Actually it works pretty good on the kind of person who might believe in NLP themselves.
It's hard to take it seriously if you consider it vs a rationalist of course. But what footing does someone who has no idea and doesn't care what any of this 'veracity' stuff is and gets amazed by crap like the shamwow guy selling them garbage on TV or horrible war crime denialist government propaganda? A big part of NLP is just boosting your own confidence that you've got this person on the hook and taking it from there, after that none of this veracity stuff matters because now we're just in the realm of manipulation of belief space, something which is demonstrably way easier than convincing people to take up enough stuff like understanding of math and probability to know otherwise.
This kind of person is the rule rather than the exception and that's why this shit works. It's a large part of the reason why everything is horrible these days. Talking down on people captivated by this stuff for years has only entrenched their beliefs harder. Us rationalists should maybe realize that we're doing it wrong if there's to be any hope for a rational future.
This guy is definitely hand waving like mad though you're right about that for sure
I don't think you're giving people enough credit. Sure, there's the very low end of the bell curve, but they're a smaller group than the middle group where most of the effort is applied. I believe that most people are in on the joke and playing along because they're bored and want entertainment. These kind of manipulators are mocked endlessly on comedy shows. Infomericals are a joke, but they work anyway.
It's hard to take it seriously if you consider it vs a rationalist of course. But what footing does someone who has no idea and doesn't care what any of this 'veracity' stuff is and gets amazed by crap like the shamwow guy selling them garbage on TV or horrible war crime denialist government propaganda? A big part of NLP is just boosting your own confidence that you've got this person on the hook and taking it from there, after that none of this veracity stuff matters because now we're just in the realm of manipulation of belief space, something which is demonstrably way easier than convincing people to take up enough stuff like understanding of math and probability to know otherwise.
This kind of person is the rule rather than the exception and that's why this shit works. It's a large part of the reason why everything is horrible these days. Talking down on people captivated by this stuff for years has only entrenched their beliefs harder. Us rationalists should maybe realize that we're doing it wrong if there's to be any hope for a rational future.
This guy is definitely hand waving like mad though you're right about that for sure