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> It's like saying that if a magician worked _really really hard_ on improving, evolving and revolutionising their "cut the assistant in half and put them back

by ben_w 1y ago

> It's like saying that if a magician worked _really really hard_ on improving, evolving and revolutionising their "cut the assistant in half and put them back together" trick, they'll eventually be able to actually cut them in half and put them back together. So, surgery? As the stage magicians Penn and Teller (well, just Penn) said, stage magic is about making something very hard look easy, so much so that your audience simply doesn't even imagine the real effort you put into it. Better analogy here would be asking if we're trying to summon cargo gods with hand-carved wooden "radios".

SCdF 1y ago
No, not surgery. Surgery wasn't gotten to by way of working really hard on a magic trick. I'm also reasonably sure surgery is not at a point where you can cut someone entirely in half and put them back together. Since you brought up Penn and Teller, take the bullet catch. They are not actually catching a bullet. No matter how hard they work on perfecting their bullet catch trick, this will not allow them to catch a real bullet shot from a real gun in their real teeth. Working on the trick is not the journey where the end point is doing the actual thing you're representing in the trick.
- ben_w 1y ago
  Surgery is at a point where you can take a living human's heart out without killing them, and replace it with one you got out a corpse. And if the waiting list for donated corpse hearts is too long, you can have yours switched off for months while a machine pumps for you. Lungs, kidneys, liver, lots can be successfully transplanted in similar ways. > Surgery wasn't gotten to by way of working really hard on a magic trick My point is other way around: if you wanted a magic trick where you could literally cut someone in half for real and then put them back together, that is literally "surgery". > They are not actually catching a bullet. No matter how hard they work on perfecting their bullet catch trick, this will not allow them to catch a real bullet shot from a real gun in their real teeth. Working on the trick is not the journey where the end point is doing the actual thing you're representing in the trick. For some tricks, sure. For others… is the nailgun memorising trick faked for safety reasons? I mean, I sure would, and I assume their insurance requires at least some safety interlock that's not visible, but you can just memorise a sequence as Penn says while doing the trick. And a few of the Fool Us tricks he says ~"we think you just practiced really hard for a very long time": https://youtu.be/Lx1P1YA2rlA?feature=shared&t=325 https://youtu.be/Lx1P1YA2rlA?feature=shared&t=325 and same video different timestamp: https://youtu.be/Lx1P1YA2rlA?feature=shared&t=482 https://youtu.be/Lx1P1YA2rlA?feature=shared&t=482

by ben_w 1y ago

SCdF 1y ago

No, not surgery. Surgery wasn't gotten to by way of working really hard on a magic trick. I'm also reasonably sure surgery is not at a point where you can cut someone entirely in half and put them back together. Since you brought up Penn and Teller, take the bullet catch. They are not actually catching a bullet. No matter how hard they work on perfecting their bullet catch trick, this will not allow them to catch a real bullet shot from a real gun in their real teeth. Working on the trick is not the journey where the end point is doing the actual thing you're representing in the trick.

ben_w 1y ago
Surgery is at a point where you can take a living human's heart out without killing them, and replace it with one you got out a corpse. And if the waiting list for donated corpse hearts is too long, you can have yours switched off for months while a machine pumps for you. Lungs, kidneys, liver, lots can be successfully transplanted in similar ways. > Surgery wasn't gotten to by way of working really hard on a magic trick My point is other way around: if you wanted a magic trick where you could literally cut someone in half for real and then put them back together, that is literally "surgery". > They are not actually catching a bullet. No matter how hard they work on perfecting their bullet catch trick, this will not allow them to catch a real bullet shot from a real gun in their real teeth. Working on the trick is not the journey where the end point is doing the actual thing you're representing in the trick. For some tricks, sure. For others… is the nailgun memorising trick faked for safety reasons? I mean, I sure would, and I assume their insurance requires at least some safety interlock that's not visible, but you can just memorise a sequence as Penn says while doing the trick. And a few of the Fool Us tricks he says ~"we think you just practiced really hard for a very long time": https://youtu.be/Lx1P1YA2rlA?feature=shared&t=325 https://youtu.be/Lx1P1YA2rlA?feature=shared&t=325 and same video different timestamp: https://youtu.be/Lx1P1YA2rlA?feature=shared&t=482 https://youtu.be/Lx1P1YA2rlA?feature=shared&t=482