3 students die after principal hypnotizes them

Checkmite said:
i.e. Being willing to follow instructions. Amazingly, I can do this without needing an altered mental state.
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Thanks Checkie, I think I just had a epiphany about my inner workings.... or thelack there of. ;)
 
Delvo said:
You seriously could not get any more perfectly ad hominem than that, which means your argument could not get any more perfectly invalid than that. Try making an actual point on the actual subject. Find and point out actual flaws in the actual neurological studies. Who told you about them and linked to them simply could not possibly count.
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OK, I can defend myself but I'll reciprocate and call you out as well. I'll stick just to this post...

What thing that people can do, particularly things which call for some kind of concentration or effort or deliberate choice, has ever existed that was not affected by whether or not they thought they could do it?
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This sentence makes no sense. You have trouble making a coherent sentence.
I don't know exactly what you mean by "physical" or why you figure it's necessary, but, skipping around that word, yes, believing that a particular altered mental state can really exist and can be entered voluntarily under certain circumstances does, in fact, increase one's odds of being able to do so. I sometimes choose to go into a state that I can only describe as having certain traits in common with sleep but not others so it's really distinct from both that and being awake. I originally discovered it in circumstances where I was sleepy and probably about to go completely asleep but was also very time-constrained and needed to be awake soon, and whether it would happen or not in any given instance was at first sporadic and accidental. Only after I started thinking of it as a third state, neither truly awake nor truly asleep, that was more likely to happen in one situation than in another, did I gain enough control over it to be able to do it practically at will as long as the circumstances aren't too thoroughly wrong for it. I obviously couldn't do that if I didn't believe the third state exists; even if I tried, the doubt in my mind would mean my mind wasn't really doing what it needs to do to get it to happen; I'd just be pretending. It's pretty obvious, really: of course you couldn't alter your own mental state if you didn't think you could. The concept of putting your mind in a state you don't believe exists doesn't even make any sense. It would be essentially trying to tell yourself to agree with an idea you don't agree with.
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As a rule I'm gifted at following convoluted logic but all I get out of this is you have a third undefined state which has nothing to do with hypnosis.

Perhaps a writing class may be money as well spent as a new age class.
 
Beerina said:
Old school Superman even had a super power where he could not be hypnotized because no hypnotist or machine could outthink his speedy superbrain.

He could hypnotize himself, though, so he could fight Mohammed Ali. Ahh those were the days, when he was so awesome he could take on the heavyweight champ without using any super powers.
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The Kryptonian material in the lenses of his eyeglasses also amplified his super-hypnosis to the point that he constantly subconsciously hypnotized everyone who saw him into thinking that Superman and Clark Kent looked like different people.

(An obscure single issue story from the late 70s that has never been referenced again since then. DC is generally embarrassed by any mention of it.)
 
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marplots said:
That guy's amazing.

"The legendary soothsayer, who has about 60 years of experience under his belt, reiterated his longstanding $100,000 offer to anyone who can scientifically prove that hypnotic trances exist."
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to add:
"My $100,000 offer which has never been taken on since that 1986 trial, has never been taken on by either a stage hypnotist, a psychiatrist, a scientist, or ruthless lawyer, says something about my position," he said.
 
marplots said:
That guy's amazing.

"The legendary soothsayer, who has about 60 years of experience under his belt, reiterated his longstanding $100,000 offer to anyone who can scientifically prove that hypnotic trances exist."
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Kreskin knows what he is talking about many things. Hypnosis is one.

It is because of Kreskin and Randi I post here.
 
Armitage72 said:
The Kryptonian material in the lenses of his eyeglasses also amplified his super-hypnosis to the point that he constantly subconsciously hypnotized everyone who saw him into thinking that Superman and Clark Kent looked like different people.



(An obscure single issue story from the late 70s that has never been referenced again since then. DC is generally embarrassed by any mention of it.)
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I like the one where when he's Superman he constantly twitches his face muscles at super speed, so that no one who looks at him can get a good bead on his facial features as they look "fuzzy" and indistinct.
 
