talkmagic.co.uk

I'm really enjoying this debate and I'm dreading the almost inevitable locking so could we all try to avoid personal attacks?

Slightlycrazy I understand your opinion and while I don't agree, I don't assume you're an idiot or a Derren wannabe (I call em 'brownies') for having them.

On Penn and Teller, they lie as well, they are not hated by other magicians and were not kicked out of the magic castle for their cup and balls routine. While they claim to reveal their magic, they don't really do they? They have never revealed their bullet catch or 'shadows' routine, they create specific performances to be revealed for the entertainment value of 'we're going to give the audience what they want, the secret.'

Saying it's okay to reveal how it's done and using Penn and Teller as an example is the same as saying 'You don't need to practice you magic, if it goes wrong just laugh it off.' Using Tommy Cooper as an example. You miss the point of the performance entirely.

The real person who you use as an example of revealing methods is that masked magician guy (I don't remember his name, no one does) why isn't he as successful as Penn and Teller?

Also what about Derren Brown? While everyone may be sick of him always being mentioned in these debates I'm sure we're all fans and respect his skill as a magician and a showman. He makes false claims about how he can do what he does all the time and maintains those claims after the show. When he first arrived on the scene lay people didn't think he was a magician, they thought what he was doing was real.

One of my favorite performances of his was the 'Simon Pegg N.L.P' performance and the explanation he gives at the end is pure unadulterated Bullsh*t, that's what made it so good.

Bullsh*t is the fuel that stokes the fire of imagination, Bullsh*t is the manure that feeds the beautiful rose of our art and we should shovel it with both hands.

People love eating nuts and olives from my beautiful Indian 'Ishana bowls' and as long as I don't tell them they're made from elephant dung they will continue to do so.

Jean Eugene Roberts wrote:People love eating nuts and olives from my beautiful Indian 'Ishana bowls' and as long as I don't tell them they're made from elephant dung they will continue to do so.

Marvelous!

Jean Eugene Roberts wrote:I'm really enjoying this debate and I'm dreading the almost inevitable locking so could we all try to avoid personal attacks?

Wot 'e sed !

Well, I'm honestly happy with themagicwand's answer. He comes off as classy.

"I don't think sleightlycrazy will ever grasp what we are getting at here as his views seem deeply entrenched." You realize I conceded to magicwand's style, right? Magicwand actually answered my question and explained his position clearly without relying on calling me stupid.


Freddie, you're not answering my questions nor really providing counterarguments to mine. Seriously, man, I answered your points in previous posts. I explained the Teller/Andrus way of sensitively and interestingly explaining that there are tricks going on. You don't have to call people stupid to get them to understand you.


Jean, I appreciate your fairness, but I still believe Penn and Teller are a legitimate example. Penn and Teller lie, but their lies are facetious and insignificant. On top of that, they come clean about their lies very, very often (hence you know about the fact that they're lies). Also, their lies can't possibly be causing people to lose money, time, or anything else, really. People who buy into Derren's suggestion that NLP is real risk getting sucked into the whole sketchy business. The seminars and books won't ever let them be Derren. Wasted money, wasted hope. As wonderful as Derren's performances are (and he's the only British performer people here in California), it's a shame that people come away thinking it was really psychology.

"They have never revealed their bullet catch or 'shadows' routine" But everyone knows they're tricks. No one walks away thinking they have the supernatural abilities to catch bullets or mutilate roses by slashing their shadows. Some people, after watching a highly deceptive mentalism trick, believe that they've witnessed real mind reading. They'll walk out of the performance believing it was real.

Many laypeople, at least here in California since I can't speak for other states much less other continents, know of the masked magician. Granted, he didn't present himself as much of a personality, so people just remember that there was a guy on TV who exposed stuff. And I'm not arguing about success anyway, though Teller suggests that a secular, non NLP-BSing mentalist may become popular with a modern audience.

I think I may have made my ideals about revealing methods a bit too emphatic in previous posts. I wouldn't explicitly explain every detail of every trick and I wouldn't do so during a performance. That would take away from the performance itself. But at the same time, I would try to find a way to keep people from thinking what I did was real.

