beathespread

Trading NLP! Does it exist? Definitely trading nlp exists and there are even books dedicated to NLP and trading.

The first question is what is NLP? According to Wikipedia

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is defined as an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy created in the 1970s. The title refers to a stated connection between the neurological processes ("neuro"), language ("linguistic"), and behavioral patterns that have been learned through experience ("programming") and can be organized to achieve specific goals in life.

The leading book for trading application of NLP is "NLP for Traders and investors: Personal Strategies to Give You the Edge Over Those Using Just Fundamental and Technical Analysis" by Terry Carroll.

From historical perspective NLP come with several books having more scientific perspective. The Structure of Magic I: A Book About Language and Therapy v. 1 (Structure of Magic): A Book About Language and Therapy.

Later its creators opted for more pragmatic and commercial evolution. The NLP has been simplifed and dedicated towards to ordinary public.

I think that this was partially (or mainly) the reason for the critical attitude from the scientific community. As you can read the main Wikipedia article this is the main thing that comes "According to certain neuroscientists,^[3] psychologists,^[4][5] and linguists,^[6][7]NLP is unsupported by current scientific evidence, and uses incorrect and misleading terms and concepts."

Even more "Criticisms go beyond the lack of empirical evidence for effectiveness; critics say that NLP exhibits pseudoscientific characteristics,^[14] title,^[3] concepts and terminology.^[6][15] NLP is used as an example of pseudoscience for facilitating the teaching of scientific literacy at the professional and university level.^[7][16][17] NLP also appears on peer reviewed expert-consensus based lists of discredited interventions."^[5]

OK you can read here as "discredited interventions","pseudoscience" and my favorite "lack of empirical evidence for effectiveness".

So you can ask WHY BOTHER with nlp.

I can structure my opinion as follows:

-I think that when NLP was created it was ahead of its time. As NLP is multidisciplinary (and scientists hate the multidisciplinary approach because that makes them work much harder). I think that pose a real problem of fair statistical evaluation. The reason is that it is too complex and a lot of bias can be achieved mainly by not understanding it.

-The second thing is that NLP is not science, it was developped as a technology. And NLP is technology. So NLP is not a unified scientific hypothesis as for example the Standard model in physics and if you disprove one part of the model the whole thing collapses. NLP is a set of techniques (I prefer the term psycho technology).

So my opinion is that NLP can and should be used pragmatically. That means to focus on a specific technique and approach and to see if it works or not and not to bother with the whole thing (being mostly not proved and criticisezed).