of words are all private. Therefore, nothing that exists in anyone’s mind can be known to another, until the former draws a picture of it, explains it, describes it, makes a model of it, or does some such thing. And even then, it can't be completely known. Or known in every detail. 

Because there can be no physical contact between the elements that comprise any world of words and those that comprise the world of no-words, the system by which everything in worlds of words operates is a belief system physically closed to the world of no-words. Consequently, nothing that exists in the real world can be affected by anyone’s beliefs, unless those beliefs are followed by action. So a conversation, lecture, pep talk, military briefing, campaign speech, sermon, or any other kind of talk, unless directly responsible for subsequent action identifiable in the world of no-words, remains what it essentially was to begin with — just a lot of noise.

Inner-world words
From here on, I’m going to call words whose referents exist in worlds of words “inner-world words.” I may also refer to them from time to time as “abstract words.” 
 

Words and information
We’re now going to focus on outer- and inner-world words and the unique role each plays in forming information. 
 

Outer-world wordsrevisited
Here are seven unique characteristics of outer-world words: 

You can convey the intended meaning of an outer-world word to others by pointing to its referent. And that would include the use of magnifiers or amplifiers — a microscope, for example — and electronic measuring devices, such as an oscilloscope.

There are times and situations when there is no referent available for you to point to. On such occasions, try a description using concrete words. If that doesn’t do the job, try an operational explanation of how the relevant referent works. For example, an operational explanation of “weight” would be a description of exactly how one goes about weighing something. Or to convey to another what you mean by the word “friction,” you might say that when an object is placed on an inclined plane, friction is what we call the force that keeps that object from sliding down the slope. 

Outer-world words are used to identify a person, plant, animal, or thing rather than characterize it. For example, the word “cloud.” Here something has been identified but not characterized. And so a cloud is just a cloud. It’s not a billowy cloud or a lacy cloud or a threatening cloud. It’s just a cloud. 

Any concept that can be couched in outer-world words is capable of being tested, assuming that the level of technology prevailing at the time is up to the task. 

Outer-world words tend to excite picture-thoughts in the mind, but they may also excite feeling- or word-thoughts. 

An outer-world word representing a class of things can be changed into an inner-world word standing for something imaginary merely by placing the word “the” before it. So “hungry,” an outer-world word symbolizing an individual’s craving for food that can be physiologically felt, becomes “the hungry,” an imagined class of people whose characteristics with respect to hunger are impossible to identify, or to express in words or numbers, making individual inclusion or exclusion purely subjective. Similarly, “homeless” becomes “the homeless.” 

The referent of an outer-world word is generally capable of being visualized. 

The existence of an outer-world word referent is independent of the word used to represent it. The referent would exist even if there were no word for it. And it would continue to exist even if all verbal language were to disappear. 

You can attempt to identify for others what it is that you mean by an inner-world word. But you can only do so by using other inner-world words, thereby setting up an endless loop within your head from which that identification can never escape. And so those others can never know exactly what you mean by that word.

Inner-world words are used to characterize a person, plant, animal, or thing rather than identify it. For example, “racist.” Here nothing has been identified. But someone has been characterized by someone else as a person who believes that race determines character or capacity to the exclusion of all other factors and that one race is superior (or inferior) to others. Therefore, inner-world words are subjective, saying something about the speaker’s psychological needs and nothing about the person, plant, animal, or thing that he intends that word to represent. 

Inner-world words are used to stand for things that are imagined. Therefore, concepts couched in inner-world words are incapable of being tested. For example, the things that “sanity,” “morality,” “greed,” “courage,” and “fairness” symbolize have no color, weight, shape, surface texture, length, width, or depth. Which means that they’re intangible, or imagined. Which further means that they’re not testable. 

Whatever it is that an inner-world word is intended to represent can't be true or false. It can only be believed or not believed. So the statement that Charlie Smith is courageous can’t be either true or false. It can only be believed or not believed. 
 

Whether something told to someone else is believable or not depends upon whether or not it seems to (“seems to” because he can never know for sure) reflect his experience. For only what happens to him in the world of no-words is true. And to make a judgment whether or not what is being imparted to him reflects his experience — i.e., is likely to occur or have occurred, based upon that experience — he must, figuratively speaking, first remove the verbal scales from his eyes.

Bronislav Molinowski said it more eloquently than that: “. . . all linguistic processes derive their power only from real processes taking place in man’s relations to his surroundings.” Hernando de Soto also said it more eloquently than that: “Political ideologies . . . cannot survive for long if they clash continually and fundamentally with lived experience.”

Also, please keep in mind that there are cases in which there can’t be a determination of truthfulness or falsity, either because the event involved hasn’t as yet taken place, or, if it has, you have no way of knowing about it. In such cases whenever I use the word true in any form — say truthful or truthfulness, etc. — I mean the word credibleitself,orin a related form, such as credibility.

A concept couched in inner-world words may or may not be picturable, depending upon what it is that’s being conceptualized. If it’s an object, it generally can be pictured — a unicorn, a leprechaun, or a winged horse. However, if the subject is an intangible, or imagined, characteristic — e.g., beauty, courage, morality — it cannot. 

