Question: Self-hypnosis in deep states

moonlightress wrote: [email protected] know you can handle it, not in the hypnosis sense,

jimmyh... For example, if a five year old says “2+2=5”, you just think “silly kid, it’s four”.

Great moonlightress. Did you need to be in trance to come up with that response? Was hypnosis required for you to “handle it”? I don’t think so. As jimmyh has stated, “No hypnosis required.”

When you are certain and have classified “friend/foe” it becomes easy for you. Disregard whatever a “foe” offers and absorb whatever a “friend” offers. No hypnosis required when you have some certainty in your mind. That makes life easy.

Where you turn to hypnosis is for the squishy middle, where you are not sure of yourself, where you are uncertain or have not yet made up your mind. It is these kinds of situations where you are nervous, anxious, frustrated, and/or fearful that you then turn to use hypnosis as a coping mechanism. You put your faith in hypnosis the same as other people put their faith in a spiritual belief system. Nothing wrong with that as long as you recognize the limitations, e.g. when it is time to take Advil or go to the dentist.

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:... blah, blah, blah...

I'll grant you one thing. You're a consummate pro at defending against threats to your ego.

moonlightress wrote:

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:... blah, blah, blah...

I'll grant you one thing. You're a consummate pro at defending against threats to your ego.

That is one way to rationalize your opinion moonlightress.

And again, no hypnosis required for you to respond. Is progress being made outside of hypnosis? Is your certainty allowing your courage to show through? Are you “handling it” without first going into trance? I think so. And I think it has nothing to do with hypnosis why you are seeing this behavior.

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:That is one way to rationalize your opinion moonlightress.

And a skilled, transparent and predictable way on your part, to deflect from, and avoid actually engaging with my point, and providing a rational explanation of why I'm wrong. But then you didn't do that with Jimmy's points either. Please, let's hear your side of the story. It's getting boring hearing the same old, recycled comments about me, even if they *are* creatively reworded.

This is where I agree with jimmyh. He has this great concept of Willy Wonky’s chocolate factory and handing the thermostat. It is the same concept as type I/II error, but it is a better narrative in my opinion. No “hypnosis” necessary. Rather it is talking to someone, building rapport, gaining their trust, and then making suggestions that nudge them to deal with the thermostat.

Keep in mind that this is sh** that non-hypnotists are categorically incapable of doing. It’s a post hypnotist skill, not a pre hypnotist skill.

Of course this approach has the self-fulfilling *feel* good flaw that when the friend wakes up after a good night of sleep, it is a big checkmark in the win column for the “keys to the factory” method. But, if the friend doesn’t experience a good nights sleep, then it is no fault of jimmy’s method, but rather the person just wasn’t ready or didn’t implement the advice correctly, or some other variable was slightly off. It is explained away as just too complex. This is the same error made in hypnosis.

When are you going to notice that I’m not an idiot?

I don’t operate on the level of “advice” if I actually want results. As you say, if you give advice you give the other person room to screw it up. What I wanted wasn’t the ability to say “I told you so” it was for him to rest and recover, so I didn’t give advice.

I asked questions. I pointed to the things I thought deserved attention, and calibrated to his responses. I did the things that I anticipated would *directly* cause his mindset to shift, and watched for the results so that I could *know* he was going to sleep well, not “know he’s going to sleep well *if*...”.

I was certainly intending to actually help him, because he is worth helping. After seeing his answer to my questions, I certainly expected that he was going to sleep well. If he didn’t, I would have been wrong and I’d have failed.

because he can point to all the cases where a friend has thanked jimmy for his advice. It is classic attribution error, where a person takes credit for success and rationalizes away any failure to external variables beyond their control.

The reason I’ve been telling stories of when things worked is because I’m telling stories to demonstrate *how things work*, not how things don’t work.

That doesn’t that I never attempt things beyond my ability, let alone that I’m omnipotent. I fail too. Most of the time I don’t even try because I can *anticipate* the failure.

Actually, a really good example of this would be the *last* time I wanted to help someone sleep through pain at the same place. I totally failed then, and it was f***ing frustrating. Haha, it was laughable in hindsight — I even knew I was flailing at the time. The worst part is that it started out *unbelievably* well too. I showed up to see my kid cousin holding back tears and a second degree burn across his whole hand. *One word*. One f***ing word later, and he was smiling and saying “actually, it doesn’t hurt — just tickles”, and laughing about it. I felt like such a ninja, and then it all fell apart when no one else could see that he was fine and kept “oh my god it must hurt so much”ing him and offering him ice/ibuprofen/etc. Dude, shut the **** up. Kid’s fine, just *look*.

