Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:Real life examples. I lived in Las Vegas for 11 years, home to some of the best hypnotists around. I worked with Steve Wyrick for a year (magic not hypnosis, but you want some sort of sourcing). I have handled hundreds of criminals, personally. I have investigated rapes, personally. I have watched plenty of sleaze bag guys in bars thinking they were using hypnosis or trying out the latest trick they learned from pickup artist video #3.
So you've watched professionals work professionally, you've talked to people who never used hypnosis, and you've watched people who only know the most basic tricks of hypnosis.
Sorry, but that's a bit like saying "I've watched professional painters, and I've spoken to people who wore clothes, and I've watched children with crayons, and based on this experience I can tell you with 100% certainty that it is impossible to dye clothes."
I don't have your experience in any of those areas. However, I have spent a year in an amateur hypnosis community where unethical hypnotists occasionally try to get subjects to do things against their will, and I can tell you with certainty that it can be done. Now granted, it can't be done to every subject, and with many subjects there's a limit to how much can be done before they're able to resist it. However, I'm confident that if a bank teller was the right sort of person, they could be persuaded to hand over sacks of money by a hypnotist.
I also believe that Derren Brown's Assassin experiment was genuine, and demonstrates that an exceptionally good subject could be hypnotized to commit assassination against his will and without his knowledge.
Also, by the way, when I was talking about rape, I wasn't talking about cold induction. Whenever I've read about that happening in the news, it was in a clinical setting.