Deception on The Infinite Monkey Cage

There is a delightful BBC Radio Podcast called The Infinite Monkey Cage, with theme song by Eric Idle and hosted by Robert Ince and Brian Cox (the guy Stephen Hawking pushed into the river on the Monty Python reunion show.)

This is the episode from January 19, 2015, entitled Deception. It's available on iTunes or from the BBC.

No one does the panel discussion as well as the Brits and it's a very interesting discussion. And includes a magician and respected academic, Richard Wiseman.

One of the most intriguing things they mention, which I don't hear discussed very often, is that we are not very good at knowing when we are being deceived. There is a natural tendency to both accept things at face value, and to assume others will accept things at face value.

It also turns out that many of the "tricks" you are supposed to be able to use to detect deceptions (facial ticks and other visual cues) don't really work.

I guest listener be warned.

#JeSuisCharlie

To anyone paying attention to the news this past week, the world became a more frightening place. In addition to the brutal massacre by Islamic Extremists at the Charlie Hebdo offices in France, a street magician in Syria was beheaded by ISIS for performing "offensive" magic and the Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawdi began receiving the first of his 1000 lashes (50 at a time over a period of months to kick off a 10 year prison sentence) for starting a blog which encouraged free inquiry and women's rights. For freethinking reasonable people, 2015 is not off to the best start.

Warming, this post contains images of the allegedly "offensive" Charlie Hebdo cartoons below the fold. They are included in solidarity with those who lost their lives for drawing cartoons and in support of free speech around the world. If you don't want to look at them, you don't have to.

Whether or not anyone is any more or less "safe" than they were before this week of atrocities is debatable. We all fall victim to the availability heuristic where we take things which are top of mind and exaggerate their importance and their regularity. So we feel insecure when images of senseless violence are readily available, even though the actual danger was there all along and went unnoticed. Conversely, we start to feel safer as time passes and the graphic events fade from recent memory. Comes with the territory of owning a human brain.

What makes this set of deplorable events noteworthy is that all three are centred around the imaginary crime of blasphemy. (This is in contrast to the violent actions carried out by groups like Boko Haram whose actions could more reasonably be portrayed as a radical military group that happens to be Islamic.)

As often happens, I look at many of these events through the lens of magician which offers to important insights. These come from understanding what magic is and how magic is constructed.

When I use the term magic, I'm referring to the kind of magic performed by the unfortunate Syrian victim; the kind which operates by pure human ingenuity and doesn't rely on anything mystical or supernatural. Any appearance of being fantastical or miraculous is simply a misapprehension on the part of the viewer. Many have argued that we should use the term illusion for this type of conjuring to separate it from what we are otherwise forced to call "real magic". I object to this line of thought because that only gives undue legitimacy to people who claim such "magic" actually exists in the real world. If you can perform a trick on the street or at a party, then that magic is very much real and doesn't deserve to take a back seat to fantasy in this way.

Magic is constructed by anticipating (and subsequently exploiting) the perceptions, assumptions and reasoning processes of the audience. The more specifically and more accurately these thoughts can be predicted, the easier it is to fool someone. For example if the objective were to cause a small object like a flower, a finger ring or a coin float in midair. A magician will know that in the mid of an audience, the two most direct ways to make an object rise up are to push it up from below or pull it from above. So if the magician waves his hand above and below the floating object, the viewer will definitely be started and confused. This is because the notion that it's possible to lift something from the side, with a fine thread running parallel to the floor, doesn't naturally occur.

What is magic, then, as I am using the term? It is when an agent (magician) takes an observer (audience) with insufficient information and leads them to an incorrect conclusion about how the world works. That conclusion may simply be agnosticism — I have no idea where that lemon came from — or could be a factual error — he really was floating two feet off the ground. The insufficient information is important. If the audience knew how the trick worked, there wouldn't be a sense of having seen something "magical" (impressive and deserving of respect maybe, but no longer magical). Magic works because the magician has access to information (a principle of physics, the location of an invisible string, a specially trained crew of mice carrying objects up his sleeve) the audience doesn't.

