Brown has written a book about how he works, and Scientific American has published research on the use of social and psychological cues by magicians. I’m not aware he has ever claimed “savant-like powers of observation”.
Oh, even BB has fallen for this.
A master of “Neuro-linguisitic Programming”? Yeah, NLP is non-science.
Simon Singh called him out on his claims.
The audience is told that this is all down to Brown’s stunning understanding of psychology. However, I believe that his amazing demonstrations of mind reading and control are based on little more than clever magic tricks, and that he is giving science a bad name.
Brown is kind of famous for lying about how he does his tricks.
I have cousins who did something like that to me when I was little. When I was 5 or 6. While they were teenagers. It typically involved them sneaking up on me at a national monument with a precipice of some kind, grabbing me by one bicep and swinging me over the edge to dangle for a heartstopping moment, then setting me down on the ground next to them, while I cried and sloshed around in my freshly wet pants while jokingly asking why I didn’t trust them.
They’re fucking dicks. I’m happy their side of the family has fallen apart. With any luck they’ll drunk drive themselves at immense velocities into various bodies of water, or concrete walls. I’m mean. But I’m not in the business of making small children plausibly fear for their lives over and over.
To this day I can’t deal with precipices at all.
Magicians are awesome. Well some are. They’re the ones who kickstarted the skeptic community in the 20th century, and continue to be allies to those seeking the truth. Just look at Randi, and Penn and Teller.
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I don’t actually have the authority to authorize lethal retributive justice; but if I did, you’d have it.
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Their own bad decisions have been their undoing so far. And when my brother and I eventually become the only people they can turn to in hard times we’ll both tell them “no. You had your chance” and leave them to twist in the wind.
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How about Sanal Edamaruku (who is in self-imposed exile) or (the sadly deceased) B. Premanand?
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Yes, did the same here as a young teenager.
Nail in board, through the foot, and it was not magical.
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Penn and Teller have been pretty clear on how the show is run. they have no contact with the acts beforehand, its set up by others, including Johnny Thompson. As far as what makes the final cut, that is also out of their hands, so sometimes they burn a trick, but its generally old tricks. The acts get some coaching from Johnny but ultimately its their act, so they get to do what they want. Remember they are not just folks walking in off the street, its a quasi-invitational contests.
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Since this story, his web traffic has spiked considerably.
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Worth it!
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