Reference: Data Series
Reference: Data Series 9—ERRORS
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ERRORS
Ask somebody to look at a table used for meals at the end of a meal and indicate any outpoints. Usually he’ll point out a dirty plate or crumbs or an ashtray not emptied. They are not outpoints. When people finish eating one expects dirty plates, crumbs and full ashtrays. If none of these things were present there might be several outpoints to note. The end of a meal with table and plates all clean would be a reversed sequence. That would be an outpoint. Evidently the dinner has been omitted and that would be quite an outpoint! Obviously no meal has been served so there’s a falsehood. So here are three outpoints!
It will be found that outpoints are really few unless the activity is very irrational. Simple errors on the other hand can be found in legions in any scene.
An error may show something else. It obscures or alters a datum; but It is nothing in itself. Errors do not count in pluspoints either.
People applying fixed or wrong ideals to 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 about 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 pluspoint 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. OUTPOINTS COMPARE TO THE IDEAL FOR THAT PARTICULAR SCENE.
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Good one 👍
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