The connection to blasphemy should almost be apparent. We all begin with insufficient information about the universe. Nobody knows with certainty what happens when we die, how the universe began, how the first life on this planet formed or why the laws of physics are the way they are. And in the past, this lack of information has lead people to all kinds of erroneous conclusions about how the world works. This can be from the "turtles all the way down" hypothesis to the inane quantum woo of Deepak Chopra.  For billions, it's the religious beliefs of their parents. (Of course, if you are willing to do some research, you'll find we have much better and very reasonable explanations for these things and some rather significant evidence which makes them plausible). In this context, religion itself can be seen as a magic trick a species played on itself.

The people who are motivated to punish blasphemy do so because they are wrong about the way the world works. And whether the cause of their wrongness is childhood religious indoctrination, dishonest apologetics or mental health issues may affect the amount of empathy and compassion we feel for them, but does nothing to reduce their wrongness. As a magician, I take particular offence at those who are so ignorant as to accuse us of being in league with the devil, or being possessed by malevolent spirits. These people need to get themselves into the twentieth century.

When properly expressed, the reasons for prohibiting blasphemy sound idiotic. It's actually a fairly complex proposition: First, it presupposes the existence of an omnipresent deity that watches you and reads your thoughts. On top of that, this deity is so concerned with "proper" thought and conduct that it takes out its anger both in this life and the next. Finally, this deity is so hamfisted, he's incapable of directly punishing the people who misbehave, he takes out his anger randomly. This isn't an exaggeration. There are no shortage of fundamentalist preachers actively declaring floods, hurricanes, droughts, earthquakes and infectious diseases to be consequences of same-sex marriage and and South Park. You would think an omnipotent god could manage a bit more subtlety;  a well timed blood clot or a well positioned lightning bolt. That has to be easier to organize than an entire ebola outbreak.

This is, of course, all a delusion. In the real world, blasphemy has the same physical effectiveness as a child pointing a toy ray gun at you and making pew pew sound effects, or pointing a stick at you and shouting "Avada Kedavra". It doesn't do anything except send some sound waves propagating through the air. The same is true of "offensive" cartoons and irreverent books. But if you take blasphemy seriously, you think that they have the power to actually turn the whole universe against you. It would be like arresting someone for trying to force choke their sibling from across the dinner table.

The unpleasant logical consequence of this is that if I can be punished for your blasphemy, then I'm obligated to actively dissuade you from blaspheming. Add in something about earning god's forgiveness and you wind up with a corollary that you also need to punish blasphemers. This is transparent superstition that the civilized world cannot afford to take seriously. We need to remember that the religious freedom for the individual does not entitle them to dictate behaviour for everyone else.

#JeSuisCharlie

Repetition

The clever folks at TED-Ed point out something interesting: 

There is a rule in magic, taught religiously to new magicians which goes something like this:

Never repeat the same trick twice for the same audience.

In its simplest for, it appears to be wonderful advice. Only showing a piece of magic once keeps the secret safe since everyone has fewer opportunities to try and work out how it's done and you retain the element of surprise.

There's another school of thought that embraces repetition with escalation. That is, you can do the same trick over and over again, but with each repetition you should raise the stakes, or incorporate extra wrinkles and twists. This is much like the famed Dueling Banjo's scene from Deliverance...

This is the version I was first exposed to as a young child in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

However, in university, I became aware of a strange phenomenon in children's television with Blue's Clues. At one point they would take an episode and air it on Monday. Then on Tuesday, in the same time slot, they aired the exact same episode. And continued for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And they did some rather interesting research on the young children watching it. It turns out, the more times they had seen the episode, the more they payed attention and the more interested they were on subsequent viewings. This runs completely counter to what our intuition says should happen; we ought to be bored watching the same program over and over again.

Of course, this matches up with my own youth. It would be difficult to count the number of times I've watched the original Star Wars trilogy or Ace Ventura. And when we were in elementary and middle school, we would watch syndicated episodes of The Simpsons until we could recite the most profound scenes from memory... Dental plan... Lisa needs braces...

I had the opportunity to run an experiment fairly recently. Due to some miscommunication, I was trapped with a group of children who were far too young (I typically try my best not to ever perform for anyone under seven years old for reasons I've explained before) for far too long. There was one piece which I learn from Eugene Burger's Mastering the Art of Magic which has always been dependable for me with children. It's fun, appropriately absurd and silly, and gets several people involved.

