My honors Spanish teacher recently told us an anecdote involving one of her college professors who she claimed had the ability to “read” a number on someone’s mind. It could be any number at all (I’m assuming positive integers). No pens or paper. She claims that of a class of 15, he correctly guessed at least 10, including her own, 250, by simply looking them in the eyes as they mentally focused on a number.
It’s quite possible that she either forgot or omitted a key detail, but she insists that her story is true and the upper level French professor is a legitimate mind reader with regard to numbers.
We couldn’t refute her story outright because of similar tricks performed by mentalist magicians like Criss Angel. A quick search on Google yielded a few results, one book did claim to teach how to guess numbers in a similar manner with remarkable 80% accuracy. Is such a feat even possible? If so, how is it done?
Thanks for checking this thread out. I’ve been a Straightdope lurker for almost a year and the intellectual prowess and quality expertise demonstrated on this forum never ceases to amaze me. I’ll hopefully become a paid member soon.
You are right in thinking she is not remembering the effect correctly. There are details of the effect that the spectator either didn’t notice or simply forgot that are crucial to the success of said effect. Magicians use this lapse in spectator memory to their advantage and some (like Houdini) have become legend because of it.
The framing and presentation of a magical effect has a lot to do with this as well. There are plenty of times the magician or mentalist is starting his routine without the spectator knowing it, so he could have led the group into a mental state that made them predisposed to selecting certain numbers without the group even knowing he was doing it.
Without more details on the effect I can’t tell how it was done exactly, but I hope this gives you a little more to think about.
Yeah, if there’s no limit on the value of the number, I’d like to see that actually happen in front of me. Who would pick a number like 250? If I were told to choose a positive integer, and the magician could simply look into my eyes and know that I was thinking of 13,873,521, maybe then I’d be impressed. And then he’d have to do it for me at least 5 times in a row for me to start believing.
Hah I know, we gave her some grief when she said she picked 250. I’m going to press her some more tomorrow and see if she remembers anything else. I’m guessing there were limits either inherent (as suggested by Dragwyr) or explicit. I think that this professor definitely used that lapse in memory.
No limits? I would’ve picked “the result calling the ackerman function with the arguments being the number produced by calling the ackerman funtion with graham’s number with the arguments”
a(a(g[sub]64[/sub],g[sub]64[/sub]),a(g[sub]64[/sub],g[sub]64[/sub]))
GOOD LUCK!
Anyway I’d look into pressing her memory, goign through hypnosis [sub]the number you will think of is 98 POWER OF SUGGESTION[/sub] and such.
Care to let me guess what you’re thinking voer the itnernet?
That’s not really that out there, though, in the right crowd. It’s a bit risky that someone might actually guess such a thing, as seen by the fact that we both know what that’s a reference to. (Proof at end of post)
I would stick with BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed’s suggestion of 13,873,521. I’d be shocked if anyone ever guesses 13,873,521. In fact, I’m going to use it as my random number of choice from now on. (Replacing my previous standard.)
As was mentioned above, it is absolutely commonplace for people to forget key details of how a trick works. And so when they “remember” the trick, it seems impossible. But they’ve forgotten the key details that would reveal how the trick was done. If you could watch a video of the trick and play it back you could eventually figure out how it was done, but human memory doesn’t work like a video.
So the mentalist who did the trick had some sort of method for constraining the choices his audience could make, or some sort of method for narrowing down the choices made, it’s just that the people in the audience didn’t remember that detail because it didn’t seem significant…at the time. I have no idea how the mentalist actually did the trick, but I’ll guarantee it didn’t happen like this:
The description of the trick as given in the OP does not match any actual mind-reading trick, method or routine that I know of. It’s true that I don’t know everything about mind-reading tricks, but I know enough to be considered an expert on the subject.
However, as several Dopers have pointed out, people very seldom remember the details of a magic trick correctly. Indeed, we (magicians and mindreaders) work very hard to ensure that some details are overlooked, forgotten or never considered relevant in the first place. Also, the ‘mis-remembering’ that occurs over time only ever shifts in one direction: to make the trick sound more amazing and impossible than it actually was at the time.
Obviously, this question can’t be resolved with certainty unless we have access to either a repeat performance by the performer in question or accurate details of the trick as performed. However, I would bet very serious money that the description provided omits at least one crucial detail pertinent to the method.
Odd things do happen when guessing people’s numbers. My fave was in high school when the various departments had “open houses”. I was helping with the computer demo. We had a program running the guess your number game from 1 to 1000 (well 1023 would work). 10 guesses max. So my favorite English teacher sat down at the terminal (a classic model 33 teletype) and when the computer made her first guess she just froze. We asked her what was wrong. The computer had started with 512 of course and that turned out to be her number.
One English teacher was now convinced that computers were mind reading geniuses.
Hey Ianzin, I have been wondering, is it possible for me as an amateur to study mind reading in some way. Is there a good book or something, or is it all kept secret?
Well, the reason I used the nested ackerman function in the ackerman function was to remove it one step from from the “what is xkcd” strip making it slightly more unlikely someone would come up with it.
It depends what you want to achieve. If you want to end up actually being able to read minds, I can’t help you and neither can anyone else. However, lots of people will happily take your money in return for books or courses, and promise that yes, they really can show you how to develop your psychic powers and read minds. To call this kind of thing rubbish is an insult to rubbish. If this kind of thing interests you, I’d like to sell you some excellent value real estate in Iraq, plus some tablets that make you instantly super smart and give you the power to fly.
There is a performing art known as magic, and within that art there is a subsection referred to as mentalism. This is magic that pertains to the power and ability of the human mind. Well-known exponents include Banachek, Marc Salem and Derren Brown. These guys can’t read minds any more than they can fly. However, they know how to put on a darn good, entertaining show in which, using skill and talent and some sneaky cheating, they create wonderful and beguiling illusions in which it sure looks like they have phenomenal paranormal skills and abilities.
If you want to learn about mentalism, the two best steps are to join a magic club or society, and buy one or two beginner’s books on mentalism. Don’t expect great results quickly. Learning how to do this kind of thing well takes just as long as it takes to learn to play the guitar well (I speak from first-hand experience of having learned both, although I’m a better mentalist than I am guitarist). You’ll need a lot of time, talent, application, practise and dedication, as well as a willigness to learn a lot that can only be learned from real performing experience in front of real audiences. The tricks and the ‘secrets’ don’t amount to much, and take very little time to learn (just like it doesn’t take long to learn two scales and four chords on a a guitar). But knowing how to use this material and create convincing illusions, and make it entertaining… well, that takes a lifetime, and the learning never ends.
The general rule you’ll find among the magic and mind-reading community is this: people who just have some idle, passing curiosity about how the tricks are done are not very welcome and won’t get much of a warm reception. People with a sincere, long-term interest who actually want to learn and become good performers are VERY welcome, and will receive a lot of help and support from the worldwide community of magicians. Trust me, magicians and mindreaders are a great bunch of people, and I count myself very lucky to have so many friends within this marvellous community, all over the world.
