Hypnosis

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Hypnosis

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Captain Monkey posted:

If you want to be more reasonable, try to write up a definition of hypnosis or hypnotism so that we can discuss it. You're relying on vague terms and linking dozens of articles that seem to sort of, if you just read the title, support you. You aren't making a very good case.

I also can't tell what Abugadu thinks hypnosis is. On end it's a technique so powerful it can literally kidnap people, on another it's "can create a highly relaxed state of inner concentration and focused attention for patients", on another it's a completely ordinary state of mind ("In truth, hypnosis is something most of us have experienced in our everyday lives."). Like I think everyone agrees that talking to people can make them more or less relaxed or focused depending how you talk to them.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2017 20:46

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 21:59

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Abugadu posted:

Re: definition, I'd say it's an induced bypass of the brain's critical factor.

Your realize this isn't a definition right? Like how do you detect if a person's "critical factor" has been "bypassed"?

# ¿ Jul 16, 2017 17:04

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Abugadu posted:

When you test it and confirm that they are following suggestions that make them unable to do something a normally functioning person should be able to do.

This could be a number of things- catalepsy of a body part, losing numbers or letters while counting, or having them temporarily forget names, etc

That's the point at which you know you have the bypass, and the technique usually switches to a deepening process then.

This is still nowhere close to a definition. Definitions of things should give people predictive power over the thing defined. Like you keep saying the sexual assault defense lawyer is proof of hypnosis, but persuading people to lose numbers is definitely not a process that should result in them masturbating on cue, so I don't have any clue how you could possibly think hypnotism had anything to do with it, given what you've offered as a definition so far.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2017 20:52

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Abugadu posted:

Please post an actual usual definition of what hypnosis even means. Like one that enables me to predict whether someone could use hypnosis to kidnap other people.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2017 06:08

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Abugadu posted:

Honestly, if you ask five different professional hypnotists what hypnosis is, you get five slightly different answers.

This seems like a real problem for someone who thinks hypnosis is real. Like if you asked five doctors what eating is, I don't think we'd get five different answers.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2017 06:13

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Abugadu posted:

The usual definition is that it's an inducement of a bypass of the critical factor, meaning someone has caused you to stop using the part of your brain that examines incoming statements or commands and subjects them to heavy scrutiny based on your past experiences.

Again this is complete nonsense. What part of the brain and how does one stop using a part of the brain? What's the difference between heavy scrutiny and light scrutiny?

quote:

Using hypnosis maliciously would require initially gaining someone's trust

So you're saying if someone trusts me I can get them to do stuff? That's just talking.

quote:

But it's that whole 'boiling a frog one degree at a time' concept that seems to sneak past it. Fine, with his victims, didn't jump to 'ok start masturbating' immediately, he was doing a long lead up - A leads to B, B leads to C, C leads to D, pushing it a little at a time until the brain is like 'well we're already at P, Q isn't much farther than that, why not'.

Again, this is just persuasion. I think everyone agrees persuasion exists.

Abugadu posted:

The digestive system is pretty straight forward compared to the brain. I feel like it's the blind men with the elephant situation, but we have a lot more data to work with to get a slightly more accurate answer. And, up until ~1950, this was a fairly dead realm of study, comparatively.

Blind men confronted with an elephant shouldn't be nearly as confident as you are.

Tunicate posted:

Brain poo poo is admittedly more complicated. If you ask five neuroscientists why people need to sleep, the only common answer is gonna be 'because people get sleepy'.

This question isn't structured well, "need" implies a goal you haven't stated, so of course people are going to project whatever goals they think are interesting. If the most precise thing a person can say about sleep is "people need sleep because people get sleepy", then perhaps they shouldn't start threads on neuroscience.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2017 16:25

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Abugadu posted:

Eh, degrees don't really mean much for this stuff, other than actually being a psychiatrist or psychologist. All the other certifications are basically 'pay money watch video get paper'.

