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> The vast majority of magic tricks are the opposite. The effect is amazing but the method is actually quite mundane. You're probably right about it being the

> The vast majority of magic tricks are the opposite. The effect is amazing but the method is actually quite mundane. You're probably right about it being the majority, but I'd say a lot of good slight of hand also falls into the category of the method being amazing. Penn and Teller are also famous for doing tricks with the secret in full view, and they're often more impressive than the trick done normally.

Jasper_ 4y ago
The routines in that case are designed to be entertaining, they don't give away secrets that aren't theirs to begin with, and there's often a double bluff where they purport to give away secrets, but there's still an element they don't disclose, or the supposed secret is just misdirection (e.g. the phone inside fish trick) A lot of P&T tricks are boring once the secret is revealed. They don't reveal those tricks.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  > A lot of P&T tricks are boring once the secret is revealed. This is the mindset I don't understand. Unless the secret is something the spectator might reasonably consider "cheating" (like, if it turns out that a video production that's ostensibly of a live performance actually used post-production visual effects), I don't see in what sense knowing the secret ruins the trick. Perhaps for some people it might, but as long as the "secret revelation" content is separate from the "trick performance" content, I trust people to identify for themselves which content they want to watch.
  - zbuf 4y ago
    All magic tricks are cheating. It's just sometimes the cheat is just something you didn't think of and not a lot more. Sometimes it's a gadget or gimmick; not something that requires a lot of practice. Of course there's amazing sleight of hand -- you are correct. But a lot of magic is creativity & performance, not necessarily skill. The lines are blurred and that's the fun.
    - tshaddox 4y ago
      > All magic tricks are cheating. It's just sometimes the cheat is just something you didn't think of and not a lot more. I think we're using different terminology here. I think there's a pretty big distinction between, for instance, the widely known variants of the sawing a woman in half trick where there are two people in the two halves of the box, and watching a video broadcast of a magic show where it turns out they just used visual effects to accomplish the effect. Perhaps the lines are blurry and different spectators might disagree in some cases, but I think there's a set of explanations that would be considered "cheating" in the negative sense.
      - vanviegen 4y ago
        Exactly. When the audience needs to observe the trick by proxy, because it's not practical to have everybody touching the object, standing on stage, or being in the TV studio, that proxy must be honest. If I can't trust that to be the case, I'd only be interested in a trick if I can be the one on stage touching the object. No more global audience for you, cheating magician.
        hgsgm 4y ago
        This is why Fool Us is what it is. P&T put magicians on TV but they put themselves in the audience so the TV audience trusts that it isn't just video editing like so many TV magic shows. But Fool Us does edit out "tells" that you could see by freeze-framing the recording but wouldn't notice in real life.
        tshaddox 4y ago
        Right. It's the same with audience plants, unless there's also something specifically interesting about the way the audience plant operated. If the magician just picks a stooge from the audience, says "the number you're thinking of is 17," and the stooge says "wow, how did you read my mind?" that is not a remotely legitimate magic trick in my view. Likewise, if you're watching a guerrilla magic television special (e.g. David Blaine: Street Magic) and it turns out it's just a completely staged, fictional production using post-production visual effects, paid actors, etc., then in my view that's not remotely legitimate.
  - hnlmorg 4y ago
    I find the secrets more interesting than the tricks in most instances. I see it as a form of social hacking.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      > I find the secrets more interesting than the tricks in most instances. I see it as a form of social hacking. It depends. I've seen more than one person learning the French Drop fool their own eyes despite performing the trick themselves, feeling the object in their hand, and knowing exactly how it works. Our brains are interesting, and the degree of surprise we can get from cognitive dissonance or mismatched perceptions is hilarious. IMO, most of the secrets are boring. But the overall performance that makes it work is fun.
mrandish 4y ago
> a lot of good slight of hand also falls into the category of the method being amazing. That's true but when slight of hand is amazing it's usually amazing in a different way than the OP's method. At the highest conceptual level, the "secret method" of most sleight of hand can be boiled down to "You hid something in your hand." At least to other magicians, uniquely good sleight of hand is amazing due to the insane level of skill and years of rigorous practice required to "hide something in your hand" in a way that appears impossible. While developing the OP's method did require amazing effort and serious engineering skill, someone else could then perform with that method without the same unique level of technical skill.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  > At the highest conceptual level, the "secret method" of most sleight of hand can be boiled down to "You hid something in your hand." I'm not sure if I agree with that. There are certainly some clever and skillful methods for how an item is literally stored and retrieved, but what's more interesting and impressive to me is the overall choreography. The way all the moves are sequenced and how one move provides misdirection for another move is where the magic happens.
  - mrandish 4y ago
    > what's more interesting and impressive to me is the overall choreography. Yes, I agree. You've described appreciating a magical performance like a magician would appreciate the work of another magician. The general public usually focuses on what they perceive as the "trick" part of creating the illusion (such as an object hidden in the hand they are unaware of). Advanced magical skill involves understanding and then perfecting the often subtle surrounding elements that make the effect so deceptive. In the past I've taught sleight of hand magic to relatively novice students and in the beginning they are always puzzled that even when they've learned "the move", a spectator will often just say "it's in your other hand." Yet when I perform the exact same move to similar spectators it never even occurs to anyone that something might be in the other hand. The difference is a dozen subtle things from where my eyes are looking, to the position of my body, to the pacing of my speech. I had to learn these techniques from my mentors and then rigorously practice them until perfected. In a lot of sleight of hand magic, any "move" by itself is not all that deceptive. The context and choreography around the move are what elevate the performance to what seems like real magic.