Unfortunately, several people wasn't enough. So to increase my interaction, I took a single segment from the middle of the trick, and started doing it over and over again, once for each child. I did it over and over again, word-for-word the same, passing form one child to the next like an assembly line. Every one was happy to get their turn, and there was no sense at all that this was "getting old". Because I was confused and bewildered, I kept going. I made it to nine times, repeating the same phase of a trick and finally moved on. I know I could have continued but I was bored myself.

Now, I don't want to repeat myself that much on a regular basis, but it was an interesting learning experience to find out that maybe repetition fundamentally isn't that bad.

Better than an infinite number of monkeys

There is a theory which states that an infinite number of monkeys typing away on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually churn out the collected works of William Shakespeare. The theory behind this is quite simple to explain, if difficult to wrap a finite brain around. The assumption is that the keys that the monkeys are tapping are being tapped in a random order. When the length of that sequence becomes infinite, then you will find, somewhere inside, the full text appearing in the middle, surrounded by gibberish. The odds of this happening are easily calculated once you know how many keys there are on a keyboard and whether or not the monkeys are allowed to hold down shift for capitals. You will also find an accurate biography of yourself, and every person you've ever met, along with several trillion inaccurate ones. Needless to say, this theory breaks down for picture books!

While working on The Uncertainty Project, we discovered that while monkeys may have worked for printed books, if you wanted to produce online content, you need cats!

Fortunately, we happen to have one on staff. Hu is everything you would hope for in a member of the production team. He is dependable (he never misses a production meeting), affectionate, adventurous, courageous, and he has a refined sense of aesthetics when it comes to wardrobe and magic tricks. (see below). Most desirable, he is a trouble maker!

So we decided to make Hu earn his keep and test out the monkey theory all at the same time. During one meeting we left him to climb on a laptop for a while with a blank word processor open. After two hours, we return and found an entire website coded and waiting for us.

You can see the results at www.UncertaintyProject.com.

True story!

Okay, fine. We added the photos afterwards, but the rest of it was Hu. And we had to do some proofreading, cause his punctuation is dreadful, even for a cat. But the rest was him, we swear.

Tickets are now available for The Uncertainty Proejct. Save $10 on special early bird tickets until this Sunday.

Why does the universe...

Why does the universe continue to do these bewildering things to me? [1] I wrote earlier about my decision to bump Moab is my Washpot to the top of my reading list. Somewhere, more or less in the middle, the learned author digresses into his early love of magic.

In particular, he talks about one of his favourite magic books, Expert Card Technique. This is considered one of the great twentieth century collections of card magic, something I own, something I have spent quite a bit of time with, and something which is still available today as an inexpensive Dover reprint.

I know many people have had a passing interest in magic when they were young. Mr. Fry seems to have had a much deeper understanding that most and his thoughts on the subject were inspiring to me.

Magic, in the form of close up sleight of hand in particular, is an art-form I venerate... My 'chops' as magicians call technique, are not of the first order, it takes the kind of practice a concert musician is prepared to put into his music to perform just the standard pass with a pack of cards...

One particular passage struck me:

I suppose those who not like or approve of magic sense firstly that magicians are the kind of disreputable or vengefully nebbish outsiders who relish putting one over on others and secondly that they themselves, as the victims of a trick, are not quite confident enough in themselves to take it laughingly.

While I don't expect absolutely everyone to enjoy magic, I always marvel at that small percentage that seem to resist enjoying a trick.

I hope it's not that someone has had a bad experience, being picked on or aggravated by a magician in the past. I wonder if I've done something to rub them the wrong way.

I suspect that no one ever explained real magic (the stuff of Harry Potter) isn't real and real magic (the stuff that magicians can actually do) is actually fake. We're not out to convince anyone that we have supernatural powers; we just like to have fun pretending we do. But it sets the stage for a weird metaphysical logical fallacy:

If I can't explain how the trick works, that must mean that it's real magic.

Of course it's a false dichotomy. If you don't consider "I don't know" to be a valid option - certainly most of us are uncomfortable admitting we don't know things - then you back yourself into a corner. And if it's a particularly skillful magician (meaning you won't be able to figure out how anything works) then you are forcing yourself to feel uncomfortable.