Mind you, I almost never do mentalism and prefer straight magic routines, so it's not much of a problem for me. But back when I played around with billets (and I played with them enough to almost reinvent acidus globus), I made it clear that I can't read minds but the tricks still killed.

"People love eating nuts and olives from my beautiful Indian 'Ishana bowls' and as long as I don't tell them they're made from elephant dung they will continue to do so." I first read this to mean the nuts and olives were made of elephant dung...!

jim ferguson wrote:

Craig Browning wrote:I've have several experience as a Reader that totally negate any of the hogwash would be debunkers and skeptics want to regurgitate. There is absolutely no way to have known any of the details that came up in the Readings -- NONE! Nor was there any kind of "misremembering" events or any of the other typical excuses. . .pardon, I meant to say "explanations" these "experts" love to toss at such instances. Such situations are why I'm only 93% skeptical -- simply seen and encountered too much so-called rationale and critical thinking cannot and never will explain.

While I dont know the particulars of these revelations surely it could be chance or coincidence ? As you have been doing this for decades its not unreasonable to imagine that every now and again a reading would be remarkably good - and by this time would have several of these to speak of. It would be expected through chance alone.

Im not saying that this IS what happened, obviously I cant say for certain, but I offer it as a possibility.

jim

Ok... you lost me when you used the two most over-used COP OUTS known to the skeptic's vernacular "Chance" or "Coincidence" . . . and please don't insult me by saying I've "mis-remembered" events or I'm too ignorant when it comes to how trickery (deliberate or otherwise) happens and all the other standard B.S.

I've done investigations for decades, helped bust us my fair share of fakes and trouble-makers when it comes to the real world. I don't know many so-called skeptics that have the BALLS to do some of the work in that area that I've done. . . (because some of these people will kill you for trying to out them).

As I just shared with someone privately; there is simply TOO MUCH the egotists can't explain without falling back on one of these lame "explanations". . . of course my favorite is when they scream about "Self-Fulfilling Prophecy" in one breath but 5-minutes later contend that New Age meditation, affirmations and visualizations don't work. . . magick (as in the ritual sort) is fake and doesn't happen... they need to decide which is which; Self-Fulfilled Prophecy is the same exact thing as all this stuff you clowns poop on. . .

Baptist evangelists aren't that duplistic.

Not helpful Craig, this is an open forum anyone can freely express their views as long as they're civil.

(Although you are right there are a lot of self opinionated teenage 'skeptics' let's not assume that everyone here is.)

Alright as far as I can see the argument or debate started with this post.

screwystewie wrote:Do you guys actually pretend that you are speaking to people's dead relatives, or do you explain it is all magic and trickery?

I'd have a real moral issue with the former.

I think everyone here has some issue with doing this. My thoughts are if your going to do this sort of stuff you are an entertainer. This can only be justified as psychiatry and grief counseling, in which case you better be certified to do it.

Either way anybody using this as an emotional hook to get people to pay you and then justify it as 'entertainment' or genuine ability is a idiot. It's the same as the difference between a genuine psychiatrist and one of those T.V life guru's that keep popping up.

Admittedly the 'pro spiritual' side was not helpful but they may have misunderstood the original question which was not 'Do you believe in the supernatural' But 'Do you callously use peoples dead relatives to 'hook' you audience.

Unfortunately it doesn't matter because screwysteiwe chose to change his question to this

screwystewie wrote:Another way to phrase my original question would be:
Do you let your audience leave a seance thinking that they just witnessed real spirits?

Which is very different to dead relatives.

Spirits, Ghosts Fairies, Aliens, Demons, and Demigods they exist all over the world and there is no harm in believing they exist. What people do with that belief can be harmful but the belief itself isn't. How can it be?

Yes people kill each other over religion, yes people slaughter their own family members because 'They're possessed by demons' and yes some people get sick and rely on ridiculous mumbo jumbo to get better rather than proper medicine.

