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> None of his claims would pass an Amazing Randi challenge. "So, yes, what I do is real" means that his act really is mental (intuition, suggestibility, etc),

> None of his claims would pass an Amazing Randi challenge. "So, yes, what I do is real" means that his act really is mental (intuition, suggestibility, etc), as opposed to non-mental (confederates, well-placed mirrors, trick pens, etc). He wasn't claiming to have psychic powers. > Where's the proof this even happened at all? Guessing names is a very common stage trick; here's Derren Brown getting the name of someone's pet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1IV_kkh1Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1IV_kkh1Xs

TulliusCicero 5y ago
> He wasn't claiming to have psychic powers. He's not? > I perfected another where I asked a person to think of a loved one, and then I guessed their loved one’s name I don't see how you do this one sans psychic powers unless you're at least somewhat familiar with the person and their loved ones. Guessing common names would work every once in a while, but nowhere close to the majority of the time. Now perhaps if you research the person ahead of time, maybe frame your question in a way that they're more likely to think of a particular type of person (e.g. mention age or old times so that they're more likely to think of grandparents as opposed to younger relatives), I could see that working, but that's not what he said. "Hey stranger, think of a loved one" -> "I know their name" is impossible without telepathy. Similarly: > Having someone merely think of a drawing, then taking a pad and duplicating their vision perfectly? No, you can't do this without psychic powers unless you're adding a lot more context around the type of drawing before they do it. "Hey stranger, do a drawing of something, anything" isn't gonna work. Even if you assume there's a handful of common objects that people are likely to draw -- a house, a car, a dog, a flower -- you're still gonna be wrong more often than right.
- ineptech 5y ago
  > ..is impossible without telepathy. It's supposed to look like it can't be done without telepathy - that's the whole point of the trick! And yet, it is done, successfully, on stages large and small, by people who are definitely not telepaths.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    I'd be willing to change my mind if a person was able to demonstrate this ability while just walking around a randomly chosen part of a big city, going up to strangers and just straightaway asking them to think of a loved one's name, with the recording stuff and people-choosing being done by a known skeptic. Having it done in a stage environment controlled by the performer in question obviously offers the ability to do research on audience members beforehand, or even have plants in the audience.
    - ineptech 5y ago
      Change your mind about what? The performers aren't trying to convince you they have psychic powers, they're trying to convince you to buy a ticket to their show. Anyway, think this through. Derren Brown claims not to use stooges, and has been doing tricks like these on stage (per his wiki page) for 19 tours each averaging 50-100 nights. If he's using stooges, he's going through an awful lot of them, isn't he? Including his TV work, there must be thousands of people in the UK that could go on TV and blow the lid on the whole thing. I ask you, which is the more impressive feat of mentalism: keeping all of those people quiet, or guessing that an audience member drew a picture of a cat?
      - TulliusCicero 5y ago
        About whether they can do this: > I perfected another where I asked a person to think of a loved one, and then I guessed their loved one’s name
        ineptech 5y ago
        That's pretty much the opening of every medium's act, right? Have you ever seen one? It would save a lot of explanation, and I'm sure you'd see through it pretty easily.
        the_af 5y ago
        But there's no way to reliably cold read a name, so it has to be done via trickery (basically, already know the answer).
