The trouble with that is there is often more than one method to do a particular trick. You do the trick using a piece of equiptment that you bought in a shop. Blaine might perhaps do it by a different, and much cleverer method. Maybe he’s cunningly palming a duplicate can and switching them through skillful use of misdirection.
The point is, you cannot say how Blaine is performing his trick. All you can do is tell how you perform a similar trick. If you say that’s hiow Blaine does it, you might be right, but then again you could be totally wrong. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
It’s about whatever happens to come up that some people might be secret and throw a fit over someone else discussing.
I think if you don’t want magic tricks revealed, then absolutely that’s what you should adhere to. But you have no right to expect other people to adhere to this ethic, and if you’re in a factual discussion, you can’t expect to persuade anyone with secret evidence that you can’t share. And thirdly, we’ve heard the “code of silence” schtick a thousand times, please, stop grandly tossing it around. We know. Not all of us care.
Darnit, we KNOW, OK? Magicians are not the only geniuses who may or may not deign to stoop to grace a group of laymen on a public bulletin board with their pearls of carefully guarded wisdom. When we ask a question on a BBS, we all know we may get some good answers and that we may get a pile of garbage. As for your part, if you don’t intend to answer, all you have to do is not answer. Your goldenhearted efforts to educate us on the “futility” of answering questions is (1) in itself futile, since a lot of this stuff is already published on the internet, and (2) redundant since we all know the secrecy that enhances the show, and (3) looks a lot less like a helpful warning than self-serving obscurantism, dissuading some from asking and others from answering.
Some do. If you aren’t one of them, just don’t answer.
It is about anyone who thinks magicians may practice obscurantism in the GQ forum. There’s no need for me to make it about Ianzin and there’s no need for you to make it about me.
No. It has no force of law. Anyone who wants to observe a trade ethic is free to do so. I am not in the trade and am not bound to enforce secrecy.
True* but generally people are asking questions because they are interested in how a trick was done. If people can’t give them an exact answer then so be it but I fail to see why it should be just ignored because some posters here have a problem with magic tricks being talked about.
As has been said many times if you don’t want to participate then don’t but others will. They may be talking crap sometimes but once they stay within the rules of this board, what’s the problem? There are many people here including myself who make money by knowing how to fix certain computer related problems. Individuals or companies have spent a lot of money on gaining that knowledge. Should all computer related queries be stopped just because I and others make money from this knowledge or some users may post inaccurate information about the subject? Why should magic be a sacred cow?
The initial objection about talking about how tricks were done was about copyright. This has been shown to be BS unless someone is actually quoting copyrighted material.
If you don’t like a thread or it’s subject don’t read it or report it to the Admin.
*The owner of the trick says that the way I know is the way Blaine does it BTW and no special equipment etc. is required just a bit of prep work.
It’s nothing like copyright. Copyrights are protected by law.
In fact, it’s nothing like a trade secret. Trade secrets are also protected by law.
I agree with the general sentiment that we should not discourage people from asking any category of factual questions in GQ. I have no problem with Ianzin offering his opinion that the OP is unlikely to get a good answer, but beyond that, just let the asker ask and whoever wants to answer answer.
That’s the point I was making. There’s no secret to learning a Baroque guitar prelude, other than just working your way through the music and practicing.
That’s exactly right, and I think it’s a good idea to try and distinguish between the two. Isn’t it? Especially here, of all places, on the Straight Fighting Ignorance Dope?
Look, it’s not just about pointing out that ‘you’re not likely to get a correct answer’. Consider a recent example. There was speculation about what Blaine may or may not be up to in trying to hold his breath for a long time under water. Someone said that they’d seen Penn & Teller do a routine where Teller was trapped in a water tank, and they’d also found out (from a P&T book) that in actual fact Teller wasn’t holding his breath and was able to breathe via some secret method. Now, these two things (the Blaine stunt and the P&T routine) have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The modus operandi behind the P&T stunt does not apply and could not apply to what Blaine was up to. So isn’t it worth pointing out – politely and respectfully – that this suggestion is, in fact, erroneous? This isn’t about trying to obscure anything. It’s about being concerned that someone’s going to go away thinking something is the case when it isn’t.
When I post a question around here, I know I might get a mix of answers - some good, some not so good. And I appreciate it when other Dopers come along and clarify things for me, even if it’s just to say, 'Hey, that answer you got a few posts back, it may have been well-intentioned, but it’s not right… '.
That’s just fine, and if you want to do that, then you provide your sources like any other expert. Nothing wrong with that. What I ask you not to do is make a statement of fact and then say “That’s how it is, and you’ll have to take my word for it, because I’m a magician and we don’t reveal secrets.” Or an inventor, or film director, or attorney, or inventor, or whatever the case might be.
I think a better analogy would be someone that ruins new movies by giving plot details in unboxed spoilers. He hasn’t broken copyright, stolen a trade secret, or done anything illegal, but he has ruined the fun for everyone else. I’ll take a guess that a repeat offender would be banned from the dope. The whole fun of a magic trick is in the mystery. Giving away a secret ruins it for other people.
Brain Wreck, just suppose you wrote to a film director and asked him to give away the ending of his next movie, what sort of reaction do you think you’d get? Asking professional magicians to simply give away their methods is pretty much the same thing. If you want the mystery spoilt for yourself, not many professionals will help you. Now, if you want to actually become a magician yourself, and wish to learn the trick in order to entertain others, that’s a different story. They will help you with that, but not on an open forum.
