How do mentalists do what they apparently do?

[Darat]

Afraid I've still not gotten down to watching/ listening to those links I'd dug up!

About counting up times they're wrong etc, do you mean that there's hits as well as misses, and that the hits are focused on and the misses ignored? I guess that's a fair point, absolutely. ...Although, I don't know, at least in a show setting, wouldn't more than just one or two misses maybe end up ...spoiling the show, making a flop of it? (But overall, I agree this makes sense. If you look up horoscopes, or those star sign things, then the hundred or thousand times the predictions don't hit home you forget, but the one time it is bang on target you tend to remember, and, if you're gullible, latch on to as proof of astrology, agreed.)

Hasn't done to date. Watched many that are simply appalling if you are listening to what they say. Plus, these 25 minutes shows will be the distillation of a few hours of the performance, so much easier to make it look like a good hit record.

ETA: 'nother video for you:



They dissect a couple of performances.

ETA:John Edwards section starts around the 9 minute mark.

 

[Chanakya]

Hasn't done to date. Watched many that are simply appalling if you are listening to what they say. Plus, these 25 minutes shows will be the distillation of a few hours of the performance, so much easier to make it look like a good hit record.

ETA: 'nother video for you:



They dissect a couple of performances.

ETA:John Edwards section starts around the 9 minute mark.

Hahaha, com-plete-ly outstanding! Loved it!

Exactly what I was looking for. Techniques not just abstractly described, but actually pointed out, in here's-cold-reading-warm-reading-etc-for-dummies-clearly-demonstrated-in-an-actual-real-life-situation-in-black-and-white-and-spelt-out-in-simple-a-and-b-and-c terms.

Of course, two things. First, this guy was dissecting not mentalism (magic), but actual lowlifes doing their con job thing. Effing low lifes that were simply begging to have their nose broken, the guy at any rate (you can't go breaking women's noses after all, no matter how much of a low life the creature is), like in that skit thing Andy Ross linked to upthread. And the second thing was that these ...specimens, were not very good actually, in fact not at all good. Which is good, which is cool, because it is all from real life and not scripted, and the fact that they're not good made it that much easier for us to clearly see through them, particularly when the guy's explaining their technique to you.

Now what I'd love is if that Derren Brown show, for example, that TED "Talk" thing for instance --- "Talk" in quotes, because it was a magic show not a talk per se, albeit an extremely entertaining one --- clearly dissected and explained, bit by bit by bit. But I don't suppose the man would actually do that, Brown I mean, because that after all is his stock in trade. Which is fair enough, no complaints, not as if he's pretending to be what he's not. Just, I'd have loved to see a mentalism performance of that caliber dissected piece by piece like this.

Anyway, absolutely great video, that, thanks for posting! I've already, immediately after seeing it, and before even writing this post, shared it with two friends who I know will appreciate it, and probably will share it with some more.

 

[Chanakya]

One key factor in all of this is people can

A) Teach themselves to cold read accidently and do it without knowing they are doing.

and/or

B) Start off knowing damn well they are faking it but over time start to believe their own nonsense.

That's actually very interesting, what you say there! ...Except, I'm not quite sure I follow, your second point I mean to say. I can see some nutjob believing God speaks to them telling them things, or the spirits, or some psychic powers magically telling them people's thoughts, sure. And I can see others buying into some trickster's tall tales. But how would someone who's themselves employing these techniques, these tricks --- deliberately or accidentally --- attribute their performance to some psychic powers or spirits or whatever (rather than the very tricks they're themselves using)? Not sure that makes sense. (Well, leaving aside extreme cases of maybe some mentally disturbed person who's given to imagining random things.)

