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Is possible that Magician guesses zodiac birth sign ?

Bubba said:
Well he had no time or opportunity to research. He simply arrived, sat at the table with strangers and did it. I put it in a thread here a while back.
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Your body of work does not qualify you as a reliable narrator.

There's also no reason to believe you would even recognize cold reading techniques even if you saw them being performed.
 
theprestige said:
Your body of work does not qualify you as a reliable narrator.

There's also no reason to believe you would even recognize cold reading techniques even if you saw them being performed.
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Yup. While my long dead father favoured stage magic, I prefer close-up. The zodiac deal is pretty trivial. Used to do it, but don't anymore. Too many took it seriously.

The entire point of magic tricks is not that the audience is gullible, but that the audience knows it is a trick and appreciate it done well. And perhaps a demonstration of how easily fooled people really are.
 
marplots said:
I don't believe it. We have hemispheres on this planet, for one.
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Obviously you would have to measure cold weather vs hot weather (or wet vs dry in places where those are the two seasons).

And it would require reaching back decades in time to near-natal and finding an effect that survives the noise.
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I don't think that is a problem. A greater effect may be school age though. There must be differences depending on whether you are young or old relative to your classmates, and that generally depends on birth month.

I don't think it's possible, but even if it is, such a method couldn't be practical. Easier to spot a birthstone or other datum that is linked to sun sign and go from there. Remember - a magic trick that habitually doesn't work isn't likely to be adopted by a performer.
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Obviously it couldn't be used to guess an individual's birth month. I'm just suggesting that with a large enough study some small differences could be found.
 
In this case, I bet these nice young ladies met someone taking a petition earlier to "help puppies/children/children with puppies..." and the petition required enough biographic data to figure out their birth sign. A bit of cellular technology and there you have it. He's told "four girls one in a blue top, another in a red, another in white..."
 
The guy said it was astrology.

The guy said it was astrology.

I met a guy and invited him to my dinner party the next day. He arrived, sat down and after a while, he did his thing. His 'thing' was correctly naming most or all guests' birth signs. About a dozen people were there.

He probably asked permission, nice guy that he was, but no matter.

He credited his feat to observing facial features only. He said it was a type of astrology.

Yes there are ways to do it, and this is mostly not about that.

In addition to acknowledging techniques known to magicians etc, I wonder what experiment/study might emerge if someone qualified wished to investigate the claim according to principles of logic, if not the scientific method.

Since he said it was about facial features I thought for starters, how about....

Photograph facial features of say 100 people per birth sign. Pics to be taken from maybe 10 (?) different angles. Angles which capture face features deemed most productive by designers of the study.

Thats a rough idea, of course open to improvement.

So this post is meant to be about how to investigate (?), discussing design of such a study. *

If no similarities were found it could be a stake in the heart of that guys claim about astrology, not that everyone needs that.

If some consistent similarities were found according to birth sign, it would absolutely conclusively prove beyond any shadow of doubt that some consistent similarities were found according to birth sign.

Either way it might make be good for conversation at some dinner party.

Any suggestions for such a study? I doubt I would take it on. Call it a thought experiment if you wish.

If nothing else, based on experience, the range of responses could make writing this OP worthwhile.

Dont hold back your views, I'm counting on you ;-)

Thanks in advance!

* In case you missed it or forgot, this is meant to be about how to investigate (?), and or discussing design of such a study.

and enjoying the range of responses
 
You realize it's a trick right? And you don't generally tell people how you do a trick?

Using faces is literally the first option to cross of the list, not where to start.
 
Matthew Ellard said:
OK. Invite him around again and video it, so we can see the original evidence rather than just an anecdote about a magician's stage trick.
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Impossible. Long ago. Lost contact. Far away. Besides its not about that. Its about the study of pictures as described.
 
Paragraphs, Bubba, paragraphs. Writing isolated lines for each sentence makes it look like you are giving us a chocolate cake recipe.
 
Thread merged with original thread about this topic. Bubba do not create new threads when you have already started a recent and active thread about the same topic.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Darat
 
Yeggster said:
Or have an accomplice run everybody's car tags
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When I was young, auto tag numbers in my area were issued in order and renewal was based on your date of birth. One day, on a date close to my birthday, I saw someone I do not know getting out of a car with a license plate number close to mine. I took a chance and said "Happy birthday." He gave me a confused look then said "thanks." He started to walk away then turned back and apologetically asked who I am. When I explained the trick, he laughed and wished me a happy birthday.
 
Bubba said:
Impossible. Long ago. Lost contact. Far away. Besides its not about that. Its about the study of pictures as described.
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But the little story is essential! It front-loads us to think, "How is this possible?" rather than, "Did this even happen?"

Without the nice story, I wouldn't even consider that birth was correlated with facial features. Still don't, actually.
 
As others have mentioned, there hasn't been enough information given to explain how the trick was accomplished. But, when I want to figure out how a magician has performed an illusion, instead of analyzing what I saw in detail, I step back and ask myself "how would I do it?" That question is often easier to answer because it mostly avoids distractions and misdirection.

In this case, I would be one of the people in the group and I know everyone's birthdate. I ask a friend, that none of the others know, to pretend to randomly pick our group and guess everyone's astrological sign. We could use gestures to communicate (which would be a reason to limit ourselves to signs of the zodiac instead of actual birth dates).
 
Bubba said:
Impossible. Long ago. Lost contact. Far away. Besides its not about that. Its about the study of pictures as described.
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But you have not shown that he wasn't just throwing you off the scent. As someone that likes to do a bit of amateur magic, I always either leave them guessing or give a wrong explination.

For example I did a dirty simple trick, involving making a balloon pop from across a small room with 4 other people in it while in placement. How they told people the trick unfolded was nothing like how it did, and the one way that I did the trick I let them convince themselves was impossible.
 
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