You cannot convey to another what you mean by the words sanity, womanizing,  alcohol abuse, morality, greed, sexual abuse, generosity, fear, courage, sexual harassment, fairness, or unfairness by pointing or by using “equivalent” words. But you may be able to do so by using a description in terms of tangible, or concrete, characteristics. Or by giving an operational explanation of the term involved — i.e., by stipulating what one must do (not say or think, but do) to be a womanizer, a sexual abuser, moral, or any of the rest. 

Inner-world words tend to excite feeling-thoughts in the mind. But they may also excite picture- or word-thoughts. 

The referent of an inner-world word is generally incapable of being visualized. (But please see the item above beginning with “A concept . . . .”) 

The seeming existence of that which is intended to be represented by an inner-world word is totally dependent upon the existence of that word; it would not seem to exist were there no such word. And it would “disappear” if all verbal language were to disappear. Therefore, eliminate language and what are supposed to be symbolized by the words sanity, insanity, morality, immorality, greed, generosity, fear, courage, fairness, unfairness, and the like all “disappear,” as electric light does when the power is cut off. Consequently, anything that’s intended to be represented by an inner-world word is purely a creation of language; it has no reality of its own.

You can do something with or to that which an outer-world word is intended to represent. But you can only say something about that which an inner-world word is intended to stand for. 

Only outer-world words permit you to convey to others what’s on your mind; inner-world words don’t. But such conveyance is relative only, because no two people can identify exactly the same referent for a given word except by pointing. Nor can anyone identify exactly the same referent for the same word twice. Not even by pointing, given that no one and no thing is ever exactly the same twice. 

You can never be sure that you’ve succeeded in conveying what’s on your mind to another, even though you use only outer-world words. For example, there can be communication — albeit not much — in a conversation between someone from Harlem and someone from Beverly Hills, between an urbanite and a Wyoming rancher, and between a New Yorker and a Muscovite when they talk about cars, houses, clothing, computers, TV sets, and food. But it’s a certainty that there’s no communication whenever each uses inner-world words. 
 

Allen Upward, author of The New Word, wrote a number of friends, asking each what the word “idealism” meant as used in the terms of the Nobel Prize award: “. . . the most distinguished work of an idealistic tendency.” The replies included “fanatical,” “altruistic,” “not practical,” “exact,” “poetical,” “intangible,” “sentimental,” “true,” “what cannot be proved,” “opposite of materialism,” and “something to do with imaginative powers.”

And some years ago, Jim Lehrer asked fifteen participants at a Democratic Party convention to define the word Liberal. He got back fifteen different definitions. The same result undoubtedly would have been obtained at a Republican Party convention with the word Conservative.

The more outer-world words you use, the more you’re talking to others. And conversely, the more inner-world words you use, the more you’re talking to yourself. 

Nouns and verbs are primarily intended to represent things that exist in the outer world, but may represent things that exist only in inner worlds. On the other hand, adjectives and adverbs can only represent things that exist in inner worlds. For example, “mountain” and “leprechaun” are nouns. The former represents things that exist in the outer world, while the latter symbolizes things that exist only in inner worlds. Similarly with “running” and “dreaming.” In contrast, “beautiful” and “gallantly,” an adjective and adverb respectively, can stand for things that exist only in the mind. 

It is relatively easy to identify someone in a crowd by using outer-world words to describe that person — he is male, has a beard, is 6’- 4” tall, weighs 240 lbs, has blue eyes and brown hair, has a mole on his left cheek, is wearing a navy blue double-breasted suit, has on a paisley tie, etc. But it’s not possible to identify someone in a crowd if the words are inner-world words. For example, he is greedy, has fine features, can be nervous at times, is friendly towards others, is afraid of the dark, has a deep-rooted inferiority complex, loves animals, is gentle, etc. 

Inner-world words can stand for specific, proper-named imaginary things — e.g., Santa Claus. Or for a class of imaginary things — e.g., fairies, ghosts, neuroses, and standard deviations. 

The subject-predicate sentence
The tendency to believe that a symbol is also its referent, or that the word is the thing it's intended to stand for, can be attributed to the peculiar way English-speaking people string words together. It’s called the subject-predicate sentence, which is a statement that says something about something  or someone.

For example: 

“Carter (or Reagan) is incompetent.” 

There are three kinds of subject-predicate statements:

The predicate is an adjective: “Carter (or Reagan) is incompetent.”

The predicate is a noun: “Charley Smith is a fireman.” 

The predicate is a noun modified by an adjective: “Mary Jones is a proficient secretary.”

Now take the statement: “Carter (or Reagan) is incompetent.” The implication here is (1) that there is such a thing as incompetence and (2) that it is something that belongs to Carter (or Reagan).

But so-called intangible characteristics— of which competency is one — are a joint product of a mind’s symbolic-self (One's symbolic-self is the way he sees him- or herself. For example, as kind, generous, and courteous. Or mean, impatient, and hostile.) and of a process wherein that mind projects an intangible  characteristic of some kind (incompetence, in this case)  into something outside itself, all the while believing that it is doing so with complete objectivity.

Consequently, the characteristic of incompetency doesn’t belong to Carter (or Reagan); it was projected into Carter (or Reagan) by the maker of the statement for reasons having nothing to do with Carter (or Reagan). 

This is not to say that the maker of the statement is incompetent in any respect. What it does say is that he or she has to think that Carter (or Reagan) is incompetent for his or her symbolic-self to be satisfied.