I didn’t handle that part well, and was unable to get the pain to go away the second time. Super frustrating, and it definitely made me think. The reason that I failed though wasn’t that I did everything perfectly according to all my models and was left with “This is unpossible! How fail?”. I failed *before* that, when I was unable to even figure out in the moment and implement how my models said I should act and what I should do. That tends to be how things go.
There’s not really reason to tell stories like that though. In the past I’ve told failure stories here before, when I was looking for input from people like Joe and Jargan to help me analyze the situation and figure out how to not fail next time (next time did go way better, btw). More recently though I haven’t been having any difficulty analyzing my failures, so until there’s a reason to remind people that I do fail, and that everything I say takes this unfortunate fact into account… not a whole lot of reason to talk about when cool things *don’t* happen.

For instance, jimmy would blame his inability to educate or “point out” things to me as my failure. It is my unwillingness to open my mind to the wisdom jimmy offers. In my case, it is not jimmy’s method or approach that needs improvement,
Interestingly enough, I’m actually *not* unable to teach you. I thought I might be, and I wanted to test myself. That’s why I took the time and put in the effort to say things in a way that you wouldn’t immediately take as an attack. I was far from sure I would succeed, since despite how it may seem , my abilities actually do have limits. I was giving myself a safe place to fail and learn. I didn’t though, and I was able to present new ideas to you in a way where you couldn’t get offended and even conceded that I made some good points without responding, which is a really really good sign.

Once I saw that I could do it though, what’s the point in continuing? What do you have to offer that’s worth that effort? That amount of eggshell walking is exhausting, and as a general rule I’m uninterested in putting in that kind of effort to maintain inefficient relationships when there are so many better options.

Far more interesting is to start cutting back on the sugar and seeing if self awareness could keep you from being so hilarious as to get offended after accusing everyone else of needing too much sugarcoating . Perhaps you could argue that the more skillful move would have been to keep you on the line for longer without letting you slide down back into offense, but god damnit, I just couldn’t help it. It’s just too damn funny. I just can’t stop laughing. I feel mean doing it because I know where you’re coming from man, but ****. I know it’s not going to feel like a good offer and I all but know you aren’t going to take it, but that’s all I got for you right now. Sorry man, I’m not gonna make it any easier to take, but it really was/is an offer to interact in a way where it’d actually be worth my while to teach you and such that people can actually have respect for the way you carry yourself.

I make the same error as do hypnotists, as does jimmy. Attribution error is a common cognitive bias.

Sorry to leave ya hangin, but I am actually not guilty of this error of yours. It's a common human failure, yes, but not a universal one. It's something to transcend, not an indulgence to allow yourself.

Moonlightress, you're funny.

Richard, you're.... funny

Honestly Richard, I *tried* to help you save face, but you resolutely resisted all attempts to help you look less stupid. I’m a bleeding heart, to a fault, and find it so hard to give up on people, but I’ve met my match and I’m throwing in the towel.

jimmyh wrote:Moonlightress, you're funny.
Richard, you're.... funny

Likewise, Jimmy. It’s been a blast, all the way. And who’d have dreamed ‘just a spoonful of sugar’ would become so hilariously apt?

Let’s go have that beer. It’s Friday and we can’t sit around and wait for Richard forever.

jimmyh wrote:

I make the same error as do hypnotists, as does jimmy. Attribution error is a common cognitive bias.

Sorry to leave ya hangin, but I am actually not guilty of this error of yours. It's a common human failure, yes, but not a universal one. It's something to transcend, not an indulgence to allow yourself.

And there you have it. Jimmyh claims that he has transcended beyond mere mortals like myself and moonlightress and the rest of humanity with “post hypnotic” skill that can be used to attack a minimum wage security guard.

Jimmy, I never called you an idiot. That is how you chose to defend yourself against the compliment I gave you regarding the factory method. You label it “post hypnotic” skill. I label it building rapport.

If you believe you avoid attribution error, or any other cognitive bias for that matter, it does not show transcendence, but instead a lack of understanding, i.e. a degree of ignorance about what cognitive bias is and how it influences our behaviors, you included in the term “our”.

As for funny or fun, maybe one day you will see the fun that can be had in the bigger dialogue, in the moments of discourse that challenge a person to be okay with being offended.

moonlightress wrote:Honestly Richard, I *tried* to help you save face, but you resolutely resisted all attempts to help you look less stupid.

Let’s go have that beer. It’s Friday and we can’t sit around and wait for Richard forever.

I appreciate your attempt to help me moonlightress. Do you recognize the help that you received in our discussion? Probably not, but that is okay. Anyway, you’re welcome for my help in being able to “handle it” in the future.

How about trying a slightly more difficult example. That minimum wage security guard that jimmyh was proud to use as an example of handling things. You and I agree jimmy is no idiot. I think jimmyh is very intelligent. He expresses his ideas in a way that definitely shows he is well above some minimum wage employee that can’t escape. In fact, I was just informed jimmyh is transcendent.

