Professional Documents
Culture Documents
com
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vISIONS OF REALITY
joN THOMPSON
fiRST EDITION
PuBLISHED AND PRINTED BY LuLu.coM
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If you didn't pay for this book and did not receive it
personally from me the author, you have stolen it.
You are a cancer on creativity.
I wish you nothing less than a life filled with pain, failure
and frustration, ending with a lingering, agonising death.
Good luck with that. You'll need it.
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-Ian Curtis
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TABU OF CoNTDTS
Introduction to Volume 111... ............................................. 13
PART I - TOOLKIT FOR CONTROL.. .......................... 21
I. Validating the Self......................................................... 23
2. Confirming to Deceive .................................................. 29
3. Controlling With Meaning ............................................ 37
4. Affording to Act.. ......................................................... .43
5. The Shape ofSound ..................................................... .47
6. A New World Awaits .................................................... 53
PART 2- EFFECTS ......................................................... 63
7. Creating New Naked Effects ......................................... 65
8. The Naked Day Test.. .................................................... 69
9. Naked Horrors ............................................................... 75
10. The Naked Credit Card Test... ..................................... 81
II. Naked Readings ........................................................... 83
12. The Naked Headline Prediction .................................. 85
13. The Naked Quiz Prediction ......................................... 87
PART 3- LEARNING DATA MODELS ........................ 89
14. Overview ofTechniques ............................................. 91
15. F ina! Thoughts ........................................................... I 0 I
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INTllODUCTION TO VoLUMBIII
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and accessed at will. You will sometimes fail, but your hit
rate will begin far higher than that of a real psychic's
subconscious guesswork, and that hit rate improves
steadily as you learn more about how to present such
mental feats in ways that suit you, and as you become
comfortable with the idea of performing in this way. The
unrecoverable misses you do encounter will be genuine.
This being the case, your own reactions will also be
genu me.
The Naked approach also leads us to an interesting and
perhaps slightly uncomfortable philosophical proposition.
If the source of a person's professed psychic abilities is
indeed their subconscious mind, then if you become so
versed in a Naked effect that you no longer have to
consciously think about its associated data model to
perform it, are you still deliberately performing an effect
that emulates a psychic ability, or have you deliberately
gained that ability for real?
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through a routine. Something you did or said jolted her out
of the moment. Think back. The more you tried to
convince her that you were doing something in which she
didn't believe, the more she rejected the idea- and you 1
If polite, the spectator may still have been amazed at the
outcome of your routine and may have clapped loudly in
genuine appreciation, but she'll have done so as a
conscious response to a clever show of fakery, and not as a
result of a spontaneous moment of surreal wonder.
Something alerted her mind's critical faculty (her mental
"firewall", if you will). Nothing you could subsequently do
would change her perception, because everything you said
and did raised that firewall a little higher. If you were
aiming for the illusion of reality, then the reality you
created was probably nothing more than the realisation that
you were insisting on a barefaced lie. The question must be
how to stop situations like this happening. Answering that
question is why we're about to delve into the bizarre world
of experimental psychology.
Much of this book starts from the premise that the reasons
people get themselves into sticky situations with sceptical
spectators is that they set out to elicit specific,
predetermined responses, decided upon way in advance of
the performance itself. It is far better to use every means in
your power to elicit a possible response within the
moment. This is where psychology can help us.
Over the past century or so, experimental psychologists
have discovered a long series of what can be usefully
thought of as 'bugs' in the way we think. As we evolved,
A few perfonners have successfully harnessed and subverted this to great comic
effect. It is only a few, however, because it is very difficult lo do.
1
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so did our brains and the minds that live in them 1 We
became increasingly adept at understanding complex
situations from smaller amounts of information. It's a
cliche, albeit a true one, that primitive man survived
because he could very quickly decide whether the rustling
in the bushes was a friend from his tribe foraging for
berries, someone from another tribe out to do him harm, or
a hungry sabre tooth tiger.
From birth, our ability to infer what's going on from tiny
amounts of information grows and forms the basis of how
we understand the world. It generates what we've come to
know as common sense. Everyone knows what common
sense is, which is in itself an example of the phenomenon
of common sense.
We assume that modern life is safe and predictable.
Because of that, we rely on common sense to autopilot us
through life. The problem is, most of modern life is far
from simple. In many cases, actively thinking through
situations is the best course of action. By comparison, the
virtually free ride offered by common sense is a path we
should be wary of treading without first looking to see
where it will lead us, as Matthew MacDonald says in his
book "Your Brain- The Missing Manual" 4
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good side is its blistering speed... The
downside is its paunchy logic. In complex
situations, common sense is all too often
reduced to quick-thinking stupidity."
Advertisers exploit our quick-thinking stupidity all the
time. Think about how difficult it is to work out whether a
supermarket is actually giving you a good deal on a special
offer. No one takes a calculator to the supermarket, and yet
evaluating some offers can only be done using complex
equations. Instead, we go with gut instinct (common sense,
or what "feels" right") and buy a second tube of anchovy
paste that will spoil long before we've used the first.
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misled in ways that are beyond our conscious control.
Phenomena as diverse as phobias, optical illusions and
hypnotic phenomena all amply demonstrate this. To quote
Anthony Jacquin, "reality is plastic". However, the mind is
also capable of accepting new ideas that are at odds with
objective reality without resorting to hypnosis. This is
where things become interesting, and possibly just a little
disturbing.
I want you to imagine you're a prisoner who has been held
in solitary confinement since birth in a soundproof cell
with no windows, and with no way of directly perceiving
the world beyond. Instead, five guards provide you with all
the information you have about the outside world. As they
do so, you naturally imagine what the world must be like you build a mental map, in other words. The more the
guards tell you, the more detailed your map becomes as
you slowly learn to trust their individual stories. They must
be telling the truth because what they each say has always
been consistent with what the others say. For you, the
mental map you have built accurately reflects reality. It is
your reality. The problem is that the guards could suddenly
decide to lie to you, and, as long as what they tell you is
still consistent, you'll simply accept and believe what they
tell you as truth.