“Mary Jones is a proficient secretary” is a statement that makes no sense whatever as far as Mary Jones is concerned — “secretary” is not a characteristic of Mary Jones, and her “proficiency” is not something that belongs to her, either; it was projected into her by the one who said that she’s proficient. 

By the way, each of the foregoing illustrative statements could be reworded  to remove some of its obscurity, but it would not be possible to remove all of it. 

“In my opinion (or judgment), Carter (or Reagan) is incompetent.” 

“Charley Smith is currently employed as a fireman.” 

“Mary Smith is currently employed as a secretary, and in my opinion (or judgment), she is a proficient one.” 

Denotative v. connotative
A word has two meanings in any given context — the meaning intended by the sender and the meaning assigned by the receiver. Both intended and assigned meanings can be either denotative or connotative. 

The denotative meaning of a word is its “actual” meaning, devoid of emotion. The same word’s connotative meaning is what the word suggests emotionally. 

Of the two, the connotative is usually the more determinative of the action that will be taken in response. An excellent example of this is Marc Antony’s speech in the marketplace to some of Rome’s citizenry right after Caesar was assassinated. In that speech, Antony inflames the populace to riot and insurrection by putting an emotional spin on just about everything he says. Had he appealed to their intellect instead, it’s highly likely that the outcome would have been just the opposite — the crowd would probably have dispersed peaceably. 

Verbal ghosts
Of all the semantic principles that you will have to master if you're going to be able to correctly decide whether or not information being offered you is meaningful, true, relevant, or useful, none is more important than being able to quickly identify verbal ghosts. 

Let me start from scratch and build the concept of the verbal ghost until it becomes compellingly clear to you. I’ll do that by first analyzing for you several nonverbal ghosts. After that, what constitutes a verbal ghost will then become apparent. 

Take the outer-world word “automobile.” When I use it in a sentence, you get a picture-thought of some kind, because the word “automobile” has a direct referent, which means that it exists in the real world. It may be a picture of your automobile, of one you had recently seen in a magazine, of one on the street. But whichever one it is, you will get a picture of the kind of object we call an automobile. And if called upon to do so, you’ll be able to describe that object (referent) in concrete terms — it has so many doors, so many wheels, is painted such and such a color, is approximately so many feet long, and so on. 

Now let’s take the inner-world word “courageous.” When I use it in a sentence while talking to you, you’ll also get a picture-thought of some kind because it too has a referent. But this referent is an indirect one, because it exists in your mind, rather than in the real world. It may be a picture of a soldier charging a machine gun nest. Or of someone running into a burning house to rescue a child. Or someone standing up to a bully much larger than she. In any case, if someone were to ask you what you mean by the word “courageous,” you could give him an operational explanation of its referent by saying, “Someone who charges a machine gun nest is courageous.” Or, “Someone who runs into a burning house to rescue a child is courageous.” Or, “Someone who stands up to a bully much larger than she is courageous.” 

In both cases — outer- and inner-world words — the referents involved can be identified only if they are picturable, either by being described in concrete terms or in terms of what someone does in the real world. 

Now the verbal ghost. 

Take the word “California.” It’s neither an outer-world word nor an inner-world word. It has no referent. It can’t be pictured. You can’t point to “California,” describe “California” in concrete terms, or give an operational explanation of “California” in terms of what “it” would have to do to be “California.” You could show someone a map of “it.” But all you’d be doing is showing her a drawing with markings on it. But you would not be showing her “California.” Fly over “California” and you would not see “it.” Nor would you see its “boundary” lines, which are imaginary. You would see houses and roads and trees and hills and cars and people and lakes and so on. But you would not see “California.” 

You see, “California” is a legal abstraction. Therefore, you can no more see “California” than you can see “ownership” or a “felony” or a “divorce” or a “corporation.” Take away language and “California” ceases to “exist.” Remove its imaginary boundary lines and the same thing would happen. Consequently, “California” is not real as are lakes, people, houses, desks, and computers. Nor is it real as are thoughts and feelings to those who experience them. If “California” were real, it would have been real five hundred years ago, just as the Grand Canyon was real five hundred years ago. But “California” wasn’t real five hundred years ago. And it can’t be now. Therefore, the word “California” is a verbal ghost, tantamount to a shadow without an object to cast it. 

Here are a few other common verbal ghosts in circulation: “right-wing conservative,” “left-wing liberal,” “racism,” “corporate America,” “affirmative action,” “the medical community,” “the politics of meaning,”  “multiculturalism,” “Big Business,” “Labor,” “IBM,” “neo-Nazi,” “the economy,” “Chicago,” “Germany,” the “US Postal Service,” “family values,” “inflation,” and the “Congress.”

Here are a couple of them. 

The true meaning of a term is to be found by observing what a man does with it, not what he says about it.

If a question has meaning, it must be possible to find an operation by which an answer may be given to it . . . Many of the questions asked about social and philosophical subjects will be found to be meaningless when examined from the point of view of operations.

For example, the question “What's a sexist?” put to someone will most likely bring a string of words in response that will tell you nothing about what that person means by the word “sexist.” However, the question “How does ‘sexism’ work?” or “What does one have to do to be ‘sexist’?”— do, not think, mind you, because no one can read anyone else’s mind, and not say, because what one says frequently has little to do with what he really believes to be the case — might bring the questioner a clearer answer. 

The same for “expert,” “fascist,” “left-wing liberal,” “right-wing conservative,” “redneck,” “racist,” “greedy,” “shyster (or Wall Street) lawyer,” and an exceedingly large host of others. 