So here is the scenario. You have a minimum wage employee, probably struggling to save up enough money for his next Scientology level test, or maybe he is tired of paying child support to an ex wife so he needs some extra cash to fight for full custody. Something like that. Then transcendent jimmyh walks in with his post-hypnotic skills and uses them to deal the devastating blow of “he’s acting like a douche”. What do you think?

In my opinion, if that’s what transcendence and post hypnotic skill allows a person to achieve, you can keep it.

And there you have it. Jimmyh claims that he has transcended beyond mere mortals like myself and moonlightress and the rest of humanity

Not above moonlightress and the rest of humanity. Just the people who are incapable of learning to not make that mistake.

You label it “post hypnotic” skill. I label it building rapport.

If you’ve internalized the teachings of hypnosis, then you get to have relationships where people can say “my hands are cold, but my core is hot”, you respond “then send more blood to them?” and they say “I did. They’re warm now”. Rapport is *part* of it, but rapport alone doesn’t get you the insight or understanding about what is on the table, let alone the ability to guide people there.

Jimmy, I never called you an idiot. That is how you chose to defend yourself against the compliment I gave you regarding the factory method.

I never said you called me an idiot, and I don’t think you think of me as an idiot. I’m sorry that I wasn’t clear, and that you thought I was taking it as an insult. I wasn’t.

You don’t think of me as an idiot, but you *do* think of me as “human”, and therefore “fallible, in the way that everybody is fallible”. This is totally fair and accurate. The problem is that there is an upper bound which you can’t imagine any human surpassing, and so you start saying things like “And there you have it. Jimmyh claims that he has transcended beyond mere mortals like myself and moonlightress and the rest of humanity” and trying to use the existence of the claim as it’s own disproof rather than actually checking to see whether or not the person is right.

This “upper bound” that you have is at a certain level of competency. In particular, it’s at the level of competency where the person not only makes the error of attributing their successes to themselves and their failures to other people, but also the level of (in)competency where they are completely and utterly unable to address this and stop doing it once it has been pointed out. To you, this level is “merely human”, and so for you to see me as limited in this way is not an insult at all.

I expect more of people. I see the mistake itself as glaringly obvious, but the real kicker is the inability to notice and correct for it. *I* was referring to this level as “idiot”. The term “idiot” is *my* word for the level you place us both at. To translate this into your own language, imagine me saying “ when are you going to realize that I’m not bound by silly human limitations?” — only, realize that I do not see *myself* as “superhuman” or anything. I just see regular flesh and blood mortal (and fallible) humans as capable of more than you think we are.

As for funny or fun, maybe one day you will see the fun that can be had in the bigger dialogue, in the moments of discourse that challenge a person to be okay with being offended

That’s *precisely* what is so hilarious. I don’t think I have ever experienced irony this thick in my entire life.

with “post hypnotic” skill that can be used to attack a minimum wage security guard.
[...]
Then transcendent jimmyh walks in with his post-hypnotic skills and uses them to deal the devastating blow of “he’s acting like a douche”. What do you think?

Can you continue to refer to me as “transcendent”? I kinda like the way that sounds. “The *transcendent* Jimmyh”.... What’s Moonlightress’s nickname going to be? Hopefully something similarly flattering.

Anyway, that wasn’t given as an example of something “only hypnotists can do”, let alone “an impressive feat” — just a basic skill Moonlightress had forgotten she had. Anyone can do it, so long as they’re really okay with not giving people even an ounce of sugar when they try to extort you for it. It’s also not me “attacking” anyone. It’s me sharing my opinion with my wife at our wedding. If people sharing their opinions seems like an “attack” to you…

In my opinion, if that’s what transcendence and post hypnotic skill allows a person to achieve, you can keep it.

Those skills allow for much much more. However, if merely learning to take responsibility for one’s own failures is beyond what you can conceive of, the rest are going to be a bit more difficult to perceive.

Separately I'm glad you've grown to have some sympathy for people who need to be dealt with delicately and can't handle hearing how people see them.

Isn’t it interesting; it’s possible I learned more from the struggle with your *omission* of the piece of information about what to do, when you don’t know what to do. I really *don’t* know what to do. I *do* expect the information to be true and useful. Right now I’m doing “nothing”, just swimming in cognitive dissonance.

Is that the secret? Remain in the cognitive dissonance and resist the impulse to defend against it, while the parts of your mind throw the ball to each other in turns, as they swim around the whole pool to find the goalpost?

jimmyh wrote:Not above moonlightress and the rest of humanity. Just the people who are incapable of learning to not make that mistake.