As you read these words, for example, you can't help the
feeling that you're experiencing first hand seeing black
letters on white. You might even become momentarily
aware of your eyelids as you blink, and of your breathing.
You believe that you are "out there" in the midst of reality,
experiencing these things first hand. There may be a breeze
against your skin, or sun on your head, but in reality these
things are just an illusion. You're not out there at all, but in
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a little bone box on top of your spine. Your guards are
pulses of raw data from sensory neurons all over your
body, transmitting at a rate of around three million
messages per second, or so it's reckoned. These messages
are automatically sifted, filtered and considered, then
analysed for meaning before being presented to you - if
you're lucky. I say lucky because most of the information
coming into "you" is integrated into your storehouse of
common sense or acted upon at a subconscious level or
even before 5
The realisation that our mental maps are not the same as
the territory they model goes back a lot further than NLP.
In fact, it goes back at least as far as the ancient Greek
philosopher Plato. In book seven of his masterwork The
Republic, he asks us to imagine of a group of people forced
to live facing a wall in a cave. To find out about the world,
they must watch shadows made on the wall by events
behind them. From this, they gradually infer what must be
going on. Plato said that because such shadows can be
misleading, we must free ourselves of the desire to simply
accept them as reality.
So, just as a mistake in a road map doesn't alter where the
roads lie, our mental maps can also mislead us. We usually
assume the opposite, however. What's most remarkable is
that major discrepancies between our mental maps and
reality itself are often very predictable, and as we'll
discover, anything predictable is exploitable if you know
how.
Reflex actions are generated in response to stimuli in lhc spinal column, for
example.
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While there are many works devoted to showing you how
to avoid the mental bugs that cause our maps of reality to
diverge from objective reality, this book shows you how to
invoke those bugs in others. In that sense, this book is
almost unique. All I ask is that you do nothing downright
ugly with what you learn, because unless you stay on your
guard, you're also susceptible.
Jon Thompson.
Darkest Cheshire.
October 20 II.
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By which, I mean entering a situation in which you will give a reading for
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ruse, designed to distract the students from the true nature
of the experiment". What Forer had actually done was to
assemble a single, general personality reading that could
equally apply to anyone. He did so by copying out
individual phrases from newspaper horoscopes and
assembling them in a random order. He gave copies of the
same text to each student under the guise of their unique
character assessment. The fact that Forer's students scored
the text so highly is a measure of the power of the personal
validation fallacy.
The phrases Forer used are recognisable today as simple
"Barnum statements", after the great showman P.T
Barnum, who boasted that his shows had "something for
everyone". Back in 1948, such statements caused the
students to generate very high scores for their apparently
individual readings, but simply trotting them out today
probably won't fool anyone unless you really dress them
well and make them sound as individual and personal as
possible.
The personal validation fallacy can be invoked in many
different ways. To demonstrate, try urgently shouting,
"Excuse me! 9" in a busy shopping street. Many people will
tum around, believing you're addressing them, even
though they have no logical reason to do so. Try beeping
your car hom as you pass a group of people. The same
thing happens. Some individuals even feel real discomfort
(called cognitive dissonance) if they deliberately ignore
your call 10
8
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lmp1omptu Use
Here's an example of using the personal validation fallacy
as an impromptu influence on behaviour. One Sunday
afternoon four years ago, as I walked home from a friend's
birthday lunch, I saw two young teenage boys having fun
by annoying drivers. They were pressing the button on a
pedestrian crossing to make the lights tum red. When
drivers stopped and shouted at them, the boys returned a
stream of abuse.
As I approached the crossing, I walked purposefully up the
larger of the two boys to make sure he understood that he
was the focus of attention. I stopped right in front of him
and said: "If you keep doing that, I'll tell your mother what
else you've been up to." He looked shocked. I quickly
added conspiratorially: "Get out of here before the police
arrive." The boys immediately ran off.
Like all the anecdotes I tell in these books, this happened
exactly as I have described it 11 Grabbing the boy's initial
attention and making sure he knew he was the unexpected
focus of attention was vital. A stranger purposely walking
straight up to you in the street is enough to convince you
that what happens next will be about you. Forer discovered
that making the situation personal is absolutely vital to
making a subject fall for the personal validation fallacy. I
wanted to frighten the boys into compliance, and the
classic cold reading technique of hinting that you know
more than you're letting on was my weapon of choice. I
placed the lad in a difficult situation, and one that
presented a potentially worrying problem. The second
sentence offered a way out of that situation and a reason to
obey me.
" This particular incident happened on Oxford Road, Macclesfield, Cheshire.
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Use in Acadings
My approach to the tarot is borne of an inherent laziness
and the desire to have readings hit home with the least
effort on my part. It takes the form of a short reading
involving three cards that represent the past, present and
future. The technique I've developed is to get the spectator
to do her own cold reading by having her invoke the
personal validation fallacy herself!
I use the Major Arcana in my readings, and simply
describe in detail the symbolism of the three chosen cards
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and relate it to general situations in everyday life. This
approach leads the spectator to fill in the details and map
her own memories onto what the cards symbolise. The
personal validation fallacy then allows her to generate a
meaning. All I have to do is ask: "What does that mean to
you?" and agree with whatever she says.
Other Uses
If a random number is to be generated in an effect, make it
one that is coincidentally personal to the spectator. In an
effect where a random card must be chosen, ask the
spectator to think of one that is personally symbolic to her.
Don't explain further, but allow her a second or two to let
your words conjure meaning in her mind. Ask her if she's
thought of one.
