How do mentalists do what they apparently do?

[Chanakya]

In general, I'm not referring to any particular mentalist. Feel free to pick specifics, that you're aware of, if you like.

We were discussing mentalists, IRL I mean to say. Apparently they do these impossible mind-reading feats. And I was wondering how exactly they do this. (Me, I haven't actually watched any mentalists' shows. Not IRL. On TV, yes, not much but a bit. Like WWE it's easy to see how that can be faked.)

The only "solution" I could think of is that the people whose minds they claim to read are basically in on the con with them. That's an easy enough explanation. Apart from that, I draw a blank, given the sheer detail they allegedly come out with. (Do they actually come out with the sheer detail that they allegedly do? Like I said, I haven't watched any in action myself, so that might be the first question to answer, if there are people here who're aware of these things.)


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A quick search doesn't throw up any such discussion here. That is, there are some reference to mentalists, but none discussing their actual technique as far as I could see, the how exactly they do it thing. So that's what I was wondering about. Use tells, sure, but what tells, how, and how does that translate into that kind of detail about what people are thinking? (Or is it simply a straight-out dishonest con job where the subject is working with the alleged mentalist, is all?) If any of you happen to be aware of how the mentalist thing works, then please go ahead and discuss.

 

[theprestige]

Cold reading.

There's also "warm" or "hot" reading, which is like cold reading, but the mentalist starts with information gleaned from other sources.

And of course there's also plants, shills, touts, and other techniques of the short con, that get used from time to time.

ETA: One of the things I enjoy about watching stage magic is seeing little bits and pieces of the method peeking through the spectacle. Like, "ah, this is the part where the magician demonstrates that the audience volunteer he's selected cannot possibly be a plant." But does that mean the volunteer isn't a plant, and the illusion is being accomplished some other way? Or is convincing me that the audience member isn't a plant the actual illusion itself?

 

[Darat]

Might find something in this section: http://www.internationalskeptics.co...rt=lastpost&order=desc&daysprune=-1&prefixid=

There used to be a ban on revealing tricks, but that no longer holds - a Randi dictate from the enforced secrecy of the magic circle, no one wants to be turned into a frog by annoying them....

 

[Chanakya]

Cold reading.

There's also "warm" or "hot" reading, which is like cold reading, but the mentalist starts with information gleaned from other sources.

And of course there's also plants, shills, touts, and other techniques of the short con, that get used from time to time.

ETA: One of the things I enjoy about watching stage magic is seeing little bits and pieces of the method peeking through the spectacle. Like, "ah, this is the part where the magician demonstrates that the audience volunteer he's selected cannot possibly be a plant." But does that mean the volunteer isn't a plant, and the illusion is being accomplished some other way? Or is convincing me that the audience member isn't a plant the actual illusion itself?

This is way more detailed than simply "reading" would throw up, unlike astrology or palm reading or whatever. Or so I understand.

You're right, info gleaned from other sources, coupled with the reading thing, might do it I guess. (But would they have access to the former, with strangers picked at random? ...Unless they aren't quite random? I don't know!)

Agreed, an out-and-out plant would do the trick. That possibility does neatly explain it clearly, the how they do it thing.


eta:
Just read through the wiki entry on cold reading you'd linked to. I was aware of cold reading, obviously, but either I'd never read about the details of it, or if I had then I'd forgotten those details. I could see how some of this might actually build up an impressive amount of detail, agreed!

(But again, while it might fool someone on a one-to-one palm reading session, but would it work on a public show? Maybe, I don't know!)

 

[Chanakya]

Might find something in this section: http://www.internationalskeptics.co...rt=lastpost&order=desc&daysprune=-1&prefixid=

Oh, right. I'll check it out, thanks!

There used to be a ban on revealing tricks, but that no longer holds - a Randi dictate from the enforced secrecy of the magic circle, no one wants to be turned into a frog by annoying them....