Now if you don’t believe that none these words has a referent, direct or indirect, and, therefore, that none of them is a verbal ghost, just ask yourself if you can picture or feel or point to or give a concrete description of or define operationally a referent, direct or indirect, for any one of them. You can’t. 

And to compound the problem of the verbal ghost, there are many people who think that some verbal ghosts are even capable of speaking and feeling. For example, “The White House (a verbal ghost when used to symbolize anything other than the building itself) reported today     that . . . ,” “The Pentagon (also a verbal ghost when used to symbolize anything other than the building itself) said this morning that . . . ,” “The State Department warned this afternoon that . . . ,” and “The black community was offended today when . . . .” 

The only referent that “The White House” could have is the building in which our presidents reside, the only one “The Pentagon” could have is that huge structure occupied by the folks in the Department of Defense (another verbal ghost), there is no referent for “The State Department,” and there is no referent for “the black community.” 

Allen Ginsberg once made the observation that whoever controls the language, the images, controls the race. I consider it to be one of the more profound insights ever made. At least of all the ones of which I’m aware. Just think, the overwhelming proportion of the world’s population is continuously being fed information by public employees (and I include all politicians, in office, out of office, or running for office) and by those who report the news (in whatever form) that has no more to do with the real world than does a dream. And yet the recipients of this nonsense automatically respond with a silent “Yeah! Yeah!” Now that’s control!

A label is a word (generally a noun) or a phrase (generally a noun modified by an adjective) that purports to tell you everything you need to know about a person or a thing, but which really tells you virtually nothing about that person or thing. But it can tell you a great deal about the person using the label. Talk shows, on radio and on TV, abound with labels, some of which we’ve already noted — “left-wing liberal,” “right-wing conservative,” “shyster (or Wall Street) lawyer.” But there are many others — “racist,” “nerd,” “superstar,” “elitist,” and “megamodel,” to identify just a few. 

A personified abstraction is a verbal ghost whose (nonexistent) referent is treated as though it had all the characteristics of flesh and blood creatures, of living, breathing human beings. Business firms, for example. And so we frequently hear assertions made about “greedy oil companies,” “experienced corporations,” and “ambitious management.” 

Political cartoons abound with personified abstractions. For example, “Nation,” “Flag,” “Consumer,” “Homeless,” “Government,” “Bureaucracy,” “Red Tape,” “Forefathers,” “Law,” “Progress,” “Confidence,” “Taxpayer,” “Liberty,” “ Masses,” “Crime,” “Poor,” “Rich,” “Society,” “Labor,” and “Big Business,” all depicted in (usually) unflattering human form and in (usually) bizarre-looking attire. 

With “real” words — i.e., words whose referents exist in the real world, such as “fish,” “plants,” “people,” “cars,” and “mountains” — take away language and the referents continue to exist. With verbal ghosts — “IBM,” “Congress,” “Big Business,” “California,” “Mens Sana Foundation” — take away language, and nothing is left. 

We’re the only beings on the planet who produce verbal ghosts in our head and then project them out into the real world, all the while being completely unaware that that’s what we’re doing. In that respect, we’re very much like the kitten who jabs and pokes at its image in a mirror, totally unaware that it’s jousting with a creature of its own making. 

It astonishes me, and it will you as well with a little thought, that when one implies the existence “out there” of gremlins, leprechauns, fairies, pink elephants or mice, winged horses, centaurs, unicorns, and so on, none of which exists in the real world, he or she is considered to be loony. Yet when people imply the existence “out there” of a “society,” an “economy,” “racist nations,” “multiculturalism,” “corporate conspiracies,” a “national malaise,” the “business community,” and so on, none of which exists in the real world either, they’re considered to be deep, philosophical, learned, profound, abstruse, scholarly. Amazing!

I was once interviewed by Chris Hunter, editor of the Pacifica Tribune. During the interview he asked me if I were a linguist. My response was that if he told me what he meant by “linguist,” I would be able to answer his question. He laughed and went on to the next question. Now here’s how that part of the interview appeared in the paper:
 

“It takes a little time to pick up on Shapiro’s direction, since whenever you question him about any other theories or academic studies on linguistics, he says he doesn’t understand what you mean. Of course, since he’s a proud member of Mensa, the “smart” club, you know he’s pulling your leg.”

Now I wasn’t pulling his leg; I really don’t understand what anyone means when he uses the word “linguistics” or “neuro-linguistics.” And if you think I’m pulling your collective legs, let me tell you what Webster’s says about linguistics: (it’s) “the study of human speech, including the units, nature, structure, and modification of language. Compare PHILOLOGY.”  And here’s what Webster’s says about “philology”: (it’s) “the study of human speech, especially as the vehicle of literature and as a field of study that sheds light on cultural history.”

As the writer of fillers for the New Yorker might say, “How’s that again?”

By the way, here are some tidbits taken from an article that appeared in the July 15, 1998, edition of the Wall Street Journal —“institutionalized segregation,” “victimology marginalizes this datum,” “adult manifestation of black children's sense of the nerd as a traitor,“ and “victimology and separatism.” The writer of these verbal ghosts? What else, a professor of linguistics at Cal Berkeley.
 