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2. CoNFIIUIING TO DECEIVE
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Bacon wrote this passage nearly four hundred years ago, at
a time when science was still in its early infancy. And yet,
discovering it quoted in a paper written by professor
Raymond S. Nickerson of Tufts University 12 , I was struck
by the depth and modernity of Bacon's thinking. Nickerson
himself has some interesting things to say about just how
much of a hold confirmation bias has over us:
"If one were to attempt to identify a single
problematic aspect of human reasoning that
deserves attention above all others, the
confirmation bias would have to be among the
candidates for consideration. Many have
written about this bias, and it appears to be
sufficiently strong and pervasive that one is led
to wonder whether the bias, by itself, might
account for a significant fraction of the
disputes, altercations, and misunderstandings
that occur among individuals, groups, and
nations."
Confirmation bias is also sometimes called "Tolstoy
syndrome", after a passage in Leo Tolstoy's 1897 book
What is Art?
psy.ucsd.edul-mckenzie/nickersonConf=ationBias.pdf
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Thanks to a recent study, we can also glimpse what's
happening physically in the brain when in the grip of
confirmation bias. In 2006, Professor Drew Westen of
Emory University in Atlanta announced the results 13 of
work in which he scanned the brains of 30 subjects while
presenting them with both positive and negative statements
about politicians whom they either liked or disliked. The
results are as much fascinating as they are a warning about
the need to think things through objectively rather than
simply relying on what we'd like to be true.
The part of the brain most associated with logic and
reasoning is the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex, which is
located very near the front of the brain. This should have
been highly active while Westen's subjects evaluated each
statement, but the scans showed that activity here was in
fact minimal. Instead, parts of the brain known to handle
emotion, value judgements, and mental conflict resolution
were all very active. Westen's subjects were making
emotional judgements about the statements while believing
themselves to be thinking clearly and logically. They all
readily accepted the statements that went along with what
they already believed, and rejected those that didn't.
Westen said of his subjects: "They twirl the cognitive
kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want."
So, we can't seem to help but use confirmation bias to
bolster what we already believe by either consciously or
unconsciously interpreting new information so that it
confirms what we already believe. This may explain why
some people see UFOs where others see Chinese lanterns,
" Westen, D., Kilts, C., Blagov, P., Harenski, K., & HamaM, S. (2006). "The
neural basis of motivated reasoning: An IMRI study of emolional constraints on
political judgment during the U.S. Presidential election of 2004". Journal of
Cognitive Neuroscience, volume IS, pages 1947-1958.
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and why some people interpret unexpected nighttime
household sounds as spirits rather than the mundane
phenomena they might more reasonably be. Such a reliable
bug in common sense thinking is highly exploitable.
" I have subsequently looked up the UK Home Office's own figures and found
that Polish migrant workers actually have one of the lowest benefit claimant rates
of any immigrant group!
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!i helpfully said that it had been on the radio 15 that Eastern
European astronauts had, in fact, been running the ultimate
tax dodge for years. I said that the reason they don't mind
long stays in the International Space Station and have set
so many space endurance records is that despite the risks, it
means they're out of their home country for long enough
not to have to pay income tax.
With his odious mind suitably greased, I then delivered my
absurd suggestion. I said that to counter this dodge, the
European Space Agency levied a special "astronaut tax" on
these high-tech freeloaders. To seal the suggestion in his
mind, I finished by saying that I'd subsequently seen the
new tax confirmed on the Financial Times web site. I think
I said the tax rate was something like 40%. To him, I was
confirming what he already believed and providing new
proof of the "problem". He was more than willing to accept
the surreal concept of an astronaut tax, and as far as I
know, still does.
So, we can use confirmation bias to add new nonsense to
what people want to believe, which is all good clean fun,
but what else can we use it for? As mentioned earlier,
confirmation bias can actually cause us to defend our
mental maps over reality itself. In the early days of writing
this book, I had an interesting insight into this
phenomenon.
I play in a league quiz team over the winter months. Just
after I began writing this book in 2008, I was playing in a
match against a team containing an ex-Brain of Britain 16
" An "official" source lends a lot of validity to the belief you're apparently
confirming when actually leading the spectator into a new belief.
"Brain of Britain is a long-running knockout quiz competition run by BBC Radio
4.
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One question was about the first great white jazz musician,
"Bix" Beiderbecke, about whom I just happen to know a
large amount. Incredibly, the other team had never heard of
Bix, and so the question was passed over to our team to
vacuum up a point. I gave the right answer, and with a
certain swagger added that people said that his comet
playing sounded "like bullets being shot from a bell."
The ex-Brain of Britain responded by saying," No, no, that
doesn't sound right at all."
"Well," I said, "but that's what his contemporaries said
about his playing: that it had such a clear tone that it
sounded like bullets being shot from a bell."
My adversary was adamant, however: "You must have got
that wrong", he insisted.
Me? Wrong about Leon Bismarck 'Bix' Beiderbecke? The
first great white jazzman? Born in 1903 in Davenport,
Iowa, discovered by Louis Armstrong, drank himself to
death aged 28? Does it really seem likely that I'd get a
famous quote about my favourite jazz man wrong?
In the end, we agreed to disagree. Maybe he had already
decided that I, in my usual jeans and a t-shirt, couldn't
possibly know anything that deep about an obscure
musician who, until a minute or so earlier, he had known
nothing about himself. Confirmation bias can make good
men pompous and ultimately foolish.
Confirmation bias can also play a major role in setting the
scene before delivering a reading. By exploring what the
spectator already believes about the method you use (tarot,
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palmistry, etc.) you can help her into a more accepting
frame of mind by confirming that what's about to happen
is an example of what she already expects will happen.
