Name: The structure of magic
ISBN: 9780831400446

What Hacker News says

gala8yJun 2023

Three Pillars of Zen, read when I was 16, it felt like "This is it. This is how I see it."

Few books by Ken Wilber, gave me a framework, a meta-frame of sorts when I was young.

Introduction to NLP (esp. chapter V on Meta Model, took me two years to process it)

Structure of Magic, vol. II - communication, incongruity

Mind and Nature by Gregory Bateson

And I could go on and on... but the winner is...

"Embracing Our Selves" by Sidra & Hal Stone.

This book and perspective changed my life completely. It was like a grenade bursting inside my mind and I've seen many people reacting to it this way (incl. people closest to my heart). It's a perspective shift, an insight. You've been warned. :)

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carapaceJun 2022

I see from your homepage that this may not be an idle request. Cheers!

Let me reply to your questions in reverse order.

> What convinced you that it is rigorous?

I originally stumbled across some books on (the other) NLP and they just made sense, and the "algorithms" they described worked. I had some emotional issues and used the techniques to overcome them to some degree. I also carried out informal experiments, mostly on myself but occasionally with friends, to double check that I wasn't fooling myself. I suffered from pretty severe depression that interfered with living a normal life (I was homeless for a few years after high school) Eventually, I managed to go see one of the co-founders of NLP, Richard Bandler, and he cured my depression in a single ten-minute intervention. (I know how that sounds, but it's true. I've written about it once or twice before in comments here on HN if you want more details, or just ask.)

So that pretty much clinched it for me. After my depression was cured I went on to have a fairly successful career as a programmer, and I am more-or-less a functioning adult thanks to Bandler. But I also lost interest in NLP personally (I mean, I still use what I've learned, but I don't feel called to be a therapist or anything like that.) I mention it from time to time because what kind of a monster would I be if I didn't? But I often get flak for it. (One fellow on here has called me a liar, fool, and scammer for talking about getting cured of depression.)

When I say that the material "made sense" I don't mean merely that it sounded plausible, I mean that it was similar to electronics or mathematics: there are formal patterns in the structure of subjective experience, and we can learn to notice and deliberately manipulate those patterns in repeatable codified algorithms. (E.g. the "Five-Minute Phobia Cure" pattern, which eliminates phobic responses quickly and durably (the phobia never comes back.))

The original work grew out of linguistic analysis of particularly effective therapists (Satir, Perls, Erikson), they were literally transcribing therapy sessions and started applying ideas from Chomsky's Transformational Grammar.

> What resources could you provide on this for a skeptical cognitive scientist?

First of all, I'm sorry to say that most of the stuff on the Internet about (the other) NLP seems to be fluffy and nonscientific (to put it politely). If I'm being frank, I don't think most people practicing NLP understand it very well from a scientific viewpoint.

I would recommend going to the source. Find and read "The Structure of Magic" (both volumes but especially the first, which explores linguistic patterns, the second volume then generalizes to the sensory channels.) You're probably going to be interested in what they call the "Meta Model" which is a set of questions designed to elicit elided information in a therapeutic setting.

Beyond that I don't really have any recommendations. It really depends on what you want to do. You might enjoy "Trance-FORMATIONS" which is IMO one of the best books on hypnosis ever written, it's all about how language affects and guides the mind. I suppose you could also go take a class or course?

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carapaceDec 2019

There's a school of therapy/psychology that has a rigourous epistemological basis and gets repeatable results. (I.e. an algorithm for eliminating phobias that works quickly and reliably with durable change.) This school gets panned for not being scientific, and I have to admit that that's not undeserved, however, as I said, the underlying conceptual structure is solid and the results are repeatable. I myself was cured of a deep and lifelong depression in a single session of hypnosis by one of the co-founders of this school. So not only can I vouch for its conceptual integrity, I can also vouch for its dramatic efficacy. (This isn't "my cousin", or "some guy I heard about", it was me. I lived the anecdote.)

FWIW, some books. "Structure of Magic" I & II are the first two books and are a good place to start from to see the origins of the latter work. TRANCE-Formations is a rich text on theraputic hypnosis. And then there's the Core Transformation Process, an algorithm for profound spiritual growth.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/964154.The_Structure_of_...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/821993.The_Structure_of_...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/956297.Trance_Formations

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/369813.Core_Transformati...

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carapaceNov 2019

In re: cybernetics and psychology, Gregory Bateson said that the Neurolinguistic Programming folks achieved what he had been working towards, a cybernetic psychology. If you're interested, start with the very first books "Structure of Magic" vol I and II https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/964154.The_Structure_of_... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/821993.The_Structure_of_...

Essentially, by modelling therapists' verbal patterns using Transformational Grammar a formal theory of mind was evolved that has lead to sophisticated algorithms for various kinds of psychological change.

Unfortunately, a lot of pseudo-science and "woo" has grown up around it, but please don't let that distract you, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

- - - -

In re: creating simple machines with intelligence, IMO cybernetics (i.e. what's in "Introduction to Cybernetics" by Ashby; I'm also not interested in fluff) is pretty obviously the way to go. Even the simple centrifugal governor "seems alive" in the words of early witnesses. Purposive behaviour is the domain of living systems, at least according to instinct and experience, eh?

I think one could use cybernetics to inform the design of robotic systems using e.g. the kind of simple controllers David Wyland talks about at the HomeBrew Robotics Club in this video: https://archive.org/details/HBRobotics_Forth

He's not explicitly talking about cybernetics, of course, but I think he's got the right idea and cybernetics shows the way forward.

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whoisjohnkidFeb 2019

I have quite a few:

- The Structure of Magic

- The Game by Neil Strauss

- Antifragile

- How to win friends and influence people

- 48 Laws of Power

- E-Myth

- Field Guide To Lucid Dreaming

- Turtle Trader by Michael Covel

Structure of magic may be the most impactful one out of all of them, but they are all hella good.

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carapaceJun 2018

"Structure of Magic, Vol. I" by Bandler

The "Meta-Model" is a set of questions based on Chomsky's Transformational Grammar that are designed to elicit"hidden" information by detecting and "surfacing" the deep structure of linguistic models in a therapeutic context.

For example, a statement of the form, "Foo shouldn't bar." omits the reason or motive, and can be met with a question of the form, "What would happen if foo did bar?"

You can use the Meta-Model to guide your own introspection and elicit thoughts or beliefs that you might not even be aware you hold.

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