If someone tells you that by praying in a particular way anyone can achieve spiritual union with the creator of the universe, and you ask for evidence, it is Not Helpful if they tell you “just try it and see”.
I think this is a little unfair. Extending the Mormon Wednesday discussion, I didn’t take my church leader’s suggestions to “read the Book of Mormon and pray about it” because, in retrospect, I had an extremely low prior probability that my thoughts could be communicated to a divine being who would respond to them with warm fuzzies.
I don’t think pjeby’s claims that practicing certain mental states/self hypnosis (I’m unclear on exactly what he is advocating) can influence our subconscious are that implausible. That doesn’t mean his theories are right, but they seem plausible that even the weak evidence of self-experimentation might say something about them.
I don’t think pjeby’s claims that practicing certain mental states/self hypnosis (I’m unclear on exactly what he is advocating) can influence our subconscious
I’m suggesting that priming, suggestion, hypnosis, NLP, placebo effects, creative visualization and a host of other psychological and new-age phenomena are ALL functions of the near/far divide, relying on a single precondition that might be called “suspension of disbelief”.
Or more precisely, refraining from verbal overshadowing—or something that’s suspiciously close to being able to be described that way.
From an evolutionary POV, you might say my hypothesis is that verbal overshadowing actually evolved in a “persuasion arms race”, specifically as an anti-persuasion defense, to prevent others from verbally exploiting our exposed unconscious processes.
IOW, if simple language evolved first, and was hooked directly to the “near” process (because that’s all there was), then it could be exploited by others—we would be “gullible” or “suggestible”. We would then evolve more sophisticated verbal intelligence, both to better exploit others, and to better defend ourselves.
Unfortunately, while this arguably gave rise to “intelligence” and “consciousness” as we know them, it also means that we’re cut off from being able to exploit our own near systems, unless we learn how to shut off the shields long enough to put stuff in (or take stuff out, change it, etc.).
Most self-help material consists of elaborate explanations to convince people to let down the shields by believing that what they say is true. However, in truth it is only necessary to not engage in disbelieving—to not shoot down the incoming data, whether it’s being provided by one’s self, the therapist or hypnotist, or something you read in a book.
However, instead of “truth” as a guide for what you install in the near system, one should use usefulness, since it is entirely possible to believe different things in the two systems without conflict.
I consider the near system to basically be a robot that I program for my own use, so I can feel free to exploit its beliefs based on what results I, the programmer, wish to accomplish. (And NLP offers a nice set of rules that can be used in place of “truth” as a guide for what “robot” beliefs are hygenic, vs. ones likely to lead to malfunction or undesired results.)
(Whee! I’m getting the explanation shorter! Practice, FTW! Too bad this particular explanation leans heavily on prior knowledge of at least priming, near/far, and verbal overshadowing, and lightly on pickup, suspension of disbelief, and the like. So in its bare form, it’s only really useful for a regular LW reader. But an improvement nonetheless.)
Well, I am genuinely appreciative of your attempts to explain, whether they are getting through or not.
Actually, I should be thanking you and the other people I’ve been replying to, because I just realized what pure gold I ended up with. I didn’t actually realize I had an implicit synthesis of the entire self-help field on my hands; in fact, I never consciously synthesized it before. And when I was telling my wife about it this evening, the ramifications of what should be possible under this simplified model hit me like a ton of bricks.
And it was the questions that Vladimir Nesov, gjm, Vladimir Golovin and others asked—about the techniques, the model, the self-help field in general, the similarities -- combined with sprocket’s post about “A/B” thinking that primed me with the right context to put it all together in a tightly integrated way. The refined model makes everything make a whole lot more sense to me—failures and successes alike. (For example, I now have an idea of why certain “affirmation” techniques are likely to work better than others, for some poeple.)
As soon as I get some rest, I have some things I want to try. Because if this more-unified model is indeed “less wrong” than my previous one, I just “levelled up” in my art. Frackin’ awesome! I think my massive investment of time here is actually going to pay off.
But whether it enables me to do anything new or not, this revision is still a big step forward in simplified communication regarding what I already do. So either way...
Thank you, LWers, I couldn’t have done it without you!
And it was the questions that Vladimir Nesov, gjm, Vladimir Golovin and others asked—about the techniques, the model, the self-help field in general, the similarities—combined with sprocket’s post about “A/B” thinking that primed me with the right context to put it all together in a tightly integrated way. The refined model makes everything make a whole lot more sense to me—failures and successes alike. (For example, I now have an idea of why certain “affirmation” techniques are likely to work better than others, for some poeple.)
Hmmm… I wish you well, but usually this kind of revelation, when put into writing and left to draw on a shelf for a couple of weeks, reveals itself as much less wonderful than it originally seemed to be. Although usually it’s also a step forward, even if in the direction opposite to where you were walking before.