Kreskin's site has a good summary of his beliefs about hypnosis.

http://www.amazingkreskin.com/page/4/?s=esp

In 1986, yours truly went on trial in the state of NJ, because a hypnotist and her psychiatrist witness felt they could prove the existence of a hypnotic trance and win the $50,000 offer I made for such proof. They never won the money, and the case was thrown out of court. Since then, I have raised my offer to $100,000 for proof of the existence of the special trance condition of hypnosis.
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He accepts the power of suggestion but does not believe there is a separate mental state called the "trance". It is really just a matter of degree, so I can understand how it might be difficult if not impossible to "prove in a court" to his satisfaction that his definition of hypnosis has been met. His explanation for the ability of someone to experience the suppression of pain is a little circumspect in my opinion. He sees all the reported phenomena as a result of "pure suggestion". For purposes of satisfying Kreskin, I can imagine that even a subject who has benefited from hypnosis would have trouble convincing him of the existence of a trance state.

The bottom line is if I had written this article, I would have made it clear that the key to the whole phenomena is pure suggestion, no trance, no deep relaxation, etc. etc., but pure suggestion.
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I guess he has a point in a way, when he observes that a hypnotized person can stand, walk around, etc., so to him, the person cannot be in a state of "deep relaxation", physically at any rate. It is also true that hypnosis does not work as a therapy for everyone. I don't view it as a "placebo" though, as Kreskin seems to, but he does certainly make some valid points.
 
Checkmite said:
I like the one where when he's Superman he constantly twitches his face muscles at super speed, so that no one who looks at him can get a good bead on his facial features as they look "fuzzy" and indistinct.
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the one superman comic strip that always stuck in my mind was where clark kent had to interview superman.
the picture was, kent on the left, superman on the right, massive flurry of superfast stuff in the middle and kent explaining cloth changing so fast no one could see, it mentioned the haircurl as well, i loved it.
 
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I was disappointed to see that Kreskin didn't so much win the 1986 court case as the other party lost on a technicality.

"But the judge ruled that the challenge that Waylock had accepted from Kreskin no longer was in effect at the time she had accepted it. In August, the mentalist revoked his longstanding challenge and, in a new challenge, offered $100,000 to anyone who provided scientific proof that there is a hypnotic state.

Because Waylock could not prove she had ever accepted the $100,000 challenge, Judge J. Gilbert Van Sciver Jr. ruled in favor of Kreskin." (from http://articles.philly.com/1986-01-15/news/26056648_1_kreskin-hypnosis-hypnotic-state)

Not really a decision about hypnosis at all.
 
Olowkow said:
Kreskin's site has a good summary of his beliefs about hypnosis.

http://www.amazingkreskin.com/page/4/?s=esp



He accepts the power of suggestion but does not believe there is a separate mental state called the "trance". It is really just a matter of degree, so I can understand how it might be difficult if not impossible to "prove in a court" to his satisfaction that his definition of hypnosis has been met. His explanation for the ability of someone to experience the suppression of pain is a little circumspect in my opinion. He sees all the reported phenomena as a result of "pure suggestion". For purposes of satisfying Kreskin, I can imagine that even a subject who has benefited from hypnosis would have trouble convincing him of the existence of a trance state.
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Yes, Kreskin is anti-trance and he is brilliant at entertaining any size crowd for an evening. My dad knew I liked Kreskin at a young age and he enjoyed him as well so I saw Kreskin three or four times before I was 16.


I guess he has a point in a way, when he observes that a hypnotized person can stand, walk around, etc., so to him, the person cannot be in a state of "deep relaxation", physically at any rate. It is also true that hypnosis does not work as a therapy for everyone. I don't view it as a "placebo" though, as Kreskin seems to, but he does certainly make some valid points.
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Kreskin is a total woo when it comes to anything but the power of suggestion. He had me believing at a young age he could mentally read social security numbers and the numbers printed on currency. I could recreate his performance except for his hypnosis act because I could never be as smooth as he is.
 
30 years ago somebody claimed to have proved it except for a technicality, and nobody has replicated it? I vote with Kreskin.
 
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Delvo said:
If entirely coincidental, it would be extraordinary. But if it's cause-&-effect then it's completely, mundanely ordinary.

What thing that people can do, particularly things which call for some kind of concentration or effort or deliberate choice, has ever existed that was not affected by whether or not they thought they could do it?

