what episode was that? Yea, Derren Brown does have lots of impressive tricks, I'm also aware that he does lots of off-camera scenes just like David Blaine and Criss Angel to make his stunts more impressive but I find Derren Brown inspirational nonetheless. I do think his lie detecting skills are genuine and aspire to be able to do what Derren helped that 80 year old lady do to nearly win a televised poker contest.

Hello there.

The episode information is here:

http://www.xploremagic.com/Trick-or-Tre ... ode-1.html

Unfortunately the video has been pulled by Youtube so you can't watch it. You should look for it when it comes on television, though. It's my favourite of his shows.

_________________
John Creases had 752 rejections before he became a successful Writer.

I'm not sure whether this has discussed before, but Brown is pretty scathing about NLP in his book. He stops just short of saying it is total bullshit. Could some of the NLP advocates maybe try and counter his criticism?

His criticism put me right off the subject, particulary where he emphasizes the lack of scientific testing supporting NLP. Since NLP is a major part of PUA this seems quite an important subject.

I believe in NLP & SS because there are too many people who have reported about using it and having it work. And they don't sound like liars. You can easily tell liars because the details don't ring true. It can't be a giant charade. There can't be all these people just pretending that it works.

They often say that the results are extreme when it works, but it doesn't always work on everyone. And no one has disproven SS or NLP. There hasn't been anyone I know of who is smart and made a total effort to master and use SS and then said that it doesn't work. If you don't want to use SS, then that's fine with me. I think it's cool that it's a rare skill. If a lot of people could use it, then that would make it less cool. If one person is enough to put you off on NLP, then I would say you weren't very motivated in the first place. You have to really want to learn it.

Who cares if there hasn't been scientific testing. It's been tested in the field. Scientific testing might be very expensive and I doubt anyone would be motivated to do it. A lot of scientists are really mean, nasty bastards, by the way. Their favorite thing to do is to tell everyone else how wrong they are about everything and to be extremely negative and critical. Fuck them.

I'm going to keep studying SS and will start using it in the field in the near future. I will let you guys know how it works out for me.

Amen to what you said about scientists, though if they were doing there job properly, ie applying the scientific method, then they would not have any bias either way.

There is a huge difference between what scientists actually do and the scientific method IMHO. The latter is an enormously powerful concept which gives us electricity, automobiles, the internet and put a man on the moon. It is probably the most important concept in human history. (Derren Brown is very big on the scientific method BTW.)

The former, as you point out, can be insufferably irritating.

While field experience is very important, you have to remember that purveyors of out-and-out bullshit, eg psychics, faith healers, will claim that their methods work for their customers also. Most of them have no problem producing testimonials from satisfied customers, and these are genuine.
The difficulty is in separating people who have been genuinely cured or assisted by something and those who got healthier and happened to be doing acupuncture or whatever at the time. There is also the placebo effect.

So, it does seem quite possible to me that you could have a school of seduction which was entirely ineffectual but nonetheless was commercially successful. There is a huge industry built around reiki, but it is total bollocks.

I tend to think there is something in the SS approach, but I'm not really how much of it is truth and how much is bullshit. In "The Game" Strauss mentions that he can't tell whether Jeffries is seducing a girl because of his NLP mastery, or simply because he is coming out with something more interesting than nice guy bullshit.

There is a problem in general working out how effective a given seduction method is, because, simply by virtue of approaching lots of girls PUA's tend to do significantly better than AFC's. They also tend to be more confident. When you add in common-sense stuff (be confident, be upbeat, touch her) stuff you are already talking about having a significant edge over the general population.

Additionally, if you get it on with a 9 using SS, you are definitely going to be a disciple of SS in the future. But the 9 may have just been really into you anyway. Or you might have effectively closed the deal at the point you approached her confidently.

To illustrate what I'm saying take a hypothetical example: I start my own "Cheese seduction" school. The basics of cheese seduction are simple. You walk up to a girl and start talking about cheese. I give overpriced seminars about how to get the girl hot talking about all the different varieties of cheese and how good they taste. After all, what kind of girl hasn't ever consumed a dairy product before? Evoking those happy memories of comfortable moments eating Philadelphia is the key to unlocking a girl's legs. $500 per hour please.

The thing is, to some extent this would actually work, at least provided you believe in it. If the acolytes of Cheese seduction really believe the method worked, then they will be projecting massive confidence, and they'd approach more girls as a result and make better approaches. They may also come across as weird, but many girls may dig a highly off-the-wall approach. They still aren't going to look as weird as Mystery even if they go around dressed as pieces of cheddar or edam.

What you would really need to determine whether SS works would be to do what a proper scientist would do and test it in the field and test it against a control group. Take ten guys, teach them SS, let them go make 100 approaches. Take ten other guys, give them generic dating advice, and get them to go make 100 approaches. If SS works, then it would give you better results with statistical significance.