As Nickerson intimated, confirmation bias also tends to
lead to stubbornness and argument, and this is also
exploitable. It's highly probable that you've had at least
one memorable argument with someone who was stubborn
to the point of idiocy:
Performer: "I'm sensing an earlier time. There's an
argument. You're being reasonable - trying to show
someone they're wrong. But the more you try, the
more they won't believe you. They're being very
stubborn. Did it feel like this person deliberately took
your argument the wrong way and thought it meant
that they were right?"
Spectator: "Yes! I remember that argument! That's
my ex-husband. He was very stubborn." 17
Again, a real life example, this time of delivering a reading for my friend Sue.
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I said at the start of this chapter that there is a rule to the
successful use of confirmation bias. It's something I call
"span". The above shift from believing in an afterlife and
believing in the Lock Ness Monster is an absurd example.
The distance or "span" between the two concepts is far too
wide for the second idea to be seen as support for the first.
Always keep the span between what you're confirming and
the new thought you want to be accepted as small as you
can. It may take several jumps over time to get from what's
already believed to what you want the spectator to believe,
but it's worth it. Spread such jumps out over time rather
than firing them off one after the other. Take the spectator
as your cue, and never directly insist.
Sometimes, confirmation bias can be invoked by mistake.
For example, I thought up a silly joke I thought my friend
Ann would like. The conceit of the joke is that I don't
much like cats. I'd certainly never have one as a pet.
Completely deadpan, I told her that a gang of youngsters
had recently broken into a beauty parlour and had stolen
ear-piercing equipment. The gang had been causing
mischief by piercing cats' ears. The punchline was
delivered in a camp manner: "Poor Snowball came home
this morning positively dripping in diamante!"
I thought the mental image would raise a chuckle, but my
friend only heard the joke up to the point where I said that
the gang had been piercing cats' ears. She's a cat lover and
butted in that she'd heard that cats had been going missing
all over town. She concluded that this must be the reason.
Perhaps it was my deadpan delivery, but I'd managed to
confirm what she already thought of the local youth with
new information.
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anguish. Some performers will even refuse to go on stage
when prevented from performing them.
If you don't believe me about the power the illusion of
control has over us all, think back to the last time you
pushed the button on a pedestrian crossing. If it was at a set
of traffic lights, the only effect the button will have had is
to tell you to wait until the carefully calculated traffic light
timings could fit your random request into their pattern. So,
pressing the button has no effect over the traffic at all. This
is the illusion of control. Seen the other way, however,
there is no illusion. Pressing the button directly controls
you!
Want more proof? The "CLOSE DOORS" button in Otis
lifts is only active when used in conjunction with the
maintenance key. If pressing the button doesn't
automatically make the doors close, if you're anything like
me, you'll usually choose to blame negligent maintenance
and never even consider that it may be due to deliberate
design 18
It is easy to exploit of the illusion of control in so many
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a certain type of word will make the test far more difficult
for me. However, this actually has the opposite effect. It
gives her the illusion of making sure that the situation is as
controlled by herself as possible while actually removing
that control.
Similarly, in my ebook Poker Faced, the spectator has a
free choice from a shuffled deck of five packets of cards.
She only makes a mental note of a card selected from a
chosen packet, and also shuffles the packet immediately
afterwards. The premise of the trick is that she must then
control her fleeting micro-expressions when I show her
some candidate cards and try to spot hers from her reaction
to seeing it. This gives her such a feeling of control over
the test that she can be sure there's no trickery afoot.
However, Poker Faced is a self-working effect. I always
know exactly which is her card right from the point at
which she selects the initial packet.
Finding places to use the illusion of control begins with
breaking down an effect into its constituent parts. As an
example, let's take a random self-working card trick such
as one that uses the basic key card principle 19 In essence,
you glimpse the bottom card of a shuffled deck (the key
card), and have the spectator take a random card. You then
cut the deck into two piles and have the spectator place
their choice of card on the packet formed from the upper
part of the deck. Reassemble the deck with the lower half
on top. The card is now "lost" but is always directly below
the key card.
This hidden knowledge means that the performer can dress
the underlying mechanism in plenty of apparent spectator
1
'
Yes, I know this is Naked Mentalism but this makes for a clear example.
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control. Instead of simply spreading the cards and asking
the spectator to select a random one at the beginning, the
illusion of control can be used in a number of ways. You
could:
Hand the deck to the spectator, have her think of a
meaningful number and count out that many cards,
taking the final one for herself. Peek the bottom card
as she concentrates on hers.
Spread the cards between your hands with the faces
showing to the spectator. Ask her to take the card
that "speaks to her".
Have the spectator bring her own deck of cards to
ensure fair play, remove one, and hand you the rest.
As long as you can peek the bottom card and sandwich it
next to the selected card when it is returned to the deck,
there's enormous scope for harnessing the spectator's sense
of control.
Even returning the card to the deck can have an element of
spectator control to it. For example, you could ask her to
take a card, then when it's time to return it, allow the
remaining cards to fall slowly from one hand into your
palm below. Ask the spectator to say stop at some point.
Hold out the cards that have not fallen yet and ask her to
place her card on top. Throw the fallen cards on top to
"lose" the card next to the key card.
Given that you know roughly where the card and key card
pairing is within the deck, you can safely execute a quick
overhand shuffle taking care to throw the section
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containing the cards in one go, thereby keeping them
together. This apparently decreases or even destroys your
own control over the deck. You could even introduce an
element of comedy or tension into the routine by suddenly
stopping dead and exclaiming that that you didn't mean to
do that shuffie. Spreading the cards face up will allow you
to locate the chosen card as you show that it's an
impossible task to figure out which card is hers. You could
then abandon the deck and "try something else".
In this case 20 you could simply run through a pantomime of
reading her mind, grab an Invisible Deck that has been on
the table the whole time, or employ a host of other methods
of showing that despite her input and overt control over
proceedings, a revelation is still available from a seemingly
lost situation.