 


Application

If the information to be analyzed includes statistics, which is not a verbal language, and, therefore, beyond the scope of InfoTest, I suggest you consult Chapter 10 — The Statistics Con — in You Must Not Let Them Con You! There's Too Much at Stake, written by Dr. Irving David Shapiro and published by the Mens Sana Foundation, ISBN 0-9642755-0-3. Click here for information on how to receive a copy on a 30-day, risk-free, money-back, satisfaction-guaranteed basis.

For example, someone shouts to you, “Hey, Charley, you didn’t set the brakes on you car! It’s rolling down the driveway!” That information clearly has meaning for you — it’s going to generate both a picture and a feeling in your mind/brain mechanism. 

But how about, “Elvis Pressley was a legend in his own time.” No picture. No feeling. And so no meaning. 

If you watch carefully, you’ll be astonished at how much is said to you or how much you read that just doesn’t stimulate either a thought or a feeling. So don’t be deceived into believing that just because someone strings perfectly good English words together that he or she has said something meaningful. In truth, you’re bombarded with thousands of messages every day, and much of it is just plain crap. They are like jigsaw puzzles that are blank on both sides — the words fit together perfectly, but they say nothing. 

For example, here’s a pull quote from an article in the July 6, 1998, edition of the San Francisco Chronicle: 

“Unfortunately, ethnic studies has become the last bastion of university scholarship that allows students the space and gives us the tools to study our communities and deal with our particular social, political and economic problems.” 

And then there's something I call technobabble, which is the stringing together of technical words with effect rather than meaning being the motive. It's as though one drops technical terms, or jargon, into a cocktail shaker, shakes the vessel vigorously, and then pours out sentences. Everyone then nods, but no one knows what was said. Not even the speaker. 

As Shakespeare might have put it: 

Verbal turgidity is but a walking shadow, 
A poor player 
That struts and frets its allotted time on the air, 
And then is heard no more; it is a tale 
Told by an illusion, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing.

There are eleven kinds of assertions: a fact, an agreement, an inference, an insight, a judgment, a phantom assertion, a pass-through, an opinion, gossip, an asininity, and a mind reading. Of these, only the fact is always true. The others may or may not be true (or even credible). 

I'll define each, give you an illustration, and then suggest to you whether and under what circumstances that kind of assertion is likely to be true. 

There are cases in which there can’t be a determination of truthfulness or falsity, either because the event involved hasn’t as yet taken place, or, if it has, you have no way of knowing about it. In such cases whenever I use the word true in any form — say truthful or truthfulness — I mean the word credible itself, or in a related form, such as credibility.

“If you fall out of an airplane over an open field, you’ll hit the ground.” 

An agreement purports to express the truth of something simply because people are of one mind on the subject. To illustrate: 

“A touchdown in football is worth 6 points.” 

But be very careful with agreements. There was a time, not that long ago, relatively speaking, when it was agreed that the sun revolved around the earth.

Abraham Lincoln once asked several people how many legs a horse would have if he were to call its tail a leg. They all agreed that the horse would have five legs. Lincoln replied that a tail is a tail even when one calls it a leg and, therefore, the horse would still have only four legs.

Inferences made on the basis of careful observation and careful reasoning are likely to be true. However, if you have no way of checking up on premises and quality of reasoning, or if the inference doesn't square with your experience, then I suggest you discard it. 

But as with agreements, you must take great care with inferences as well. For example, one of the better known inferences is that the universe began with a “Big Bang.” While this assertion is a good inference, it’s highly unlikely to be true given the old adage that you can’t pull something out of an empty bag. The obvious question in the face of such an inference is: What existed before the Big Bang?

The source of an insight is unknown. Some have identified the subconscious mind as that source. Some the still, small voice of God. 

Insights tend to be true. But frequently that truth is not immediately evident — the passage of time is frequently  necessary before the truthfulness of the insight becomes apparent. 

It is wise, then, to tentatively accept information offered to you in the form of someone's insight as true, but to delay making choices based on that insight until it has been confirmed by ensuing events. 

A judgment purports to express the truth of something based upon observation and experience. To illustrate: 

“Look at those clouds. It’s going to rain soon.” 

But please always keep in mind that no one is infallible.

“Inflation is an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods resulting in a sub-  stantial and continuing rise in the general price level.” 

“The latest Hinkum-Dinkum poll shows that 42.6% of   Americans have lustful thoughts from time to time. The   poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points.”

A pass-through purports to express the truth of something based upon nothing more than its repeated appearance in print or in some form of electronic media. It may also show up in a specific discipline or field of study as a “fact.” For example: 

“Columbus discovered America in 1492.” 

An opinion purports to express the truth of something based upon nothing more than personal like or dislike, comfort or discomfort. As an example: 

“Jim Brown was the greatest running back ever.” 

Making choices on the basis of your own opinion is bad enough. But making choices based upon someone else’s opinion is lunacy. And it’s astonishing how many people do just that. Usually by allowing themselves to be pressured into adhering to tradition, or by caving in to popular opinion, or even by allowing others to pressure them into acting in accordance with the dictates of so-called cultural imperatives. What never seems to get through to these people is that doing so is a form of voluntary slavery. As Nietzsche put it: “Whatever cannot obey itself, is commanded. Such is the nature of living things.”

Gossip purports to express the truth of something based upon nothing more than idle chatter or groundless rumor. For example: 

“Charlie Smith is cheating on his wife.” 

