Saturday, February 9, 2008

Think of a Caribbean cruising ship. It has been hired for the purpose of a psychological experiment. Imagine that you invite two thousand subjects for the experiment. To qualify they have to be susceptible to hypnosis and agree to take part in this experiment. OK, on boarding this wonderful cruise ship all the guests are hypnotized. Some are hypnotized to believe that they are deeply religious; Catholics, Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, fanatic Muslims, fanatic Hindus. Some are hypnotized to believe that they are atheists. Some are made to believe that they are extreme right-wingers, some are made to believe that they are left-wingers, some are made to believe that they are artists, some are made to believe that they are ordinary office clerks. Some are made to believe that they are superior, some are made to believe that they are inferior. Some are made to believe that nothing is important but money…

Well, this is quite a job and will take some time I guess, even if a dozen good hypnotists are there to help.

Now, if you invite a few people as a control group, people that you don’t hypnotize and that are totally unaware of the experiment, do you think that they would smell a rat?

And, if you on the second day of the trip woke them all up, do you think that they would feel like they had just woken up from a dream? Would they feel like they are in one of those dreams, you know, when you in the dream, dream that you wake up from a dream?

Are all people, really hypnotized sleepwalkers?

2 comments:

:Doreen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
:Doreen said...

Are you pointing out that the control group will be the same as the hypnotized group?

Is that the rat? Do you know how a rat smells? And let's drop the personification of all animals. Rats are only judged by humans.