talkmagic.co.uk

themagicwand wrote:people jumping up and "debunking" them will only serve to make the original beliefs more deeply entrenched.

I disagree. There are people who are on the fence and undecided about their beliefs. To those people, seeing that it's a trick-- and a very deceptive trick at that-- and being told that it's not real is helpful. It tips them over to the side of truth. At the very least, it makes them think. That's better than giving them a strong emotional experience that, to them, provides evidence (when it's actually a trick) for the supernatural.

sleightlycrazy wrote:I disagree. There are people who are on the fence and undecided about their beliefs. To those people, seeing that it's a trick-- and a very deceptive trick at that-- and being told that it's not real is helpful. It tips them over to the side of truth. At the very least, it makes them think. That's better than giving them a strong emotional experience that, to them, provides evidence (when it's actually a trick) for the supernatural.

But magicians are not on the side of truth, we are deceivers, tricksters and illusionists, and being shown somethings a trick does not guarantee that people will think.

Revealing that things are 'just a trick' doesn't just spoil the effect you created, it also sterilizes magic as a whole. Think about your stereotypical magician. Top hat, white gloves, hankies, rabbits and a wand and think about how pathetic he looks. This is what comes when magicians become so afraid of offending people they reduce their art to harmless triviality's. You tell people that nothing real is happening then it looses all substance.

Whats wrong with the willing suspension of disbelief? Whats wrong with theater? When I go to see the next Saw movie should I have to be reminded at the beginning that nothing I see is real?

Also when you use the ultra mental deck do you start with 'I have a trick deck here that will do the magic for me.'?
If people hear you say that they may not know how it was done but at least they can be assured that it's just a trick.

I know we lie. I lie. But I restrict that lie to my performances. Lying about stuff outside the performance is what I am arguing to be wrong.

We don't need the guarantee of how people will respond to us. As people have stated before, we have virtually no control over that.

"Revealing that things are 'just a trick' doesn't just spoil the effect you created, it also sterilizes magic as a whole. " "you tell people that nothing real is happening then it looses all substance. "I disagree. Penn and Teller do "just tricks." No one thinks they do anything more. Everyone knows they don't actually catch bullets in their teeth. Everyone knows Teller doesn't actually have the power to damage things by cutting their shadows. Everyone knows Teller doesn't actually swallow needles. Yet they're arguably a couple of the most successful people in magic today. Their show is hardly sterile.

I'm all for being offensive. In fact, I love offensive performance arts; George Carlin, Steve Martin, David Cross, among others are my heroes. This discussion isn't about being offensive, it's about lying about the world outside the context of the performance. If I do a trick in which I apparently read minds, I will let that effect resonate. If, however, after I am finished performing, the "show" is done, and I am asked man-to-man if I can really read minds, I am happy to say it's fake. If it's fuzzy, like with ideomotor responses or psychological forcing, I may honestly say it's psychology.

Knowing that there are no ghosts, no spirits, and no demons in the world (much less ones that bother to communicate with people through magic tricks), I don't like the idea of people walking away from performances believing that what I did wasn't a trick but a demonstration of something real. Magic tricks, even if they rely on subtle psychology, aren't evidence of psychic phenomena or spirits. To allow people to believe them to be such is as wrong as using a tiny earpiece to make people believe God talks to you.

There is nothing wrong with theater. There is nothing wrong with willing suspension if disbelief (though people can argue about magic audiences being "willing"). Saying you're psychic after the show isn't theater, it's Bullsh*t. That is what I'm arguing.

No one believes card tricks are real. They know that it's a trick, albeit one that appears to be inconceivable. The clash between what they experience and what they know to be true makes for an interesting bit of entertainment. Many people, on the other hand, believe that psychic phenomena are real. After they see a mentalist, they may very well believe they've witnessed genuine psychic abilities. They won't have the same sense of having watched a trick.

If you are, according to the maxim "an actor playing the role a magician", surely if you had real magic powers would you use them to make a handkerchief vanish or to find someone's card?

These kind of things are trivial to the average person. So many magic theory books claim you should aim for believability. People like wonder.
Some of Doug Higley's props are on display in Ripley's Believe It Or Not which create much more wonder to those that see them than if they were film props on display.
I think the person should be allowed to make their own minds up without some wannabe Derren riding the fashionable mentalism bandwagon telling them what to think.

Alaistair Crowley is probably the greatest occult showman of all time.

Of course I must be a wannabe Derren. Naturally, anyone who shares my point of view must be one.

For a psychic, you're awfully presumptuous.

(See what that's like?)

I agree, people should make up their minds. Nowhere did I say otherwise. But if you withhold facts or tell outright lies, how the hell are they going to come to any reasonable conclusions? Lie all you want during performances, I do, but don't con them after the show is over.

I am psychic in that I knew you would take the "Derren wannabe" statement personally rather than as a general reference point for the current wave of 'athesist' mentalists and also that you would fail to see anyone's but point but your own and miss the whole concept behind bizarre/paranormal entertainment.

You may think that mystery performers are "conning" the audience (which shows how little knowledge you have of this genre) but at least we are free of the militant self-righteousness that the "I'm using NLP" crowd are far too eager to display.

You are fooling yourself far more than you are your audience.

I can read implications. You implied that I was one of them since you were responding to my post. Had you read my whole post, you would have seen that I pointed out that you're being general. There are plenty of people who share Derren's views (mine are actually closer to Teller and Jamy Ian Swiss') without being wanna-be Derrens. And actually, I see your position and understand it. I just think it's wrong. Unless you're again not referring to me while implying that you are with your very use of language, you ought to know that I don't dig the NLP claim either. And nowhere in my posts did I say I do. Had you been correct, it would have been mildly impressive. As things stand, your psychic abilities are disappointingly inaccurate.