Coming back to this, if you, Joe, or anyone else, might be able to talk a bit more about this, that'd be interesting. Do these psychic types sometimes actually believe their own BS? ...That is, leave aside the out-and-out crazies, the literally schizo types; and also leave aside the religious nutjobs who're literally channeling what they imagine Jesus or Mary or whatever ghost or spirit actually speaking inside their heads; what I'm saying is, would someone who's actually using these techniques, who's presumably had to learn these techniques and is now deliberately employing them, and is seeing their "readings" click precisely as a result of those techniques, ...would they not realize that they're pulling off con jobs here? The lady in that video right above, or that guy, would they not necessarily realize, they themselves in their hearts even if they don't vocalize it, that they're dishonest conmen (conpersons?) is all? Or do some of these psychics who employ these techniques and who aren't what's technically in medical terms called crazy, actually believe they channel spirits, or read minds, or read palms, or read the constellations, or whatever?

That'll actually make for an interesting discussion, first whether that's a thing at all, and two, if it is indeed a thing then how exactly that happens, people getting to think that way.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Just watched Derren Brown's TED Talk. (It's on YT as well, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IFa0tqHrwE ---- in the computer I'm on now it his website didn't click open, maybe a firewall thing, I don't know.)

It was entertaining, but it didn't really explain anything. Actually, atypically for a TED Talk, it didn't actually do any explaining or enlightening or impart any knowledge. It was simply a performance of magic, is all, wasn't it? I mean, he does explain about concocting narratives, and so on, but while that may be true, but it was all very general, and seemed more like a spiel, a shtick, basically just chatter, than actual ...actual talk.

But I enjoyed it nonetheless. Cool show. And I liked how he clearly says, leaving no place for ambiguity there, that he's not channeling any psychic or supernatural spirits or forces or abilities or voodoo or whatever. It's great that he spells out, very clearly, that misdirection and magic tricks is all this is about.

As I said up-thread I have the same problems with his "explanations". He's a believer in NLP. Which is not very well thought of in the scientific community. But he does not say what he does is magic. He does not claim to be a psychic -- it's all trickery.

 

[Filippo Lippi]

Is he a believer in it or is he getting his misdirection in early and often?

 

[Craig4]

Afraid I've still not gotten down to watching/ listening to those links I'd dug up!

About counting up times they're wrong etc, do you mean that there's hits as well as misses, and that the hits are focused on and the misses ignored? I guess that's a fair point, absolutely. ...Although, I don't know, at least in a show setting, wouldn't more than just one or two misses maybe end up ...spoiling the show, making a flop of it? (But overall, I agree this makes sense. If you look up horoscopes, or those star sign things, then the hundred or thousand times the predictions don't hit home you forget, but the one time it is bang on target you tend to remember, and, if you're gullible, latch on to as proof of astrology, agreed.)

Not exactly. They'll start with something like, "I'm getting a name, it sounds like maybe starts with R or there's an R in it or an R sound..." If no one bites they'll go to another letter or maybe a relation. They might look at me, see the grey hair and go for one of my parents being dead. If say they're still alive, they might try an aunt, uncle or grandparent. If they start talking about money and I don't bite they might try asking me about a family squabble. The cold reading starts with the mentalists getting lots of "hits" and responds to you based on what you respond to. Once I say my dad passed away and there was some money issue, things will get a whole lot clearer for them.

 

[Ethan Thane Athen]

Is he a believer in it or is he getting his misdirection in early and often?

This. I believe there were some posters on here a while back who were members of the Magician community and indicated that the general view in the industry was that Derren Brown was performing relatively straight-forward and well established 'magic' tricks dressed up with a whole load of NLP stuff that had nothing to do with the performance of the trick other than to act as misdirection and, much more importantly, gave him a unique selling point for his act. Lose that and he becomes an average magician, indistinguishable from a host of others with considerable less success.

There was grudging respect for his 'theatre' and acknowledgement that he admitted it was 'not magic' but considerable frustration that he kept up the NLP ******** even in his books etc...but then he'd lose his USP if he ever fessed up.

 

[GrandMasterFox]

Also wasn't a big part of his show that he claimed to have "psychological" tricks to convince people of doing stuff - when in reality it was just bogus tv editing?

