Yeah, that sounds really suspicious, actually. See, there's this thing called the "placebo effect". How do you know which of your willpower tricks work only because you expect them to work? Or should I not ask that?
Actually, it's a trope of the Mind Hacker's Guild that "if you're not surprised, you probably didn't change anything". So expectation is not required, only sufficient suspension of disbelief to actually carry out a process. (As I said, I've tested techniques I thought were downright stupid, and found that as long as I actually did them, and emphasized unconscious non-verbal components over analytical/verbal ones, I was able to get results.)
Now, in order to get almost any technique to work, you have to assume that it's possible for it to, at least in principle, in much the same way that you aren't going to find a way to get FAI to work unless you assume that it's possible, at least in principle. Otherwise, you'll give up way too soon to get results.
Within all usable techniques, there are certain steps that might be called "entry criteria". For example, in my thoughts-into-action video, I describe the "mmm test", which is an entry criterion for engaging the particular kind of motivation demonstrated. You have to pass the test for the technique to work. If you don't, then there's no point bothering with the rest; it's simply not going to work.
Similarly, for many NLP techniques, the entry criterion is being able to identify driver submodalities for some characteristic. If you don't achieve that criterion, the rest of the technique is irrelevant. Meanwhile, your failure to achieve the entry criterion does not mean the technique is broken; it simply means you haven't learned to achieve that criterion unassisted. (Some criteria are easier to achieve than others, especially unassisted.)
This might sound suspiciously like moving the blame from teacher to student. But to use a martial arts analogy, you can't successfully perform a combination move, if you can't yet perform the individual moves within the combination. This doesn't mean the combo is useless, it means you haven't learned the prerequisites.
Here's what happens, though, when people try to learn techniques without feedback about the entry criteria: either they accidentally or inconsistently stumble through the criterion, or they mistakenly believe they've reached it, when they've actually misunderstood the criterion. The former people get results, the latter people don't.
(i.e., if you already "get" punching and kicking, you'll master combinations more quickly, but if you're punching and kicking wrong, it doesn't matter if you can do the combination of those wrong punches and kicks.)
You can test all this and see for yourself: watch my video and compare what happens when you do and don't achieve criterion. You can also try teaching it to other people, with and without the criterion test, and see whether it works or not.
You could interpret entry criteria as meaning that "some things work for some people", but I think this is an error. If you do that, you won't try hard enough to find different ways to teach.
Hildegard's hypnotizability research was off-base because it assumed that "hypnotism" was a fixed sequence of exactly-repeatable steps, i.e., that if you tape-record an induction and play it back to a bunch of people, it's an acceptable test of "hypnotizability".
In practice, just like everything else, hypnotism is an interactive process with entry criteria. A good hypnotist varies their behavior -- timing, rhythm, tone, choice of words or images, etc. -- based on the subject's real-time responses. They use externally-visible entry criteria to test the subject's depth and responses, before engaging in suggestions, etc.
I'm not sure if I'm explaining this well. What I'm saying is, Things That Work have testable criteria and include parts that require looking for ways to achieve those criteria, where the ways of achieving the criteria vary from one person to another, but the net effect of getting to the criterion is that you can do something that's universal or very nearly so.
Achieving those criteria is also an objective matter, even if the perception of those criteria is subjective. That is, you should be able to objectively determine whether something feels a certain way, even if nobody else can observe it on the outside.
(Part of formal NLP training for therapists, however, involves learning to observe the exterior signals of these feelings, so that you're not dependent on a client's skills in subjective introspection. I don't use that in my work, though, because I work long distance without the aid of remote video.)
Anywho... what I'm trying to say is, you will be able to tell whether you're experiencing a placebo effect or not, because to achieve entry criterion for a technique, you will have to try some things, and some of them will not work. Your own observation of what personally works or does not work, will provide you with adequate demonstration that it is not just a placebo effect, unless you just so happen to be (un)lucky enough to stumble on the right thing at the very first try. ;-)
I've noticed a serious problem in which aspiring rationalists vastly overestimate their ability to optimize other people's lives. And I think I have some idea of how the problem arises.
You read nineteen different webpages advising you about personal improvement—productivity, dieting, saving money. And the writers all sound bright and enthusiastic about Their Method, they tell tales of how it worked for them and promise amazing results...
But most of the advice rings so false as to not even seem worth considering. So you sigh, mournfully pondering the wild, childish enthusiasm that people can seem to work up for just about anything, no matter how silly. Pieces of advice #4 and #15 sound interesting, and you try them, but... they don't... quite... well, it fails miserably. The advice was wrong, or you couldn't do it, and either way you're not any better off.
And then you read the twentieth piece of advice—or even more, you discover a twentieth method that wasn't in any of the pages—and STARS ABOVE IT ACTUALLY WORKS THIS TIME.
At long, long last you have discovered the real way, the right way, the way that actually works. And when someone else gets into the sort of trouble you used to have—well, this time you know how to help them. You can save them all the trouble of reading through nineteen useless pieces of advice and skip directly to the correct answer. As an aspiring rationalist you've already learned that most people don't listen, and you usually don't bother—but this person is a friend, someone you know, someone you trust and respect to listen.
And so you put a comradely hand on their shoulder, look them straight in the eyes, and tell them how to do it.