the_af 5y ago
> "Guessing names is a very common stage trick; here's Derren Brown getting the name of someone's pet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1IV_kkh1Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1IV_kkh1Xs" Oh, but it IS an act of non-mental tricks (confederates, research, etc). From the comments on the link you provided, and do note this person is appreciative of the showmanship of it all: > "Notice how the letter F was clearly not random and he specifically chose that girl from the audience. What also wasn't random was that he asked specifically if she had any pets. He did research on one of his audience members beforehand and decided upon this girl and mind-reading a pet name - because she had her pet name on one of her social medias. What makes this even better is that they probably would have chosen a social media account she hadn't used in ages or a post from years ago to maximise disbelief. It wasn't mind-reading or looking intently at her face for plosive sounds or anything. It was just audience research and epic showmanship and story-telling." Now, I like a good trick and I enjoy magic acts. But this has nothing to do with intuition or suggestibility or mind-reading of any kind.
- ineptech 5y ago
  I admire your confidence; I don't claim to know how any of his tricks are done. But certainly he has done some that unambiguously rely on hypnosis and/or psychological manipulation and some that unambiguously don't. edit: But since you're explaining things, I would like to know how the trick he does with Matt Lucas is done!
  - the_af 5y ago
    I'm not explaining things, I quoted the explanation from a fan in the video you linked to!
    - ineptech 5y ago
      Then I admire their confidence (and wonder how they think he did it before social media). edit: For example, here's Derren Brown reading the name of a woman's first crush in his stage show in 2005: https://youtu.be/idtbswz_mXw?t=1247 https://youtu.be/idtbswz_mXw?t=1247
blindseer 5y ago
Surely, Derren Brown's team talked to the lady, asked her a few questions like her name, her age, her dogs names etc, and fed that information to Derren. It's very easy with a few pieces of information like that to completely narrow it down to one person. You can see in the video, he asks for all the Fs to stand up, and he selects one person. I'm sure there's more to mentalism, like reading body language but it feels like 90% magic (lots of prep work + hard work + presenting / misleading) and 10% improvisation.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Not always. One part of Derren Brown's act involves getting people to say things that aren't true at all -- playing with suggestibility in groups and cohesiveness. Like, he'll do a quickfire guessing thing, going through audience members, guessing, "did I guess right?" thing, ramping up the speed, and he knows for sure people will say yes when they want to say no. He's maniacally clever.
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  A mentalist can also remember the name of everyone in a theatre, using memory techniques. Theatre tickets are sold out months in advance. TV shows too. Names and addresses are given. Many people have open Facebook profiles. People love talking about their pets, and about their upcoming visit to see a famous performer. I imagine a team might compile the list that a mentalist has to remember. Seat numbers can also be memorised, etc etc...
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    > mentalist can also remember the name of everyone in a theatre, using memory techniques. It doesn't need to be _everyone_ in the theatre, or even most of them. He asked for "someone on the balcony" and then picked someone in the front row thereof.
zeroonetwothree 5y ago
100% of mentalism acts use normal magic techniques They just pretend to use "intuition" or "suggestibility" (not sure why, but it seems to make it more appealing), but those are not real methods...
deleted 5y ago
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TulliusCicero 5y ago