Like claiming he can brainwash a woman to not recognize her own car and when they told her they were bringing her car - they brought another car on purpose so she'll have a reaction? Then cut to her in the actual car?

Which made people go "wow, this NLP stuff is real"

 

[GrandMasterFox]

Like many things, mentalism have a LOT of ways where it can be done.
It's hard to pin point everything to one specific method without discussing a specific act.

Just random examples:

Uri Geller used to do the whole thing where he would let someone draw a picture and then draw the exact same picture himself. Randi noted that Geller covers his eyes a lot and also tend to turn around during the act. Meaning that he is likely using staged mirrors so he can see the other person's drawing.

There was a woman on Penn and Teller Fool Us named Emily Victoria who is not even a professional magician (back then, no idea what she does now) but got the trophy because her trick was so simple they didn't even consider it.
Her act was about letting the person pick a bunch of songs on a phone.
Her trick (she openly talks about it) was just to have an apple watch that shows her what the person selected.

They also had a couple on the show who even admits to how their trick is done but not the details. I don't recall their names, but essentially a husband and wife act. One of them let people in the audience pick some stuff then the other one has to guess what they picked.
How the trick works? They developed some sort of language code which they don't disclose so they can freely talk on stage and use their hidden language message to tell the other what the people picked.

There is also the acts where the mentalism itself is BS in the sense that the person isn't finding out what you picked, but rather forced you to make a pick in the first place.



That's part of the reason why I hated mentalism acts on Fool Us. They most of the time win the trophy solely because there are so many ways it can be done in most cases unless the person seriously goofs up, it's basically just a random chance for them to guess it.

 

[Darat]

Like many things, mentalism have a LOT of ways where it can be done.
It's hard to pin point everything to one specific method without discussing a specific act.

Just random examples:

Uri Geller used to do the whole thing where he would let someone draw a picture and then draw the exact same picture himself. Randi noted that Geller covers his eyes a lot and also tend to turn around during the act. Meaning that he is likely using staged mirrors so he can see the other person's drawing.

There was a woman on Penn and Teller Fool Us named Emily Victoria who is not even a professional magician (back then, no idea what she does now) but got the trophy because her trick was so simple they didn't even consider it.
Her act was about letting the person pick a bunch of songs on a phone.
Her trick (she openly talks about it) was just to have an apple watch that shows her what the person selected.

They also had a couple on the show who even admits to how their trick is done but not the details. I don't recall their names, but essentially a husband and wife act. One of them let people in the audience pick some stuff then the other one has to guess what they picked. How the trick works? They developed some sort of language code which they don't disclose so they can freely talk on stage and use their hidden language message to tell the other what the people picked.
There is also the acts where the mentalism itself is BS in the sense that the person isn't finding out what you picked, but rather forced you to make a pick in the first place.



That's part of the reason why I hated mentalism acts on Fool Us. They most of the time win the trophy solely because there are so many ways it can be done in most cases unless the person seriously goofs up, it's basically just a random chance for them to guess it.

That's a classic.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Is he a believer in it or is he getting his misdirection in early and often?

I thought he wasn't actually a believer. I suppose part of it is he's sometimes a debunker, but he's also a showman (and a damned good one at that, I've been to one of his live shows). Like P&T you shouldn't necessarily take his explanations at face value.

 

[Darat]

Is he a believer in it or is he getting his misdirection in early and often?

That - it's come up many times before and some people don't seem to understand that his stage persona is not him, that the patter he uses as part of that is entertainment not his personal beliefs. He's very clear about that in interviews and the like.

 

[Chanakya]

Not exactly. They'll start with something like, "I'm getting a name, it sounds like maybe starts with R or there's an R in it or an R sound..." If no one bites they'll go to another letter or maybe a relation. They might look at me, see the grey hair and go for one of my parents being dead. If say they're still alive, they might try an aunt, uncle or grandparent. If they start talking about money and I don't bite they might try asking me about a family squabble. The cold reading starts with the mentalists getting lots of "hits" and responds to you based on what you respond to. Once I say my dad passed away and there was some money issue, things will get a whole lot clearer for them.