Like the security guard earning minimum wage, unable to defend himself. Good to know you see yourself above him and were able to use your post hypnotic skill and transcendence above those lesser than you to say he is acting like a douche.

You don’t think of me as an idiot, but you *do* think of me as “human”, and therefore “fallible, in the way that everybody is fallible”. This is totally fair and accurate. The problem is that there is an upper bound which you can’t imagine any human surpassing

Jump to conclusions much? You really are trying to rationalize to yourself why I might not see your actions as beyond the upper bounds. I have not tested it you claim. You used your surpassing ability to insult an employee making minimum wage jimmy. That is not a good enough test? That in your mind is surpassing the upper bounds? Most people would be ashamed to admit they had treated someone like that, but you brag about it as an example of your acumen, your surpassing the upper bounds of humanity that others can’t grasp.

You claim to not be insulted or offended. Fair enough, but then you believe the same standard doesn’t hold true for certain others. And now I see why, because you have clearly stated you are above others, that others are incapable of achieving or surpassing some upper bound that you have introduced into this discussion.

In my opinion, your personal empiricism is floundering a bit here jimmy.

moonlightress wrote: I *do* expect the information to be true and useful.

Information is only useful to the extent it helps to address any uncertainties you might be facing. Information is only true or false to the extent it brings with it a greater degree of certainty, thereby reducing cognitive dissonance. Even then, certainty is never certain. In other words, being capable of tolerating a certain degree of uncertainty is vital to success.

Is that the secret? Remain in the cognitive dissonance and resist the impulse to defend against it, while the parts of your mind throw the ball to each other in turns, as they swim around the whole pool to find the goalpost?

It is cyclical. You don’t remain in cognitive dissonance. Instead, you have the known, the explored, what you are comfortable with. It is your island. Then, in order to grow you must set a small goal, set a goalpost that takes you a few steps into the water. Cognitive dissonance ensues as you explore the unexplored. You learn, you grow, you fight, you overcome, you conquer, you get stronger, you handle it, and that then becomes another little piece of your island. Cognitive dissonance disappears,

Your island, at least in part, is hypnosis. Great. It is a solid island. To some extent I am, was, or continue to be the unexplored. All relationships require exploration. But, as you have stayed to explore rather than retreat, it adds to your island as you have gone from uncertain to certain. You are certain of your affect towards me and this in turn makes you certain of your responses. You don’t suffer any cognitive dissonance as you let me know exactly what you think.

Where you still are uncertain, this is where cognitive dissonance remains. If you struggle to set a goal post, that usually relates to self handicapping or setting goals/expectations well beyond your current capabilities. Instead of a few steps into the water (scaffolding) you are imagining swimming to an island you can’t even see.

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:You used your surpassing ability to insult an employee making minimum wage jimmy. That is not a good enough test? That in your mind is surpassing the upper bounds? Most people would be ashamed to admit they had treated someone like that, but you brag about it as an example of your acumen, your surpassing the upper bounds of humanity that others can’t grasp.

Dammit, Richard, you make this *really* difficult for me. Just as I resolve to throw in the towel and write you off, you show compassion for the poor security guard, and demonstrate impressive insight in identifying with him. You didn't do that last time Jimmy talked about him; now you're in a corner, you find the ability. It's exhausting for me to have hope for you, lose it, have it, lose it - couldn’t you just let me solidify my opinion of you as incapable of that?

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:When you are certain and have classified “friend/foe” it becomes easy for you. Disregard whatever a “foe” offers and absorb whatever a “friend” offers. No hypnosis required when you have some certainty in your mind. That makes life easy.

Here's another of the hilarious ironies you've provided for us to laugh about. There’s been ample evidence of my uncertainty in this thread. I’ve just admitted to sitting, right now, in another pile of uncertainty, over a blow to my worldview. You, however, have never waivered in your own certainty. It’s been a godsend for you that I arrived here, to provide you with someone to project* onto. Pleased to be of service.

And now you've just done it again. (are your belly muscles as sore as mine, Jimmy?)

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote: Even then, certainty is never certain. In other words, being capable of tolerating a certain degree of uncertainty is vital to success.

-

*(To be fair, I’ve probably been guilty of the same thing. I’m still busy examining and reflecting on my behavior here, for signs of that. Then Jimmy and I can laugh about the irony of me writing the above, too.)

Richard,

With my last post, I'm done with teasing you out here in the open forum. I'm starting to feel mean and that isn't how I want to be. It’s clear that you were very offended, but I hope I didn’t actually hurt your feelings by laughing at you. You were invited to laugh with us, and earn some respect by showing a little humbleness and ability to laugh at yourself, but you didn’t arrive for the beer date.

You’re free to exercise your prerogative to continue being hostile and sarcastic, but I don’t want to play anymore. I have stuff to ponder.