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Interestingly, Penn and Teller (although I've never heard Teller talk about it [har har] they seem to be in agreement) look at and talk about this sort of moral
by jedimastert 7y ago
Interestingly, Penn and Teller (although I've never heard Teller talk about it [har har] they seem to be in agreement) look at and talk about this sort of moral quandary a lot in the context of the tradition of magicians. For them, it's not enough to think think that "of course the audience knows" but to be honest from the get go.
Darren Brown did a stage show called "Miracle" (which was fantastic, but a different discussion) where he talks about his experience with faith healers and the like and says at the beginning that, which he doesn't like people getting suckered or lying, the experience is one that people should have, and goes on to spend the rest of the show "in character" as a faith healer.
The movie Leap of Faith also explores this moral dilemma.
I've never been upset at people doing whatever it takes to survive, but I don't think that it excuses you from the ethics of what you do. I definitely wouldn't consider what he did 100% ethical and it's OK to question what you do.
Do address something else:
> I think this guy needs to stop and revisit what he was doing. He wasn't a fraud. He was exactly what those people were paying for.
The cursed man didn't come in to see a magic trick or to be lied to, he came to have his curse lifted. There are many many people, whether ignorant or ill, who do not see this as some sort of entertainment or escapism, but actually how the world works. This is where the morally questionable part comes in. It's like casinos or the lottery: plenty of people go in expecting to "throw their money away" on entertainment, but nothing is done to tell people that it's not wise to expect anything to actually happen, and over-correlation can lead to addiction (and yes, addiction to psychics can and does happen)
It's far more grey than you think.
- dkersten 7y ago> although I've never heard Teller talk about it [har har] they seem to be in agreement He does actually talk in interviews and they are definitely in agreement. He also has a rather soothing radio voice, in a way its a pity he doesn't talk more, although I do feel his performances are stronger because of his silence.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoI think I recall seeing him act in Big Bang Theory, acting as Amy's father.
- LandR 7y agoI don't like Derren Brown. I feel he is happy with people leaving his shows believing in psuedo-scientific nonsense, it's just a different brand of nonsense. I'd be interested in a poll of people leaving his shows being asked if they thought it was a) mostly traditional magic / sleight of hand or b) Psychology, influence, whatever nonsense Brown calls his stuff nowadays. I might be wrong, but I think most would go with with b)
- jedimastert 7y agoDerren Brown is in a weird space for me. On stage, he mixes his very heavy skepticism with other claims of pseudoscience, and the two can be a bit muddled. He does always say that what he does is a trick and "honestly dishonest", but obscures how he does it. Off stage, he rails against any thought that things like NLP or subliminal suggestion works, but people might not be aware of that. I don't doubt that at least a small portion of what he does is very similar to what the author of the article describes, with cold-reading and just a good understanding of people, but there's plenty of traditional stage magic with it. I also don't doubt that he would never go on stage with a trick that couldn't be performed correctly 100% percent of the time.
- davinic 7y agoTo me NLP always felt more like mysticism than science.
- jedimastert 7y agoIt's absolutely considered pseudoscience by most people, including Derren Brown himself [0]. [0]: http://derrenbrown.co.uk/claim-claim-2/ http://derrenbrown.co.uk/claim-claim-2/
- danesparza 7y agoPenn doesn't just talk about it in the context of magicians. He's mentioned James Randi many times, and has been very forthcoming about his atheism (see https://youtu.be/oKGjHmeKUQs https://youtu.be/oKGjHmeKUQs )
- fortydegrees 7y agoIrrational problems have irrational solutions. If your child is scared at night because of the monster under their bed, you don't show them that it isn't there. You make a magic stick and give it to the child and tell it that it'll scare away the monster. For the man that came in and genuinely believed he was cursed, you tell him you have the counter spell.