I don't know exactly what you mean by "physical" or why you figure it's necessary, but, skipping around that word, yes, believing that a particular altered mental state can really exist and can be entered voluntarily under certain circumstances does, in fact, increase one's odds of being able to do so. I sometimes choose to go into a state that I can only describe as having certain traits in common with sleep but not others so it's really distinct from both that and being awake. I originally discovered it in circumstances where I was sleepy and probably about to go completely asleep but was also very time-constrained and needed to be awake soon, and whether it would happen or not in any given instance was at first sporadic and accidental. Only after I started thinking of it as a third state, neither truly awake nor truly asleep, that was more likely to happen in one situation than in another, did I gain enough control over it to be able to do it practically at will as long as the circumstances aren't too thoroughly wrong for it. I obviously couldn't do that if I didn't believe the third state exists; even if I tried, the doubt in my mind would mean my mind wasn't really doing what it needs to do to get it to happen; I'd just be pretending. It's pretty obvious, really: of course you couldn't alter your own mental state if you didn't think you could. The concept of putting your mind in a state you don't believe exists doesn't even make any sense. It would be essentially trying to tell yourself to agree with an idea you don't agree with.

You seriously could not get any more perfectly ad hominem than that, which means your argument could not get any more perfectly invalid than that. Try making an actual point on the actual subject. Find and point out actual flaws in the actual neurological studies. Who told you about them and linked to them simply could not possibly count.
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The first part of your argument is the same as those no touch "qi masters" who wave their hands around at their students while the flip around and fall over. Some of those also claim that belief in their qi is essential to it working. The adamant few that try to test these "powers" against non believer maistream martial artists get beaten quite quickly. So the "powers" are pretty much useless in the real world. In other words unless you have fun deluding yourself and/or playing along there is no point to it.

The second part of your argument sounds almost like lucid dreaming, or a mild form of sleep paralysis. Both of which are not hypnotisim.

Eta a ki master vs martial artist
https://youtu.be/Wd7M4H0b62k
 
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Varanid said:
I am working my way through those links you provided; so far, they are not terribly impressive, but we'll see.

Nevertheless, the argument wasn't whether or not hypnotism is real (though I do doubt it) -- the argument was over your characterization of your observation as "evidence."
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Exactly. She's claiming that no one would fake being hypnotized and even if they did, she could tell if they were faking. Unbelievable.
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
I always found it funny that the bad guy would even throw the gun in the first place. I mean, you just saw 6 bullets bounce off his chest, yet somehow you thing hitting him with the gun would kill him?
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Haven't you ever been so frustrated you want to throw something at somebody? Anything, anybody?
 
As vice president and engineer in a small electronics firm, my partner and I worked for several years with the inventor, a well known psychologist, on the design and construction of the cardiac vagal tone monitor. This device calculates and displays as a digital value the relationship between cardiac arrhythmia and breathing rate, known as "vagal tone".

As we breathe in and out, the heart rate varies slightly to varying degrees depending on various factors which have been studied. Its value as a research device was investigated in many fields including SIDS in infants, neurotoxin level identification in crop dusters, polygraphy, hypnosis and other areas.

A lot of academic publications appeared world-wide as we built about 50 of these units. Here is one article I happened to find which this professor has co-authored which relates to hypnosis.

In this study we explored the relationship between hypnotic susceptibility measured with the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility (HGSHS) and cardiovascular parameters. After assessing their degree of hypnotic susceptibility, we induced 21 female students into happy mood states and into sad mood states. During the mood state induction we monitored blood pressure, heart rate, and cardiac vagal tone continuously. The study demonstrated a strong relationship between hypnotic susceptibility and both cardiac vagal tone and heart rate reactivity. Subjects with lower heart rate and greater vagal tone during baseline and greater heart rate increases during mood induction were more susceptible to hypnosis. Multiple regression analyses indicated that approximately 40% of the individual difference variance of hypnotic susceptibility was accounted for by baseline cardiac vagal tone and heart rate reactivity during mood state. The data demonstrate that autonomic tone, assessed by cardiac vagal tone and heart rate reactivity, are related to hypnotic susceptibility as measured by the HGSHS.
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There is no shortage of papers on the relationship of EEG to various factors such as hypnotic analgesia.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8792204
During hypnotic analgesia the hemispheric asymmetry found in high hypnotizables was parallel to a significant reduction in the spectral mid-frequency peak of heart period variability which indicated a decrease in the level of sympathetic activity. In contrast, during hypnosis/no-analgesia the EEG amplitude reduction was not paralleled by a decrease in sympathetic activity.
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