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Comment by Loic | Hacker News Reader

If you think like me that NLP means NonLinear Programming, in this context it means Neuro-linguistic programming[0]: "Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in California, United States in the 1970s. NLP has since been overwhelmingly discredited scientifically, but continues to be marketed by some hypnotherapists and by some companies that organize seminars and workshops on management training for businesses."

Homoeopathy has also been discredited, the mind is full of corners the science cannot really explain.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming

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To be honest, the very first books - The Structure of Magic - are much better than later "practical" and manipulative stuff. The notions of "patching reality" - what we call today the Confirmation and Self-serving biases (deletion, distribution) and "framing effects" are correct in general.

Programming, or what they call "re-framing" works to some extent, by "unlearning" some wrong concepts acquired through social conditioning and biased perceptions, by re-framing (transforming) them into more closely related to actual reality. Anchoring is already crap (but use of amulets and "things of power" is exactly this). So are the supposed correlations between looking patterns and modes of thinking (while naive people (children) some times show such correlations).

The core ideas of early NLP, including re-framing, were nothing new. The prophets of old times seemingly did exactly this - they succeeded in re-framing of traditional views and beliefs.

The later "technique" stuff, is nonsense. It apparently worked because hypocrisy, manipulations, reading and use of so-called body language are as old as humanity. Again, priests of any kind are famous practitioners of such manipulative techniques. Nowadays businessmen and politicians are using similar tricks, as if we are still in ignorant middle ages.)

From the referenced WP page:

By the end of 1980, the collaboration between Bandler and Grinder ended. [...] In July 1996 and January 1997, Bandler instituted a further two civil actions against Grinder and his company, numerous other prominent figures in NLP and 200 further initially unnamed persons. [...] On this matter Stollznow (2010) comments, "[i]ronically, Bandler and Grinder feuded in the 1980s over trademark and theory disputes. Tellingly, none of their myriad of NLP models, pillars, and principles helped these founders to resolve their personal and professional conflicts."

It may not be a very scientific rebuttal, but I always find that interesting. (Kinda similar to how psychics never win the lottery.)

Don't listen to what people say, watch what they do.

At its core NLP is basically little more than a notational system for mental processes which is a pretty hard thing to discredit scientifically.

It's true that that most of the NLP community revolves around cargo culting a few of these processes though (which most likely indeed aren't scientifically valid.)

Saying that that discredits NLP as a whole is roughly equivalent to saying a programming language is inherently bad because a lot of shitty software has been written in it though.

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