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I saw it on a message boeard and I want to know what it is
Thankx!
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Hmmmm....I went and read that article above and my advice would be if you read it, take it with a very big grain of salt. That writer, in true tabloid style, was obviously writing from a position of no personal experience and using emotionally charged, abstract language to provoke an emotional rather than reasoned response. I would probably find that article offensive if it weren't so much fun to pull the language apart and look at all of the persuasive techniques the author is using. Oh, by the way, NLP teaches one how to do that...and do it quite well  . Mike
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MikeB, Can you give me an example of the article's abstractness? The only thing I found difficult to read was Bandler's and Grinder's (the creator's/founder's) description of NLP. Perhaps it was the Kuhn/Kant portion, and I'm sure the writer only went into it to explain what a paradigm shift is and how NLP's creators misuse the word. And about tabloid style - it was a reasoned out essay, the argument was logical enough, even if it doesn't meet your conclusion.
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Hi chaosadelt, I'd be happy to give you a couple of examples. Linguistically speaking, the farther we move away from sensory-based language (what we can see, hear, smell, taste and touch) the more abstract we move. A good example of this is found in the first sentence, "Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) is one of many New Age Large Group Awareness Training programs." "New Age" probably means something a little different to everyone, and the author was trading on that fact, as well as on the slightly negative connotation of the phrase "new age" itself. Here's another great one, "One common thread in NLP is the emphasis on teaching a variety of communication and persuasion skills, and using self-hypnosis to motivate and change oneself." Very little sensory-based language there but many nominalizations. A nominalization is a verb that has been turned into a noun. You'll find lots of nominalizations in hypnotic and persuasive language because they are extremely vague. "Freedom" is a fantastic nominalization as any politician knows...ask any 100 people what "freedom" means to them and you'll most likely get around 100 different answers. The point to my original post was simply that the article is extremely opinionated and slanted, which I can accept when the author knows what he is talking about. Unfortunately I highly doubt this person has spent any time actually experiencing what NLP claims. As a computer programmer who is just finishing the Practitioner Certification (with NLP Comprehensive in Colorado), I can say that in my own experience NLP is a pretty solid science. The techniques can be reduced to steps which, with a small amount of training, anyone can follow to consistantly produce results. Let's see traditional psychotherapy claim that ! At one point in the article the author picks on NLP's presuppositions: "When the space shuttle blew up within minutes of launch, killing everyone on board, was that "only feedback"? " However, what the author misses is the spirit which the presuppositions are intended. We aren't interested in whether or not the presuppositions are "true" or "false" but rather are they useful? Sure, the space shuttle accident was a tragedy. Sure, that mission is considered a failure, but let me ask you this: Did we still continue to fly space shuttle missions? Hopefully we learned what went wrong with that mission and corrected it so no ever loses their life on another space shuttle mission....that is the nature of reframing a failure into feedback. Just to balance things out, here is a link to the alt.psychology.nlp FAQ:
http://www.rain.org/~da5e/nlpfaq.html
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MikeB, I thought you meant abstract as in (dictionary.com, number 3.)Difficult to understand; abstruse: abstract philosophical problems. I did not think the article was particulary difficult to understand. I said in my first post it was a skeptic's view - not a believer's. I am sure the author spent time investigating his stuff, he has over 400 entries and the ones I read seem thought-out. He is not just a hack poster like me Talking about abstract (above version), the cofounder of NLP has quotes such as this: <<<One of the models that I built was called strategy elicitation which is something that people confuse with modeling to no end. They go out and elicit a strategy and they think they are modeling but they don't ask the question, "Where did the strategy elicitation model come from?" There are constraints inside this model since it was built by reducing things down. The strategy elicitation model is always looking for the most finite way of accomplishing a result. This model is based on sequential elicitation and simultaneous installation.">>> To me this is truly abstract. But I am not 100% familiar with the lingo - could you translate? And while you are at it answer flower333 original question "What is NLP"?
How can I very talk about concepts such as NLP only using sensory based language? I could give sensory based examples of what I am talking perhaps, but that would get tedious if one had to do that everytime when having an intellectual dicussion.
