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Romashka comments on One model of understanding independent differences in sensory perception - Less Wrong Discussion

17 Post author: Elo 20 September 2015 09:32PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 21 September 2015 12:12:26AM *  2 points [-]

This is actually one of the core ideas of NLP, known as a "Primary Representational System." There's all sorts of crazy synesthesia tricks that NLP has developed.

Example: If your primary representational system is visual, making things brighter, closer, clearer, and first person (for most people) makes them more salient, while making them smaller, farther, blurier, and third person makes them less salient. For sound, making it louder, clearer, and closer usually does the same thing. If you have a voice in your head that you want to stop taking seriously, try making it sound like Donald Duck.

Some other fun observations from NLP:

You'll tend to use language that has to do with your PRS. For instance, if you're primarily, visual, you'll say things like "I see". If you're auditory, you'll say "I hear you." They used to think that speaking in the language of someone else's PRS could create rapport, but AFAIK that's been disproven by research. The concept of language affecting it I think is still in the air, but I'm not sure.

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_systems_(NLP)

Comment author: Romashka 21 September 2015 04:59:14PM 0 points [-]

People also say I hear you or I see[=understand] when it is exactly what they have to convey. Saying I see instead of I hear you can at times be counterproductive... And vice versa...

Comment author: [deleted] 22 September 2015 01:54:58AM *  0 points [-]

Can you give an example when "I hear you "as an idiom works but "I see what you're saying" doesn't?

Comment author: Romashka 23 September 2015 06:25:31AM 1 point [-]

Also, nobody says 'You hear,...' instead of 'You see,...'

Comment author: Romashka 22 September 2015 04:20:50AM 0 points [-]

(It might be a quirk of how I learned English.) For me, "I hear you" is an acknowledgement of listening, possibly negotiating, and "I see..." - of the other person already thinking they have heard all they need to, possibly a dismissal. Of course, intonation matters too, and maybe it so outweighs the actual words that the above doesn't matter, but I mostly intake English as written.