The Dark Side of Hypnosis

Stage hypnosis is interesting but also full of amoral sides. A stage hypnotists goal is to perform and stage hypnotists can cause all sorts of issues for the hypnotized ranging from lack of free will in the suggestions and post hypnotic suggestions manifesting in the hypnotizeds everyday lives. In this way hypnosis can be dangerous when especially when a highly skilled hypnotist induces a trance with questionable intentions.
People with borderline mental health can be pushed over the edge with hypnosis. Logic in deep hypnotic trances is distorted and irrational. Say Frank was being hypnotized and was in a deep trance. He is told that he will see Shaun Coneroy in an empty chair across the room. Then he is told that Shaun Coneroy is standing beside him. He sees both Shaun Coneroys & is confused as to how there are two of them but he accepts that there are two Shaun Coneroys in the room quite readily.
It is also illegal for a hypnotized person to be convicted of murder. However most hypnotists claim that under hypnosis a person will only do what he or she has within them. So if you hypnotized a serial killer they would probably commit murder but if you hypnotized a charity worker who had devoted her life to helping children in Africa and was a vegetarian the results would be much different.
For suggestion related issues I recommend:

► 14:51► 14:51

Sources:
Experience
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2002/4/11/harvard-professor-demonstrates-hypnosis-is-real/
Blog

Portrait of a desk

They say a desk tells a lot about a person. A cluttered desk is supposed to be the hallmark of a genius.  Sticky notes are the mark of an organized person. Books, computers and diplomas are the mark of personality and opinions. Diplomas can represent pride or need to impress for whatever reason. If there is a surplus of certain items then you should focus on those. This is a shot taken of the surface of my desk: a leather jacket draped over it with cards scattered everywhere and my notebook lying open.

Smoke but not mirrors

Smoke not necessarily refers to a distraction and is often used in magic tricks whilst the real illusion is taking place. That's why attractive female assistants are usually hired. Let us take Frank for example. Frank is an average ordinary person. In this business he's the mark. It's ok Frank your a very good mark.  Frank is watching the Great Gazebo perform magic and illusion. The great Gazebo is now doing a card trick. Frank watches avidly as he takes the deck of cards and holds it in his left hand. Then he draws everyone's attention to the wand whilst doing so he takes the ace of spades which he knows to be the card Frank named and hands it of to his assistant as she passes him the wand. The Great Gazebo now draws the audiences attention by waving the wand dramatically around in the air. And looking not towards the assistant who has the card but towards the wand. Meanwhile the assistant is leaving the stage looking for volunteers for the next illusion and slips the card into Franks pocket. Several acts pass and the act ends with Frank finding the card and the Great Gazebo and his lovely assistant disappearing in a puff of literal smoke. In this act there are many examples of smoke. The assistant. The wand. The direction of the magicians eyes. The several tricks in between. Then finally the literal smoke.

A Two Part Post

We are all clones of Hitler...

The title whilst not entirely accurate converys the general idea....the fact that it lights up in more search results than "you random citizen are like Hitler." & is also slightly more dramatic is wholly irrelevant. Almost all people have stuff in common in the sense that they are humans and thus have similar evolutionary traits that almost all humans have and also similar brain structures...thus most people think in similar ways. A goth can be motivated to be a goth for the same reason an Emo can be motivated to be an Emo. A valley girl can be a valley girl for similar reasons as the Emo and the goth. People often have similar traits.
We often have much more similar emotions than we may think through a process I believe is called convergent evolution but am not entirely certain. An example of this being spacial recognition and memory which in the universal human brain has the strongest memory capabilities due to evolutionary particulars that stem from a time period known in precise scientific terminology as the caveman era.
The six universal emotions are generally recognized as being happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, disgust and anger. Every culture regardless of cultural influence shows and expresses these in the same way.
Thus you have many similarities in the way you think and the way Hitler thought and similar understandable motivations but you also have similarities in the way you think and the way Green Day or Bruce Wayne thinks. 

Collective unconscious

The unconscious is right about 90% of the time. That's why on tests they always tell you to go with your first instinct. According to Jungs theory of the unconscious there are two types: the personal unconscious & the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is memories, emotions & experiences of humankind or of individual societies. It has to do with us all having similar emotions & correlating those with similar things. It's like if I where to say "table" then what would be the first thing you think of? A general image of a table with a surface and something holding it up. That would be the collective unconscious. However Frank might think of a round plastic table with one post holding it up like in the diner near his house meanwhile you would think of whatever kind of table you though of... For examples sake let us assume it was a square wooden table held up by four posts. You and Frank both though of general tables but ones made of different materials in different shapes. The difference between your tables is the personal unconscious and can be applied to emotion, instinct & experiences. The reason that great inventions are often invented by three or four people around the world is related greatly to the collective unconscious.

