> I see -- we are using different definitions. Let me provide mine... You misunderstood that whole section, so I'll try again. Those words are just labels, it

> I see -- we are using different definitions. Let me provide mine... You misunderstood that whole section, so I'll try again. Those words are just labels, it doesn't matter what they are but it very much matters that they be used consistently. You said, in essence, that magic tricks are always done by using X, never Y - that whole section was me trying to define what X and Y are. I used "trickery" to mean X because that's how you used it, in your first comment: > "But there's no way to reliably cold read a name, so it has to be done via trickery..." Remember? You started by drawing a distinction between cold reading and trickery, and now you're saying that cold reading is trickery. Either definition is fine, but you gotta pick one, as I'm less sure than ever of what the X means. This doesn't help: > What I am arguing AGAINST: that mentalism requires some sort of extraordinary power of observation, picking up subtle signals, hypnosis, extreme mental powers of deduction, etc. ...because of all the subjective qualifiers. How am I to know what you consider extraordinary? Take the Stephen Merchant clip, in which Derren Brown appears to dupe a guy into guessing wrong. If I claim that it was done purely with with psychology, I have no idea if you'd disagree ("No way, that would require extraordinary mental powers so there must be some gimmick!") or agree with me ("That only requires pretty good mental powers, so no gimmick required"). It seems like you're just redefining X to include anything that can actually be done by a human, and to exclude only supernatural abilities. This is illustrative: > I don't have to know how a particular mentalism trick is done to know it's a trick. If you don't need to look at a trick to know it's X, that would suggest that your position is tautological: "All magic tricks are X, because I've defined X that way." Well, fair enough; we certainly agree that magic tricks are indeed magic tricks, as opposed to psychic powers or space aliens or whatever. But I don't think your position started out tautological. I'm pretty sure you began this discussion because there are real mentalists doing real tricks that you think must've been done with a gimmick and I think could've been done with skill and practice. That's why I thought it would be helpful to cite examples! But I agree that if your position is tautological, there is no point in looking at them (other than perhaps the natural curiosity about mentalism that I imagined you might have, based on how long we've been discussing it).