I mentioned in Chapter I that the illusion of control works
well with the personal validation fallacy. When asked for a
random number and subsequently asked to comment on
their choices, people will tend to have chosen numbers that
either conform to stereotypes (3, 7, 37, etc.), or which have
some hidden personal meaning. Asking the spectator to
explain her choice as an afterthought and you can unearth
useful information for a later reading or segment. As a
subtle hot reading technique, there's a lot to commend it.
20
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4- A:f:fOllDING TO ACT
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situation to just the device, we need to remove all other
perceived impromptu writing surfaces. The important word
here is "perceived". I mean the available writing surfaces
as seen from her perspective. If the billet she will write on
is palm sized, her hand becomes both writing surface and a
useful way of hiding what she writes. Because of this, it
always pays to overestimate the affordance others have at
every point in an effect and seek ways of limiting or
eliminating it.
More philosophically, it may also pay to think about
affordance in terms of the spectator's perception of you.
The all-time great mystery entertainers tend to give the
impression that they have normal or even limited
affordance when, in fact, they have far more control than is
ever supposed by anyone other than other entertainers 21
Maybe magic is what happens when spectators see a
person with normal affordance produce miracles.
The Crazy Man's Handcuffs, in which taught elastic bands
are seen to pass through each other, creates magic in this
way. Borrowed elastic bands that can be examined
afterwards can't pass through each other, but imagine
performing this effect with wine corks. How little
affordance would be perceived in that situation, and
therefore how much more magic would it create? I can
honestly say that it massively amplifies the effect, having
seen Lennart Green do this with two random corks in a
hotel bar.
This is all just my way of suggesting that affordance is
inversely proportional to magic:
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Magic
Affordance
The implication of this ratio is that when affordance
becomes zero, maybe magic becomes infinite - becomes
real in other words. Maybe this also explains the strong
reactions seen when using props such as spirit cabinets.
Affordance when tied to a chair inside the cabinet is
apparently zero, and yet physical phenomena still manifest
themselves. For many people, especially those for whom
such phenomena confirm what they already believe, some
unseen force is somehow literally acting through the
medium. For those people, the magic of the situation 22 has
arguably become real.
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I think you'll agree that the rnalurna is the one on the left,
but why?
German psychologist Wolfgang Kohler first coined these
two nonsense words and drew their shapes in 1929 23 One
word somehow sounds rounded and smooth, while the
other sounds angular and spiky. The underlying principle at
work here is called phonesthesia 2\ which is the natural
tendency we have to assign certain physical attributes to
shapes, objects and even concepts, based merely on the
sound made by their names - even before we've seen the
things they name.
According to Torn Stafford in his fascinating book "Mind
Hacks" 25 , when we listen to someone talking, we need to
pick up as much information about what's being said as
quickly as possible. If we don't understand a word, then
instead of leaving a blank in our minds to fill in when we
" It's also called the "Bouba!Kiki" eiTect after two other names used to describe
the shapes.
"Also called "word symbolism"
21
"Mind Hacks: Tips & Tricks for Using Your Brain", O'Reilly Books. 2005,
ISBN 0-596-00779-5, page 163.
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get more information, we instead fill the void with
meaning based on the mere sound of the words being
spoken. This makes phonesthesia an immensely useful
technique for subtly imparting information. It enables us to
construct words that, by their very sound, imply a rich set
of predictable attributes.
An obvious use for pareidolia would be to adapt a living
and dead test to Naked ends. Perhaps we could have the
spectator separate pictures of murderers from victims,
especially when also given their (foreign) names.
As you might expect, the world of advertising discovered
phonesthesia a long time ago, but how wisely it uses the
concept is open to debate. Think, for instance, about some
of the strangely named products you've bought or heard of
over the years. Those names are never chosen by accident,
and we know that the name of the popular Blackberry PDA
was chosen due to phonesthesia.
According to an account from Stanford University 26 , when
marketing executives from Lexicon Branding Inc. saw the
then-unnamed Blackberry for the first time, they were
struck by how the buttons seemed to resemble seeds on the
outside of a fruit or berry. "Strawberry" was the inevitable
first suggestion for a name. "Straw", however, with it's
drawn out "s" and long "aw", is a slow syllable. The
branders wanted shorter, punchier sounds, implying
efficiency, speed, and ease ofuse 27
Interestingly, they decided that the sub-word "berry" was
already punchy enough. Research into the way in which
26
http://www.stanford.edu/classllinguist34/Unit_08/blackberry.htm
Seriously, I'm not making this stuff up. Marketing men believe that millions of
dollars ride on getting the name of a product just right.
27
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people process sounds for meaning apparently suggested to
the marketing men that we're likely to associate the "b" of
"berry" with solidity and reliability, and a short "e" sound
with speed of action. According to the story, after a few
minutes, the name "Blackberry" was born. The short "ack"
of "black" provided more punch and immediacy than the
slower, more laid-back "straw".
So, phonesthesia allows us to create nonsense words, or
select existing ones, which will cause people to conjure
meaning that isn't necessarily there. If you split the sounds
made in English (or any other language) into syllables, it's
possible to organise these into groups that represent
different sound qualities. For example, you might sort them
into groups of soft, rounded, sharp and brittle sounds.
There are potentially a very large number of ways to "dice
and slice" the possible sounds of speech into such groups.