> He wasn't claiming to have psychic powers. He's not? > I perfected another where I asked a person to think of a loved one, and then I guessed their loved one’s name I don't see how you do this one sans psychic powers unless you're at least somewhat familiar with the person and their loved ones. Guessing common names would work every once in a while, but nowhere close to the majority of the time. Now perhaps if you research the person ahead of time, maybe frame your question in a way that they're more likely to think of a particular type of person (e.g. mention age or old times so that they're more likely to think of grandparents as opposed to younger relatives), I could see that working, but that's not what he said. "Hey stranger, think of a loved one" -> "I know their name" is impossible without telepathy. Similarly: > Having someone merely think of a drawing, then taking a pad and duplicating their vision perfectly? No, you can't do this without psychic powers unless you're adding a lot more context around the type of drawing before they do it. "Hey stranger, do a drawing of something, anything" isn't gonna work. Even if you assume there's a handful of common objects that people are likely to draw -- a house, a car, a dog, a flower -- you're still gonna be wrong more often than right.

ineptech 5y ago
> ..is impossible without telepathy. It's supposed to look like it can't be done without telepathy - that's the whole point of the trick! And yet, it is done, successfully, on stages large and small, by people who are definitely not telepaths.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  I'd be willing to change my mind if a person was able to demonstrate this ability while just walking around a randomly chosen part of a big city, going up to strangers and just straightaway asking them to think of a loved one's name, with the recording stuff and people-choosing being done by a known skeptic. Having it done in a stage environment controlled by the performer in question obviously offers the ability to do research on audience members beforehand, or even have plants in the audience.
  - ineptech 5y ago
    Change your mind about what? The performers aren't trying to convince you they have psychic powers, they're trying to convince you to buy a ticket to their show. Anyway, think this through. Derren Brown claims not to use stooges, and has been doing tricks like these on stage (per his wiki page) for 19 tours each averaging 50-100 nights. If he's using stooges, he's going through an awful lot of them, isn't he? Including his TV work, there must be thousands of people in the UK that could go on TV and blow the lid on the whole thing. I ask you, which is the more impressive feat of mentalism: keeping all of those people quiet, or guessing that an audience member drew a picture of a cat?
    - TulliusCicero 5y ago
      About whether they can do this: > I perfected another where I asked a person to think of a loved one, and then I guessed their loved one’s name
      - ineptech 5y ago
        That's pretty much the opening of every medium's act, right? Have you ever seen one? It would save a lot of explanation, and I'm sure you'd see through it pretty easily.
        the_af 5y ago
        But there's no way to reliably cold read a name, so it has to be done via trickery (basically, already know the answer).

the_af 5y ago

> "Guessing names is a very common stage trick; here's Derren Brown getting the name of someone's pet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1IV_kkh1Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1IV_kkh1Xs" Oh, but it IS an act of non-mental tricks (confederates, research, etc). From the comments on the link you provided, and do note this person is appreciative of the showmanship of it all: > "Notice how the letter F was clearly not random and he specifically chose that girl from the audience. What also wasn't random was that he asked specifically if she had any pets. He did research on one of his audience members beforehand and decided upon this girl and mind-reading a pet name - because she had her pet name on one of her social medias. What makes this even better is that they probably would have chosen a social media account she hadn't used in ages or a post from years ago to maximise disbelief. It wasn't mind-reading or looking intently at her face for plosive sounds or anything. It was just audience research and epic showmanship and story-telling." Now, I like a good trick and I enjoy magic acts. But this has nothing to do with intuition or suggestibility or mind-reading of any kind.

ineptech 5y ago
I admire your confidence; I don't claim to know how any of his tricks are done. But certainly he has done some that unambiguously rely on hypnosis and/or psychological manipulation and some that unambiguously don't. edit: But since you're explaining things, I would like to know how the trick he does with Matt Lucas is done!
- the_af 5y ago
  I'm not explaining things, I quoted the explanation from a fan in the video you linked to!
  - ineptech 5y ago
    Then I admire their confidence (and wonder how they think he did it before social media). edit: For example, here's Derren Brown reading the name of a woman's first crush in his stage show in 2005: https://youtu.be/idtbswz_mXw?t=1247 https://youtu.be/idtbswz_mXw?t=1247

blindseer 5y ago

Surely, Derren Brown's team talked to the lady, asked her a few questions like her name, her age, her dogs names etc, and fed that information to Derren. It's very easy with a few pieces of information like that to completely narrow it down to one person. You can see in the video, he asks for all the Fs to stand up, and he selects one person. I'm sure there's more to mentalism, like reading body language but it feels like 90% magic (lots of prep work + hard work + presenting / misleading) and 10% improvisation.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
Not always. One part of Derren Brown's act involves getting people to say things that aren't true at all -- playing with suggestibility in groups and cohesiveness. Like, he'll do a quickfire guessing thing, going through audience members, guessing, "did I guess right?" thing, ramping up the speed, and he knows for sure people will say yes when they want to say no. He's maniacally clever.
thinkingemote 5y ago
A mentalist can also remember the name of everyone in a theatre, using memory techniques. Theatre tickets are sold out months in advance. TV shows too. Names and addresses are given. Many people have open Facebook profiles. People love talking about their pets, and about their upcoming visit to see a famous performer. I imagine a team might compile the list that a mentalist has to remember. Seat numbers can also be memorised, etc etc...
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  > mentalist can also remember the name of everyone in a theatre, using memory techniques. It doesn't need to be _everyone_ in the theatre, or even most of them. He asked for "someone on the balcony" and then picked someone in the front row thereof.

zeroonetwothree 5y ago

100% of mentalism acts use normal magic techniques They just pretend to use "intuition" or "suggestibility" (not sure why, but it seems to make it more appealing), but those are not real methods...

deleted 5y ago

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