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NancyLebovitz comments on Build Small Skills in the Right Order - Less Wrong
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For those wondering: The Scientology staring routines summarised, from David Touretzky's site. Anyone who's read the first section above really needs to closely read this page. (The whole section is quality, and includes demo videos by ex-Scientologists.)
Do it too much and you end up with the famous Scientology Stare, the thousand-yard "fixed, dedicated glare" that anyone who's dealt much with Scientologists will be familiar with. (This guy, from this demo, was doing his stare up to 12 inches from other people's faces.)
Scientology is based on a bunch of low-level hacks on human perceptual routines and cognitive biases. (The staring one works on others by intimidation, as you look confident in an odd therefore unpredictable manner; the routine itself trains you to uncritically accept what's in the later, sillier material.) Hubbard did rather well for someone with no theory and only an aim (money and fame) in mind. I would, however, caution that there are few arts of mind-hacking that are darker.
I strongly advise any LessWrong reader to stay the hell away from this stuff unless they have a fascination with dissecting the mechanisms of how people abuse other people [1]. Luke, you're recommending actually dangerous activities here.
[1] Which is, of course, interesting and important, particularly for mind-hackers. Approach it like you would analysing sewage.
People have tried to pull the useful parts out of Scientology while not having the destructive aspects. Has anyone here worked with those systems, and if so, what did you think of them?
People who practice something descended from Scientology without being in the Church of Scientology are generally collectively referred to as the Free Zone, though not all of them like the term. Some are weirdly sci-fi-ish, a lot are near the weird end of New Age. Some are very Scientological (including belief in Xenu), some you'd barely know were related. In general, they're much better-behaved and much nicer people than the Church of Scientology, though that's not hard.
The only one I know of that has any sort of acceptance as non-lunacy in general circles is Traumatic Incident Reduction, an abreaction-based psychotherapy derived from Dianetics by Frank A. Gerbode, an ex-Scientologist who went on to become a psychiatrist. (Hubbard started off pitching Dianetics to psychiatrists, and was greatly embittered by them dismissing him as a crank.) It isn't particularly noteworthy and I don't know of any clinical trials of it.