But then people do all sorts of stupid things. Two neighbors may hate each other because one supports Arsenal and one supports Man-U (I don't know if those teams are rivals but I know they're real football teams so I'm using them). In the 70's Mods would have knife fights with Rockers on Brighton beach based on nothing more than music taste. These days we have Rap battles, musicians and fans shooting each other over * lyrics. I've heard that there are riots at every major American sporting event. Hell people die or servilely injure themselves by playing certain sports. Then these gangs living in the same area killing people because they're waring the wrong colour. Personally I smoke cigarettes it was a stupid thing for me to do but I'll keep doing it as it kills me and I will destroy anyone who tried to stop me.

Music, Sport, Clothing style. These are all things we made up, and they're not really that important but people still kill and die over them.

Then there's the big stuff people kill over. Race, Land, Politics, Culture, Resources, The Class system, Sexuality, Fear.

Given all that 'Believing in ghosts' seems like a pretty trivial concern.

Your first point slightlycrazy took us even further away from the original issue.

sleightlycrazy wrote:I do, however, agree that it is a bit of a stretch to call it entertainment, especially if they believe that what they are experiencing is real.

When I do the coinvexed effect I do a whole ritual, involving drawing arcane looking symbols on the coin to turn it into a talisman and then have the person white the name of someone they hate on the other side to create a curse, the coin being bent is the evidence at the end. Not everyone believes me but some do. Twice people have become quite disturbed about it in those cases I revealed it was a trick. Most of the time people ask me how I do it I reply honestly 'It was magic.'

What am I doing that's so immoral? These people didn't hire me to exact magikal revenge on someone they hired me for entertainment specifically they want to see some magic, So I show them magic. They are entertained I've done what I was payed to do (although I would gladly do it for free).

Craig Browning wrote:Ok... you lost me when you used the two most over-used COP OUTS known to the skeptic's vernacular "Chance" or "Coincidence" . . .

No, it's partly the law of big numbers, partly misremembrance, partly physically cued intuition.

Craig Browning wrote:and please don't insult me by saying I've "mis-remembered" events or I'm too ignorant when it comes to how trickery (deliberate or otherwise) happens and all the other standard B.S.

You'd be a very interesting specimen if you could distinguish between genuine and embellished or downright false memories. Memory is not a perfect recording, and will always be skewed by whatever stories we tell ourselves about the nature of the universe. That's why stories, however compelling, can't ultimately be taken as evidence. One need only look at the Indian Rope Trick or the Maria case to demonstrate how skewed recollections can become. Tellingly, when cases are dismissed for robust reasons, these dismissals are generally forgotten about. Believers continue to print the legend.

Craig Browning wrote:I've done investigations for decades, helped bust us my fair share of fakes and trouble-makers when it comes to the real world. I don't know many so-called skeptics that have the BALLS to do some of the work in that area that I've done. . . (because some of these people will kill you for trying to out them).

I've spoken before on how it's a vital plank of anyone's belief in the paranormal that they make distinctions between fakes and the real thing. Dismissing Acorah is a foundation in the belief of Gladys who does a turn at the spiritualist church down the road and only charges expenses. Knowing the TV medium is fake doesn't mean that Gladys is any more real. It's the bad toupé fallacy. You think toupés aren't convincing, because you "can always tell who's wearing one". But if convincing toupés do exist, then you wouldn't know, because they would convince you. It's a mistake a lot of paranormal researchers seem to make. Lyon Playfair makes the error in the Enfield Poltergeist case, where he claimed that occasionally the girls did try to trick him and Maurice Grosse, but whenever they did, Grosse and Playfair always caught them out. This does not account for occasions where the girls tricked them successfully. I've more to say about Enfield, but that's not for now.

I can't, obviously, comment on anything that you've experienced or believe you've experienced because I wasn't there, and can't very well learn very much from your recollections of it. What I can say with some certainty is that the following patterns exist in parapsychology.

Someone claims an ability. Let's say they can determine the sex of a dead person by the aura of their diary.

