[ExI] Physics versus psychology

[Damien Broderick]

On 10/24/2010 6:02 PM, Keith Henson wrote:
> But hypnosis has me baffled.  I can't come up with a reason the
> psychological trait engaged in hypnosis has any survival or
> reproductive advantage at all.

It's a while since I look at the literature, but I gather that hypnosis 
is regarded as an instance of attention-capture; the "suggestible" who 
respond best probably exempflify strongly what happens to us all during 
collective episodes of focused attention on a leader or the mood of 
one's group. In a memetic animal like H. sapiens, I think the value of 
such a trait is pretty obvious.

Damien Broderick