Exposure as Convincer
/In last Wednesday's post I said that if people had a magic concept they’d like tested in front of a focus group they could send it along to me and I’d consider it for some upcoming testing we’re scheduling for the end of summer. I got a number of good ideas, although they might not crack the list for this particular round of testing. And I got a few emails that I already have some answers for. A couple because we had tested in the past what was suggested in the email (I’ll post those later this week). And this one below because I have some thoughts on it based on some of my own testing.
Here’s the email from Doug G.
I'm thrilled that testing is back. There has been something I've been thinking about for a long time, and my discussions on this with magicians has been, let's say, less than satisfying. Here's my question:
There are a huge number of ways to gain a peek at what is written on a billet. Some are direct (real time center tears, obsidian, stack peeks), some are delayed (center tears, peek wallets), and many are "invisible." But that isn't my issue. It's that regardless of how the information is obtained, the most obvious explanation is that "somehow you saw what I wrote."
I know you have put a lot of thought into how to justify writing on pieces of paper, and I love your approaches And magicians/mentalists always tell me that with suitable staging and revelation (or "pre-revelation") they "never" get this response. Or they tell me to do it pre-show, and it won't matter what they think (obviously unsuitable for casual performance).
What percentage of spectators, given a reasonable "psychological" reveal, give their #1 response as "you used very interesting psychology," versus "somehow you read what I wrote?" Use any "invisible" method that negates the "you read it when you did this" sort of response. I'd love to know. —DG
While we’ve never officially tested the exact question asked in Doug’s final paragraph, I’ve spent a lot of time personally testing ideas to allow us to get people not to default to some Easy Answers.
The “Easy Answer” when you reveal something they wrote down is that somehow you read what they wrote down. WHY ELSE WOULD THEY THINK ANYTHING BUT THIS?? Some mentalists will say something like, “No one I perform for thinks this. If your audience thinks you looked at what they wrote down, then you need to work on your peeking technique.”
People who think that way are not just bad magicians. They’re utterly moronic humans in general. You can’t “technique” your way out of the situation. The only way to believe you can is if you wholly underestimate your audience. “They didn't catch me peeking the information, so they must believe I read their mind!”
(This is the “Wishful Thinking” brand of magic theory. It’s very popular. “Nobody ever asked me to examine the deck. Therefore they must believe it’s not a gimmicked deck.” The most fragile magic egos think this way. And it perpetuates itself, because most people are nice and don’t want to put fragile egos on the spot, so they don’t call these magicians out on their obviously gimmicked deck (or whatever). And the magicians think, “I’m really fooling them!”)
The best way to get people not to suspect a peek is to expose it. That is to say, you have to bring up the idea. And you have to do it before you could possibly get the peek.
So they’ve written a word down. “Now, at the end of this, you’re going to tell yourself, ‘He must have read the word I wrote down. He must have looked at it at some point when I wasn’t paying attention.’ So I need you to be really focused and if you see me even look in the direction of your card, call me out, and we’ll start over.”
You see what happens here, yes?
It’s a little more than just warning them what’s going to happen.
Think about this… Imagine you wake up in the morning and there’s a ceramic squirrel statue on your kitchen table that wasn’t there the night before.
I call you up on the phone and say, “I made a squirrel statue appear on your table by magic.”
You’re going to say (or think), “No you didn’t. I probably left a door unlocked. Or you had a key. Or a window was open.” You’re not going to believe the “magical” solution when there are many other reasonable explanations.
Now imagine instead, I call you the night before and say, “Something is going to happen tonight and you’re going to be certain that someone came in your house. But that’s not the case. That’s why I need you to make it impossible for anyone to get in without you knowing.” So you go and board up all the doors and windows with sheets of wood and nails. You set up video cameras. And put in an alarm system that senses any movement.
Now the next morning a squirrel statue is on your kitchen table that wasn’t there the night before and I say, “I made a squirrel statue appear on your table by magic.”
Do you say, “Oh, I guess someone must have got in without me knowing”?
No. And you don’t say that for two reasons:
That itself would be a magic trick. How did anyone get in when you were on guard for them? That’s no longer an “Easy Answer.” It’s an impossibility.
If you say, “Someone got in without me knowing,” you are saying you failed. Because you were warned. That was your one job, to make sure that didn’t happen. To say that someone got in makes you complicit in somehow fooling yourself.
So now we go back to the word written on the slip of paper.
“Make sure I never even look in the direction of that card. This is super important. If you see me look at it, stop me.”
At the end your spectator won’t say, “Well, he probably just saw the word.” They might not believe you read their mind or their body language or whatever. But they should be left without an answer to satisfy them. This is how we create mystery. No Easy Answers. They may, in fact, believe you looked at the paper somehow, but now that explanation is itself a mystery because they are sure they didn’t see you look near the paper. And why would you tell them not to let you do that if that’s what you were going to do?
Now, an issue you might run into is that your peeking technique doesn’t hold up to exposing what you’re going to do beforehand. If you have to go back into your wallet to get a second business card, of if you’re looking at the billet while you tear it up, or if it’s a business card in a stack of other business cards and they’re not certain where their card is, then they may very well may call you out for looking at the card when you are in fact looking at the card. This is letting you know that this technique isn’t strong enough for the effect.
Years ago, I wrote about “broken tricks.” I defined these as: Tricks where the method that is used prevents you from establishing the conditions that are needed for the trick to be seen as truly impossible.
Many peeks are “broken” in this way.
Here’s the thing, if your peek doesn’t hold up to them guarding against you peeking the information in the moment, then it ALSO won’t hold up to them searching their memory to be convinced that you didn’t look at the card at some point. Does that make sene? It’s actually harder to demonstrate that something was fair after the fact, than it is to demonstrate it in the moment. That’s because it’s impossible to do it after the fact.
So what types of peeks hold up to this level of scrutiny? Generally (but not always):
wallet peeks where you never go back in the walle
center tears that aren’t peeked during the tearing
peeks that happen after a billet is switched (if, for example, they believe their billet is over on the side of the table, but really you’re unfolding it in your lap)
There are plenty of options that will work for this. But there are also plenty options that won’t. Common sense and testing for real people will help you determine which are which.
In an upcoming post we’ll look at which is the better false riffle shuffle: the Zarrow Shuffle or a push-through shuffle. I have some data on that from previous testing. And it’s sort of related to today’s post.
Just out of curiosity, let’s see what you think is stronger: