Responding to Magic

What is the correct way to respond when you see a piece of magic? I'm not sure I know the answer either. 

Live magic performance sits among countless other forms of arts and entertainment, each one with it's own social accepted norms when it comes to showing appreciation. When watching a classical music concert, you wait until the end of the piece. At a sporting event, you react immediately, and loudly, when something exciting happens — you don't wait until the end of the period for cheering for a goal. In the middle of Macbeth, it would be rather strange to leap to your feet and applaud because Lady Macbeth did such a phenomenal job of conveying that she was going mad with grief.

Even within the same medium it's not so clear. It's ok to chat with your neighbour over the CNN anchor, but total focus is mandatory during the Game of Thrones season finale. 

Rockstars generate tremendous reaction simply for showing, before they've even done anything (that night at least.) I've worked with many magicians who feel entitled to spontaneous adoring applause simply for walking out on stage before a crowd who has no idea who they are.

So what do when you see magic? I was struck by the question while watching reactions to a magic trick distilled through different cast members of The Big Bang Theory:

There's something in Sheldon's response we can all appreciate. Not knowings something is one thing. Nobody knows everything. Not knowing something that other people clearly know is frustrating. It makes you feel like an outsider.

But there is something else which comes up often. Apparently, it's rude to ask a magician how a trick is performed. And no one is quite sure why. I was performing a piece of magic impromptu last week for a small group. Someone asked how I did that, and another in the group chastised them quickly: "You're not supposed to ask that." And followed up with, "He won't tell you anyway."

If you asked your mechanic what he planned to do with your car and he said "you don't really need to know" or "not knowing is part of the fun" you would quickly seek a new mechanic. So why is it rude to ask a magician? I've always had a problem with this question.

Having spent most of my life in a teaching role, once as a martial arts instructor, a math tutor and now teaching children magic in hospitals, I think it's part of everyone's responsibility to society to encourage curiosity. "You don't need to know" or "you're better off not knowing" are simply bad answers.  

I think it's important to remind people from time to time that it's perfectly alright to try really, really hard to figure out how piece of magic works. Curiosity is never a bad thing. But by not immediately satiating the curiosity, we allow that feeling to linger and be savoured. You'll fuss over the mystery of a magic trick far longer than you will over how your refrigerator works. 

So try and figure it out.

Business Advice from Poker Players

Nowhere in the world does the human mind run up against cold hard statistics quite like games of chance. Serious card players understand that it's possible to feel that we're evaluating evidence and thinking rationally and responsibly even when we're not. Here are four pieces of advice to help prevent that:

Everyday Optical Illusion

Human beings are used to being on the ground, standing right side up. So when you view the world from a different perspective, such as from aerial photographs, things often don't look quite right. Minute Physics explains a common optical illusion used to make maps easier to read:

Elementary my dear Watson

I've always been delighted by the magic of Sherlock Holmes. Far from being a detective, Holmes is really a magician who achieves results through deception. He know, exactly what he needs to know at exactly the time he needs to know it and seemingly with no way of possibly knowing it. If that isn't magic, I'm not sure what is. (And his secret secret is hidden in plain sight, he knows the guy who wrote the script.)

Recently the American adaptation of the classic Conan Doyle character Elementary (which took a rather odd twist filling the role of Dr. Watson with Lucy Liu) tried their hand at some magic... with some rather unusual results.  

The episode, The Art of Sleights and Deception (Season 5 Episode 20), follows the quest to uncover the identity of the pseudonymous author of a magic book, The Art of Sleights and Deceptions. Actually, in more traditional Sherlock Holmes style, the story follows a murder related to these investigations, because we must have our dead bodies for good wholesome entertainment.

The story is, in fact, based on a true one. I magic, there is a book written by an unknown author, S.W. Erdnase's Ruse Artifice and Subterfuge; The Expert at the Card Table. Originally published in 1902 it contains some of the earliest descriptions of techniques for cheating with cards. More importantly, it contains descriptions of how to perform the necessary sleights (prior to that, the description of a bottom deal might simply be that it is possible to take the bottom card while apparently taking the top one without any indication of how the hands move to accomplish this.) The book sold very poorly initially, but later became the subject of great study by magicians and the book has remained continuously in print for one hundred fifteen years and has video version, annotated versions and even commemorative playing cards and t-shirts. 

But the author never came forward and identified himself. The illustrator was located, some decades after the fact, but provided only scant details which didn't point to a clear candidate. There have been many proposed candidates, most of which start with the fact that S.W. Erdnase spelled backwards is E.S. Andrews. The most compelling candidate was identified by magic historian and book publisher Richard Hatch, an E.S. Andrews who was in the right place at the right time.

Of course, once it hit American television, things needed to be spiced up. So a wealthy source (probably intended to be a parody of David Copperfield) offered a million dollar prize for unmasking his identity. There are a few twists inside that I did not see coming, probably because I know so much about the real history. But there was, very clearly, someone who knew an awful lot about this story, although no specific person was referenced in the credits.

I always delight in seeing magicians portrayed in mainstream movies and film. They almost never get it right. They didn't this time. (For example, the apartment of the expert card magician contained no playing cards, but was full primarily of kids' show props and a medieval torture device.) I found out a long time ago, that the film industry isn't interested in realism, when a stereotype will do perfectly well. Unless you are in the educational or documentary film business, trying to correct an audience's incorrect perception of how something is rarely worth the time. It's quicker and easier to go with the flow and simply give them what they expect. (I'm sure most lawyers watching Law & Order or The Goodwife feel exactly the same way.)

I remember years ago, I received a casting call for a magician for a role on a television series. The call specifically called for a "real magician". Many of my friends had received the same notice and none of us could figure out what "real magician" meant. The modern audition process is based on ignoring quality, and simply going through enough quantity to hopefully find what you want. Thus casting personnel never really learn to articulate what it is they want. They're able to sit back and wait until they see it and say, "That's it." Actors also aren't generally called upon to have any particular skills, except being able to pretend to have whatever particular skill is required.

It turned out, what "real magician" meant was "owned big boxes" like the kind you would use to saw a woman into halves. They wanted the props for the set and the magician to serve as an extra standing in front of them. You have to learn not to take these things personally.

A Conversation About Happiness

Derren Brown, one of the most famous magician-mentalist-hypnotist-strangepeople in the United Kingdom who has recently crossed the pond for a new Broadway show called Secret. 

He had a very interesting conversation with Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, about his latest book Happy. They talk about the quest for happiness, the search for meaning and dealing with death, as well as the skepticism associated with performing magic.

The Illusion of Understanding Things

Not knowing something puts you in a strange situation. When you don't know something, don't understand something, or aren't qualified to do something, you are rarely aware that you are. Not understanding something usually also means not being able to realize that you don't understand it. In social science this has been named the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

This short video, from one of the world's most delightful humans, Stephen Fry, explains (admittedly with a bit of a political slant.)