From: sol@rigel.cs.pdx.edu (chris s de voir)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Re: e-meter
Keywords: 3 - dimensions
Date: 13 Dec 92 00:22:31 GMT


quotes are From: schafmei@fraser.sfu.ca (Chris Schafmeister)
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada

"The net resistance between your hands will be a complicated
sum of resistances throughout your body dominated by
the resistance of the junction between your hands and the
electrodes.

Someone, please, correct me here if I'm wrong."

I respond: I agree completely with what you are saying.  I thought
about this too, which is why I also mentioned the electrical
characteristics of voltage and current.  In the case of the latter
two, they can be broken down into vector components whose magnitudes
will vary according to their orientation to the linear electrical
path between two leads.  This is demonstrated in electrocardiography
and other electrophysiologic measurement.  For instance, the e-meter
leads correspond to an electrocardiograph lead I because the arms
are essentially transmission lines for electrical activity in the
thorax and so the line of reference is between the right and left
shoulder. By the way: 1. I don't know which e-meter lead is positive
and which is negative.  2. I am almost certain that it does not
measure resistance with an A.C. refernce signal but if it does I'm
going to enjoy examining that one.  3. The e-meter has no reference
lead (another interesting little point).  Anyway, even numerous
complexly related smaller vectors have vector sum or "mean vector".
This mean vector can be broken down into the three component vectors
and only the vector parallel to the leads will cause a positive or
negative component.

"If your personality 
is encoded in ~1 trillion neurons and ~1000 trillion neuronal
junctions, and since the information is transmitted
by a combination of polarization inversion and chemicals,
measuring electrical resistance at 2 or 3 places will
not give you any objectively measurable quantities that
could be associated with what a person is thinking/feeling."

I respond: I agree, that is if the personality is encoded this way.
but this is why I am considering other phenomenae other resistance
and is why I am asserting that a one-dimensional measurement is
inadequate to measure a three-dimensional domain.  The nervous system
extends throughout the entire body not just the cranium.  It remains
to be seen whether non-invasive, non-ionizing methods of data
collection are in fact useless (although the results of MRI and PET
are interesting but limited).  

"What you will get is reflexive hand movements, capiliary dialation,
and sweating which can be linked to changes in mental state.
However, before any scientologists say "Yeah! Thats what we are measuring!"

I respond: The scientologists will never claim this as Hubbard had
specifically declared the e-meter does not measure these things.  But,
I find this disappointing.  Why not measure these things?  Or other
things?

My main thread is this:  Even if the e-meter does measure voltage or
current changes indirectly because of changes in resistance and
because size of the e-meter needle response is critical to decision
making on the part of the auditor, the component vector projected onto
the line between the e-meter cans could be a component of a vector of
any magnitude in three dimensions and therefore does not relate to
the importance of whatever subject the auditor is addressing.  If
you live in Flatland and you have a compass that allows the needle
to only rotate, it will work fine.  But if you get in a spaceship
and try to use this compass, you will have an extremely limited
understanding of where you are because the compass cannot point up
or down.