Here are two groups of English syllables, sorted into those
with two letters and those with three.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
AL
AN
AR
AS
AT
EA
ED
EN
ER
ES
HA
HE
HI
IN
IS
IT
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
49
ALL
AND
ARE
BUT
ENT
ERA
ERE
EVE
FOR
HAD
HAT
HEN
HER
HIN
HIS
lNG
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17
IS
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
LE
ME
ND
NE
NG
NT
ON
OR
5I
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
ou
RE
SE
ST
TE
TH
TI
TO
VE
WA
64
65
66
67
68
ION
ITH
NOT
OME
OUL
OUR
SHO
TED
TER
THA
THE
THI
TIO
ULD
VER
WAS
WIT
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There's also very good evidence that the physical shapes
we make with our mouths when saying certain words
imparts meaning. Think of the word "round" as an
example. Say the word out loud. The "oun" part of the
word has you creating a rounded movement with your lips.
By having your spectator say the words you create out
loud, she'll get (or rather generate) more apparent
information about them.
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In 1974, psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel
Kahneman wrote: "There are situations in which people
assess the ... probability of an event by the ease with
which instances or occurrences can be brought to mind.
For example, one may assess the risk of heart attack among
middle-aged people by recalling such occurrences among
one's acquaintances."
I know three middle aged people who have recently
suffered heart attacks. However, one was caused by
cocaine abuse, and the other two were due to genetic
abnormalities - one fatal. In the cold light of day, these
people are not evidence that middle-aged people generally
have heart attacks, but being three people known
personally to me certainly makes it feel that way.
As an experiment, ask yourself whether there are more
words that begin with either "R" or "K" than have those
letters as the third letter. Go with what simply feels right. I
bet in most cases you genuinely had a gut feeling that there
are more words beginning with those letters. After all, you
can easily think of plenty of examples (they're available to
you). However, it's second option is the truth. So, people
can be made to base their judgements on how easily
examples can be brought to mind. It's the old "I knew a
guy once who ... " effect that floors so many people in
online arguments. It's the "exception that proves the rule".
As an example, before I realised that such arguments are a
waste of time, I once had a blazing row with someone who
claimed that anti-gravity devices were possible. I know of
only one that works -a superconductor cooled in liquid
helium will levitate a small magnet. My opponent
produced a link to a patent for an anti-gravity belt. That
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should have been the end of the argument, but though it
took some work, but I managed to counter the idea that a
patent means a device works with a link to a patent for a
Santa Clause detector.
To lead people into a frame of mind that's more in tune
with the abilities you intend to present in your act, help
them to remember times when phenomena you can claim
are similar happened spontaneously, either to them or to
people they know. Make those experiences available, in
other words, and people naturally reference them when
assessing what comes next. Asking for a visual display of
recognition can even help trigger the availability heuristic
in those portions of the audience who are initially sceptical
of you:
Performer: "On a show of hands, how many of you
have thought about someone you've not talked to for
a while, and shortly after, they've either called you
or you've bumped into them quite by chance? That's
quite a lot of you"
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argument at the right time can floor the opposition even
though they know they're right. 2H
We can also use the availability heuristic in reverse to
create an aversion to something (a subsequent decision,
perhaps) by asking the audience to imagine it in vivid ways
that are so upsetting that the very act of thinking about it
leads to an increased refusal to want it to occur.
Pragmatic Exploitation
If you're creating a presentation that exploits the idea of a
well-established method of divination, the pragmatic
fallacy is definitely something you should know about. Put
simply, it grants temporary permission to people to believe
that something you say is true, thereby helping encourage
the suspension of disbelief and entry into the moment.
The pragmatic fallacy works because the spectator is more
likely to accept what sounds like a reasonable explanation
about something when delivered by someone she trusts.
She becomes pragmatic about the explanation, in other
words, and accepts it more readily.
The pragmatic fallacy works particularly well when you set
someone in pursuit of something desirable. Even an
initially sceptical individual may fall victim the fallacy
very heavily in situations where she believes there's a
likelihood of gaining something valuable (see also the
illusion of control).
Whether they consciously know it or not, bizarre magicians
are particularly good at exploiting the pragmatic fallacy.
As they lead the audience into their world, they might
"This is why it's so important to demand proof in online arguments!
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discuss various divination techniques, making sure to only
mention the ones by which the subsequent effects will
apparently operate. The bizarre magician is seen more as a
responsible gatekeeper to another realm than the producer
of magic, which is where the necessary authority comes
from for the pragmatic fallacy to really kick in.
Another example is in a reading situation, for instance. If
the spectator believes that, say, the tarot has more
credibility than palmistry, agree like crazy and give her a
tarot reading 29 Never insist on your favourite technique
over hers - always adapt. Be pragmatic, in fact. Guide
what you say and do towards what she already believes.
Be Anthropomorphic
The anthropomorphic fallacy is the tendency to give
inanimate objects and phenomena the characteristics of
living, conscious beings. The computer crashes because it
knows the email you're writing is important, and the car
won't start because it knows you're late. The sounds in the
attic are being made deliberately by a conscious entity.
Of course, the computer doesn't really know what you've
suddenly decided is important, and modem cars tend not to
start due to poor maintenance. The sound in the attic is
probably just the joists contracting after a sunny day.
However, these examples, especially the assumption that
the knocking sound in the roof is a ghost, are difficult to
shake for some people, and can be induced in others given
the right circumstances.
Could this be why you never ~ee mediums on ghost hunting shows ever say: "I
don'tlhink your house is haunted- I'm gening nothing."?
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One place where the anthropomorphic fallacy is routinely
induced is during a seance. We can't help but conjure an
unseen spirit in our minds when the glass deliberately
moves during the Ouija board session, for example.
Delving deeply by questioning the spirit for personal
details also helps to instil the anthropomorphic fallacy. Go
beyond the usual questions and ask things such as "Is there
anyone else with you?" to enhance the idea in the
spectators' minds that here's a real entity with an unseen
Iife and context.
