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Derren Brown is no different than Uri Gellar.

I've avoided this thread so far, but here's a bit that I haven't seen addressed and that I can't let slide:

shuttlt said:
Derren deliberately avoids explicitly stating what is and isn't a lie in order that people will believe in his act in a way they don't in a normal magic show.
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Here you are claiming to know the reason why Derren words his disclaimer as he does. How do you know this? How do you know that his intention is to make people believe, rather than, say, encouraging them to think about what is and isn't real or truthful or possible? I find the latter possibility far more likely.
 
JFrankA said:
Sounds like to me you don't like his style of magic. I won't say you don't like magic, because I'm gathering that you enjoy Penn & Teller.

*shrug* can't please everyone......
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Do I like it as far as entertainment goes? Not especially. I get a kick out of sleight of hand, but the big stage spectacle stuff? Doesn't do it for me. I didn't go to TAM, but if I had, I'm 90% sure I would've found a bar to watch UFC 100 (two title fights!!!!) instead of going to the P&T show.

But my level of enjoyment of magic is a whole different issue than my concern over its ethics. I think I'd probably enjoy cockfighting, but I can still see that it's unethical.
 
StanUpshaw said:
To me, it seems that society has, in nearly every scenario I can think of, deemed it unacceptable for the more capable party to deceive and take advantage of the less capable party. For some reason, magic seems to be immune, but I question if it should be.
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Where have you been? Entertainment in general is immune, with the proviso that no material advantage is taken, but gaming has no such proviso (ever played poker with the big boys?).

There have always been magicians and illusionists, fakirs, shamans, psychics, etc. Count your blessings and stop whining, here in the 'civilised' Western world they are entertainers and hustlers - in some parts of the world they are what passes for a health service...
 
StanUpshaw said:
But how am I supposed to know he's being honest in the book? Why wouldn't the book be just another venue where he offers shreds of truth to make the lies seem believable? It's been beaten into my head that first and foremost, he is an entertainer. Now I'm supposed to believe that he's trustworthy source of information? Which is it, how am I supposed to know,
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Having been a fan of Derren for some time I have more recently found myself asking these same questions with increasing frequency and have made similar comments in other threads on these forums.

I recently re-read Tricks of the Mind and noted with some amusement and a little confusion that Derren pours considerable scorn on practices like NLP and the people involved with it, past and present before gleefully proceeding to explain in detail to the reader how to use many of the NLP techniques to good effect.

Does he believe?

Does he not believe?

Or does he just want to have his cake and eat it? :confused:
 
dlorde said:
There have always been magicians and illusionists, fakirs, shamans, psychics, etc. Count your blessings and stop whining, here in the 'civilised' Western world they are entertainers and hustlers - in some parts of the world they are what passes for a health service...
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LOL :D

Very nicely put.
 
I'll settle for him showing that he has nothing up his SLEEVES! He doesn't need to go to those extremes :yikes:
 
StanUpshaw said:
Did you guys just get the internet last week? How have you not heard of Goatse!?
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OK. OK. I saw Goatse years ago. With therapy I had forgotten him and gone on with my life. Then you brought him back.

Seriously though. I think Goatse's is a once and future meme. Goatse is eternal, like Cthulhu. Perhaps his time has come again.
 
I hadn't seen this Olympic tribute to Goatse before:
BBC_Goatse.cx_Alternative_Olympic_logo.png
 
psychictv said:
I think it's important to think for a minute about what type of woo Brown is "promoting". Not all woo is harmful. Convincing the public that you're psychic in order to sell your services and defraud little old ladies out of their savings is harmful. Convincing people to forego medical treatment in favor of a sham natural remedy is harmful.

But what about convincing the public that subliminal advertising is real and effective? Where's the harm? ... It's quite a different story to corrupt the public's understanding of basic medicine or fundamental questions of life and death.
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:clap: :clap: :clap:

Thank you. EGarrett has long since given up, but StanUpshaw is still convinced that Derren Brown's inclusion of crap like automatic writing in his explanations is setting science back so many years. :rolleyes: I sure hope Derren Brown never claims to be dowsing on anything. That might make everyone think you can actually find water with a stick! How f**ked up will the world be THEN???? :eek: This man must be stopped!!

The stuff that anti-DB people point at when saying he promotes woo are things that have long been proven to be nonsense. Voodoo, automatic writing, mind reading, etc. It's all crap, yet he mentions that stuff in his patter. He says those thing to avoid telling the method and ruining the trick.

Saying that he promotes woo because of that is like saying I promote woo because I won't spill the beans to my toddler cousin about Santa.

StanUpshaw pay attention: Derren Brown is not promoting woo, he's not anti-science, and he and his television show bear absolutely NO responsibility for the education of society at large. Please get these facts through your head. This thread was actually shut down pages ago.
 
Ya hear that folks? It looks like our job here is done, and skepticism has won the day.
After all, psychic ability, intelligent design, UFOs...since they've all "been proven to be nonsense" too, that should be sufficient, right? Nothing left to do but pop the corks on the champagne and tear this bitch up!




Oh wait.




vvvvvv The rest are easy. I prefer a challenge. vvvvvv
 
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I'm just saying in your Eternal Quest for the Advancement of Critical Thinking, Derren Brown is a weak ass target.

Find a real fight.
 
microdot said:
I recently re-read Tricks of the Mind and noted with some amusement and a little confusion that Derren pours considerable scorn on practices like NLP and the people involved with it, past and present before gleefully proceeding to explain in detail to the reader how to use many of the NLP techniques to good effect.

Does he believe?

Does he not believe?

Or does he just want to have his cake and eat it? :confused:
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Hmm...might be I can't follow your reasoning correctly. But it seems to me you're not giving enough emphasis on what exactly are the parts of NLP DB dissects and discards, what he finds useful and WHY. For example, the ideas on how to emotionally connect/disconnect with a vivid memory seem to be fairly well established as working processes for most people. I think DB does a good job in giving a fairly solid base for the stuff he recommends as useful (which is, considering the whole spectrum of NLP claims, a teeny weeny fraction). As well as giving adequate reasons for not recommending other aspects of NLP.

So, as with many other things, I don't see it simply as a matter of believing all of it/not believing all of it. I see more like DB's giving an example of having the courage to face something that mostly seems useless, even dangerous, and learning to extract even the tiniest possible benefits from it, while at the same time making sure to avoid the downsides. I'm not sure I can convey myself well here, English not being my strong language, but I hope you get my drift.

As a person prone to fanatic behaviour, I find DB's work (on/off stage) very inspiring in the sense of giving emphasis to the gray areas between my usual black and white ideas.
 
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Tapio said:
Hmm...might be I can't follow your reasoning correctly. But it seems to me you're not giving enough emphasis on what exactly are the parts of NLP DB dissects and discards, what he finds useful and WHY.
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If you've read Tricks Of The Mind you should be able to work this out for yourself.
 
'Derren Victor Brown (born 27 February 1971) is an English magician, illusionist, mentalist, painter and sceptic.' - Derren Brown's wikipedia page. Doesn't that say it all?
 
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