Esme Povirk @madewokherd@computerfairi.es

(While writing this, I programmed myself to do something a little silly later, with no hypnosis or trance around it. Mostly to observe what I was doing. Will be interesting to see if it works.)

I think that when someone looks at you very seriously and gives you some warning about a precaution to take, so you don't burn or electrocute yourself or something, and you know it's important and somehow you always seem to remember when the time comes, that's the same thing as programming a post-hypnotic response.

For me, the process of committing goes like this:

• I translate the language of the suggestion into a structure of non-verbal concepts that I can hold in my brain at once. (Repetition makes this easier, as I might forget parts of the language while I'm building the structure.)
• I create a mental sensation of "learning" or "accepting an instruction". This is feels similar to when a concept clicks, or being taught to do something in the normal way.

Repetition increases the odds of at least one attempt succeeding.

Practicing is a way of conditioning the response. I doubt trance directly helps with this, but it means the subject is less likely to be distracted. Also if it's something they think they need to be in trance to do, it removes a possible obstacle.

Committing the instruction is something I experience as a distinct "mental action". I think that's the interesting part.

One of the things I experience as a distinct "mental action" in hypnosis is programming a response. "When X happens, I do Y." Often classified as a "post-hypnotic suggestion".

Hypnotists will often:

• State the instruction more than once
• Practice the response in trance first
• Include some metaphor for "committing" or "writing" the instruction

I believe that everything a hypnotized person can do is a skill that one can learn. A lot of it is imagination and knowing how to use metaphor to affect and observe one's mind. There are also distinct "mental actions" that can be controlled like a muscle, and "inner senses" that can be as clear as the external ones. And some physical actions affect the mind. None of these require hypnosis, but they're all associated with it, and trying to model them as one thing doesn't work.

This may work for many people, but it leaves no option when the stock phrases don't click. The hypnotist may shrug and say "I guess you're not very hypnotizable", or give a recording and hope the subject gets it on a later attempt.

And, when it does work, the subject may not learn the actual skills involved, and still depends on the cargo cult ritual.

I think of hypnosis not as something human brains are intrinsically capable of, nor as a roleplay/social construct, but a sort of cargo cult. The hypnotist is like an instructor who, rather than understanding the mechanics of the skill he tries to teach and explaining them clearly, simply repeats phrases and actions that have often worked in the past.

It's as though people see the years stretching on forever and the spark of life leaves them. Or as though Death said in her apparent defeat "If you won't follow my rules, then I will follow no rules," and started taking people whenever it pleased her.