“Mayor Tristan Oglehofer is taking bribes.”

I was struck during the recent impeachment proceedings by how much of what was aired on TV news programs was nothing more than political gossip masquerading in the guise of expertise, insider information, and political shrewdness. Nonetheless, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck . . . .

An asininity is a statement, generally statistical, but it needn’t be, that’s completely inoperational, meaning that there isn’t a single reasonable or logical procedure or operation that could allow for the reaching of such a conclusion or for the testing of it. 

There are countless asininities out there. Here are just two of them, the first statistical, the second not: 

“There were 12% more blackbirds in California this year than the year before” 

“Secondhand smoke kills.” 

Needless to say, information in the form of an asininity should be immediately discarded. 

A mind reading is a statement whose truthfulness depends completely upon the maker of that statement being a mind reader. For example: 

“When Charlie married Mary, he had no intention of honoring the vows he took.” 

“There’s no question that Senator McFoofle hasn’t the slightest interest in serving his constituents.”

First-hand or nth-hand?
Assertions can be first-hand or nth-hand. A first-hand assertion is one that originated with the speaker. In contrast, an nth-hand assertion is one that the speaker heard or read somewhere. 
 

The bottom line
In summation, facts should be accepted as true, whether first-hand or nth-hand; agreements, inferences, and judgments should be considered potentially true if first-hand and potentially untrue if nth-hand; an insight should be tentatively accepted as true, but decisions made on the basis of that insight should be delayed until it has been confirmed; pass-throughs should not be used as the basis for decision-making unless they can be and are confirmed by personal observation; and opinions and asininities should be allowed to go in one ear only to be escorted directly, emphatically, and immediately out the other, first-hand or nth-hand. 
 

3. Is the information descriptive or evaluative?
Information can be classified as descriptive or evaluative. 

For example, “This room is 30' long x 20' wide by 8' high” is descriptive information, while “This is a handsome, useful room” is evaluative. 

Most information being offered you is presumably about things existing in the real world. But that’s not the case. The overwhelming proportion of that information is about people’s perceptions of the real world instead. Therefore, it's evaluative rather than descriptive. Which means that it's likely to be true only for the people doing the perceiving. Which further means that it should never be used as a basis for making choices by anyone else. 
 

4. Is the information couched in concrete words? 
A concrete word is a word that symbolizes something that exists in the real world, while an abstract word is one that symbolizes something that’s imagined. 

If information is couched in concrete terms, test it before using it as the basis for decision-making. If it's in abstract terms, ask that it be restated in concrete terms, or ask for concrete examples. If the speaker fails to do either, forget it; the information is useless for all practical purposes. 
 

5. In the information couched in short, familiar words?
Generally, if information is couched in short, familiar words, then it's likely that the one feeding you that information is trying to inform you of something. But on the other hand, if he or she uses long, unfamiliar words, it's just as likely that he or she is trying to deceive, manipulate, or impress you instead. 

Compare the following two chunks of information and decide which one was written to inform you of something and which by someone bent on deceiving, manipulating, or impressing you. 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 
2. Mix 4 cups of finely diced apples with 3/4 of a cup of granulated sugar, 1/4 of a teaspoon of salt, 1/2 of a teaspoon of ground cloves, 1/4 of a teaspoon of grated lemon rind, 1/2 of a cup of orange juice, and 3 tablespoons of medium dry sherry. Set aside. 
3. Combine 1/4 cup of melted butter with 3 cups of soft, fresh bread crumbs, mixing well . . . . 
                         — Part of a recipe

In his brilliantly provocative rethinking of the meaning of nationalism, Michael Lind assaults the pieties of both right and left in his attempt to construct a new foundation myth or meta-narrative for American history.             — From a book review

6. Is the information centered on a euphemism?
A euphemism is what some people believe to be an agreeable or nonoffensive word or expression that should be used as a substitute for one that (to them) is harsh, indelicate, or otherwise unpleasant. So revenue enhancer is a euphemism for tax; Native American for American Indian; affirmative action for racial prejudice or racism; undocumented alien for illegal alien; unemancipated minor for teenager; and decruited for fired. 

People who are out to control the rest of the population have used the euphemism — generally in the guise of "sensitivity" — with great effect in matters involving race and ethnicity. It's what I call Americaspeak. For example:

If you’re born in this country, you’re not necessarily a Native American. To be one, your parents have to be American Indians. And, if they are, it doesn't matter where you were born — Poland, Tibet, Tierra del Fuego. You're still a Native American.

Now if you were born in Africa to white parents from the United States, then you are an American. But not an African-American. However, if you were born in England — or France or Australia or some such place — to black parents who were American citizens at the time, then you are an African-American even though you or your mother — or your father — never sets foot on either the Dark Continent or in any of the Fifty States.

If you’re white, born in this country, and your parents came from Belgium, that doesn't make you a Belgian-American. No, indeed. It just makes you a plain, ol' American. Unless, of course, your parents came from Argentina or Peru or Cuba. In which case you're an Hispanic-American.

And then there’s this business about Orientals being really Asians.

According to an encyclopedia I consulted, Asia includes Turkey, a good part of the USSR, Israel, the Philippines, China, India, Pakistan, and Iran. So it might just surprise an Hasidic Jew born in Wyoming to know that he's really an Asian and not a Yank. And that he, Yasir Arafat, Ferdinand Marcos, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Nikita Krushchev, Mustafa Kemal, Mahatma Ghandi, and Mao Tse-tung are — or were — all brothers under the skin.