How about this, instead of constantly referring to my lack of understanding without explaining what it is I don't understand, why don't you explain it? It would make things a lot easier for me to understand if you would keep your subtle insults to a minimum and actually make an argument. One that you expound upon and has nothing to do with me being an atheist wanna-be-Derren NLP spewing hypocrite would be nice.

I try not to get tangled up in these unwinable arguements, particularly as I'm sat in BK replying on my Blackberry (please excuse any typos). But...
At no point do I ever claim to be psychic (whatever that means) or force a belief in spirits on anyone. I simply present a series of oddities - ouija, seance etc - and explain its history, what people have claimed happens, and what we can expect to happen. The audience is always encouraged to make their own deductions as to what they think is going on (I think adults should be treated as such).
However if at the end of the evening someone wants to discuss the ouija (for example) I'm happy to discuss ideo-motor function, subconscious desire AND the spirits.
Personally I think magicians poo pooing the possibilities of the spirit realm a little absurb. What makes them the font of all universal knowledge? I've seen a ghost. I have a level of belief. Rather than a cruel hoaxer attempting to hoodwink gullible audiences, I see myselkf as a traveller on a journey of discovery into realms where humans still no very little I invite my audience to join me on that journey.
I don't put any stock in the ideo-motor function to be honest. I think that very often with the ouija it is subconscious wish fulfilment, but I have also seen things that lead me to honestly believe in the paranormal.
At the start of each performance I tell my audience that I don't want to change anyone's point of view on the paranormal. I don't understand what makes my magic any more dishonest than someone engaged in other forms of magIc.

To be honest, sleightly, you're arguing against such a narrow set of circumstances, I'm not sure I see the point.

Added to that I'm not 100% sure that the undecided ultimately gravitate towards belief or disbelief. I suspect they mainly remain undecided. If they do gravitate towards belief, say, then that again is a different issue because that suggests that they wanted to believe all along; they'd not been seeking the truth, they'd been seeking something that could comfortably confirm their predisposition.

In Derren Brown's Messiah Brown converted a number of people into believing in God. I'm not sure how he worked it, but if you place an ad for a meeting in which it is claimed that a person will speak who can give people faith in God, who do you think will turn up? One or two challengers, perhaps, but in the main, people who want that faith to begin with.

themagicwand wrote:However if at the end of the evening someone wants to discuss the ouija (for example) I'm happy to discuss ideo-motor function, subconscious desire AND the spirits.

Now that I can respect. You answer honestly to the best of your knowledge. Even if you don't personally credit the ideomotor response as much as scientists do, as long as you explain that aspect of it, great. I'm not necessarily "poo poo"ing spirits; I just think withholding the scientific/skeptical/deceptive aspects from someone who genuinely wants to know is wrong. Personally, I found the ideomotor response to still be eerie and intense even after I explain it. Pendulums still freak people out when they know that there is a scientific explanation for their movement.

After lecturing at Psycrets, a well known author on the subject of cold reading and vocal skeptic (I won't name him in case I infringe his privacy) said to me "your act is brilliant. All you do is put things in front of people and say 'let's have a go with this and see what happens'. Genius!"
If that guy gets it...

And now we're (briefly) back on topic! The effect of these phenomena even on spectators/participants with analytical or sceptical mindsets was the original question.

I suspect no one who pays for an evening of psychic entertainment wants to be told "of course it's all bullspit" at the end: believers don't want to hear it and sceptics already know! Surefire way to ensure no repeat bookings I'd imagine. It's incredibly arrogant imo for anyone to decide that it is their duty to 'educate' poor gullible people to how foolish they have been in believing that any shred of spirituality exists in the world, 'making them think', or 'tipping them over to the side of truth' because you 'know' that the supernatural does not exist. This is the dangerous path to your scepticism/atheism becoming your religion: the high priests being Dawkins and (Gawd help us) Penn Jillette; and its fruitlessness should be apparent by its lengthy history.

I'd say there's a difference between saying "there's no spirituality" and "these specific phenomena don't appear to have much to do with the spirit realm", though.

Paul has explained it all better than anyone and it's a case of horses for courses. It annoys me when people arrogantly tell you that because your style of presentation differs to theirs then you are wrong.
I don't think sleightlycrazy will ever grasp what we are getting at here as his views seem deeply entrenched.

Let's put it this way: An audience member is touched and overjoyed with something you have done and believe it's due to spirits ( this is their interpretation). Do you then go up to them and tell them it's all trickery and potentially leave them unhappy? If so then you are not performing to bring a sense of wonder to peoples lives but to prove how clever and all-knowing you are and far more well informed than these idiots you are.

You may as well wait outside Santa's Grotto at Christmas and tell the kiddies coming out that it's just a man in a fake beard pretending. I am sure you'll receive as much gratification and a boost to the ego.

When it comes to readings, psychic acts, etc. Magicians give themselves to much credit. I don't want to offend anyone. Mentalists, magicians, etc. can do psychic acts for people who don't believe or don't really have an opinion. In the same way, I can talk about the Bible to a 'christian' who doesn't really go to church or pratice their faith. I can fake a religious knowledge and conviction and persuade this ambivalent spectator. But if I tried this on with a genuine believer I'd quickly become unstuck.

I was at an event put on by my work and they had a tarot reader. Loads of people had a reading and they all said the usual think about how they couldn't understand how he knew this and that. But no-one changed any of their beliefs. They didn't believe in fortune telling before and they didn't believe in it afterwards. The whole process is just a social game.

Gosh, Im sorry for the lecture. But what I want to say is that psychic magic and readings are treated by just a game.