I, personally, get quite a lot of this. Because you see... when you've discovered the way that really works... well, you know better by now than to run out and tell your friends and family. But you've got to try telling Eliezer Yudkowsky. He needs it, and there's a pretty good chance that he'll understand.
It actually did take me a while to understand. One of the critical events was when someone on the Board of the Institute Which May Not Be Named, told me that I didn't need a salary increase to keep up with inflation—because I could be spending substantially less money on food if I used an online coupon service. And I believed this, because it was a friend I trusted, and it was delivered in a tone of such confidence. So my girlfriend started trying to use the service, and a couple of weeks later she gave up.
Now here's the the thing: if I'd run across exactly the same advice about using coupons on some blog somewhere, I probably wouldn't even have paid much attention, just read it and moved on. Even if it were written by Scott Aaronson or some similar person known to be intelligent, I still would have read it and moved on. But because it was delivered to me personally, by a friend who I knew, my brain processed it differently—as though I were being told the secret; and that indeed is the tone in which it was told to me. And it was something of a delayed reaction to realize that I'd simply been told, as personal advice, what otherwise would have been just a blog post somewhere; no more and no less likely to work for me, than a productivity blog post written by any other intelligent person.
And because I have encountered a great many people trying to optimize me, I can attest that the advice I get is as wide-ranging as the productivity blogosphere. But others don't see this plethora of productivity advice as indicating that people are diverse in which advice works for them. Instead they see a lot of obviously wrong poor advice. And then they finally discover the right way—the way that works, unlike all those other blog posts that don't work—and then, quite often, they decide to use it to optimize Eliezer Yudkowsky.
Don't get me wrong. Sometimes the advice is helpful. Sometimes it works. "Stuck In The Middle With Bruce"—that resonated, for me. It may prove to be the most helpful thing I've read on the new Less Wrong so far, though that has yet to be determined.
It's just that your earnest personal advice, that amazing thing you've found to actually work by golly, is no more and no less likely to work for me than a random personal improvement blog post written by an intelligent author is likely to work for you.
"Different things work for different people." That sentence may give you a squicky feeling; I know it gives me one. Because this sentence is a tool wielded by Dark Side Epistemology to shield from criticism, used in a way closely akin to "Different things are true for different people" (which is simply false).
But until you grasp the laws that are near-universal generalizations, sometimes you end up messing around with surface tricks that work for one person and not another, without your understanding why, because you don't know the general laws that would dictate what works for who. And the best you can do is remember that, and be willing to take "No" for an answer.
You especially had better be willing to take "No" for an answer, if you have power over the Other. Power is, in general, a very dangerous thing, which is tremendously easy to abuse, without your being aware that you're abusing it. There are things you can do to prevent yourself from abusing power, but you have to actually do them or they don't work. There was a post on OB on how being in a position of power has been shown to decrease our ability to empathize with and understand the other, though I can't seem to locate it now. I have seen a rationalist who did not think he had power, and so did not think he needed to be cautious, who was amazed to learn that he might be feared...
It's even worse when their discovery that works for them, requires a little willpower. Then if you say it doesn't work for you, the answer is clear and obvious: you're just being lazy, and they need to exert some pressure on you to get you to do the correct thing, the advice they've found that actually works.
Sometimes—I suppose—people are being lazy. But be very, very, very careful before you assume that's the case and wield power over others to "get them moving". Bosses who can tell when something actually is in your capacity if you're a little more motivated, without it burning you out or making your life incredibly painful—these are the bosses who are a pleasure to work under. That ability is extremely rare, and the bosses who have it are worth their weight in silver. It's a high-level interpersonal technique that most people do not have. I surely don't have it. Do not assume you have it, because your intentions are good. Do not assume you have it, because you'd never do anything to others that you didn't want done to yourself. Do not assume you have it, because no one has ever complained to you. Maybe they're just scared. That rationalist of whom I spoke—who did not think he held power and threat, though it was certainly obvious enough to me—he did not realize that anyone could be scared of him.
Be careful even when you hold leverage, when you hold an important decision in your hand, or a threat, or something that the other person needs, and all of a sudden the temptation to optimize them seems overwhelming.
Consider, if you would, that Ayn Rand's whole reign of terror over Objectivists can be seen in just this light—that she found herself with power and leverage, and could not resist the temptation to optimize.
We underestimate the distance between ourselves and others. Not just inferential distance, but distances of temperament and ability, distances of situation and resource, distances of unspoken knowledge and unnoticed skills and luck, distances of interior landscape.
Even I am often surprised to find that X, which worked so well for me, doesn't work for someone else. But with so many others having tried to optimize me, I can at least recognize distance when I'm hit over the head with it.
Maybe being pushed on does work... for you. Maybe you don't get sick to the stomach when someone with power over you starts helpfully trying to reorganize your life the correct way. I don't know what makes you tick. In the realm of willpower and akrasia and productivity, as in other realms, I don't know the generalizations deep enough to hold almost always. I don't possess the deep keys that would tell me when and why and for who a technique works or doesn't work. All I can do is be willing to accept it, when someone tells me it doesn't work... and go on looking for the deeper generalizations that will hold everywhere, the deeper laws governing both the rule and the exception, waiting to be found, someday.