In Brief
- Humans have a hardwired process of attention and awareness that is hackable.
- When people focus on one thing, their brains automatically suppress everything that happens around it. Magicians have devised many techniques that exploit this “tunnel vision.”
- People can pay attention in various ways. Magicians exploit “top-down,” or deliberate, attention by, say, asking a person to scan a book. They capture “bottom-up” attention with distracting displays such as doves fluttering out of a hat.
More In This Article
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Video
Neuroscience meets magic
Excerpted from Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions, by Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, with Sandra Blakeslee, by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company, LLC (US) and Profile Books (UK). Copyright © 2010 by Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde.
Apollo Robbins, master pickpocket and celebrity magician, is sweeping his hands around the body of the fellow he has just chosen from the audience. “What I’m doing now is fanning you,” he informs his mark, “just checking to see what you have in your pockets.” Apollo’s hands move in a flurry of gentle strokes and pats over the man’s clothes. More than 200 scientists are watching him like hawks, trying to catch a glimpse of fingers trespassing into a pocket. But to all appearances this is a perfectly innocent and respectful frisking. “I have a lot of intel on you now,” Apollo continues. “You scientists carry a lot of things.”
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4 Comments
Add CommentVery interesting, thanks!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe most basic hack of all is believing that magic exists in the first place, which is a product of our crufty hardware and software. We have Man Who Went to the Moon 2010 running software written for Australopithecus 1.0 and Crocodile Protecting its Young. The hardware is essentially a Pentium connected to a 386 connected to an 8088 connected to an Apple II connected to a Commodore 64 connected to an Altair, and we trust the Altair the most because it's the oldest. Baby cries, Mom nurtures it, and baby learns "The Universe does what I want." And most of us never update that, in fact, we reject updates (AKA rationalism) as malware. Alan Cromer's remarks in "Common Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science" about our fundamentally egocentric view of nature, and how it has to be overcome before science can evolve, pretty much tell the story.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishumbug.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhere's the real thing?
this is not a robot. this is a multitasker and advanced.
Unfortunately, the article does not explore the magic of Libet’s 0.5 sec delay. It seems to be referred to by magicians as “time misdirection”. I am waiting now for the book to see if the phenomenon is explored there - as I hope it is. If not - I’ll try to bridge the gap.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave a nice day and coming festive season,
Damir Ibrisimovic