One might get the opposite impression, but in fact I am too. One reason why I keep whingeing at Philip is that his style of presentation makes it very difficult to tell where he is on the charlatan-to-expert spectrum, and that wouldn’t bother me if I didn’t think there was at least a chance that he’s near the expert end.
I think this is a little unfair. Extending the Mormon Wednesday discussion, I didn’t take my church leader’s suggestions to “read the Book of Mormon and pray about it” because, in retrospect, I had an extremely low prior probability that my thoughts could be communicated to a divine being who would respond to them with warm fuzzies.
I don’t think pjeby’s claims that practicing certain mental states/self hypnosis (I’m unclear on exactly what he is advocating) can influence our subconscious are that implausible. That doesn’t mean his theories are right, but they seem plausible that even the weak evidence of self-experimentation might say something about them.
I’m suggesting that priming, suggestion, hypnosis, NLP, placebo effects, creative visualization and a host of other psychological and new-age phenomena are ALL functions of the near/far divide, relying on a single precondition that might be called “suspension of disbelief”.
Or more precisely, refraining from verbal overshadowing—or something that’s suspiciously close to being able to be described that way.
From an evolutionary POV, you might say my hypothesis is that verbal overshadowing actually evolved in a “persuasion arms race”, specifically as an anti-persuasion defense, to prevent others from verbally exploiting our exposed unconscious processes.
IOW, if simple language evolved first, and was hooked directly to the “near” process (because that’s all there was), then it could be exploited by others—we would be “gullible” or “suggestible”. We would then evolve more sophisticated verbal intelligence, both to better exploit others, and to better defend ourselves.
Unfortunately, while this arguably gave rise to “intelligence” and “consciousness” as we know them, it also means that we’re cut off from being able to exploit our own near systems, unless we learn how to shut off the shields long enough to put stuff in (or take stuff out, change it, etc.).
Most self-help material consists of elaborate explanations to convince people to let down the shields by believing that what they say is true. However, in truth it is only necessary to not engage in disbelieving—to not shoot down the incoming data, whether it’s being provided by one’s self, the therapist or hypnotist, or something you read in a book.
However, instead of “truth” as a guide for what you install in the near system, one should use usefulness, since it is entirely possible to believe different things in the two systems without conflict.
I consider the near system to basically be a robot that I program for my own use, so I can feel free to exploit its beliefs based on what results I, the programmer, wish to accomplish. (And NLP offers a nice set of rules that can be used in place of “truth” as a guide for what “robot” beliefs are hygenic, vs. ones likely to lead to malfunction or undesired results.)
(Whee! I’m getting the explanation shorter! Practice, FTW! Too bad this particular explanation leans heavily on prior knowledge of at least priming, near/far, and verbal overshadowing, and lightly on pickup, suspension of disbelief, and the like. So in its bare form, it’s only really useful for a regular LW reader. But an improvement nonetheless.)
Well, I am genuinely appreciative of your attempts to explain, whether they are getting through or not.
Actually, I should be thanking you and the other people I’ve been replying to, because I just realized what pure gold I ended up with. I didn’t actually realize I had an implicit synthesis of the entire self-help field on my hands; in fact, I never consciously synthesized it before. And when I was telling my wife about it this evening, the ramifications of what should be possible under this simplified model hit me like a ton of bricks.
And it was the questions that Vladimir Nesov, gjm, Vladimir Golovin and others asked—about the techniques, the model, the self-help field in general, the similarities -- combined with sprocket’s post about “A/B” thinking that primed me with the right context to put it all together in a tightly integrated way. The refined model makes everything make a whole lot more sense to me—failures and successes alike. (For example, I now have an idea of why certain “affirmation” techniques are likely to work better than others, for some poeple.)
As soon as I get some rest, I have some things I want to try. Because if this more-unified model is indeed “less wrong” than my previous one, I just “levelled up” in my art. Frackin’ awesome! I think my massive investment of time here is actually going to pay off.
But whether it enables me to do anything new or not, this revision is still a big step forward in simplified communication regarding what I already do. So either way...
Thank you, LWers, I couldn’t have done it without you!
Hmmm… I wish you well, but usually this kind of revelation, when put into writing and left to draw on a shelf for a couple of weeks, reveals itself as much less wonderful than it originally seemed to be. Although usually it’s also a step forward, even if in the direction opposite to where you were walking before.
One might get the opposite impression, but in fact I am too. One reason why I keep whingeing at Philip is that his style of presentation makes it very difficult to tell where he is on the charlatan-to-expert spectrum, and that wouldn’t bother me if I didn’t think there was at least a chance that he’s near the expert end.