Right, no, I see how that might be reasonable, to not give out the ...techniques, basis which magicians actually make their magic work. No, absolutely, even if there's no formal ban in force on revealing that sort of thing, but if on those grounds people are reluctant to actually and in public ...well, reveal the tricks of the trade, well then I'd respect that, sure.

 

[Darat]

Cold and hot reading is how all "mediums" do their shows, and they can play to very large audiences, probably easier with a larger audience to get a bite or two to start.

I do think it is possible that some "mediums" - the folk who don't do it as a profession or make money from it may not know they are cold reading.

 

[theprestige]

This is way more detailed than simply "reading" would throw up, unlike astrology or palm reading or whatever. Or so I understand.

You're right, info gleaned from other sources, coupled with the reading thing, might do it I guess. (But would they have access to the former, with strangers picked at random? ...Unless they aren't quite random? I don't know!)

Agreed, an out-and-out plant would do the trick. That possibility does neatly explain it clearly, the how they do it thing.


eta: Just read through the wiki entry on cold reading you'd linked to. I was aware of cold reading, obviously, but either I'd never read about the details of it, or if I had then I've forgotten. I could see how some of this might actually build up an impressive amount of detail. (But again, while it might fool someone on a one-to-one palm reading session, but would it work on a public show? Maybe, I don't know!)

Mentalism has been part of pretty much every public performance of stage magic I've ever attended.

John Edward has made a very successful career out of public performances of mentalism, including cold reading among other techniques.

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Most modern stage magic shows seem to include the following types of illusion:

- mentalism, including cold reading

- sleight of hand

- stock illusions that are de rigeur for any performance of stage magic

- prestige illusions that are unique (in their presentation, at least) to this particular stage magician

- and what I call "number sieves", which involve going through a series of seemingly arbitrary steps that appear to be randomizing the result, but are actually sifting down to a specific predictable result.

Every magician has some version of the stock "volunteer object goes up on stage and then appears somewhere in the audience", but only Teller of Penn & Teller does the illusion of cutting the rose's shadow.

 

[Cat Not Included]

I feel like "mentalist" can cover a lot of different tricks. I saw a trick that was very impressive at first where a performer had a participant (someone I knew) write down a name on a piece of paper, keep it secret, and then came up with the name. It was pretty baffling...until we were watching him do the same trick with someone else and realized there was a woman who was with the magician who maneuvered right behind the person and was (reasonably discreetly at least) reading the name the person was writing.

 

[Darat]

If you want to know about cold reading the classic book is by Ian Rowland. He takes you through exactly how it works. Very interesting book - used to be hard to get hold of but perhaps in this digital age it has got easier? ETA Doesn't seem to be an ebook version: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Full-Facts...easy-to,, negotiation, management and therapy.

ETA1: There is a review of the book here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90744

 

[zooterkin]

I do think it is possible that some "mediums" - the folk who don't do it as a profession or make money from it may not know they are cold reading.

Yes, that was the case with chillzero, who came here thinking she was a medium, and realised, after taking on board what people here were telling her, that she wasn't.

 

[zooterkin]

Something to bear in mind when trying to work out how a particular magic trick is done, there are no lengths a good magician won't go to for the sake of a good illusion. Don't dismiss a particular explanation just because you think it would be too much work to set up. On the other hand, some illusions do have a simple explanation. Hope this helps.

 

[Chanakya]

I feel like "mentalist" can cover a lot of different tricks. I saw a trick that was very impressive at first where a performer had a participant (someone I knew) write down a name on a piece of paper, keep it secret, and then came up with the name. It was pretty baffling...until we were watching him do the same trick with someone else and realized there was a woman who was with the magician who maneuvered right behind the person and was (reasonably discreetly at least) reading the name the person was writing.

Haha, yes, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU5UN-OQtZc


Yep, what you say would explain it all perfectly. Either this, or, even better, the subject themselves directly working with the alleged mentalist.

