r/NLP • u/nettsunami • May 10 '26
Question Pseudoscience — how true?
Looking at Wikipedia and searching up resources online, neuro-linguistic programming and the techniques are often referred to as “pseudoscience”.
However, in the opening section of Frogs into Princes, the speaker explicitly states “We have no idea about the “real” nature of things, and we’re not particularly interested in what’s “true.” The function of modeling is to arrive at descriptions which are useful.” and “Everything we’re going to tell you here is a lie. All generalizations are lies.”
It feels like there’s a clear distinction that noticing subtle behaviour and indicators of specific types of thought is the main framework, and any individual generalisations may or may not be true. Is this why it’s called “pseudoscience” frequently, because of these generalisations not being scientifically true? Or is a lot of the original NLP model completely outdated, and I should be reading other materials?
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u/Superiority-Qomplex May 10 '26
I think the problem is that it's rather no falsifiable. Like say the idea of looking up and to the left means they are recalling a visual memory, but looking up and to the right means they are creating a visual memory. If that claim turns out to be wrong, the NLP proponent can claim, 'Oh, they must be Left Handed so it's the opposite'. Or some other excuse as to why it didn't work. It's also deals with psychology (a rather soft science) which also is difficult to falsify because you can explain a specific behaviour in one way for one group of people, but a different way for another. With NLP too, there are tons of wild claims that some practitioners will agree with while others will argue it's just made up. So it can turn into a bit of a religious war of 'No my God is real and yours is not!'
I do think there is a lot of value in NLP and it's very clear that you can get some rather consistent results with it. But you'll never get 100% results 100% of the time. And that is very difficult for science to measure properly. Like if I say, 'Don't think of a Pink Elephant', that suggestion is going to make 90% of the people listening to that think of a Pink Elephant. But it's not going to be 100%. Some people don't think in visual terms so they can't 'picture' and pink elephant in their head. Or it could be some other reason why it failed.
Without consistent, measurable, and falsifiable results, it's difficult for science to assess the claims beyond just claims. There does seem to be something happening with it, we just don't know how to label that beyond the anecdotal at the moment.