I’m still not who I used to be, but I don’t think it’s a placebo. Also, I sleep easier *if* I got more like 30-40 minutes of it in. It has to be more than walking-level stuff, though.

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If I am going to continue being uncharitable then I would say that I think the reasoning comes down to the idea that: the US has private healthcare, and it is expensive and works badly; every other civilized country has nationalized healthcare, and it works great; the US needs to stop being so irrationally ideological and move to the obviously correct option that everyone else has already taken up. It’s a stance based on inaccurate information, but it’s an easy one to take, and if you want to differentiate yourself from anyone who leans libertarian, for fear of getting a label attached to yourself and being thought of as a tribal ideologue, then this is an easy way to do it. Free market works – except for healthcare, where it doesn’t. Done. Oh and there’s probably some reason for it too.

As I said, this is a mean accusation for me to make, but I think there is a little of something in it. Committing yourself to the center ground is no more rational than committing yourself to the blue or red tribes, but this never seems to be brought up.

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http://allpoetry.com/The-Camels-Hump

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Insurance makes sense for low probability/high cost events, since most of us would rather pay a hundred dollars with certainty than a million dollars with one chance in ten thousand, especially if we can’t get a million dollars and not paying it means death.

Current health insurance combines actual insurance with a different service—making decisions for you that you don’t have the expertise to make. There is no particular reason why those have to be linked.

So far as the common idea that health is somehow different in nature from other good things, such that everyone has a right to have health care provided for him, I have never been able to make sense of it. I can understand arguments for greater equality, utilitarian or otherwise, but not “health equality yes, housing and food and clothing equality no.”

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Well, actually I do, but we’re crazy in very different ways/

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“… my immediate feeling is fear — that if I dropped my constant anxiety, I’d make some serious mistake, or something could sneak up on me.”

This is central, isn’t it?

If eternal vigilance is the price of survival, what alternative is there to anxiety?

When you’re in a situation where it’s obviously irrational to ever let down your guard, where it’s stupid to take your medication, what hope is there?

Perhaps you could find a fellow anxiety sufferer, and learn to trust him completely, and then get a good night’s sleep on his watch?

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That being said, and with the disclaimers I’ve already made as well as the one above understood to remain in full force and effect, I will answer your questions to the best of my ability.

“You are almost certainly lying, and if you are not lying, that is even worse” kind of suspicious.

I know that’s not a question, but I’m going to treat it as one.

I am not lying: to the best of my knowledge and belief after reasonable inquiry and observation, it is absolutely true that a person can enter an altered state of consciousness, for a reasonable definition of “altered state of consciousness,” from what appears to be a few words and a sudden tap on the shoulder.

However, as with many things in life, these things are not what they appear to be. In fact, if I were to simply walk up to someone, even someone extremely suggestible, and simply yell “Sleep!” at them while tapping them, etc., in all likelihood absolutely nothing would happen. Well, actually, I’d probably get the response a rather well-known stage hypnotist did when she did that very experiment. She’d go up to random people on the street, make mystic passes at them, and yell “sleep!” What happened was that every single one of them looked at her as if she were insane (one person can clearly be heard muttering, “Crazy bitch!” on a recording she had made) and kept walking. But if she did the same thing after a very brief pre-talk, most people would go into hypnosis. The tap and the words are the end of the induction, not the whole of it, and describing it as “instant” is a term of art, not literal. Does that make you any less suspicious and/or horrified?

What is possible in this state that is not in a normal state?

Define “normal,” please.

And while you have fun with that, I’ll say that generally speaking, there’s nothing you can physically do while hypnotized that you can’t do while unhypnotized. (The famous “stiff as a board” trick, for instance, can be replicated by a waking person, although it’s much more difficult to hold the concentration necessary.) And as for other things, we get into the argument about whether the hypnotic suggestions and the subject’s responses to them are conscious/roleplaying. Again, that’s not a debate I’m interested in having. You asked, I answered.

Mentally, same basic answer, although I have seen hypnotic anesthesia used to allow very extensive dental work to be performed with no chemical anesthesia and no apparent discomfort on the part of the patient. (I have experienced this, as I often go into a light trance when having dental work done. I rarely ask for anesthesia even though my pain threshold is ridiculously low.) Doctor James Esdaile, for whom the “deepest” state of hypnotic trance is named, performed well-documented major surgeries on hundreds of patients using only hypnotic anesthesia. (Ironically, Esdaile was a Mesmerist, as opposed to Braid, who was the first true modern hypnotist. Esdaile never studied with Mesmer or a Mesmerist, but based his induction techniques and the theory behind them on Mesmer’s “animal magnetism” ideas. Thus proving once again that you don’t have to know why something works to make it work.)

On the other hand, people can learn to disregard astonishing amounts of pain even while completely conscious… although many hypnotists would argue that they are using autohypnosis to do it.

As far as posthypnotic suggestion, as far as I know, and the experience of every other hypnotist I have ever discussed this with is the same, the old saying that you can’t be hypnotized into doing something you don’t want to do is absolutely one hundred percent accurate.

But…

See my prior comment about the slippery meaning of “want.” You may “want” to stop smoking… but you “want” nicotine more. So you reach for the cigarette and light up, despite what you say and think you “want.” (I use that example on purpose, as hypnosis for smoking cessation can be extremely effective.) If the hypnotist can convince you something is true which isn’t, or isn’t true which is, suggestions to do things which you otherwise wouldn’t do will be readily followed. This is obviously also true in the waking world. But given how much less conscious thought people will give to following a suggestion that their subconscious has accepted, there may not be time for them to avoid following it. Or their subconscious (which isn’t a separate personality, it’s more complicated than that) may decide to follow it for reasons which are absolutely opaque to the conscious mind, but make perfect sense at the subconscious level.

To try and go around the bland glittering generalities I see, lemme phrase this was — What is the worst, most damaging thing you could do with it?

Okay, remember: You asked. Possibilities (as in, things I know are possible either from observation or reports from sources I consider trustworthy) include:

Inculcate false memories of such strength and verisimilitude as to cause the person serious mental distress, up to and including (in extremely suggestible persons) the symptoms of Disassociative Identity Disorder and/or Borderline Personality Disorder. Inculcate phobias and/or anxieties based on specific triggers. Inculcate eating disorders and addictions. Trigger and/or amplify the symptoms of PTSD. Inculcate psychosomatic physical maladies up to and including spontaneous paralysis, sexual dysfunction, and/or persistent hypersensitivity and/or asensitivity. In rare cases, induce actual physical maladies including but not limited to stigmata, the inability to relax and/or contract certain muscles, etc.

Like every tool, it can be used for good or for ill. Everything I said it can do, it can also undo. “Nothing’s good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” and that is nowhere more true than in the application of hypnosis.

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