The spoiler issue. We discuss spoiler info about movies and tv shows here all the time. Sometimes the spoilers are included in spoiler boxes. Many times the whole thread is clearly spoiler oriented (either with “spoilers” included in the title or due to the nature of the question.
Clearly, any thread asking about how a “magic” trick is done is by default a spoiler thread. Anyone reading such a thread should expect to hear possible explanations of the trick.
I have no idea why the issue of “spoiling things for people who don’t want to know” got into this thread. It is not at all germane.
One of the key rules which makes the SDMB work is the “don’t be a jerk” rule. In my opinion, certain people coming into the “magic” trick threads and not discussing how a trick could be done are being jerks.
If you don’t like the topic of discussion of a thread, don’t post in it.
ianzin’s posts fall into this category. Of course he/she is going to get flamed for posting the same unhelpful stuff over and over.
“Magic” tricks are not trade secrets anymore than movie endings. Yes, you can pay $10 and find out what “Rosebud” means or you can ask someone who knows. Being told over and over and over “You really should invest time and money in seeing the movie. Anyone who tells you what Rosebud really means could be wrong.” etc. is one of those “What is wrong with this person?” kind of things.
As others have noted, we talk about spoilers all the time here on SDMB and we even have unboxed spoiler threads. Any GQ thread should be considered by default to be an unboxed spoiler thread.
This is another episode from Bad Analogy Theatre. To be more accurate, it’s like asking someone on the street the spoiler of “The Crying Game” when it’s been out for a decade or more. I don’t want to waste 5 bucks and 2 hours just to pick up a cultural reference, and if somebody is willing to save me that time and trouble, good for them.
Fortunately the world is full of amateurs.
Then those magicians should stay away from open forums where we’re talking about this kind of stuff, because it matters not one iota to me what they think is best for my entertainment experience. I’m not interested in the entertainment experience or in becoming an entertainer.
Yes, this is usually true, but not always. Sometimes in a ‘magic trick’ thread the OP isn’t asking ‘how is it done?’. He’s asking to be referred to a good source as in this thread about card manipulations. I’d be surprised if you could characterise my post to that thread as ‘unhelpful’.
I apologise to you if you feel I’ve been ‘a jerk’ or that my posts have been ‘unhelpful’. I haven’t been aiming to post ‘unhelpful’ stuff! Quite the opposite. But I live and learn. As I said in response to Brain Wreck’s point, if a question is asked and someone posts an answer that is just plain wrong or inaccurate, then it might be in the questioner’s interests to know this, rather than to go away under the misapprehension that the answer was correct. I think this applies to just about any question posted on the Boards, including those about magic. I know that if I ask a question on the Boards and someone pops up with an answer that isn’t right, I’d find it helpful for someone to point this out.
I have seen many of these kinds of discussions about magic secrets and exposure (not just here on the Boards), and it’s often the case that people offer analogies with other kinds of information, such as patented intellectual property, copyright works of art, and the endings to movies. I understand why people reach for these comparisons, but I agree with ftg and Brain Wreck that they are too flawed and distant to cast much light on the issue. To take a simple example, in threads involving movie plots, it would be quite rare for someone who doesn’t actually know the facts to hazard a guess based on something else they think they remember seeing a while ago. But it happens in the ‘magic trick’ threads all the time.
So, what do you think of Hitchcock asking the audience to “Don’t give away the ending - it’s the only one we have!” then? Of course, there was a lot more to Psycho than a twist ending, but when you already know the twists it doesn’t have the same impact.
Yes, indeed - amateurs who don’t speak with any kind of actual knowledge. Amateurs who will likely give you wrong information. You should understand that.
But to satisy your curiosity, you are willing to spoil everyone else’s fun, AND perhaps destroy someone else’s livelihood in the process. Don’t be surprised if someone is not inclined to help you.
Hopefully sometime in the next month or so we’ll have a new sticky at the top of the General Questions forum. This will summerize what has become a hodge-podge of stickies. This is happening in all the forums.
But, there will be NO mention of a specific ban on or policy about threads or posts about magic. Anymore than there will be one on garbage collecting.
As a moderator in that forum, here’s my personal take on the magic problem:
Anyone is free to ask anything they wish in General Questions about magic tricks. Anyone is free to post factual answers to that thread. Beyond that, the only inportant things is that posters try to stay to the guidelines for the forum.
I personally don’t think ianzin has been a problem in his posts to magic threads. I know that many well-meaning posters do. We’ll have to agree to disagree. He has, IMHO, always tried to correct misconceptions, and when people have taken wild guesses on how things are done, he has said, in his professional opinion that they are incorrect. I personally don’t think he has ever posted in bad faith.
As far as I am concerned as a moderator, he has as much right to posts his professional opinions to those threads as others have in posting what they consider to be possible solutions to the tricks.
I just wanted to say thanks to the mods for doing this. All the new one-sticky forum guidelines are well done and useful.
After the pit one was finished, I thought about the ATMB stickies. If it were me, I might merge a couple of them, but I doubt I’d reduce them all to a single sticky. (I might retitle some of them for a consistent look, though. heh.)
Please stop being repetitive. We all understand what plot spoilers are. Some like to discuss them, some don’t. The ones who don’t have adequate opportunity to avoid the conversation.
Due diligence is a given. Let me make that judgement myself. (Last time I checked, we’re still on the internet, to be taken with the world’s largest grain of salt no matter who is speaking).
Been melodramatic much lately? If I’m only educating myself, how am I ruining anyone else’s fun, except perhaps the magician’s fun in collecting my fee of admission?
This is probably be the least surprising event that we tend to encounter in life; it does not merit repeating with a sanctimonious lecture.