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pjeby comments on Build Small Skills in the Right Order - Less Wrong
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The other major hack going on in all of those routines is people paying attention to you. Being paid attention to is an extremely powerful behavior modifier, and it's a major recruitment tool used by cults of all kinds.
(Not only is staring paying attention, but in the other exercises, the instructor is clearly paying attention to the slightest detail of everything you say or do. This type of attention from parents and teachers tends to stimulate a desire to please the person giving the attention.)
I remember when I was 18 and on the road alone on a spiritual quest and I got heavily recruited by a cult. The primary techniques seemed to be giving me such attention and affirmation for every word that came out of my mouth. My reaction was: Well, this is awkward. These people are being very nice but they're not interesting. Given their techniques I had difficulty politely disentangling myself from their presence. After about 12 hours I heard Reverend Moon mentioned, at which point I said "Oh, you're Moonies!". A few hours later I politely bid them goodbye and walked away. They followed me around for a while to no avail.
I wasn't in danger. Their perspective seemed narrow and boring to me.
PJ has nailed it here. The hacks are really simple and really evil. If they teach you anything that can be called a "communication skill" at all, it's only by happenstance: the real goal is obedience training and swallowing ever-increasing impossibilities.
Evil as techniques in and of themselves, or evil because of the larger goal of turning the trainee into a puppet?
From what I've seen, the techniques are not really useful for anything other than turning 'trainees' into compliant cult members. Yes, the exercises lukeprog mentions in the OP can be used to improve self-control, but only by toning the routines down and approaching them cautiously. For instance, developing a "thousand-yard stare" is clearly unhelpful for someone who's trying to improve eir social skills, even though staring someone down is occasionally useful as a way of asserting dominance.
The staring exercise seem to resemble simple exposure therapy. A lot of people have trouble making normal eye contact, so exposure therapy in this is likely to be a useful exercise for them.
Didn't David Gerard state that Scientologists develop a permanent thousand-yard stare as a result of OT-TR0/TR0? [1] My point is that this is a potential failure mode, i.e. not something that anyone actually interested in social skills would want.
[1] edit: apparently, it's common enough to be a stereotype, which is effectively what I meant. I wouldn't expect this to apply to every member of the church, much less everyone who has taken an intro course, but it still counts as a potential problem.
Not all, but enough do that it's stereotypical.
Lukeprog is the obvious test case. If you are right that the the technique will give a person a thousand yard stare unless it is toned down, then it follows that Lukeprog currently has a thousand yard stare. So, does he?
Lukeprog may actually be a rather unusual test-case, since he's an atheist who was generally aware of what Scientology is about, yet he chose to approach the 'course' instrumentally. See the OP and his discussion with David Gerard. Regardless, even a moderate probability of such harmful effect ought to be of concern to those who would use the routine to improve their social skills.
Keep in mind that even techniques expressly designed for improving social skills can result in "social robots" when misapplied. And this is the first time I see de-facto hour-long staring contests (from a cult indoctrination course, no less) mentioned as a way to improve eye contact skills.
Which techniques and can you link us?