I think SS would probably outperform. I do think there is something obviously seductive about tryint to get a girl into a relaxed and aroused mental state. However, I am not so sure as to what the extent of the improvement would be. It does seem to me quite likely that the more esoteric aspects of SS are just ineffectual or actually harmful.

I recall reading this in one of his books too but can't remember so I can't comment accurately, but I recall thinking at the time that there appeared to be ulterior or sentimental facotrs in his apparant distaste for the subject; I think it's more to do with him being labelled an NLP junkie and related factors, that he is brushing it aside. The fact remains that he is using many crystal clear NLP techniques, moreover, many of these techiques are fundamental to some of the tricks he performs. He has lied in the passed, for instance on the use of stooges. I'm not sure if many people know this because he writes it in how to perform a mentalist card trick in that book where only a 100 or so copies were ever sold, I think it's 'Pure Evil' or perhaps that's another one. I lent it to a friend.

Having said all that, I have the greatest respect and admiration for him. I certainly think he is worlds ahead of us all, both in terms of NLP, mentalism and in fact human psychology in general. I know how to do almost all his tricks - and yet my success rate would be only a fraction of his. Knowledge is not even half the work - delivery has to be inch perfect.

There's one thing I could never crack though, one trick of his - and that's his cold reading skills. Sometimes I think he just uses a force, other times he just uses all the classical techniques plus a few here and there from NLP etc to the sharpest extent.

Remember, each trick can be performed in a variety of different ways to give different effects, handing to the overall illusion that he is a real magician.

You've brought in some interesting information here and raise a good point about Brown being labelled an NLP junkie. I would imagine there would be some kind of pressure to disassociated yourself from that type of label, which would be probably be very limiting.

When you say "crystal clear NLP" you are aware that much of this stuff is from older primary source material?

What was most damning about NLP in his book for me was not Brown's own opinion, as of course his profession is deception, but the aforementioned lack of scientific support for NLP. It is just common sense: if something works there should be some way to measure tangible results or effects of the technique.

Brown wasn't making this up, it is difficult to find any scientific investigations in periodic journals and the link into NLP which support it.

i love derren

i would watch the Simon pegg clip youtube if you know a bit about how ancoring works and if watch it a few times you can see how he anchors certian words to make make want a bmx bike instead of a leather jacket

_________________
some guys women fall for me I make women lose their blance slightly

Too bad he will never be using his NLP to seduce women as he is gay and has had a male partner for over a year

Too bad he will never be using his NLP to seduce women as he is gay and has had a male partner for over a year

I wished people would stop referring to Derren Brown when they discuss NLP.

Brown is very harsh in his criticism of NLP, and he does not use embedded commands, other than for effect...

If you have ever seen the episode where he pays for items with blank paper, here's an explanation how this trick is done: http://www.cafeadler.com/2012/01/derren ... ealed.html

Again? seriously?

What many people forget about NLP is that it is a hodge podge of psychology from all different schools put under one roof called NLP. Embedded commands existed without NLP, Anchoring Existed without NLP, Language Patterns existed with Milton Erickson who inspired NLP. NLP then is also a model of other things, they model great leaders, they model great thinkers, they model great writers, and then tell you how these people function, because, quite accurately, if two people can do something almost anyone can be taught to do it.

The only thing that is original in NLP is the Submodalities, for which, a person has a very sense for which they access the world that can be seen by their eye movement. The eye's never lie. That's true, but as Derren Brown points out, people are consistent with their eye movement, but everybody is different. If you ask somebody to really see something in their head, and their eyes look down and to the right instead of up, you wouldn't think they're double-talking, they access visual memories through looking down, contrary to NLP.

Their power words, the words they lean on and use to describe their world, are going to be far more powerful to telling you how they process the world, than how their eyes move when they think. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/let ... they-speak This is a wonderful article by Jack Schaefer, former FBI agent, who used words to detect lies.

On another note, I'm a certified hypnotist, certified conversational hypnotist, NLP Master Practitioner, and I dabble in Mentalism, and I can say quite certainly that most of the tricks Derren Brown does are just that, "tricks," they're not real mental magic. However,
The paper money was not NLP as much as it was misdirection with a few embedded commands. There's a simpler version of the trick where you ask for change and through complicated dealings you end up with an extra ten dollar bill.

The drunk pattern for which started this post is my favorite to use at clubs and parties. I've made variations of it, the high pattern, the tripping pattern, and others. The wallet theft is again misdirection with hypnotic rapport. My favorite was what he did with Simon Pegg when he created that false memory.

There are a lot of things you can do with NLP, most of Derren Brown's tricks are not part of it. He's a great mentalist, great fun, and very interesting, but for most of the time, it's just illusion.