A Conjoined Fa11acy
Linda is an outspoken 45-year-old graduate in women's
studies who still retains a keen interest in politics. Which is
most likely:
I. Linda is married
2. Linda runs a bookshop
3. Linda runs a feminist bookshop
The chances are high that your gut instinct was to go for
the third option rather than the first two. Being a
conjunction of two facts, it naturally feels as if it best fits
or identifies Linda. In actual fact, it has less probability of
being right. Psychologists call this called the conjunction
fallacy, but it is also known more informally as the "Linda
effect" or "Linda Problem".
The fact is that at 45, Linda is far more likely to be married
and, with a far lower probability, to run any kind of
bookshop. There are millions of married, 45-year-old
women but there simply aren't that many bookshops. Both
attributes have a far higher probability than Linda
specifically running a feminist bookshop. So, why are we
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naturally attracted to the third, vanishingly less likely
option? Why does it feel more "real"?
When you calculate conjunctions of probabilities, you
multiply them together. Because probabilities are always
expressed as fractions of one (zero being impossible and
one meaning a dead certainty), the outcome of multiplying
them is always lower than the highest of the individual
probabilities. A good example is the difference between
betting on the winner of a single horse race, and having to
bet on a series of horse races to collect.
Imagine a sequence of I 0 horse races, each featuring I 0
horses. The probability of picking the winner of one race is
1110, or 0.1. The probability of picking the winner in two
races is 0.1 x 0.1, which equals 0.0 I or 11100. Picking the
winners in three races carries a I in I 000 chance, and so
on. This is why placing an "accumulator" bet at the
bookies is a really bad idea. When dressed in Linda's life,
however, the conjunction fallacy tends to make the third
choice seem more likely. The conjunction fallacy seems to
make us add the probabilities together to make a surety
rather than multiplying them to reduce it.
Spying Patterns
Pareidolia is a relatively newly discovered psychological
effect. It describes the tendency for vague and possibly
even meaningless patterns to be interpreted as having
greater significance than they actually have if they support
a view we already hold. In some cases, this can cause us to
literally make things up.
The usefulness of invoking pareidolia when performing
readings or effects that don't have a guaranteed outcome
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should be fairly obvious. It will help the spectator to see a
deeper pattern of general success, from which, if
questioned, she' II report as far more concrete than it really
was. Rather than promoting accurate recall, pareidolia
creates a false memory of what she wants to believe
happened.
Anchoring ne musion
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it's possible she can't anchor to something that will help
her make a clear decision. Help her: add a few words
pointing out a good and positive reason for why she should
do as bade and you could find yourself with someone who
is already slightly under your influence before you begin
her induction.
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PART 2
EFFECI'S
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an ongoing web-based survei". When I began developing
this effect in January 2008, 950 people had responded. This
is a big enough population for it to be statistically
significant. Here are the most popular choices:
~
14.21
8.03
4.33
4.33
3.81
3.40
3.30
3.19
2.37
2.27
2.27
2.16
2.16
2.06
2.06
2.06
2.06
TABLE ONE:
Qrd
Colour
Ace of Spades
Queen of Hearts
Ace of Hearts
Queen of Diamonds
Jack of Diamonds
Ace of Diamonds
Jack of Hearts
Seven of Diamonds
Six of Diamonds
Ace of Clubs
Jack of Spades
Seven of Hearts
King of Diamonds
Queen of Spades
Three of Clubs
Ten of Diamonds
King of Hearts
B
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
B
B
R
R
B
B
R
R
MosT
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arranging these cards to show the distributions of values 31 ,
suit and value, an interesting pattern appears:
AC
3C
AH
7H
AS
AD
JH
JS
60
7D
IOD
JD
OH
OS
OD
KH
KD
BAND
Low
Middle
High
CAllDs
CHOICES
5
3
9
22%
16%
55%
~~~1
II II UI I I:: I~: I I
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that we can use? Diamonds and hearts equate to money and
love, for example? A spade could, through some trippy
notion of "psychic fog", be a heart upside down - and a
"black heart" gives us a partial out if we get the colour
wrong. The black could indicate lost love.
If it's a low valued card, we might begin describing how it
feels as if it "stands alone" due to the lack of pips. If it's
high, it's an image we're getting of "a boy apart from his
mother" (covering the Queens and Jacks, the latter of
which is naturally assumed to be younger than the monarch
cards). If it's of a medium value, we might comment on its
colour, its suit, and so on.
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I~ITI~I~I~I~I,ITITI~INrl~l
7
TABLE:
From this table, we can see that the 7'h January 2011, and
therefore the 14'11, 21" and 28"', all fall on a Friday (day 5).
It's also easy to work out the day of the week upon which
any date falls. 12"' September 2011, for example, must be a
Monday because the 14'h falls on day 3 (Wednesday). You
can easily memorise the sequence by splitting it into four
groups of three and creating the following picture of the
arrangement in your mind 32 :
lsl1l1l
1416121
1417131
lsiii3
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Given a random date of 5'h July 2011, we can work out
with no real difficulty that the day of the week upon which
it will fall, because according to the data model, the 7'h of
July falls on day 4, so the 5th must fall two days earlier on a
Tuesday. If we know any date in the current year, we can
quickly and reliably find the day of the week upon which it
falls.
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spectator to name a meaningful date - just the date and
month name will do (let's assume 6th May. I also asked her
to say why it's significant for her. As she does, I mentally
calculate what day of the week it will fall upon. From the
data model we can see instantly that 6th May 2011 falls on
Wednesday.
I now go on to explore for a minute or two the significance
of the date with the spectator. Is it something she's
dreading, like a dentist's appointment, or something good
that she's looking forward to? I listen to her answer and
take it seriously, sympathising about a dread or sharing the
anticipation.
Next, I change the subject slightly to the idea that not only
dates but also certain days of the week have emotional
significance. I explain that those astrologists who cross into
the arcane field of numerology say that everyone has a
special day of the week, called their "key day". This isn't
necessarily the day of the week on which we were born,
but discovering which is yours is believed in some cultures
to be important for your future happiness. This, I say, is
because if a significant date falls on anything other than
her key day, she might perceive it in an unduly negative
way.
