All of Hey's Comments + Replies

Hey00

Thanks, I was not aware of this. I would like to create something like this, but generic so every online community can use it.

Hey180

I am thinking of coding up a web app for accumulating, voting, and commenting on quotes. Kind of like bash.org but much fancier.

Is that something you guys would be interested in? If so, what features would you want?

This would be free to use of course, and the site would not lock down the data (ie it would be exportable to various formats).

I am thinking there are a lot of communities that post quotes for internal use, and might be interested in a kind of unified web site for this. My initial thought is that it would be like Reddit, where each tribe/community/subculture/topic/etc gets its own subdirectory.

2DanielVarga
Are you aware of my Best of Rationality Quotes post? I'm not saying that it is directly relevant for you, but there is stuff there that might give you some inspiration, especially the weird aggregate statistics at the end.
Hey40

Heh, you understood my intent perfectly. I'm pretty pig-headed on my own, but thanks for the encouragement :)

I propose that we create an open thread called "Fringe topics we should research for potential usefulness". In this thread, the usual downvoting norms would be somewhat laxer.

Hey40

Absolutely agree with that. Was not suggesting wholesale acceptance of NLP (which is quite non-monolithic mind you) either, merely pointing at something and saying "let's find out if there's some value to that thing there".

The way I figure it, NLP is about hacking the psyche through manipulating the individual experience at a lower level than mainstream psychology (although there seems to be some overlap with eg CBT in the linguistic part of NLP). I can't think of any other therapy form that asks the subject to manipulate their mental images in o... (read more)

Hey40

Interesting video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtUatMghbHg

Follow up 25 years later: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjjCzhrYJDQ&feature=related

I suspect the efficacy of this method depends a lot on the subject's ability to really bring forth the internal representations of the phobia (ie mental images, feelings, etc) so that they can be changed.

Hey00

I might read that later tonight. Do you have a TLDR for now?

9lessdazed
tl;dr: Science is designed to avoid belief in untrue things, not figure out what is most likely to be true.
Hey30

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).

0jsalvatier
I am glad at some NLP advocates engage existing research.
0lessdazed
Hey, I thought you might like this post on Science.
Hey70

Agreed, but it takes a high degree of luminosity to distinguish between tactical use of status to attain a specific objective, and getting emotionally involved and reactive to the signals of other (inducing this state of confusion is pretty much the function of status-signals for most humans, though).

Tactical = dress up, display "irrational confidence", and play up your achievements to maximize attraction in potential romantic partners, or do well at a job interview.

Emotional-reactive = seeking, and worrying about, the approval of perceived social betters even though there is no logical reason.

Hey30

A lot of LWites (including you based on your mention of LoveSystems) seem to be interested in PUA, which is similar to NLP in that it contains a LOT of scammers and creepy people, but also has a group of genuinely useful and non-scammy people (eg Rob Judge and Mark Manson). I think our quest for scientific stringency should not ALWAYS get in the way of investigating cool new stuff. I'm sure NLP could be tested. If it's possible to prove eg the existence of synesthesia in a lab setting then it should be possible to prove the stuff NLP talks about. But I'll ... (read more)

Hey-10

Yes, there is some of that attitude which you describe. However, it's hardly descriptive of ALL neuro-linguistic programmers.

NLP people would say you are Generalizing, Distorting and Deleting :)

5Richard_Kennaway
Well, there you are, that's the concern I have about NLP, which I have to admit I have seen only in its worst manifestations, on the Usenet newsgroup alt.nlp many years ago. It was like looking into an overcrowded cage of rats fighting for dominance, with the NLP techniques as their claws and teeth.
Hey00

Agreed. There are plenty of minor names in the field though, who don't give me this impression. The NLP Mind Fest Event was apparently designed to bring out a lot of these lesser known people.

Hey10

Here are some common patterns: http://www.nlpu.com/NewDesign/NLPU_Archives.html

Again, I am NOT an expert on NLP. I simply find it to be intriguing and full of potential. Coming here and talking about should not be construed as advocacy, merely "hey guys, this looks neat, could it be useful?" :)

Jack190

Another huge link full of the jargon isn't helpful. What do the leaders in the field claim for it? I'm looking for straight-forward English sentences describing the effects of employing NLP. Like how, if I asked someone what you can do with aerodynamics they might reply "Build things that fly!".

It seems to be a kind of psychological therapy- but there are hundreds of such methods some supported by licensed clinicians and others not. All of it is subject to a huge placebo-like effect-- to the point where all of it may be no better than talking to ... (read more)

Hey10

Haven't dicked around much with it yet. But one thing I can tell is that a lot of the self-hacking stuff I came up with myself over the years has been laid out in much clearer form in NLP. Always cool to get those "ah! so that's what I was doing" moments.

