I haven’t heard of NLP before, but reading about it now it’s setting off all my old skepticism alarms. The claims it makes seem to be very vague and optimistic. I’m especially wary of things like the links you provided that talk about having “over 200 patterns”; I don’t buy my textbooks based on their page count.
Self-hacking is cool, but any advice given along those lines needs to be backed up by solid literature something fierce (i.e. see lukeprog’s How to Be Happy) to be plausible, and even then you should generally expect that any given piece of advice will only have a moderate chance of working on any given person.
Saying “I’m smart and I think it’s worthwhile” isn’t enough; lots of smart people think religion is worthwhile. If NLP has a central theory behind it, rather than just being an umbrella term for a bunch of disparate self-hacking techniques, then where can we find a step-by-step explanation and solid justification of that theory? And if there’s isn’t a central theory, then each “pattern” will have to be presented and justified on its own, and survive on its own merits independent of its sisters.
where can we find a step-by-step explanation and solid justification of that theory?
The usual answer I’ve seen NLP practitioners give to this question is that they’re too busy successfully applying NLP to waste time on proving it to the losers who aren’t. Which is itself an example of the NLP technique of reframing.
NLP people would say you are Generalizing, Distorting and Deleting :)
Well, there you are, that’s the concern I have about NLP, which I have to admit I have seen only in its worst manifestations, on the Usenet newsgroup alt.nlp many years ago. It was like looking into an overcrowded cage of rats fighting for dominance, with the NLP techniques as their claws and teeth.
Yes, I realize that it sets of skepticism alarms. It did so for me as well when I first encountered it. It’s a detriment to the field that it looks scammy on the surface :)
Yes, I love his article on happiness. The problem with ONLY going with research-backed stuff is that one might be missing out on potentially useful stuff. My argument here is NOT to take NLP on faith, but rather to perhaps to investigate it further and see what it can offer.
A lot of it seems to be based on introspection and informal experimentation. Which could be said for the father of modern psychology, William James. Not trying to appeal to authority, just making a parallell.
I haven’t heard of NLP before, but reading about it now it’s setting off all my old skepticism alarms. The claims it makes seem to be very vague and optimistic. I’m especially wary of things like the links you provided that talk about having “over 200 patterns”; I don’t buy my textbooks based on their page count.
Self-hacking is cool, but any advice given along those lines needs to be backed up by solid literature something fierce (i.e. see lukeprog’s How to Be Happy) to be plausible, and even then you should generally expect that any given piece of advice will only have a moderate chance of working on any given person.
Saying “I’m smart and I think it’s worthwhile” isn’t enough; lots of smart people think religion is worthwhile. If NLP has a central theory behind it, rather than just being an umbrella term for a bunch of disparate self-hacking techniques, then where can we find a step-by-step explanation and solid justification of that theory? And if there’s isn’t a central theory, then each “pattern” will have to be presented and justified on its own, and survive on its own merits independent of its sisters.
The usual answer I’ve seen NLP practitioners give to this question is that they’re too busy successfully applying NLP to waste time on proving it to the losers who aren’t. Which is itself an example of the NLP technique of reframing.
Yes, there is some of that attitude which you describe. However, it’s hardly descriptive of ALL neuro-linguistic programmers.
NLP people would say you are Generalizing, Distorting and Deleting :)
Well, there you are, that’s the concern I have about NLP, which I have to admit I have seen only in its worst manifestations, on the Usenet newsgroup alt.nlp many years ago. It was like looking into an overcrowded cage of rats fighting for dominance, with the NLP techniques as their claws and teeth.
Yes, I realize that it sets of skepticism alarms. It did so for me as well when I first encountered it. It’s a detriment to the field that it looks scammy on the surface :)
Yes, I love his article on happiness. The problem with ONLY going with research-backed stuff is that one might be missing out on potentially useful stuff. My argument here is NOT to take NLP on faith, but rather to perhaps to investigate it further and see what it can offer.
A lot of it seems to be based on introspection and informal experimentation. Which could be said for the father of modern psychology, William James. Not trying to appeal to authority, just making a parallell.
Here’s an article about that similarity as well: http://www.neurosemantics.com/nlp/nlp-articles/william-james-could-he-have-invented-nlp