Hello. I wrote: "1. the subjective connotations of your client's communication, when changed by you, needlessly and undesirably manipulate your client's experience. I might argue principle (1) case-by-case against each person who posts some example of his or her action in therapy." I'd like to consider that principle in some example future contexts.  I'm going to use my imagination. Suppose the following came about: 2. Modeling nonprofits flourish across the world.  Agents of change are now "agents of difference".  Modeling technology is applied to provide rapid-learning possibilities for skill-areas that include: personal relationships, sports skills, gaming skills, employment training, and entertainment skills.  Most of the modeling organizations market training services in response to popular trends in entertainment and education, including immersement entertainments (VR games, movies, the internet), music, dance, sports, and (online) learning.  The modeling organizations all advertise, and they use popular advertising venues, including the internet. In future (2), modeling trainers DO manipulate their client's experience, beliefs, and more, to provide training services.  The models overflow with content, and so do the skills taught to trainees at the modeling organization centers. In future (2): 3. NLP researchers follow trends, rather than create them.  Yes, in future (2), principle (1) might have some relevance to the ethical practice of therapy, but NLP-modeling will have little to do with therapy.  It will have a lot to do with what's marketed to the public as worth learning or worth doing. Suppose NLP-modeling takes a different approach, one that only develops skill-sets, skill-sets that are deemed important or desirable to society.  Then: 4. NLP-modeling organizations create trends, rather than just follow them.  NLP organizations might then still use traditional advertising methods to reach their market, but now they sell a concept along with their promise of rapid-learning possibilities. Both approaches (3) and (4) rely on selling, or at least tolerating, the content, and beliefs, of some organization.  In approach (3), the organization doing the selling is an ordinary media organization, the one that sold your client on a skill-set that the client then came to you to learn.  In approach (4), the organization doing the selling is yours; you have to convince the client that your skill-set is worth learning, (and that you should be the one to teach him) before he comes in to learn the skill-set from you.  One difference between approach (3),  and approach (4), is that: 5. approach (4) probably involves changing the preferences of your client as part of selling your client on your model, and also teaching the client your model, since, in approach (3), some other organization already taught your client what results to want.  In approach (3), you're providing the learning, some learning, like, how to walk like a model, or shoot a gun in VR, or paint like picasso, or .... One question I have is:  6. what future would include a community-wide approach close to approach (4), one that does not piggyback on conventional media propaganda to generate clients? It seems to me that a blind-spot of Dr. Grinder, and Ms. Bostic St. Clair, is their failure to see the likelihood of a future (2).  Also, while the ethics "Whispering In The Wind" discussed were relevant to the therapy context (don't manipulate, give your client self-reliance, don't promise a one-shot wonder session), those ethics had no relevance to NLP-application contexts, in a future like future (2). Yes, "Whispering In The Wind" called for broad use of the triple description process, but, I wonder: 7. how relevant is the triple description process to modeling or training some other process for which the triple description process is not applied? If you watch television, or pay attention to advertisements of any kind, you'll notice that some advertisements sell a behavior and a set of desired results from that behavior.  A person who wants the results that an advertisement sold her, will look for a teachers of the advertised behavior, or some other behavior, but definitely one that will get her the result she learned to desire.   Another question is: 8. should a NLPer be the one who sells client on a result, as if the result is worth the client having? Contrast question (8) with question (9): 9. should a NLPer be the one who sells a client on a result, as if the NLPer can provide his client that result? Well, however NLPers answer "no" to question (8), if NLPer's still go on to model human behavior, and develop explicit models of behavior, NLPer's will be part of developing more knowledge of how humans work.  Trying for the syntax of behavior, learning how existing NLP behavior models apply to particular behaviors, NLPers will develop additional knowledge of how humans behave. At some point, once they need to earn some money, those NLPers who answered "no", to question (8), will be answering "yes" to question (9), and probably following approach (3).  Approach (4) seems to me to be less of a money-maker.  A much larger variety of behaviors will be possible to model and teach, by following approach (3).  Masking approach (3) as approach (4) makes no difference to whether or not someone follows approach (3). If you think about it, a NLPer who follows approach (4) either uses VERY appealing marketing techniques, to gaurantee herself an income, or has an ethical stance that convinces her to teach to those (relatively) few students who have a pre-existing interest in what she has to teach.  But, A NLPer who follows approach (3), probably wants to gaurantee herself a living. Right now, NLP is all about self-help, and personal growth, but NLP-modeling is not about that at all.  It's about learning skills.  It's the individual researchers who bring their own ethics, and constraints, to any modeling research effort.  There's no ethics to help NLP-researchers decide what is worth researching.  Principle (1) COULD be such an ethic, but its application would probably lead people who would follow approach (4), to follow approach (3) instead, so as not to manipulate trainees unfairly.  And it's application would be limited, since relatively few therapeutic behaviors exist, contrasted with the large number of potentially profitable modelable behaviors out there. I thought, at one point during my reading of WITW, that NLP-modeling would naturally create a transitive learning relationship between source_model, researcher, and trainees, so that researcher trainees model the researcher just as the researcher modeled the source_model.  Not so, considering historical evidence.  Mr. Bandler and Dr. Grinder wrote books that described explicit, streamlined methods to produce the same results as Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson in therapy.  And Mr. Bandler and Dr. Grinder both entered a know-nothing state to model, a la "Whispering In The Wind", so my evidence does demonstrate the function of the modeling process a la WITW. It's wonderful that Dr. Grinder and Ms. Bostic St. Clair are teaching others how to model effectively.  But, in "Whispering In The Wind", they went further.  They wrote that (paraphrasing from memory): 10.  Once a researcher can reproduce a model's behavioral results, then the researcher can produce an explicit model of the target behavior, and publish the model for the community. If the NLP-community grows into a large pool of researchers, then, by following instructions (10), earnings per NLP trainer will be low, unless the researchers work for clients via approach (3).  Those researchers who elect to pursue approach (4) will be few, with scarce research assignments, and barely profitable trainings.  Potentially profitable models will then be kept secret, or researchers will follow approach (3), or both.  The likely alternative is that NLP researchers earn their living the way many scientists do, by adding their knowledge to that of the world at large, for the common good (or bad).  I know that scientists in other disciplines, and marketers selling every kind of product and service, would pay for that knowledge, but I don't think its ethical to be paid to produce knowledge for either market group. Thinking about it all, I really like the following future better.  11.  Modeling, by Dr. Grinder and Ms. Bostic St. Clair's method, is pursued by a researcher until the researcher is able to reproduce the target behavior's result.  Training, by a researcher, is conducted simply by allowing trainees to model the trainer.  No explicit model of the target behavior is ever created by the researcher or her trainees.  Dissemination of this model of learning is accomplished via approach (4). It's unethical for me to work toward future (2), which is why I wanted to share my line of thought, as I have in this post.  It would be ethical for me to work toward future (11).  Any replies or thoughts? -nj