Hypnosis

Scott Adams has a long post about his experience with hypnosis. It's very interesting.

The power of hypnosis, for me, was in understanding how easily people can confuse the imagined with the real. You can’t hypnotize someone to kill himself, because he would reject that suggestion. But religion can convince someone to kill himself by creating an imaginary afterlife with plentiful virgins for martyrs. So on a scale of dangerous imaginary things, hypnosis is somewhere closer to advertising, well below peer pressure, nowhere near religion.

In fact, part of your hypnosis homework involved watching a well-known preacher’s television show. He was a skilled hypnotist, although it was unclear how much was from training and how much was natural. Damn, he was good. Nothing he said made any sense whatsoever, and by that I don’t just mean it was hard to believe. I mean you couldn’t even discern his point. Yet somehow, it a-a-a-almost, kind of, sort of, made sense, so it drew you in. A half hour later you realized the only thing that made sense was “send me money.” That’s a standard hypnosis trick: You create a sense of confusion in the subject’s mind, and it makes him cling to the first clear thought that comes in. People don’t like to be confused for long, so the one clear thought in the mess of confusion takes on a higher power of influence. But it’s important to note that the hypnosis wouldn’t have been that effective, and evil, without the religion part.

Adams also has a similarly long post about public speaking here.

Scott Adams should be required daily reading. He simply gives away the keys to success. It's amazing.