One thing I'm going to be experimenting with is changing my chunking and anchoring around exercise. In other words, trying to change the number of steps I perceive it to be, and the mental images and feelings it evokes when I think about it.

Something I'm currently playing around with is imagining turning down negative self-talk and dimming mental images that I don't wish to have.

Hey10

Yes, I realize that it sets of skepticism alarms. It did so for me as well when I first encountered it. It's a detriment to the field that it looks scammy on the surface :)

Yes, I love his article on happiness. The problem with ONLY going with research-backed stuff is that one might be missing out on potentially useful stuff. My argument here is NOT to take NLP on faith, but rather to perhaps to investigate it further and see what it can offer.

A lot of it seems to be based on introspection and informal experimentation. Which could be said for the father of ... (read more)

Hey00

(Sorry for replying to my own comments).

NLP can be used for lots of things, one of them being reverse-engineering the minds of other which is called "modeling". Here is an example: http://www.nlplive.com/nlp/tim-ferriss-mind-hack-by-mr-twenty-twenty/

It's very interesting. He goes into how someone who is thinking in Auditory who won't truly understand a person who is thinking in Visual-Kinesthetic, like in this example, and so won't be able to take their success and emulate it. Do as I think, not as I say :)

More on modeling: http://en.wikipedia.or... (read more)

Hey10

Oh btw, I think there is a lot of stuff that was discovered by the LW community yet was already known by NLP. Take the concept of dissolving your intuitions. NLP would agree that intuitions are not atomic, and would try to look at the compontents from various angles:

Visual representation: mental images and movies

Auditory representation: linguistics/labels/associations/metaphors used to describe the intuition

Kinesthaetic representation: gut feelings, "uggghhh" fields

Chunk size: the level of abstractness, how many other concepts it subsumes

Ecology:... (read more)

pjeby140

Oh one more thing: if you've seen PJ Eby's "How to clean your desk video", then that's pretty much an NLP technique he uses. I think the term is "future-pacing".

If you're not sure whether the correct term is future-pacing, I think that rather than suggesting LW investigate NLP, perhaps you should do some more investigating of it. ;-)

(Hint: technically, you could maybe stretch the term to say I am future-pacing the feeling of enjoyment, but as generally applied in NLP, future-pacing is used to link a behavior to a context, and that i... (read more)

rysade120

The main thing I think folks are objecting to here is the idea of 'swallowing the NLP pill.'

You'll see plenty of self hacks and hacks that work on others (dark arts, etc) but none of it will be labeled NLP. I imagine plenty of the techniques we have here were even inspired in one way or another by NLP.

But here's my main point. We have kept our ideas' scope down for a reason. We DO NOT WANT lukeprog's How To Be Happy to sound authoritative. The reason for that is if it turns out to be 'more wrong' it will be that much easier to let go of.

Introducing the... (read more)

0Hey
(Sorry for replying to my own comments). NLP can be used for lots of things, one of them being reverse-engineering the minds of other which is called "modeling". Here is an example: http://www.nlplive.com/nlp/tim-ferriss-mind-hack-by-mr-twenty-twenty/ It's very interesting. He goes into how someone who is thinking in Auditory who won't truly understand a person who is thinking in Visual-Kinesthetic, like in this example, and so won't be able to take their success and emulate it. Do as I think, not as I say :) More on modeling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_neuro-linguistic_programming#Modeling Modeling can also be used on yourself. Ie figure out why you are supremely successful in one area of your life and try to map those behaviors/beliefs/capabilities/identity/environment over to to another area of your life which is less successful. I've used this myself with good results. In essence it's about using the concept of design patterns outside of computer programming.
Hey10

To my understanding, what you are describing here is what is called a transderivational search in Neuro-Linguistic Programming. It is basically a "satisficing" (suffice+satisfy) fuzzy search.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transderivational_search http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing

Here's a pet peeve of mine: I think this site could find A LOT of benefit in delving into NLP. I mean, the whole field is basically a quest to find the machine-code of the human psyche. The version of NLP that is represented on sites like SkepDic seems like a poor re... (read more)

I think one of my favorite things is to see someone earnestly defend a marginally valuable and slightly controversial theory on LW, because the resulting dynamics cause the good parts of the theory to be revealed while simultaneously producing an object lesson in identifying junk science and filtering poorly tested claims with reasonableness. Most of the regular commenters wouldn't advocate or support a theory like NLP and if it was left to them the community wouldn't produce conversation trees like this one, which I find quite educational.

I wish there wa... (read more)

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.