Jasper_ 4y ago

The routines in that case are designed to be entertaining, they don't give away secrets that aren't theirs to begin with, and there's often a double bluff where they purport to give away secrets, but there's still an element they don't disclose, or the supposed secret is just misdirection (e.g. the phone inside fish trick) A lot of P&T tricks are boring once the secret is revealed. They don't reveal those tricks.

tshaddox 4y ago
> A lot of P&T tricks are boring once the secret is revealed. This is the mindset I don't understand. Unless the secret is something the spectator might reasonably consider "cheating" (like, if it turns out that a video production that's ostensibly of a live performance actually used post-production visual effects), I don't see in what sense knowing the secret ruins the trick. Perhaps for some people it might, but as long as the "secret revelation" content is separate from the "trick performance" content, I trust people to identify for themselves which content they want to watch.
- zbuf 4y ago
  All magic tricks are cheating. It's just sometimes the cheat is just something you didn't think of and not a lot more. Sometimes it's a gadget or gimmick; not something that requires a lot of practice. Of course there's amazing sleight of hand -- you are correct. But a lot of magic is creativity & performance, not necessarily skill. The lines are blurred and that's the fun.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    > All magic tricks are cheating. It's just sometimes the cheat is just something you didn't think of and not a lot more. I think we're using different terminology here. I think there's a pretty big distinction between, for instance, the widely known variants of the sawing a woman in half trick where there are two people in the two halves of the box, and watching a video broadcast of a magic show where it turns out they just used visual effects to accomplish the effect. Perhaps the lines are blurry and different spectators might disagree in some cases, but I think there's a set of explanations that would be considered "cheating" in the negative sense.
    - vanviegen 4y ago
      Exactly. When the audience needs to observe the trick by proxy, because it's not practical to have everybody touching the object, standing on stage, or being in the TV studio, that proxy must be honest. If I can't trust that to be the case, I'd only be interested in a trick if I can be the one on stage touching the object. No more global audience for you, cheating magician.
      - hgsgm 4y ago
        This is why Fool Us is what it is. P&T put magicians on TV but they put themselves in the audience so the TV audience trusts that it isn't just video editing like so many TV magic shows. But Fool Us does edit out "tells" that you could see by freeze-framing the recording but wouldn't notice in real life.
      - tshaddox 4y ago
        Right. It's the same with audience plants, unless there's also something specifically interesting about the way the audience plant operated. If the magician just picks a stooge from the audience, says "the number you're thinking of is 17," and the stooge says "wow, how did you read my mind?" that is not a remotely legitimate magic trick in my view. Likewise, if you're watching a guerrilla magic television special (e.g. David Blaine: Street Magic) and it turns out it's just a completely staged, fictional production using post-production visual effects, paid actors, etc., then in my view that's not remotely legitimate.
- hnlmorg 4y ago
  I find the secrets more interesting than the tricks in most instances. I see it as a form of social hacking.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    > I find the secrets more interesting than the tricks in most instances. I see it as a form of social hacking. It depends. I've seen more than one person learning the French Drop fool their own eyes despite performing the trick themselves, feeling the object in their hand, and knowing exactly how it works. Our brains are interesting, and the degree of surprise we can get from cognitive dissonance or mismatched perceptions is hilarious. IMO, most of the secrets are boring. But the overall performance that makes it work is fun.

mrandish 4y ago

> a lot of good slight of hand also falls into the category of the method being amazing. That's true but when slight of hand is amazing it's usually amazing in a different way than the OP's method. At the highest conceptual level, the "secret method" of most sleight of hand can be boiled down to "You hid something in your hand." At least to other magicians, uniquely good sleight of hand is amazing due to the insane level of skill and years of rigorous practice required to "hide something in your hand" in a way that appears impossible. While developing the OP's method did require amazing effort and serious engineering skill, someone else could then perform with that method without the same unique level of technical skill.

tshaddox 4y ago
> At the highest conceptual level, the "secret method" of most sleight of hand can be boiled down to "You hid something in your hand." I'm not sure if I agree with that. There are certainly some clever and skillful methods for how an item is literally stored and retrieved, but what's more interesting and impressive to me is the overall choreography. The way all the moves are sequenced and how one move provides misdirection for another move is where the magic happens.
- mrandish 4y ago
  > what's more interesting and impressive to me is the overall choreography. Yes, I agree. You've described appreciating a magical performance like a magician would appreciate the work of another magician. The general public usually focuses on what they perceive as the "trick" part of creating the illusion (such as an object hidden in the hand they are unaware of). Advanced magical skill involves understanding and then perfecting the often subtle surrounding elements that make the effect so deceptive. In the past I've taught sleight of hand magic to relatively novice students and in the beginning they are always puzzled that even when they've learned "the move", a spectator will often just say "it's in your other hand." Yet when I perform the exact same move to similar spectators it never even occurs to anyone that something might be in the other hand. The difference is a dozen subtle things from where my eyes are looking, to the position of my body, to the pacing of my speech. I had to learn these techniques from my mentors and then rigorously practice them until perfected. In a lot of sleight of hand magic, any "move" by itself is not all that deceptive. The context and choreography around the move are what elevate the performance to what seems like real magic.