“These ain’t the vittles yer lookin’ fer, Jethro.”
I was going to post here earlier, but I ended up in another thread instead.
The Jedi mind trick is not mind control. There’s a reason it’s called a “trick”. It’s more like a distraction. Most people aren’t continuously thinking about what they’re doing. They are simply doing it; only occasionally reassessing what and why. The mind trick simply bumps their internal record needle to another track, with some direction by the Jedi.
There’ve been psych experiments where the subject makes a choice based on their own preference. Like choosing which one of several pictures is they like best. They’re distracted by something, and the picture they choose is swapped with one they didn’t. Some subjects eventually notice the switcheroo, but others don’t and will go on to defend their “choice” which wasn’t their choice at all.
Our minds run in well-worn ruts.
This still isn’t the thread you were looking for.
Sort of like how Gaspode the Dog influences people in the Discworld books: Everyone knows that dogs can’t talk, so when someone hears what he said, they tend to assume that it was just their own inner monologue they were hearing.
Of course, what their inner monologue is saying usually turns out to be something along the lines of “Oh, what a nice little doggie! I should give him some food.”.
I’ve read of a couple of similar experiments, and now I’m trying to remember where. One was done on a busy sidewalk. A person would come up to another person and ask for directions. Two people carrying something large and flat would walk between them, blocking the view of the person giving directions. While blocked, the questioner would be switched with another person, one dressed differently. Usually this wasn’t noticed.
Another was done in a room. The subject was asked to watch a video of a basketball game and count the number of turnovers. During the game, a person in a gorilla costume would wander onto the court and then off. Some people would be caught up enough in watching the ball that they’d miss it completely. I think it was about half and half, but don’t remember the percentages.
It’s completely plausible that the JMT would use this propensity. If so, it’s not a matter of how strongly your mind can focus, but of how aware you are of your surroundings. I can completely believe that Jedi are trained in awareness of their surroundings. (Now I need to remember where I read that. It’s going to annoy me until I do.)
Obviously, they sent the mitichlorians to lobotomize whoever it was they needed to jedi-trick.
You didn’t read it. A Jedi just told you that you did.
That would be the work of magician Derren Brown. Mr. Brown’s work first came to my attention through that august journal of scientific inquiry, Cracked.com.
To the extent it ever was, yes. Which is to say, no.
I’ve seen DB’s trick done as an actual experiment. You have someone behind a counter giving you a survey, and they have to bend down and get something. A different person pops back up. I forget what percentage noticed, but it was pretty low.
Also, DB is a magician who occasionally uses well-known experiments to add to his illusion that he is really manipulating people’s minds. IF you’ll look, most of his stuff is very simple magic.
Also linked to in the Cracked.com article.
But that seems a totally different experiment than the others mentioned. You’ve asked them to watch the ball, and some people are concentrating effectively enough to not be distracted by extraneous events. In the others, the subjects are talking to a person; failure to notice that that person has changed into a different person represents a lack of the attention that was asked for.
Ha! Your simple mind tricks won’t work on me.
Hey, what’s that shiny thing over there?
…Um, where were we?
Well, the dealer’s name is Elan Sleazebaggano. He probably didn’t realize anything was amiss with the product name.
Going down the dark path, you are.
I’ve always been under the impression that “weak minded” simply meant “non Jedi-savvy”. They don’t actually have to be Jedi, but at least familiar with the mind trick. Otherwise, you’d have audience members going “Why doesn’t Luke just mind-trick Vader into being a nice guy?” and “Why doesn’t Obi-Wan just mind-trick enemies into killing themselves?”
On the other hand, calling poorly made distilled alcohol “rotgut” and “redeye” didn’t deter people from drinking it. In fact I would suppose there to be a subset of people who would use such products just to show how bad they were.
This got me thinking. Lucas was never above borrowing from others in order to create his characters. Consider: The jedi were trained by Yoda, who insisted on the old ways, was older than dirt, talked funny, ate strange wildlife, and was the one who actually ran things without seeming to.
My God. Yoda is based on Grannie.
Did Lucas have a Jewish Grannie? 
What? Do you think you are some kind of Jedi or something? Mind tricks don’t work on me. I’m a Doper!