 

[Chanakya]

If you want to know about cold reading the classic book is by Ian Rowland. He takes you through exactly how it works. Very interesting book - used to be hard to get hold of but perhaps in this digital age it has got easier? ETA Doesn't seem to be an ebook version: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Full-Facts...easy-to,, negotiation, management and therapy.

ETA1: There is a review of the book here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90744

Cool review.

(Which reminds me, I've more than once made a mental note to read some of the book reviews in that section, there's some promising-looking stuff there put in by people here.)

 

[theprestige]

Something to bear in mind when trying to work out how a particular magic trick is done, there are no lengths a good magician won't go to for the sake of a good illusion. Don't dismiss a particular explanation just because you think it would be too much work to set up. On the other hand, some illusions do have a simple explanation. Hope this helps. : D

My naive impression, as a layman, is that a lot of really spectacular illusions are dead simple "behind the curtain", and that the most important parts of the magic are the patter and props and other things that go into making it seem like something entirely different than what it actually is.

Penn Gilette has an illusion that looks very much like him firing a nail gun into a wooden plank (and, at seemingly arbitrary intervals, not into himself). I wouldn't be surprised if the actual illusion has absolutely nothing material to do with nails or nail guns, and is in fact well known to the stage magic community and considered mechanically trivial or mundane.

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ETA: Reminds me of an episode of "Fool Us!" where the magician performed an illusion, then revealed the mechanism by which the illusion was created. And then revealed that the mechanism itself was a facade, and the actual mechanism remained a mystery to the audience - including Penn & Teller. The actual trick may have been simple and obvious, but also nothing like the trick you were led to believe you witnessed.

 

[Thermal]

...Penn Gilette has an illusion that looks very much like him firing a nail gun into a wooden plank (and, at seemingly arbitrary intervals, not into himself). I wouldn't be surprised if the actual illusion has absolutely nothing material to do with nails or nail guns, and is in fact well known to the stage magic community and considered mechanically trivial or mundane.

That can actually be done low-tech with minimal preparation. A collated strip of nails that feeds into a pneumatic nail gun (not the paper taped Passlode style) can have whichever nails you want removed, and the gun will fire nothing when it hits the empty collation. It happens accidentally on jobs all the time. All Penn would have to do is precision count to keep track of when the empty shot was coming up, and act like it was entirely random.

Alternatively, I can see how you could easily modify a nail gun to stop the rack of nails from feeding up to the driver with a subtle flick of a lever.

Both are crazy high risk though, IMO, due to miscounting or not fully engaging the flicked mag stop.

 

[theprestige]

That can actually be done low-tech with minimal preparation. A collated strip of nails that feeds into a pneumatic nail gun (not the paper taped Passlode style) can have whichever nails you want removed, and the gun will fire nothing when it hits the empty collation. It happens accidentally on jobs all the time. All Penn would have to do is precision count to keep track of when the empty shot was coming up, and act like it was entirely random.

Alternatively, I can see how you could easily modify a nail gun to stop the rack of nails from feeding up to the driver with a subtle flick of a lever.

Both are crazy high risk though, IMO, due to miscounting or not fully engaging the flicked mag stop.

Jillette (not Gilette, my bad) actually acknowledges this, even going so far as to show the nail strip with arbitrary nails removed. The premise of the trick is that his powers of recall are so great that he can rapidly switch between the board and his body, without ever losing track of where the gaps are and when its safe to fire the gun at himself.

He does a bit partway through, where he pretends to have lost count of the fires, and hopes that the expected gap is here against his palm.

But then he goes on to patter that he believes any trick which truly puts someone in harm's way is unethical, and that therefore the trick we think he's showing us isn't the trick he's actually performing. "You think I'm firing a real nail gun, loaded with a real strip of nails, against my neck, and relying on my powers of recall to avoid injury. But I believe that would be immoral, so - BANG! - this can't be what it looks like. And that's what makes it magic."