PhilGoetz190

I agree that it seems worth looking into. I've looked into NLP a little bit. I'm always turned off by the voices of its practitioners. Their tonality, speed, excitement, and rhythym scream "I am trying to sell you snake oil!" to me. This is odd for people who claim to be masters of subcommunication via speech. They often repeat the charlatan pattern I first observed in Tom Brown Jr., of spending as much time telling you how great what they are telling you is, as telling you things.

This applies also to the popular self-improvement gurus, including Tony Robbins. I cannot stand to listen to an audio of him; it's like being trapped in a small room with a door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman.

DSimon180

I haven't heard of NLP before, but reading about it now it's setting off all my old skepticism alarms. The claims it makes seem to be very vague and optimistic. I'm especially wary of things like the links you provided that talk about having "over 200 patterns"; I don't buy my textbooks based on their page count.

Self-hacking is cool, but any advice given along those lines needs to be backed up by solid literature something fierce (i.e. see lukeprog's How to Be Happy) to be plausible, and even then you should generally expect that any given piece ... (read more)

5Jack
So, like, what can you do with it?

the amazing stuff I am always reading about

I'm sure it's amazing to read about. How amazing have you found it in practice?

1Hey
Oh btw, I think there is a lot of stuff that was discovered by the LW community yet was already known by NLP. Take the concept of dissolving your intuitions. NLP would agree that intuitions are not atomic, and would try to look at the compontents from various angles: Visual representation: mental images and movies Auditory representation: linguistics/labels/associations/metaphors used to describe the intuition Kinesthaetic representation: gut feelings, "uggghhh" fields Chunk size: the level of abstractness, how many other concepts it subsumes Ecology: how does this affect other parts of the person's psyche? Are there internal conflicts? Secondary gain: ie the intuition might be harmful/counterproductive but the person gets some benefit from it, even if only a sense of certainty They would probably go into more factors as well. I am still a neophyte to this. I just wanted to highlight an example of a similarity between NLP and LW. As I said, I think there are lots of these similarities. Oh one more thing: if you've seen PJ Eby's "How to clean your desk video", then that's pretty much an NLP technique he uses. I think the term is "future-pacing".
Hey10

My speculation: people in "our" personspace cluster tend to be pattern mismatchers/polarity responders (NLP lingo, there are probably some googleable descriptions). Whereas "normals" get good emotions from rapport, "we" are the opposite. A lot of nerd awkwardness probably comes from the failure to understand and utilize rapport.

Hey-40

What you are describing is well known in Neuro Linguistic Programming. I'm not super familiar with the terms (yet) but I THINK this is referred to as "chunking". "Submodalities" and "anchoring" might also be relevant.

More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming

I think LW could do very well to import a lot of knowledge from NLP and try to see what's valid and what's not. I've noticed that people here are often reinventing the wheel.

PJ Eby, please chime in on this.

0wedrifid
Except when the wheel is, you know, 'bad'. Lesswrong wouldn't accept NLP for normative reasons. That said, I would be reluctant to give NLP 'wheel' status in any case. "Reinvent the swiss army knife" perhaps. :)
4pjeby
True, but I don't believe it really has a name there. Tony Robbins refers to them as "references" or "reference experiences", but I'm not sure if that's his own coinage or borrowed from NLP. If you must throw it into a formal NLP term, the blanket term "strategy" is probably what you're looking for. (The terms you just gave are for things used in strategies, or to modify strategies.) However, I personally think that this is one area where importing NLP terminology actually obscures more than it makes clear -- Robbins' terminology and the one used here are sufficiently clear to get the point across with a minimum number of entities introduced.
Hey100

I have been using this exact method for a few years. It is absolutely the most reliable method for getting something specific and critical done in an intermediate time frame (say 2 weeks to 3 months), but it's kind of the nuclear option of willpower and should be used sparingly since 1) it relies on being the nuclear option, if you ever fail then you would lose faith in the method 2) it absolutely sucks, since it's usually something sucky you decide to do and you have bargained away the usual weaseling out tactics 3) Cthulhu doesn't like it when you break your promises.

2faul_sname
I find that if I reinforce myself with an M&M or other small candy every time I complete the sucky task, it stops feeling sucky after about a week

it absolutely sucks, since it's usually something sucky you decide to do and you have bargained away the usual weaseling out tactics

That's a really good point. Robin likes to talk about this. Someone may enjoy eating fatty foods more than they would enjoy being fit and healthy. But people who express a desire to be fit and healthy get more social prestige, so the optimum case for them is to think they would be better off dieting, while continuing to eat as much as always. These people think they have akrasia, but don't. If someone gives them a way to &q... (read more)