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August 10, 2006

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It sounds as if the NLP has changed a lot since I first encountered it. I did take some of the early training and have found it very useful in communicating more clearly with people who are hostile and with teaching children.

It has not, however, been useful in many of the other endeavors for which the program claims success unless the listener is already inclined towards complying with the suggestions.

Thanks for that Skeptico - most entertaining. I sometimes indulge in e-debates with woos, and I look forward to trying your flip-it-back trick myself at some point.

"Love and light", Jocky

I love the nerve fallacy.

“the observer will always effect what is being observed”

Duh. Observation is just a collection of specialized forms of whacking things, last time I checked.

Doggerels # 2, 4, 5, 8, 19, 23, 28, 30, 31 noted.

17 was in there, but I need to update to fix some mistakes, sometime.

Observation is just a collection of specialized forms of whacking things, last time I checked.

Thanks to entanglement, we actually do have one slightly more clever way to observe something: Whack something entangled with it, take note of that thing's property, and the first thing's property is the opposite of that. Quantum mechanically, this does count as an observation as it does in fact collapse the wavefunction of the first thing, even though you didn't do anything to it. You still do alter it by observing it.

Of course, where woos get this mixed up is by saying that a lot more things are entangled than actually are, or acting like some actual information is transferred beyond the logical deductions of conservation of energy/spin/charge/etc.

Back to the point. In public discussions, I find its best not to pursue dropped questions and points. The public is who you're really trying to convince, and humans are partial to believe the last thing they hear on an issue. So, if they drop it, you've got the edge even without saying that they've dropped it. Of course, a private e-mail discussion is completely different, and in that case I too would probably call him on it and demand answers or I will accept the lack of them as conceit.

Ah, Landmark. I took their introductory course. I got one or two interesting ideas, although I'm not sure I wouldn't have come to the same conclusions myself if I'd given the matters any thought.

My wife took the second (and MUCH more expensive course) and was thoroughly disappointed. She tried getting her money back. I bet you know how that came out.

Infophile, good call on the quantum entanglement; it's a major plan(c)k of quantum computing experiments.

You're also right that the woos often extrapolate, say, electron spin complementarity entanglement into any number of "big world" effects that just swamp individual quantum effects.

I don't expect NLP or any other LGAT (Large Group Awareness Training) regime to change my mind on this any time soon. I obviously don't have enough good quanta in my brain.
That's why I'd love to pin a woo down and find out just what he means by "this is quantum-charged water," or the like.

I notice now that there is an insidious new version of this called "life coaching" which uses all of them at once, ie, NLP, TLT, Robbins etc.

But not only that, the members of each coven now is required to go out and find their own pigeons and provide life coaching to them.

Very Amway.

In case you missed it, check out this relatively recent article by Jon Ronson, about his encounter with NLP.

I agree, the Trademarks™ are just flying left & right from Bandler a bit too much for my taste... I wonder if he used NLP to reprogram his mind to propell himself to financial success, creating an involuntary unconscious reaction to trademark, patent, and openly-obfuscate. I wonder if his conscious mind knows this; heheh

According to his website, he hasn't trademarked charisma enhancement; note the false claim in your article above:

source: richardbandler.com
Neuro-Hypnotic Repatterning™
Design Human Engineering™
Persuasion Engineering®
Personal Enhancement
Charisma Enhancement

Also, looking at most of the NLP websites gives me the same vibe that I get when I stare at recklessly-designed new-age websites that seem to be stuck in bad creative taste, and a form of web-design that seems to still be stuck in the era of 1997, sementically & metaphorically! Perhapse if Bandler dropped his website in order to go with a free blogger account; or at the very least throw a couple hundred/thousand at a web designer to develop a much better designed website template for all of his $itez™

I recently went through reems & reems of video footage from various Bandler workshops, and found many of his ideas & stories to be pretty engaging. However, just yesterday I came accross him saying, in a round-about way, that even web-design can have embedded nlp-techniques.

Looking at this long list of NLP Seminars; notice that it says it's the year "106." Wow, how did they manage to find a Y2K non-compliant service!? LOL. But wait there's more; many of the links are horribly mistyped, so they don't work. So I go scrolling down this long page, wondering how business people can take this site seriously with all of the OVERLY-OBVIOUS red & black "hypnotic" attempts with CAPS LOCKS! This particular excerpt near the bottom of the page got me to seriously crack up laughing:

"So the only question left is: Because Your Brain Works Faster Than You Think® ...HOW CAN YOU QUICKLY LEARN TO GET AHEAD OF YOUR COMPETITION AND STAY THERE BECAUSE YOU ARE BETTER AND CAN GET YOUR POINT THROUGH THAT WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY BETTER THAN THEY EVER CAN?"

Wow, talk about subtle! ...I'm totally convinced now. This page just blew me away and made me want to shell out the $$$

The only question left is, where & how do I sign up?

just wondering if you think this nlp stuff can benefit people? and if so whats the problem(please don't mention anything as dull as money profit etc.

also ive never met anyone who can justify anger maybe you'd like to give it a go

Patrick:

All your points/questions were answered in my original article - maybe you'd like to read it.

Come on people, NLP is brilliant. I use it all the time, with a near 100% success rate.

OK, I should qualify this a little bit. I do close-up magic and mentalism, and I usually do it for friends and peers, which means educated rational people, for whom, 'it's magic' is insufficient explanation for what I do, and when I perform mind-reading routines, If I claim it's for-real they just try harder and harder to work out how the trick is done. With NLP however, I can get away with it all. NLP just sounds so damned convincing!

I'd best give you an example:

pick a card, any card. (you pick out an ace of spades). Now, as this is a TRICK, I will know what card you're holding. I'm not going to give away any magicians techniques (or I'll get other magicians whining at me), but I guarantee, the reason I know will have no woo involved at all. after all, it's just a trick.

now, I could pretend to read your mind... "I get an image, it's a black card, it's an ace, its.... the ace of spades!". OK, so a magicians guessed a card, big deal.

however, if I give 5 minutes spiel about NLP, eye cues, facial ticks etc and then observe them very closely, while apparantly probing them for results.. "it's a red card...no...your pupil just dilated, that must mean it's black....it's a high card...hang on you're showing uncertainty...maybe it's the ace which can be high or low...its.... tadaaaa the ace of spades!"

I get much better reactions from the second routine. why? because NLP seems so much more believable to the educated mind. Seriously. People who would never accept that the trick I do are magic, or mind-reading or clarvoyance, will happily suck up the line about NLP. It's great! The only downside is that I have to have a chat with some of them later to kind of unconvince them of the power of NLP (damn my sense of ethics!), as some get carried away with the possibility, and I don't really want to fuel woo, just make my magic act more fun.

^The above post was me, sorry for the anonymous post :)

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