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jsalvatier comments on Your inner Google - Less Wrong
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Wikipedia suggests that NLP doesn't have any science behind it and it's predictions have been tested and disconfirmed. I'd have to hear a good explanation for this before giving NLP much time.
We've sort of been down this road before.
versus
Sure, the "and it's predictions have been tested and disconfirmed" part is more important, though if you want to make a convincing case for NLP you'd want to at least acknowledge the first party.
I'm not sure how you interpreted what I said.
The first party is making the case for leaning non-scientifically proven (or unconfirmed after testing, or whatever) systems. Arguments are several but fall along the lines that their catching on culturally and having at least some confirmed useful features indicates they have something to them, so one is better off with them than if they hadn't been considered, even if most of it is crap.
The second party is attributing the valid bits to the stopped clock being right twice a day phenomenon and saying it is almost certainly not a productive use of time for anyone to study such systems (unless they are studying the system as a thing studied rather than a system used, as an anthropologist would study a cargo cult and not as a shaman would study the cult).
Making a case for something involves acknowledging critics, which in this case I intended to be the second party.
That Wikipedia page confirms that its widely disrespected, but read the Wikipedia on the actual studies performed. There is supporting research, some of it fairly impressive. The list of ratio of supportive studies to dismissive studies is very much skewed in support of NLP on this wikipedia page.
There are a few issues I see here.
1) NLP sets off big time "SCAM!" flags, since they seem to be trying to use NLP to sell NLP (to idiots).
2) Their theories can be useful, but are still crap. You can test it and "disprove" it by finding a flaw without finding the part that made it useful.
Because of these, it's going to take work to extract the value that's there.
3) It's hard to test things that have more than a couple causal factors. The hypnosis research, which is more respected, falls prey to this all the time. They measure one correlation resulting from a giant mess of factors without holding other factors constant (because they have failed to even identify them) and then are surprised when they cant' get consistent results for their oversimplified model.
4) "NLP" is being used too loosely. If they do a study that fails to find evidence for one theoretical claim NLP practitioners have made, its is interpreted as "NLP is bullshit". There are plenty of studies that go that way for various hypnosis theories, but it is interpreted as "Well then, hypnosis must work differently than that".
I ended up researching "hypnosis" instead of "NLP" because it seemed to be easier to extract useful information on the same subject (though there is still a huge pile of BS to sift through and piece together), but I will say that NLP can teach you to do stuff you couldn't do before.
Their "fast phobia cure" does work, for example. I've done it.
I found some info on research: http://realpeoplepress.com/blog/research-in-nlp-neurolinguistic-programming-science-evidence.
Disclaimer: the author of that post is a major NLP persona.
Keep in mind that formal science is not the totality of research, see for example the writings of Seth Roberts on self-experimentation (the guy who invented the Shangri La diet and Morning Faces Therapy, among other hacks).
I am glad at some NLP advocates engage existing research.
Hey, I thought you might like this post on Science.
I might read that later tonight. Do you have a TLDR for now?
tl;dr:
Science is designed to avoid belief in untrue things, not figure out what is most likely to be true.
Both of those visions of science are flawed, in very similar ways: Each seeks to maximize something without acknowledging the tradeoffs.
Trivially: If science is to avoid belief in untrue things, you can instantly complete science by not believing anything.
The "figure out what is likely to be true" at least isn't so trivially dismissable.
Science should maximize expected value. The difficulty in practice is that you often must understand something before you can know what utility this understanding will provide.
You've misconstrued what you're replying to. The statement was:
You misconstrued it here:
Analogously:
lessdazed wrote that umbrellas are designed to protect against rain.
You replied that if umbrellas are to protect against rain, then you can instantly complete an umbrella by moving to a place with low precipitation.
When lesswrong said that science is designed to avoid belief in untrue things, he was not saying that everything that is to avoid belief in untrue things is science. Any more than had he said that umbrellas are to protect against rain, he would be saying that anything that protects against rain is an umbrella.
That is a "should" statement. However, what science is, is an is, not an ought. There are many reasons to be careful about not bridging the distinction. One is that you want to distinguish between mechanism, proximate function, and (ultimate) function. Even if the ultimate function of science is to maximize expected value, that does not tell us anything about the mechanism of science or its proximate function, through which it maximizes expected value. Science may, for example, serve the ultimate goal of maximizing expected value by helping avoid belief in untrue things.
If we look at the activity of a scientist, not everything they do is science. A scientist needs to eat breakfast, but eating breakfast is not science. A scientist needs to imagine possibilities, but imagining possibilities is not science. Artists do that as well without being scientists. What makes someone a scientist - and I'm simply restating what I've heard many times and seems plausible, not something I've put a lot of thought into recently - is that he tests these imagined possibilities, which in the context of science are called hypotheses. It's putting the hypotheses to the test, particularly to a systematic, rigorous test, that sets science apart from other activities. And this bit - the testing bit - the bit which is what (I have often heard) makes science science and not religion or art - is designed to avoid belief in untrue things.
You wrote that "what science is, is an is, not an ought." Could you please explain what science is? I only ask because different people have different ideas of what science is or should be, and I'm a little unclear what is being referred to here. Thanks.
That's why it's a tl;dr.
Thanks!