A scientist wishes to test this claim. They determine a protocol with the claimant. The claimant knows that the auras of the diaries extend several inches, so they agree that if the diaries are individually boxed, she will still be able to sex the diarists. The scientist wants to have the diaries boxes to eliminate any visual cues coming from the diaries themselves; perhaps colour or style choice, lever of wear and tear, or even scent.

The scientist acquires six diaries, places them in individual boxes. The claimant attempts to determine the sex of the diarists, and does no better than chance.

The claimant now decides that the protocol previously agreed on is flawed. She builds something into the explanation she has for her ability that requires the diaries to not be boxed. The scientist cannot agree to this. They go their separate ways. Occasionally the claimant will then turn around and suggest some kind of victory, that the scientist somehow lacked the courage to test her skills on her own terms.

What happens, I believe, is that people develop intuitive skills, either through specialisation or just through the process of living. The skills, being relatively unconscious, appear as if magical to the person with the skill. They narrativise their skill, either fitting it into their existing belief system, or building a belief system from scratch in order to explain their ability. This narrative makes use of a false mechanism. If these skills are put to the test within the context of that false mechanism, and the skill fails, then the person will make the smallest adjustment possible to their personal explanation of the ability to explain away the null result. That is human nature, and not peculiar to psi.

Here's the other pattern...

A scientist devises an experiment to test latent ESP ability based on existing anecdotal evidence.

They test a number of subjects. Some of these subjects do much better than chance. The scientist claims they have proved ESP is a reality, and publishes their research.

The protocol is examined and flaws are discovered. Perhaps the randomisation process has a bias that closely matches a bias present in human psychology. Perhaps the blinding was not thorough enough to eliminate fraud or forms of unconscious cuing.

These flaws are removed from the test protocol and the experiment is repeated. The ESP effect vanishes.

People have found excuses for generation after generation as to why lab tests aren't appropriate for psi, from Dion Boucicault's declaration that séances need for darkness is comparable to photography requiring darkness all the way through to the regular backtracking performed by people who failed to win the Randi Challenge.

Ultimately the reality proposed is that psi is real, but for weird reasons cannot be teased apart from fraud or from unconscious real-world mechanisms. To that end, it's not worth believing in psi, even if it did exist.

Grue, just as people have found "excuses" why lab tests have fallacies the so-called "rationalists" have invented excuses to justify their claims... Catholics see Christianity one way, Baptists another... in other words, it's a matter of perspective not "Law".

With the exception of one big, very important point -- Human Beings DO NOT and WILL NOT be able to explain it "all" unless we become willing to look outside the cubical we insist on fitting "all of it" into. We justify out little niche ways of seeing things, but so do alcoholics & drug addicts -- they can justify why they do what they do -- all of us do it; we defend what we see as being "ours" no matter how "out there" others may see it as being.

When someone gives me a lame cop-out like coincidence (which is impossible to have exist according to Hermetic Law . . . same with paradox and accidents -- all things have purpose/cause & effect) or offhandedly says that something is "self-fulfilling" I know they haven't a clue as to what they are speaking of. They have not (and typically refuse to) taken the time to actually learn what is and is not the "Psychic"/Mystic perspective. . .
. . . I'm not talking about the New Age fanatical escapists in this arena, but rather the adepts; people that know the deeper, more pragmatic meaning and perception tied to that world. But this is where part of the problem exists; such people deliberately stay in the background, allowing the EXoteric (outward facade) to do its job and filter out the grain from the chaff -- the latter being those "students" that are actually ready to learn and understand the deeper aspects of this world -- the ESoteric or "secret" teachings. . . most of which comes hauntingly close to what is known as "Science".