You don't think the hypnosis industry being filled with people who charge money for fake degrees, and then use fake degrees to call themselves a doctor, isn't problematic for your claims regarding hypnosis?

# ¿ Jul 20, 2017 15:52

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Space T Rex posted:

Oh so your argument is just a denial of the premise that's its real. Do you have an argument to support that or...? Again, I'm not convinced it's real myself it just seems silly to be so positive that its not when the culmination of your argument comes to a head at "naw uh no its not". So what if neurological studies haven't been able to define details yet, that means its either complicated, fake, difficult to define, has lots of variability, or many other things. But its not evidence that solely asserts its completely fake.

If we define hypnotism as "sometimes a person will declare they are performing hypnotism and then ask people to do things, and sometimes those people will do the things, even if we wouldn't ordinarily expect them to do the things" then hypnotism definitely exists, but is indistinguishable from normal persuasion. If hypnotism is something more than that, then we need to people who think that to come up with rigorous definitions that can be tested.

Like to get at what you were saying earlier, is it even possible for hypnotists to badly perform hypnotism? Can a hypnotism expert make a mistake that wouldn't be noticed by non-expert, but still prevent hypnotism from working? I earnestly can't even tell, because I'm getting definitions like "bypassing the critical factor", which on top of being nonsense, isn't a description of a process. It's just saying you keep doing it until you succeed. Once you succeed, then you know you've done hypnotism, if you don't succeed, the clearly you haven't done hypnotism and it's all your fault. Hypnotism can not fail, it can only be failed.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2017 22:12

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Space T Rex posted:

Do you think consciousness exists within other people?

Using the definitions I'm familiar with, I'm agnostic to this, because, as you noted, there's no way to distinguish between true consciousness and faked consciousness. Now what? If there's no way to distinguish between hypnotism and persuasion why do we need words for both?
edit:
If this helps you, I don't give a poo poo if the Chinese room actually understands Chinese, only if it successfully communicates in Chinese.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2017 22:58

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Space T Rex posted:

So then your opinion is that maybe its real maybe its not, who knows? Cause same my dude. Were tight now.

No, because I know for sure persuasion exists, and if hypnosis is just persuasion then it also definitely exists, and people are just using extra words because people are weird about words. If hypnosis is something other than just persuasion, then the people who believe that need to present a testable definition before we can even have a sane conversation about it. Like if someone posted a thread insisting that some percentage of the population were p-zombies, I'd also be asking for a testable definition of consciousness such that we could even begin to have a conversation.
edit:
The people claiming hypnosis is real, do think it's distinguishable from persuasion, but aren't telling us a way to distinguish it.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2017 23:06

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 21:59

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Numerical Anxiety posted:

One can find analogues of hypnosis in normal mental functioning, the same way that one can find normal prototypes for the mechanisms of just about any mental illness; a distinction remains practically useful for marking certain extremes. When I retreat to the happy place in my mind to block out some stressful circumstance, this is more or less normal - when this becomes my normal state of affairs, I get labeled as delusional. It's a meaningful quantitative difference, although not a qualitative one. I might be able to persuade you to act like a duck - chances are I can't convince you that your left arm is paralyzed such that you subjectively experience it to be so.

I keep asking for a definition because the things people are doing in, for example, a stage show, a scummy lawyer's office, and clinical studies with people hooked up to EEGs and fMRIs are all clearly different, and I want to know which we're talking about.

quote:

Here's a some extracts from a fairly recent paper describing neuroscientific studies of hypnosis (from a real cognitive science journal, mind you):

This is a cool paper, but there's literally no reason at all to think that stage performers are even attempting to perform the same routine as what was studied, or even if they are attempting the same routine that they are successful at it, or even if they were successful, that some rear end in a top hat isn't just pretending to subjectively believe their left arm is paralyzed because it's a way better story then that one time you spent $100 bucks on a show, and nothing interesting happened, and you just burned $100 and 2 hours of your life for no reason.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2017 00:32

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Hypnosis