hypnosis question

post by KvmanThinking (avery-liu) · 2025-02-06T02:41:53.314Z · LW · GW · No comments

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    1 Milan W
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hypnosis is really crazy and weird and 

 

  1. hypnosis is a real thing, right?
  2. if so, can I use it to motivate myself to do stuff, nudge my aliefs and System 1 dispositions closer to actual reality, be happier, etc?

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answer by Milan W · 2025-02-06T03:23:13.504Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

It's a bit late in my current timezone and I read this stuff long ago and don't quite know where so please do not believe me much, but here goes:

I have the impression that social-trust-stuff is pretty load-bearing in hypnosis (ie if a psychiatrist does it you have to trust them for it to work, if a stage magician does it on a member of the public they bring onto the stage then they have to be skilled and the rest of the audience has to be receptive). So going from that I'd say that it is probably kind of a real thing but different and less powerful than you are probably imagining, and that doing it on yourself seems hard and maybe impossible.

Anyways don't quote me on this, I will retract this answer upon the slightest correction, I did zero research for it, I wrote it on a whim.

↑ comment by CBiddulph (caleb-biddulph) · 2025-02-06T05:11:59.008Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I am not really knowledgeable about it either and have never been hypnotized or attempted to hypnotize anyone. I did read one book on it a while ago - Reality is Plastic - which I remember feeling pretty informative.

Having said all that, I get the impression this description of hypnosis is a bit understated. Social trust stuff can help, but I'm highly confident that people can get hypnotized from as little as an online audio file. Essentially, if you really truly believe hypnosis will work on you, it will work, and everything else is just about setting the conditions to make you believe it really hard. Self-hypnosis is a thing, if you believe in it.

Hypnosis can actually be fairly risky - certain hypnotic suggestions can be self-reinforcing/addictive, so you want to avoid that stuff. In general, anything that can overwrite your fundamental personality is quite risky. For these reasons, I'm not sure I'd endorse hypnosis becoming a widespread tool in the rationalist toolkit.

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