Yes, there is a very logical perspective that is 100% applicable to this stuff but NO, science/humans cannot and will never be able to explain all of it. The ONLY THING that leads us to assume this is our arrogance and the atheistic demand to Edge God Out . . . (and I'm not speaking of any defined ideology here, when it comes to divinity; just the essence of something that is beyond us)

Technically we're talking about a religious war -- Atheists/Agnostics vs. any and all other modes of faith; the former of which wants to cram the holy suppository of pseudo-logic into everyone's world and like those zealots of other faiths, don't give a damn about the views, beliefs and experiences of others. This is something I've never tolerated regardless the religion/ideology. I get adamant about it on the forums in that it has become an unwritten rule that anyone that picks up a book about learning magic CAN'T have faith or belief in anything other than contrived logic. This is a problem that has evolved significantly in the past 25 or so years . . . since people like Randi and the CSICOP element have become so abusively aggressive within the magic world.

I would think an embodiment of self-defined "debunkers" would want to make certain they were in the right and not guilty of the very same hustle tactics and stone throwing as the criminals they supposedly want to out and expose.

Just because it is an easy cop-out to say that the mysterious event might have been a coincidence does not mean that the mysterious event was not a coincidence.

However, I think the point Craig is making (in part), is that debunkers throw these things about like chaff when they cannot explain something. "I don't know what happened, so I will say it was a lucky guess, coincidence, or that someone must have misremembered something." So, by guessing or using catch-all statements, they are effectively doing the very things they condemn.

It's an interesting idea, and I think it has some merit, but I suppose it boils down to the old issue of who has the burden of proof. In law, there are presumptions. If X happens, then you presume Y. However, presumptions can be rebutted, and this can reverse the burden of proof. Once you have enough evidence to rebut the presumption, the other party must then prove that what would have otherwise been assumed, did actually happen. They can no longer rely on an automatic application.

We are not talking about law, however, and in reality each side has its own views and they will largely be entrenched. I really do recommend The Principles of Mentalism for a full consideration of why it's not a good idea to tell mentalism audiences that you are doing tricks. I am not saying Richard is necessarily right, but he makes good points.

Magic is a performing art and its rules are not like the laws of physics.

Relativism will only get you so far. Beliefs don't shape the universe; never have, never will. The evidence has this tendancy to do whatever it pleases. All science does is explain the evidence to the best of its abilities. It would look at explaining psi, but as psi has yet to be observed, there's nothing yet that needs explaining.

I think we're getting slightly off topic here guys. I don't see any end to the science/supernatural debate as the people on both sides of the argument are talking about different things.

The debate is on the morality and ethics on misleading your audience, where do you draw the line and why?

I draw the line at 'contacting' relatives of guests. My spirits are carefully created by myself. Their life and death all comes from my imagination. I would never contact relatives, my shows are more bizarre than spiritual.

Fair enough.

The séance act I'm working on at the moment is based on the Philip séance from the 70s. The sitters invent a fictional spirit, then use glass moving and the like to get in touch with it. If we get through to anyone else, then I will defer to the group's will.

I keep certain things till the discussion afterwards, but there's nothing misleading in the run up either.

If I ever make it onto a stage, I have a disclaimer. If I ever end up in a discussion after the performance I won't answer the "was it a trick?" question.

My mother once asked me whether OOTW was a trick. I told her it was a magician's secret, which I thought would be answer enough. It wasn't.

Nice way of doing it! I really like the idea of creating a history for my spirits and even faking documents etc which is why i do it my way. I get a kick out of creating these characters and telling a story of their life and death. Nothing evil, nothing satanic... just spooky fun for all!

I don't do seances, I've got nothing against them but they're just not my style. I will shift my performance style depending on the venue, but whenever I get the opportunity I play what I do as genuine.
I can honestly tell people I'm a student of the occult and do so often. I credit certain mind reading and fortune telling effects to Eris the Discordian goddess. If I do any fortune telling I never advice people on health, or finances.
I try to keep my claims ridiculous enough to not put off the skeptic crowd. I will never say 'it's just a trick' even if they don't believe the Bullsh*t I feed them. I'm quite happy for people to make their own conclusions as long as they're wrong and impressive.
I do not do effects around Jack the ripper, Voodoo or the mentally ill. Once again this is just a personal view but I find most bizarre effects on them quite cheap.