![]() ![]() If you are given a choice, you believe you have acted freely. When a magician lets you notice something on your own, his lie becomes impenetrable.ħ. The one on the bookshelf was a heavy duplicate, left out to entice the curious. But the ball the audience had seen floating weighed only five ounces. Guests would sneak over, heft the ball and find it was much heavier than a thread could support. After the show, Abbott would absent-mindedly leave the ball on a bookshelf while he went to the kitchen for refreshments. He used to make a golden ball float around his parlor. Abbott was an Omaha magician who invented the basis of my ball trick back in 1907. ![]() Nothing fools you better than the lie you tell yourself. The hoop is genuine, but the deceptive choreography I use took 18 months to develop (see No. The hoop is what magicians call misdirection, a second trick that “proves” the first. But during the routine, the ball jumps through a wooden hoop several times, and that seems to rule out the possibility of a thread. My method-the thing that fools your eye-is to puppeteer the ball with a thread too fine to be seen from the audience. Every night in Las Vegas, I make a children’s ball come to life like a trained dog. To fool the mind, combine at least two tricks. As I doffed the jacket, I copped the spider.ĥ. Getting rid of the jacket was just for my comfort, right? Not exactly. Then I reach into your pocket and pull out a tarantula. ![]() A viewer has only so much attention to give, and if he’s laughing, his mind is too busy with the joke to backtrack rationally.Ĥ. ![]() We often follow a secret move immediately with a joke. It’s hard to think critically if you’re laughing. More trouble than the trick was worth? To you, probably. Then we built a secret compartment out of foam-core (one of the few materials cockroaches can’t cling to) and worked out a devious routine for sneaking the compartment into the hat. We hired an entomologist who provided slow-moving, camera-friendly cockroaches (the kind from under your stove don’t hang around for close-ups) and taught us to pick the bugs up without screaming like preadolescent girls. My partner, Penn, and I once produced 500 live cockroaches from a top hat on the desk of talk-show host David Letterman. You will be fooled by a trick if it involves more time, money and practice than you (or any other sane onlooker) would be willing to invest. Make the secret a lot more trouble than the trick seems worth. As Homo sapiens, you grasp the pattern, and take away the impression that I produced all five coins from a hand whose palm was empty.Ģ. Then I allow you to see the palm of my hand empty before a fifth coin appears. I magically produce four silver dollars, one at a time, with the back of my hand toward you. I think you’ll see what I mean if I teach you a few principles magicians employ when they want to alter your perceptions.ġ. Magic’s about understanding-and then manipulating-how viewers digest the sensory information. If I could have avoided those welts by visiting an MRI lab, I surely would have.īut magic’s not easy to pick apart with machines, because it’s not really about the mechanics of your senses. My hypothesis (that nobody would see me sneak a fishbowl under a shawl) proved false and the Scouts pelted me with hard candy. I remember an experiment I did at the age of 11. Magicians have done controlled testing in human perception for thousands of years. Neuroscientists are novices at deception. But after I share what I know, my neuroscientist friends thank me by showing me eye-tracking and MRI equipment, and promising that someday such machinery will help make me a better magician. He replied that those who fund science research find magicians “sexier than lab rats.” I asked a scientist friend (whose identity I must protect) why the sudden interest. Even I-not exactly renowned as a public speaker-have been invited to address conferences on neuroscience and perception. In the last half decade, magic-normally deemed entertainment fit only for children and tourists in Las Vegas-has become shockingly respectable in the scientific world. ![]()
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