Jon’s Blog

Can digital assistants be used as agents of undue influence? AIs like Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Now, M and Bixby help us to send messages, play music, and set reminders. We can even insult them to get a witty comeback, or ask them to tell us a joke – and then demand they tell us…

Preface This article is the first in a series of articles based upon research into the roots of the Hubbardian philosophy that gave birth to the “Sacred Scriptures” of the Church of Scientology The Office of Special Affairs, the elite Secret Intelligence unit of the Church of Scientology, was well aware that this report…

2014 redraft of the original 1995 paper There have been many assertions that cult groups utilize hypnotic techniques. A good example is Persinger, Carrey & Suess in TM and Cult Mania, where the relatively straightforward techniques of Transcendental Meditation are analysed to show their hypnotic content. However, there has been little analysis of such…

By PictorialEvidence – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons My starting point is the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary definition of plagiarism, viz “the taking and using as one’s own of the thoughts, writings, or inventions of another.” Hubbard’s plagiarism was extensive. He took ideas from earlier authors without proper acknowledgment; repudiated his initial,…

Students are frequently disciplined these days for cut-and-pasting paragraphs from the Internet rather than properly responding to their tutors’ questions. A similar habit is found among academics who speak about “brainwashing” and “cults”. Rather than reading and reviewing Steven Hassan’s new book, Professor Zeller has cut-and-pasted ideas that have been floated repeatedly over the…

“One fellow, Aleister Crowley, picked up a level of religious worship which is very interesting – oh boy! The Press played hockey with his head for his whole life-time. The Great Beast – 666. He just had another level of religious worship. Yes, sir, you’re free to worship everything under the Constitution so long…