Of course, that's not bewildering, that's just a happy coincidence that I would share something neat like that in common with a longtime role model. The bewildering part is that the discussion of magic, is strangely close to a deep and thoughtful discussion of buggery...

The jokes just write themselves. Feel free to leave yours in the comments below.

[1] Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Thinker's Toolkit

I was recently forced to shuffle around material on my many bookshelves (it's turned into an apartment-wide game of Tetris) and I came across a book I had completely forgotten about. When I was younger, it completely changed my outlook on the world.

The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving

How I came to own it is a happy story, at least for me. At UofT, one of the mandatory second-year courses was something called Analysis for Decision Making and Control which was really a course about problem solving (it's now estimated that 3.5% of all tuition fees goes to the committee for the invention of pretentious course names.)

The typical textbook for courses in this program was $120-150 per book and you usually had to buy four or five a year. This one was quite shocking because it was the only book for the course and you could get it for less than $25. You could even get it at Indigo (Amazon had not yet taken over the book world - but never mind that; I'm giving away how old I am).

The book, written by a CIA analyst, discusses different techniques for... well... solving problems. While those were interesting, I am a hardcore math nerd and systematic ways of breaking down problems were really nothing new.

The revelation came to me when the book digresses into evaluating explanations. Think of a murder mystery: five suspects and a pile of clues (evidence) and you're trying to reason out whodunnit. It's no surprise to learn that most have no idea how to evaluate evidence properly.

Look at the evidence...

...comes up often in discussion. Whether it's psychic phenomena, ghosts, conspiracy theorists, or theists - there are lots of people who hold some very silly and untenable beliefs. And most people would claim they hold these beliefs because of some sort of evidence.  But if your tools for evaluating evidence are rubbish then where does that get you?

Here's the method in brief. It's misleading to think of evidence which "supports" a hypothesis. I'll explain why in a moment. It's better to separate the evidence into two categories: consistent and inconsistent.

Inconsistent means it's implausible [1] for both your hypothesis to be true and this piece of evidence to exist. For example, if you can't find your iPod and you think your son borrowed it, that would be implausible if your son had been away at university for the past four months and therefore inconsistent. Consistent, then, is just the opposite.

What's crucial is that one piece of evidence can be consistent with multiple hypotheses. If you see something strange in the sky at night, it could be a UFO, a weather balloon, a plane or Iron Man. The evidence (you saw something strange) is consistent with multiple interpretations and doesn't push you towards one over the other. For this reason, when determining which explanation is the "best", consistent evidence doesn't count. You can all but throw it out.

The explanation that is the most likely is not the one with the most consistent evidence. That is probably the most counterintuitive notion in problem solving. Instead, the most likely explanation is the one with the least inconsistent evidence. It's not the one with the most support; instead it's the one with the fewest problems that you pick. [2]

You can (and should) take this a step further and actually go looking for inconsistent evidence. Think "what would prove me wrong?" and see if you can find it. Naturally, no one likes to do this. Who could be eager to be wrong? Apparently Lawrence Krauss:

The two most exciting states to be in are confused and wrong. Because then you know there's a chance you might learn something.

That has to be one of the greatest mind-opening experiences of my life. Although, I've never done drugs, so I don't know what I'm missing. It was so powerful, that I can explain all of this from memory, I don't even need to crack open the book again ten years later to remember what it said. I'm also fortunate to have come across it at the right point in my life where I could actually make use of it.

Looking back at the book in hindsight, it can also be used as a great primer for magic. All of the little pitfalls and traps that people prone to stumble into when solving a problem (like, say, trying to figure out how a piece of magic works) seem to be universal and understanding them makes it even easier to lead people astray and perform some really incredible things.

[1] If you want to actually work out with some rigour what "plausible" is you'd need do some kind of Bayesian analysis. The best resource for this I've come across is Proving History by Richard Carrier.

[2] An even cooler explanation of this concept is provided by Richard Feynman in the Messenger Lectures - generously made available for free online by Bill Gates. In particular, the final lecture on "Seeking New Laws"