A Holmesish Theory of Profiling by Tea & Dark Chocolate

A HolmesishTheory of Profiling by Tea & Dark Chocolate

People who drink tea heavily (usually around 2-4 but can be higher)  the taste of it are often grieving, depressed or have been exposed to one of those emotions in some way. Either that or they drink tea because they picked it up habitually either from someone close to them or from a past experience of depression or grief. It is said that in grief especially people taste things much more and truly appreciate them. Thus: woman and Ben & Jerry's and also thus: dark chocolate. Dark chocolate is usually much the similar emotions although not entirely unlike tea it is often coupled with introversion of some sort.
This is one of many theories and particulars that exist & everything is technically relevant in some way so in this blog (the Oxford dictionary hasn't accepted any sort of proposals bout the matter yet) I'm going to redefine irrelevant: something that is relevant but cannot be deduced to be of use. Take color psychology for example. It works but in such a small way that it is impossible to discern what it means as there are too many variables involved.

Card counting

Card counting...it's a blog about cards. Eventually this was going to come up.

One of the many card tricks used in casinos it is legal however due to it being so successful most casinos ban it. Now that you know how to memorize cards (if you don't please revisit my earlier post)  let us review a basic version of card counting used in blackjack.
2-6 = +1
7-9 = 0
10's = -1
A= -.5
Count every card. The more positive the deck is the higher you should bet. The less so the lower. Card counting can get more specific with memory palaces being built as in the previous post about memorizing a deck of cards and with each individual card being taken into account.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advantage_players

Mirrors but little smoke

Mirrors are tools that have been used throughout the ages....from the dawn of magic itself....a fundamental factor in illusion and its conception. There's the classic mirror in a box trick: since the mirror reflects the other half of the box it looks the same. Then there's the invisibility trick: with a mirror on stage or it can be used to make something that is there appear as if it isn't according to the physics laws of reflection. A mirror is placed diagonally in the box so it appears empty but in reality is not. Mirrors also reflect things so a mirror could be used to say make it appear as if one was levitating if you where to lie on top of a box and have a mirror on one side of the box. You would then only have to lift one arm a leg and it would appear as if you where lifting two. Thus is the art of illusion and the saying mirrors and smoke.

Memory Palace

Simonides...poet...mnemonic inventor of the memory palace. 

In the ancient days of Greece there was a great dramatic reading to be held in a hall of stone and many notable people came to see it. Simonides was nervous for this was his greatest poem yet...a poem that would truly stun the audience. As he walked out to perform his poem he was reciting it in his head. The building then collapsed and Simonides was the only survivor. The greeks needed to identify it and Simonides institutionally recalled the places of each guest as he had combined spatial recognition with his poem and each guest represented a word.

The technique of memory palace has been around since then and was a part of the Greek teachings of rhetoric.  It is a way to take a place and mentally walk through said place leaving images and symbols that represent a word at each loci or notable landmarks of this mental place. Let us for example take your local mall and imagine yourself at the entrance. "To be or not to be that is the question..."
Then imagine yourself there and see two bee's flying around. Imagine what the bees look like, sound like or even feel like if your where to touch them. Now watch the bees and imagine a guy with a machette coming around the corner and killing them. "to be or not to be." Since the guy with a machette isn't the focus he doesn't have to be remembered with such detail as the two bees.
Now walk a little way in to the next landmark. It may only be a foot or two in. It could just be the place just inside the doors... in fact it probably should be. Imagine a band playing called the question. There are question marks everywhere....on their guitars, on the backdrop behind them...Imagine the sound of their music...the smell of sweat and alcohol. The weird hair that sticks up on the lead singer. Now imagine your confusion. You turn to the convenient bypasser and ask "who are these people?"
The by passer turns to you and says dramatically. "That is...the question."
The more details in each word the better the more solid a memory it becomes. A good memory palace should be good enough so that although a few details are forgotten the overall structure is never forgotten.  This can be done in any place you know well enough to walk through mentally. Its the most efficient way to convert short term memory to long term which is one of the reasons its so useful.  

Hypnosis in the spirit of mentalism

From the reliable minds behind dictionary.com: Mentalism:noun

1.

a person who believes in or advocates mentalism.

2.

a person who believes that the mind and its functions are alegitimate area of psychological research.

3.

a mind reader, psychic, or fortuneteller.