Even the term “person of color” sounds as though it came from semantic never-never land. It holds that if you’re black, brown, red, or yellow, you’re a “person of color.” And if you’re white, you’re not. But everyone is a person of color. Because if your skin had no color, it would be invisible.

You know, all this makes the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party look like a Mensa summit meeting by comparison.

7. Does the information smack of conventional wisdom? 
All through the ages, since man first appeared on the planet, there has been something called conventional wisdom. It’s the “Everybody knows . . .” kind of thing. The problem with conventional wisdom is that it's usually wrong. You see, where wisdom is concerned, one size doesn't fit all. 

Wisdom deemed conventional gets to be conventional because most  “experts” are in agreement about what's involved. However, what people tend to forget is that (1) for every expert, there's an equal and opposite expert and (2) every major failure — political campaign, marketing campaign, advertising campaign, big budget movie, military campaign, and so on was the work of experts.

Conventional wisdom holds that you cannot succeed in doing business on the Internet unless your web site has a steady stream of new visitors. And that you do that by constantly updating the site so that folks will return again and again to see what's new. OK, let's try that one. 

Let's assume that you get 1,000 visitors a day to your site, 7 days a week, and 52 weeks a year; that there are currently some 40 million people surfing the 'Net  (I've read estimates from 30 million to 80 million, so 40 million seems to be reasonable); that that figure never increases (which is extremely unlikely); and that no one who visits your site ever comes back. Do you know how long it would take you to run out of prospective customers? Almost 110 years! So much for conventional wisdom. 
 

Conventional wisdom holds that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. Let's try that one now. 

In 1964, the then Surgeon General of the United States published a report stating his findings — that there appeared to be a statistical relationship between cigarette smoking and the onset of various body disorders, including lung cancer. But the report also contained a caveat that has been largely if not completely ignored since then — “Statistical methods cannot establish a causal relationship. . . .” 

Since that time, additional studies have been conducted, mainly statistical, by the Surgeon General, and by interested medical research groups all over the world. But, despite numerous studies, to my knowledge there has yet to be established a clinical, nonstatistical relationship between cigarette smoking and the incidence of lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, infertility among women, and so forth. 

Now how plausible is all this? 

Cancer is a malignant growth of tissue, which tends to spread. It's a real event. It exists in the real world. But no one knows why it is what it is, or how to keep it from being what it is. 

In a statistical study of the relationship between cigarette smoking and the incidence of lung cancer, the focus is not on cancerous or healthy tissue, but on people who are intended to represent cancerous or healthy tissue — John Smith, Mary Jones, etc. In other words, people used as symbols. 

Now John Smith and Mary Jones are complex living things functioning in a complex human ecology. John Smith's brain and the brain of Mary Jones are each capable of directing the production of a reportedly estimated 100,000-1,000,000 different chemicals, when and as needed, in response to instinctive body-process needs, as well as to the needs of an infinitely-shaded number of thoughts, emotions, and passions. A malfunction or dislocation or conflict of any kind in this complicated structure might well manifest itself in John Smith or Mary Jones as cancer. 

And who's to say it couldn't? 

Given the generally accepted notion that the mind in some way determines what happens to the body (placebo effect, psychosomatic illnesses, etc.), you would think that John Smith's and Mary Jones's habitual mood or state of mind or belief system would be given some weight, however crudely measured, in these studies. But again to my knowledge, this has never been the case. 

In addition, everything and every person is constantly changing. For example, it has been estimated that the human body is completely renewed about every seven months. Also, each of us is constantly changing his attitudes, values, beliefs, and so on — in short, his mental state — over time, and it is a powerful and compelling inference that one's state of mind is continuously being manifested upon his/her body. 

So the John Smith who was examined at the beginning of a five-year study was not the same John Smith, neither physically nor mentally, who is examined at the end. Neither was the Mary Smith nor the Howard Miller nor the James Wilson. Indeed, not a single participant in the study was the same person at the end of the investigation as he/she had been at the beginning. The only things about each participant that remained constant during the five-year period were his/her name, social security number, driver's license number, the research study code number (assuming it's a blind study), and so forth; everything else changed. Therefore, when the researchers examined John Jones in 1975, and then again in 1980, they were examining not one person twice, but two different people once each. How reliable, then, could their findings be? 

And the clincher is that if cigarette smoking by itself caused lung cancer, then everyone who smoked cigarettes would develop lung cancer. The corollary would also be true: those who did not smoke cigarettes would not develop lung cancer. But we know that not everyone who smokes cigarettes develops lung cancer, and we know that there are those who do not smoke cigarettes who do develop lung cancer. 

And don't fall for that piece of junk science which says that second-hand smoke kills. Not only is such a claim not provable, but I think it was invented in an attempt to fill the gap created by the question “If cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, how can anyone who doesn't smoke get lung cancer?” 
 