One question though - How is NLP a science? Let me define science pretty much (being perhaps over simplistic):
(Note the entire description is important)
It is one human branch of knowledge. It proposes theories on how the world (or an aspect of it) works. A scientific theory is a proposed description of things that happen in the real world works. The theory will stand if it describes and predicts events that can be observed and measured. If it fails this test if will be rejected. The unique feature of science is that over time it is self-correcting. Of importance in testing theories are measurements - this is the center of reality testing. To date I see many pseudo sciences that have their theories. They always seem to be measure in anecdotes, testimonials only though with few tests. Their assumptions are the Law of the Land. Also there is almost never any scientific testing/studies on their validity. I always wonder why so many programmers feel as if they were scientists (from your assertion that you are a Computer Programmer and feel NLP is logical science as well from the interactions I have with many others). For the most part, programmers in general have as their main skill applying the stuff they learn; much like engineering. Not furthering the sciences that they have studied. For example I am sure most programmers studied math - yet never did a significantly advanced mathematical proof. They are given ready made tools (in forms of theories and formulas) without ever learning how they were made. I am not saying this is a bad thing, but we CS majors and graduates are mostly not scientists because that is not our job! On a side note MikeB, I am a part time computer programmer/college student myself. Which field in computer programming are you in? Which languages do you use, for example C,C++,CC++, Cilk, Perl, VB? Just would like to know. [This message has been edited by chaosadelt (edited April 25, 2001).]
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Hi chaosadelt, You always bring up a lot of interesting points in your posts. Definitions (these are off the top of my head rather than "text book"): Strategy: The method or steps one uses to do something. For example, my car buying decision strategy may be something like, "See a good looking car, read reviews of the car, look at that model of car on the sales lot, test drive the car, imagine myself driving the car in the future, buy the car." Modelling: As I understand it (I haven't done much modelling yet), modelling is the act of eliciting and understand all of a person's strategies well enough to do what they do. Model: Here it is being used in much the same way as the mathematical definition. The author was talking about building a model of some process to understand how it works better. Elicitation: Getting someone to demonstrate the strategy/response/whatever, as in "eliciting a car-buying decision strategy." How is NLP a science? Hmmm...well, by your definition, NLP presents a theory of how people communicate, their thought processes, etc. People (Practitioners) go out and test this theory and then report back to the community their findings, thus evolving the science (take a look at an NLP site's bookstore for that reporting-back part). When I elicit someone's decision strategy, I'm using the Scientific Method. I propose a theory (He does this set of things to make a decision), then I test the theory by asking a question based on my theory of their strategy and observe the results. If my theory was correct I move on, if not I go back and reformulate the theory. On the programming front, I'm a C++ programmer right now. I've worked in C, C++, Java, Pascal, and I can read and understand a half-dozen or so other languages. I'm always intrigued when someone _doesn't_ think a Computer Scientist is a "real" scientist. I grant there is a difference between coders and computer scientists, just as there is a difference between, say, engineers and physicists. I went to school for Computer Science. I learned how to analyze algorithms and formulate the theoretical and mathematical basis of how they work. When I'm trying to improve a sort algorithm's efficiency, again I use the Scientific Method. So my real question to you is, what is _your_ definition of a scientist? Is it someone who applies the Scientific Method in his work? Is it someone who does theoretical work rather than application? Does a scientist have to wear a lab coat and sport a pocket protector? Where is your "Threshold for scientist-ness along the spectrum of the application of scientific principles?" Mike
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What do you mean by that? "it weren't so much fun to pull the language apart and look at all of the persuasive techniques the author is using. Oh, by the way, NLP teaches one how to do that...and do it quite well " quote:
Originally posted by MikeB:
Hmmmm....I went and read that article above and my advice would be if you read it, take it with a very big grain of salt.That writer, in true tabloid style, was obviously writing from a position of no personal experience and using emotionally charged, abstract language to provoke an emotional rather than reasoned response. I would probably find that article offensive if it weren't so much fun to pull the language apart and look at all of the persuasive techniques the author is using. Oh, by the way, NLP teaches one how to do that...and do it quite well . Mike
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Tehy talk about NLP in the photoreading book right?
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Hi Flower, They do mention NLP in the Photoreading book. Part of the main focus of NLP is in communication. One of the founders of NLP (John Grinder) is a linguist, and he and Richard Bandler noticed that some people (Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson initially) were able to make profound changes in peoples' lives just with the _language_ that they use. Bandler and Grinder then set out to determine exactly how these people used language to make these changes. Out of the approximately 144 hours of instruction I'll receive for my Practitioner training, around 48 hours was devoted explicitly to studying the language used in persuasive writing (The Milton Model) and also language used to get very specific information (The Meta-Model). Most of the remaining time is spent applying what we learned about language. Mike [This message has been edited by MikeB (edited April 25, 2001).]
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