Hacker News Reader

Can you ellaborate on hypnosis being "total baloney"? I know trained hypnotists and seen it work first-hand, curious to see your evidence...

View on HN

The kind of hypnosis you see in movies is "baloney", people know what hypnosis is from movies, hence this impression.

I don't know what people know from movies, but personally I've researched hypnosis.

And as with all other evidence around it, I agree that the "altered state of mind" part is total baloney.

If you have evidence to the contrary please share, thanks.

Um... curious to see your evidence. I've "hypnotized" people too. Everyone can "hypnotize" some people. All evidence goes against any kind of altered state of mind though. More like submissive role-playing.

Also, for future reference, things that should make your alarm bells go off:

a) something works on someone only when you describe it to that someone

b) something works only on some people, not all of them and you don't know why.

EDIT: some people didn't understand that what I'm implying with the above points is that hypnosis is more akin to the placebo effect than anything else(altered state of mind etc).

So basically most medicine is "baloney" for you too? (see: placebo effect and many different drugs that won't work on everyone)

Of course not!

But no hypnotist says that hypnosis is placebo!!!

I totally agree that it is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com