From: ferguson@uxuw03.cern.ch (Douglas Ferguson)
Subject: vote &  more
Reply-To: ferguson@uxuw03.cern.ch (Douglas Ferguson)
Organization: CERN, ALEPH
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 04:44:24 GMT

hello,

	i just discovered your group and would like to make a few quiet observations. wading through the NLP discussion i kept hoping to read about how NLP accomplishes what it claims to, how related/ different is it to hypnosis, and in general what states of mind are involved it the topic. i'm still confused. george continually attacks friday and sharon, they defend and in turn attack george. and so on, and on, .... nowhere does the meat of the topic get really broached. many  of the last 2 dozen or so postings 


have wasted all or much of the time simply arguing or praying for it to end. meanwhile for me, trying to find out the fundamentals, the process of continually reading these postings under the same header (N L P (FAQ)) hoping against hope for something substantial to emerge and finding nothing becomes extremely frustrating.
could'nt the flames be listed under NLP:flames (subtopic/target,etc) or such, the prayers under NLP:please-stop-it and then serious discussion reserved for NLP:FAQ? Also, even in the beginning before the war erupted NLP techniques were not discussed. or maybe i missed that (a repost anyone?). or maybe this forum is really meant for professionals only; if this is the case would someone please tell me and i will quietly pack my bags and go.

as for voting: this is really inappropriate. i hope you realise that at various points you have all attempted to effectively silence the other's voice; if george accepted this vote as binding he could then no longer voice his primary concern about NLP.

george's argumentative style leaves some to be desired, esp. in some earlier posts. but his  basic premise seems sound to me. when a drug company applies to the FDC for license  to sell miracle X; it must support its drug with proof that  a)the drug really does what it claims and
 b)that it leaves no serious side effects. 
	if the drug is extremely expensive, ie in the multi-thousand dollar range for treatment, it is then more necessary to prove that it really works. (this is not to say that this shouldn't be done for the less expensive drugs as well, but one could argue that in this case efficacy testing by the company needn't be as exacting (and thus costly))

as for b) NLP is, to my inexpert eye, associated with hypnosis, which can have rather damaging consequences if the hypnotist is incautious. i can imagine how i would feel afterwards if i were the young man with stong feelings against gays, and then i found that i was dancing with a man in front of all my peers.
	i once knew a man with an intense fear of snakes. what would happen to him if he were to find a videotape of his "snake act" after going to the stage hypnotist's show? supposedly NLP can help cases like this. how, exactly? or even somewhatimprecisely?
	granted the side-effect argument's may not apply to NLP; since i have not yet learned about NLP i cannot tell. but the general point is again valid.

if this forum is not really meant to intelligently and politely discuss issues like those, where else?! or if the resident NLP experts do not wish to delve into those aspects can't a simple 'george: let's just agree to disagree for now' 
suffice? IMO this would be a 'cop out' though. on to other subjects.

i have seen repeated pleas for self hypnosis help in this group. this was actually the reason i was interested in the first place. i am planning on starting my own experimental program in self hypnosis, and would greatly appreciate help and advice.  so if anyone has the knowledge, PLEASE HELP! 

(a subnote to other self-hypnosis fellows): 

if no one responds to this call, i am assuming that no one here actually has an idea on how to proceed, or they are unwilling to help. so, motivation is the key! i propose we form our own self-hypnosis-guinea-pigs-(mini)-club and just  proceed. i am planning on devoting considerable effort to this over the christmas holiday; if any one else is interested then i will try to form a coherent account of my little adventure into the depths. so how 'bout it? 

in general, i am interested in sh for 3 reasons:
    1) god did not gift me with the world's greatest memory, or even a somewhat mediocre one. after living with this for 25 years i've had enough. i have read that subjects in hypnosis have total recall however, so i want to see if this can be somehow brought at least a little closer to the surface, so to speak. also, i have noted recently that i tend to memorise bad incidents well, particularly ones in which i was the bad one (both types are very considerably enhanced over good/neutral memories @ facts). 


this is probably not a particularly healthy sign, why do i do this?

{a final plea before i embark on my very own self guided tour: do i even have a chance at success, or am i on the wrong boat? could a regular hypnotist help? could your friendly local graduate student affordable? NLP practitioner help? (same comment applies to hypnotist) or am i up the creek without a paddle here? (sorry for the imagery) } 

    2) recently i have become extremely melancholy, yet there is no medical
       record of manic depressives in my close relatives. i think i'm reacting to the fact that i am sitting 800 or so miles to the west of where the *** serbians are bombing breadlines, but i am not sure.

    3) self help aside, i just want to know what's up inside my skull.

-end sub note-

	i also am ferociously curious about anything having to do with consciousness and paranormal phenomena; several aspects of the latter 'seem to be' enhanced in meditation and trances. BTW, for the person who recently posted the precognition article (the bloody machine won't give give your article back after i made a short excursion to sci.physics,so i can't give your name, sorry!) is there a more detailed account somewhere? paper? etc. cripes that would be fun to try and repeat on myself! (with some others 


drawing the pictures of course). how deep were the trances? were the pictures randomly drawn by computer or by the hypnotist, or by someone else? were standard 'blinding'  procedures used? how similar is 'similar', statistically? how many trails were performed? did the results show any correlation with the intervening time interval? i know i know, given the above sh comments i am somewhat chomping at the bit  but still.

quite a whiles back i read a book by upton sinclair (the muckraker). it was titled _mental radio_ and dealt with a series of experiments his wife and a cousin she had always felt extremely close to performed in  different rooms and then using prearranged timings in different houses 40 km. apart. they had agreed that at, say 4:00, they would meditate simultaneously, one would then take a  randomly chosen household object or a picture which they drew (fork, umbrella, toaster, etc.) and concentrate on it, whi


lst the other attempted to draw it. The results were OUTrageous!

sinclair showed many pictures which show significant similarities. the most obvious similarity was that when one drawing was somewhat spikey, with many straight lines, approx. 80- 90% of the time the other was too, with this correlation holding for smooth, more flowing drawings as well. several of the household objects were identical as well (they both drew identifiable forks, etc.)

the sinclairs went to great lengths in the book to convince the reader of their sincerity; the argument essentially boiled down to 'this internationally famous muckraker does not want nor need more fame, and moreover this field is generally considered one of the best places to ruin previously gathered reputations' 
they brought the results to a statistician, who conceded that (barring fraud of course) the results were indeed correlated.

as a final note, none other than albert einstein wrote the preface, in which he said (cautiously) -i'm paraphrasing again- "call it what you will, i'm convinced that there is a new phychological phenomenon at work here. and yes, that means mr. sinclair isn't lying" for me, personally, a blessing by einstein lends an effort the utmost respectability. however i am well aware of my frailites, including my clear need to believe in the possibility of such things, so i am interested in other such trance (or non-


trance, of course!) induced projects.

so if anyone cares to comment, 

fergie.                                 or email ferguson@vxaluw.cern.ch