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Notes -
I wouldn't say I'm a nerd about it, but I read through operation clambake and a lot of the other online resources years ago. The "church" as it currently exists is fairly depressing, but I find the accounts of Hubbard's early life much more interesting. His apparent ability to either con his way past peoples' defenses or else select those without defenses is remarkable, and that paired with Tex's thesis of the Christmas Effect, combined with problems like the Replication Crisis, is something it seems to me more people should be paying attention to.
Any explanation of the Christmas Effect that's faster than 1.5 hours?
Some people can lie on a scale that beggars all belief, with very serious and very obvious consequences, and get away with it in ways that seem completely inexplicable.
Dr. Christmas wanted to be a titan of aviation. He designed a plane that he claimed would be vastly superior to anything else flying. He had no actual idea how to properly design a plane, but he talked his way into control of considerable financial and material resources sufficient to build his plane, and then send it up with a human pilot for a test flight. It immediately crashed and killed the pilot, in the process destroying a scarce airplane engine loaned to him by the government explicitly and exclusively for ground tests. All this happened very publicly, under the auspices of a major airplane manufacturer, and he simply lied about it to the press, who believed him unquestioningly. He continued lying until he'd amassed enough resources to build another plane, which likewise immediately crashed and killed its pilot. This again happened very publicly, but he again simply lied a lot, often to the press, and escaped all consequences. He learned nothing, and continued pushing shitty airplane ideas for the rest of his life, while being lauded as a sort of hipster pioneer of exciting aeronautics ideas in the press and the public. He testified to congress about how his planes were the best planes in the world, and all the other planes the US was buying were garbage by comparison.
He never suffered significant consequences, and the truth never caught up with him.
The Christmas Effect, as I understand it, is the way in which our protective social systems don't actually work all that well, allowing dedicated liars to do absolutely absurd things as long as they lie the right way. People here are doubtless familiar with Mitnick and Abagnale, but those guys were small time. With a resume consisting primarily of swindling old widows, L. Ron. Hubbard talked his way into no-shit command of a literal US Navy warship, in wartime, via one flight where he ended up sitting next to a senior federal politician. That's a bit beyond scamming checks or plane tickets.
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