I’ve recently heard of Darren Brown who is immensely popular in the UK. If you search you-tube for him you will be stuck watching for a while. He’ll be on the Sci Fi channel in the US soon, so now would be a good time to hit this topic.
While Brown has never used the term NLP, it is very obviously, sometimes hilariously implied in his tricks. For example, Brown goes on the subway with cameras rolling to make people forget where they are going to get off the train. He blatanly asks / suggests “What is your stop? Thinking about it. What is your stop? Thinking about it. What is your stop? Thinking about it.” and they can’t come up with a destination.
Some of this NLP is blantant misdirection brillianlty used for what would otherwise be your garden variety magic trick. For example, every other magican worth watching can change the contents of a sealed evelope and Brown suggests that he uses mind control for force the contents in the first place.
My suggestion is that mind control and hypnosis should be re-visited using these conscious and overt methods. Does it work? Do people notice it? I do watching the videos, but I’m looking for it. Can you take a loosing dog race ticket up to a cashier and bash your fist on the frame at the appropriate time while saying “This IS the WIN-ning ticket, that IS why I came to this (BAM) WIN-dow.” and have the cash handed to you?
Brown often tells how the tricks are done, but I personly think that is all part of the misdirection.
~~ SPOILER WARNING ~~
In “Russian Roulette” there was no live ammuntion on the set and Derren Brown did manipulate the postion of the blank to the cylider marked as #1 after saying the word ONE a half dozen times to the guy inserting the dummy round under the table. It turns out that some people where up in arms about this guy running around in Jersey with a loaded hand gun. Of course this was anticipated and the local authorites were in on the trick and someone let the cat out of the bag.
Derren Brown has written a book - Trick of the Mind - in which he describes many of his techniques, and his attitude towards them. I read it recently. He says that he trained in NLP, but he now thinks most of it is utter bullshit, but parts of it work, so he uses them.
His “disclaimer” at the beginning of his TV programmes says he gets his results from “a combination of magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship; at no time are confederates or actors used”. I see no reason to believe he doesn’t use a lot of different tricks of the trade. Most of his stuff just seems to revolve around forces, so he probably just combines the traditional magician-type physical forces with mental forces like NLP. Of course, we have to take his word that he doesn’t use confederates… although I suppose that the disclaimer makes people more likely to trust him when it’s essentially just the same as him saying nothing is part of the psychology.
I too started watching the clips on YouTube and got totally addicted.
One of the things he does very well, indeed, is use psychological effects in some of his tricks while suggesting he uses them in all his tricks, which isn’t the case.
For instance, this video, in which he gets a college student piss-drunk without having him take a sip of alcohol seems based on actual hypnosis techniques.
In this video, he has a man sort a bunch of photographs based on whether he feels “drawn towards” the people in the pictures. At the end, it is revealed that all the people he was drawn towards are alive, and all the others are dead. The man is suitably flabergasted, and after the trick is over says: “it’s possible I was being guided in some sort of way.” Some of the comments on YouTube went along this line, how DB put clever hints in the photographs, or whatnot. However, compare this trick with this standard card trick.
It’s almost exactly the same, but DB 's presentation is far, far superior and the psychology misdirection is part of the reason I think.
I was in the audience for a pilot of his show. He identified me as a troublemaker and slagged off my clothes to keep me in a submissive state. While wearing a black velvet suit and sporting David Brent style facial hair…
I have a friend who is big into NLP - runs training courses etc. Just talking to her my BS detector goes off repeatedly. It sounds to me like NLP takes a load of psychological tricks, comes up with some unproven (unprovable?) unifying theory to explain them and to tie them all together, then claims they are somehow unique to NLP. From what jjimm said it sounds like DB may be of a similar opinion.
I’m surprised we haven’t had someone yet post (or did I miss it?) saying that subjects of hypnosis are never anything more than willing participants in the whole process. I’ve never been able to reconcile that with some of the things people are apparently caused to do, but people keep saying that’s all there is to it.
Mr Brown says just that in his book too. He thinks hypnosis is also 99.9% bull, though cites one incident (a friend seeing a rhinoceros following a suggestion by DB, when the friend had no motivation to fake it) that he couldn’t explain.
I think he cheats the viewer sometimes. For instance, the photographic memory one, or the pickup one, obviously aren’t possible to do with the reasons he presents. And I don’t see how he can do it without help from outside the view of the camera.
I read “If Tomorrow Comes” by Sydney Sheldon where a female theif pulls off the same trick with the chess masters. I have to assume that one of you guys had read that as well.
All the players knew beforehand that there were only 3 ways to beat us:
bribe us (sadly there was no offer of money, just sandwiches!)
get Kasparov or a computer to play all the games (rather expensive)
play mirror chess
Most of us had given simultaneous displays before. In these, the master walks round the outside making moves as soon as each player does. All the players can see each other throughout.
Derren got us to sit where we could only see the adjacent boards. So already we knew what was coming.
He waited for us to move, looked thoughtful and wandered off (to get the reply from the other side of the circle). Another confirmation of mirror chess.
Why did we go along with it?
Firstly it was good publicity for chess. The show was very well done.
Secondly Derren had to remember perfectly about 500 moves (in batches of 8). This is not easy.
(Derren nearly made one mistake, playing Bd6 before correcting it to Bf6.) :eek:
Thirdly we all liked being on TV (and now Youtube!)
Fourthly all magic is just trickery. But Derren is very good at the misdirection and showmanship.
Also, after the display, he took time to thank us all and signed autographs for some of my pupils. Decent bloke.
Just to show you what we knew on the day:
I was sitting next to Grandmaster Chris Ward, who had Black. His game started 1. d4 Nf6 2. Bg5. This meant Chris was playing Grandmaster Julian Hodgson, who is the leading British expert in the opening. Julian was also top seed, so Chris grinned ruefully at that point (he did lose a hard-fought game).
the only game that wasn’t mirror chess was against Robert Chan, who was unknown to most of us. (He’s not currently rated in England.) I saw the game and would estimate that whoever was playing Derren’s moves for him would be at least a 2200 ELO rated player. There was such a player listed in the credits, but I still don’t know how he passed the moves to Derren.
Seems to me that this thread would be better suited for Cafe Society. There are a few questions in the OP, but they seem a bit tangential. I have also edited the title for clarity.
If it’s the library trick you’re talking about, years and years ago, I saw someone do that very trick on tv with the yellow pages. In the end, I seem to remember they explained how it was done. There’s little to no memory involved.
I have trained myself to answer that sort of question with a non sequitur. It’s come in handy surprisingly often, when people attempt to trick me into answering something. I tend to reply ‘Bacon?’