Right, I understand. And I agree, they do do that sort of thing, a lot, move from something that "misses" to fishing further till there's a hit.

On the other hand, the best of them, they don't seem to miss much, or at all. Derren Brown, for instance? (See his TED Talk, for instance, that Gord-in-Toronto linked to.) ...Of course, it could be, as has been suggested in this thread, that that's brazen TV-editing monkeying around that's responsible for the slickness, by cutting out the most damaging/embarrassing portions. Plus some other kind of monkey business maybe, after all these things are an amalgam of many different tricks all at once, as has also been pointed out in the thread.

But yeah, I take your point, agreed, absolutely. That is indeed one of the things you do see them doing, particularly in the less competent shows, this thing you point out here. (That hilarious video Darat linked to, for instance, a few posts up?)

 

[Craig4]

I would want to know how easy it would be to figure out who was going to be in the audience. I'd bet a dollar that the people he keyed on made a social media post about going to the TED Talk.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I would want to know how easy it would be to figure out who was going to be in the audience. I'd bet a dollar that the people he keyed on made a social media post about going to the TED Talk.

I went back and took a quick scan of the TED Talk. One thing to notice is that he controls the question cards and never shows them to us or the audience. Who knows what is actually written on the cards?

There is a trick used by comedy club improvisors where the audience hands in cards (or as I've seen it PostIt notes) with suggestions for a sketch and a couple of comedians riff on one picked at "random" from those provided. It's easy to prepare a sketch beforehand, pretend to pick a card with the papered sketch suggestion and be hilarious -- just like you rehearsed. Nobody ever sees the cards (in the case of the PostIt notes they were crumpled up and tossed on the stage).

NLP my foot!

 

[ahhell]

That's actually very interesting, what you say there! ...Except, I'm not quite sure I follow, your second point I mean to say. I can see some nutjob believing God speaks to them telling them things, or the spirits, or some psychic powers magically telling them people's thoughts, sure. And I can see others buying into some trickster's tall tales. But how would someone who's themselves employing these techniques, these tricks --- deliberately or accidentally --- attribute their performance to some psychic powers or spirits or whatever (rather than the very tricks they're themselves using)? Not sure that makes sense. (Well, leaving aside extreme cases of maybe some mentally disturbed person who's given to imagining random things.)

Cold reading is basically making high probability guesses about someone until they say, "Yes, uncle joe died last year!" Then making more high probably guesses about uncle joe and what he might have to say.

If you think you are psychic, that's basicaly what you will do. The psychic that thinks they are actually psychic is cold reading the client and confirmation bias convinces themselves that they are psychic.

 

[Darat]

Cold reading is basically making high probability guesses about someone until they say, "Yes, uncle joe died last year!" Then making more high probably guesses about uncle joe and what he might have to say.

If you think you are psychic, that's basicaly what you will do. The psychic that thinks they are actually psychic is cold reading the client and confirmation bias convinces themselves that they are psychic.

Or as it usually goes:

Psychic readings are basically making high probability guesses about someone until they say, "Yes, uncle joe died last year!" Then making more high probably guesses about uncle joe and what he might have to say.

Really they are usually crap, it is the believers wanting it to be true that they overlook all the fails.

Many of the psychics should treat themselves to Rowland's book - they could improve their acts by 99%!

 

[Spektator]

Really they are usually crap, it is the believers wanting it to be true that they overlook all the fails.

Many of the psychics should treat themselves to Rowland's book - they could improve their acts by 99%!

True. I can have some sympathy for the victims - they may be searching for comfort, for relief from grieving, and their willingness to be fooled is understandable. As we can see in the USA today, once one grabs onto a belief, it's an uphill battle to realize even a grave mistake.