Having said all the foregoing, let me suggest that you don't start smoking cigarettes just because it is doubtful that cigarette smoking by itself causes lung cancer. There are two reasons for this “disclaimer” — (1) we have become a very litigious society, and I don't wish to be sued and (2) if you believe that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, it most likely will if you start smoking. And here lies the irony of all the publicity given to the Surgeon General's studies of cigarette smoking: the more such publicity, the greater the number of people who will believe that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. And the greater the number of smokers who believe that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, the greater will be the incidence of lung cancer among them. A manifestation of the self-fulfilled prophesy and what is known in medical research circles as the placebo effect.
By the way, it seems that Arthur Schopenhauer once tried to ring a warning bell about making choices based on conventional wisdom. He put it this way: “He who can see truly in the midst of a general infatuation is like a man whose watch keeps good time, when all the clocks in the town in which he lives are wrong. He alone knows the right time.”

Also, by the way, conventional wisdom is most damaging when you let it deter you from daring to attempt. Given that (1) no two sets of conditions, no two situations, and no two sets of circumstances are ever the same, and (2) principle is not bound by precedent, meaning that just because something has never happened doesn't mean that it can't happen, failing to attempt something that you've thoroughly thought out because of conventional wisdom is both foolish and regrettable.

Conventional wisdom holds that there is such a thing as race, which leads to something called racism, racial tension, racist America, and so on. OK, let's try that one now. 

Webster's has three definitions for the word “race.” 

Let's take the first one. According to Webster's, “race” is “a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock.” Now I submit to you that every one of those terms is vague and obscure in meaning. Just what in concrete terms constitutes “a family,” “a tribe,” “people,” “nation,” and “the same stock”? 

OK? How about the second:  “a class or kind of individuals with common characteristics, interests, or habits.” To that one I would say that everyone on the planet with noses, all Rotarians, all football fans, all bird watchers, all junkies, all coffee drinkers, and all late-risers would fit the bill. Yet I would hardly call each group a race. 

And now the third: “a division of mankind possessing traits that are transmissible by descent and sufficient to characterize it as a distinct human type.” OK, how about someone with no sense of humor. Or someone with a love of music. Or how about a hemophiliac? Does each belong to a specific race? 

“Well, what about skin color?” you might say. Well, what about it? Can you give me the precise range of skin color that differentiates one race from another? For example, suppose we were to line up every human on the planet, arranged by skin color — the whitest of the white on one end  and the blackest of the black on the other, everyone holding a placard with a number on it. Assuming that there are six billion humans presently on the earth, the numbers would run from one through six billion. Now I'm going to ask you to identify the range of people that would comprise the black race, the white race, the brown race, the yellow race, and the red race, each starting with what number and ending with what number. Could you do it? 

And if a hundred other people did the same thing, what are the odds that they would all come up with exactly the same results? I think you’d have a better shot at growing a foot  in height at age seventy. 

You see, Nature doesn't classify. Only people do. 

Which means that “race” is a concept that exists only in people's heads. There isn't a shred of reality to it. Nor is there a shred of reality to any of the so-called racial characteristics that go with it. 

I rest my case. 
 

But just because the concept of race is a figment of imagination, that, by no means, will cause its disappearance — there's too much money and too much power being derived from it for that to happen.

Clearly, then, there's apparent relevancy, which is a function of experience. And relevancy that's not apparent, which is a function of imagination.

Let me illustrate.

If you're experienced in repairing internal combustion engines, then information that reflects that experience will be relevant to you. And probably to someone else experienced in repairing internal combustion engines.

However, in such a case, information that does not reflect that experience may or may not be relevant to you, depending upon the quality (I just can't think of a better word in this context) of your imagination.

And it may or may not be relevant to someone else experienced in repairing internal combustion engines, depending upon the quality of his/her imagination.

Therefore, the matter of relevancy in any given case is highly subjective. Nonetheless, it still must be taken into account if you intend to make choices based on the information involved.

"Quality of imagination" in this context is illustrated in the form of an old parlor game puzzle on another page in this site entitled “Ratioverbalistics.”

Also know that information can be meaningful and true and still be irrelevant. For instance, I am an electrical engineer seeking to change employment. Information comes to me that Boeing is looking for aeronautical engineers. While that information has meaning and is true, it’s completely irrelevant for my purposes. 
 
 

9. Is the information useful?
Information is useful in terms of the question at hand when it's serviceable for the end or object involved, when it's helpful in the context of that question, or when it's capable of providing a benefit of some kind in answering the question under consideration. 

Information can be meaningful, true (or credible), relevant, and still be useless. For example, I have $25,000 to invest. Information comes to me that a prime property in town has just come on the market at a fire-sale price of, say, $1 million. To buy it, I would need about $200,000 (20% down). The information has meaning, is true, and relevant. But it’s useless for my purposes. 

I could, of course, depending upon my entrepreneurial bent, look for partners. In which case the information would be useful. But without that inclination the information would still be useless though meaningful, true, and relevant. 

The acid, ultimate, final, foolproof, never-fail test
When all is said and done and you still can't decide whether a chunk of information being offered you is meaningful and true, (because matters of relevancy and usefulness are completely subjective, this test won't help you with those questions) there's a test you can apply that is theacid, ultimate, final, foolproof, never-fail test — can a procedure or operation or process without unverifiable assumptions be designed that could (1) reasonably lead to the conclusion reached by the speaker or writer and (2) be replicated by others with the same result?

If the answer is “yes” to both parts, the information in question is meaningful and true; if the answer is “no” to both parts, then the information in question is without meaning and  is untrue; if the answer is “yes” to the first part and “no” to the second, then the information in question has meaning but is not true; and, lastly, if the answer is “no” to the first part, the game is over.