Hypnosis is the usage of the power of suggestion to induce a subconscious state of concentration. There are many sources out there that have different opinions about hypnosis and whether its real or not. They make it out to be something more dramatic than it really is. Hypnosis is actually rather plausible. Say we are trying to Hypnotize an average guy named Frank? We've talked about Frank before and he will be appearing in this blog as our example. Frank is a guy in his 20's. He's skeptical about Hypnosis and has recently joined the FBI. As part of his FBI training Frank will need to be able to resist hypnosis. A glass sphere is placed in front of Frank's face and it is the only object he can see. He is sitting comfortably in a comfortable chair in a warm room. He is already somewhat tired as it is a Friday. These are the perfect conditions for hypnosis. Frank has been given a piece of information of which he must guard. He is told that he is to stay in the room until he has been hypnotized. The hypnotist who Frank can not see asks him to concentrate on the sphere and then begins using the power of suggestion. Its like when someone says not to think about chocolate bananas and the first thing you think about is chocolate bananas. This is the power of suggestion as it is planting the idea in a persons head. Hypnosis first requires using the power of suggestion to get the person in a certain mental state. Have you ever been tired and reading a book on a rainy day and stopped seeing the words? What about those first few seconds before you fall asleep? Or how about if you where made to stare at a blank wall for hours? What about when you zone out in class? We often go into this state when tired or relaxed. That is the state of hypnosis.
Using a combination of this being in this state and using the power of suggestion on a person whilst in this state it is possible to hypnotize someone. If the Hypnosis wants to get Frank to tell him the information. He has to get Frank into the state of hypnosis so Frank is concentrating on this and this only.
Part of the reason that hypnosis works so well is all the mystery about it. If you where to tell Frank before the Hypnosis it was impossible to resist than Frank even if he didn't believe you he would still have a nagging doubt in his head. Hypnotists often use techniques that sound similar to the ones used by people who lead meditations to get their subjects to slip into "That state of grey"

Colour Psychology Doesn't Work

Colour Psychology Doesn't Work

Color psychology has long since stated that a persons favorite color determines certain personality traits in a person. Color psychology is actually very inaccurate being mostly considered right due to the vague nature of the statements and the subconscious want of the viewer for belief in them. When given an analysis of a different color than is their favorite...it could even be their least favorite...and told that it is their favorite a person generally finds it the same accuracy. Let us take Frank for example. His favorite color is white. A common trait of people with the favorite color of white...in fact one of the main ones is loneliness. "You have a part of you that is very lonely." reads Frank about people who like the color white. Who doesn't? Its a part of human natural to feel lonely. Almost everyone does. Lets say I had given Frank fifteen statements about the color green, told him it was white and had him read over and mark the ones that where wrong. According to tests i have done Frank would rate the statements as being at least 14 or 15 accurate if it was green and he would also rate the statements 14 or 15 accurate if it was white. Thus color psychology whilst maybe having a fraction albeit a small fraction of truth shouldn't be relied on for accuracy. However for use as training to become a psychic con artist I recommend using it as a valuable resource in your search and end this article with the statement that appearing psychic or as if you know a persons life and personality is actually remarkably simple once you boil it down to a few basic techniques. After this said person...lets use our example Frank may drop his guard around you and reveal more if he thinks you already know.
However let it be noted that colours & moods are correlated even if overall favourite colours aren't correlated to personality.

Cold readings

Cold Readings

For all the budding con artistes out there this article goes out for you. "Cold reading is a series of techniques used by mentalists, psychics, fortune-tellers, mediums and illusionists to determine or express details about another person, often in order to convince them that the reader knows much more about a subject than they actually do." is the first sentence on the Wikipedia article titled cold reading. Here are some cold reading techniques:

Shotgun Statement: "I'm sensing your card its a diamond, a heart...no its a spade." Using Franks' reaction a psychic can usually determine that it was a spade as Frank reacted differently on spade. Frank is now amazed as he had not believed in psychics before but yet you had guessed his card so you must be psychic.

Rainbow Ruse: "You are generally a good person but when someone angers you you retaliate." Frank is stunned by the psychic Rowena's statement. He is unable to believe that she could know something like that about him. Rainbow Ruses are saying an obvious statement that covers both sides of a matter and is vague. If you look at fortune cookies the technique is often used there. Although this technique combines with the trivia statement technique in which you say something vague it is a more complex version covering the entire spectrum of the rainbow so to speak.

Vanishing Negatives: "Frank you don't have an interesting job do you?" This statement can be answered either way and the psychic can be thought right. "I do actually. Wow. I'm an FBI agent."
or Frank could be undercover and answer. "Thats right. I don't. I sell shoes." By the rest of the audience the psychic could be considered right either way.

Cards