 

[zooterkin]

My naive impression, as a layman, is that a lot of really spectacular illusions are dead simple "behind the curtain", and that the most important parts of the magic are the patter and props and other things that go into making it seem like something entirely different than what it actually is.

Penn Gilette has an illusion that looks very much like him firing a nail gun into a wooden plank (and, at seemingly arbitrary intervals, not into himself). I wouldn't be surprised if the actual illusion has absolutely nothing material to do with nails or nail guns, and is in fact well known to the stage magic community and considered mechanically trivial or mundane.

---

ETA: Reminds me of an episode of "Fool Us!" where the magician performed an illusion, then revealed the mechanism by which the illusion was created. And then revealed that the mechanism itself was a facade, and the actual mechanism remained a mystery to the audience - including Penn & Teller. The actual trick may have been simple and obvious, but also nothing like the trick you were led to believe you witnessed.

Yes, I did allow that some tricks are simple, behind the scenes, but I'm basing my first comment on seeing Penn Jillette and Teller speak (yes, both of them) at TAM, plus articles such as this one - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/teller-reveals-his-secrets-100744801/

 

[Chanakya]

Cold reading...

If you want to know about cold reading the classic book is by Ian Rowland. He takes you through exactly how it works. Very interesting book - used to be hard to get hold of but perhaps in this digital age it has got easier? ...

Found these discussions online, on cold reading in general, and about Ian Rowland's book.

Haven't actually listened to them yet, just (very briefly) checked out some random portions of each to see what they're about. None seem very ...engaging, their format I mean to say, the presentation ---- well for one thing, they're audio only ---- but as far as their content, hopefully they'll not be bad, and maybe actually cover some specifics from Rowland. I'll check them out later when I have time. Meantime the links, put out here as reminder to myself, as well as anyone else who might want to check them out:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zICaET0r8UE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvr6AqHOwcI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcGjiLVcZKo



eta:

Also, came across this other title: weird name, but it's about cold reading it seems: Julian Moore's The James Bond Cold Reading.

(Don't know that I want to actually buy a book on cold reading and sit there going through it. But on the other hand, after going through those vids, those audio things, if I find myself drawn to it, then I might after all.)

 

[JoeMorgue]

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.

 

[Thermal]

Jillette (not Gilette, my bad) actually acknowledges this, even going so far as to show the nail strip with arbitrary nails removed. The premise of the trick is that his powers of recall are so great that he can rapidly switch between the board and his body, without ever losing track of where the gaps are and when its safe to fire the gun at himself.

He does a bit partway through, where he pretends to have lost count of the fires, and hopes that the expected gap is here against his palm.

But then he goes on to patter that he believes any trick which truly puts someone in harm's way is unethical, and that therefore the trick we think he's showing us isn't the trick he's actually performing. "You think I'm firing a real nail gun, loaded with a real strip of nails, against my neck, and relying on my powers of recall to avoid injury. But I believe that would be immoral, so - BANG! - this can't be what it looks like. And that's what makes it magic."

OK, I just watched it on YT, and I'm sure that wasn't a real unmodified nail gun. He pulls the trigger at one point, and it fires without the safety being depressed. When he puts his palm to the gun, it also doesn't depress the safety (which he holds up and you can see the safety is not pinned off). Also, the safety is wildly oversized. Nails striking wood backed up by metal (as the trick is shown) would certainly bend, not stand straight, and the gun would kick up like a freaking mule from the driver not being able to travel its full length. This invariably happens when a nail hits something hard, like even a knot or steel.

So no, it's not shooting nails. No way. My best guess would be the nails that look like they are embedded in the wood are actually being pushed upwards? Maybe that's why the oversized safety, to give room for error in planting the gun down over a nail head that is actually springing up inside the safety shroud?

Anyway, cool looking trick, great effect, but definitely not a nail firing gun.