Here, I ask the spectator to think of an example of a past
occasion when she though she'd be happy, only to find that
she wasn't. I explain that in the same way, dates we're not
looking forward to can cause us real anguish if they fall on
the wrong days of the week for reasons we never
consciously understand, and that when they fall on the
right day we get through them without a problem. This
might even be why we're sometimes unaccountably more
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frightened of a visit to the dentist on some occasions than
on others, even though it's just a check up. This might
even explain, I add, why some birthdays don't seem as
good as others, even though the presents are better and we
have more guests at our party.
I tell the spectator that having talked to her for a while, and
using knowledge of numerology, I believe that I have a
good idea what her key day is. I say that it is almost
certainly Wednesday (in this example). I then explain by
giving a simple character reading for Wednesday. The idea
here is to create a sense of identification with the day.
I then mention a second choice I had for her day before I
settled on Wednesday. I give a slightly less good
personality reading for this second day. The purpose is to
get her agreement that I've identified her key day, and to
get her to buy into the idea that I can "see" personal days
when I get to know people a little.
The spectator still isn't aware that an effect is even
underway yet. I can now ask casually if she happens to
know what day of the week the date she mentioned earlier
falls on. If she knows it, the connection is made and we
have a revelation, but if she needs to, she can consult the
calendar on her mobile phone.
Either way, the spectator learns for herself that by an
amazing cosmic coincidence, the date falls on her key day.
If it's something she's looking forward to, I tell her I think
she'll have a great time. If it's something she's not looking
forward to, I explain that because it falls on her key day,
that in some strange way the universe will be watching
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over her and that she shouldn't worry unduly about it. All
shall be well.
It's a simple effect - basically a self-worker - but it also
creates a moment of wonder. There's a complete
disconnection between asking for a date and giving the day
of the week, but in the spectator's mind, a cosmic
connection is made, and order jumps out of chaos with a
positive message.
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9. NAKED Hoa.lU>llS
JJ
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The data model for this effect is very simple:
I
2
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Lettuce
Dog
Knife
Clown
Car
Wedding
Water
Diamond
Animal
Dinner
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Garden
Book
Water
Atlas
Gun
TABLE
J:
Televisio
n
Movie
Dinner
Candle
Water
Lettuce
Movie
Animal
Mother
Car
CAl\.D ""
Dog
Silent
Gun
Son
Wedding
TABLE 4= CAl\.D
Clown
Father
Book
Car
Envelope
TABLE
"2"
Water
Atlas
Wedding
Doctor
Clock
Diamond
Floor
Silent
Animal
Book
Fortune
Clock
Dinner
Candle
Doctor
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perfectly good method, but a more subtle marking system
may prevent spectators wondering about the colours. You
could use plain index cards, for example, and work out
what's been taken from what's left from their position on
the table. You could also number the cards I, 2, 3 and 4, or
even letter them (perhaps with Greek letters). As long as
you remember that they have the values I, 2, 4, and 8 that's
the important thing.
To perform Naked Horrors, hand the spectator the categmy
card and ask her to "use her intuition" to think of
something that fits one of the categories. Now hand her the
I, 2, 4 and 8 cards and ask her to select all cards containing
it or something close to it and hand the rest back.
Here's how to work out what she chose. As an example,
the spectator retains cards I and 4. I +4=5. The fifth entry
on the numbered list of targets is "Car". She must have
selected a form of transport on the category card. Being
based on the binary system of counting, no other
combination of cards can make the same total. The other
entries on each card simply pad them out to I 0 entries each
and are essentially noise.
You can add as many extra categories and cards as you
like, but remember to ensure that they bear no relation to
each other, or to the categories on the category card. Extra
cards should have the numbers 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and so
on.
One idea for those readers skilled in memory techniques
(more ofwhich in Part 3) is to have several sets of cards
covering different subjects sealed in different envelopes.
The spectator has a free choice of envelope and they can all
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be opened at the end. All you need to do is mark the
envelopes so that you know which set of cards is in play.
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Initial
digit
3
Card Type
American Express
Visa
Mastercard
Discover
5
6
Number
Length
15
13, 16
16
16
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4. There's someone in your life about who you know
deep down you need to change your opinion, but
can't bring yourself to see him or her in a different
light.
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hBDICTION
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IJ.
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of connections you can create between concepts, and so no
limit on what you can remember.
When you set out to memorise something using any of the
methods in this chapter, you'll increase your recall
immensely if you use as many senses as possible. This
works especially well with the method of loci. If you can
make the bizarre images you create have a sound, a smell,
some movement and so on, do so!
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smells, feel, and so on. Use every scrap of imagination to
really bring the path to life in your mind.
This might seem like a lot of work at first, but in Medieval
times, scholars would choose a large public building such
as a cathedral 35 They would walk the same route around
the building every day, pausing to take in each scene as
they went, until they were completely familiar with every
part of it. The amount of information these people could
subsequently store in the mental model of the path is still
truly remarkable today.
To now use the path to memorise a sequence of data, you
walk it in your mind's eye, dropping off bizarre objects at
set points that represent and remind you of each item you
need to remember. When I say bizarre, I mean bizarre too!
Make them rude, shocking, sexy - anything, in fact, that
creates both a vivid image in your mind, and reminds you
instantly of the data item.
One of my own mental locations stores an old '70s stereo,
a soccer player being replaced during a game, a huge arrow
covered in lights, an apple with the phrase "this is an
orange" written on it, a photocopier spewing out pictures
of a face, a plastic politician, a soldier seen through a cross
hair, and someone on his knees begging a secret policeman
not to torture him. These objects correspond to the eight
basic tools of the propagandist: stereotypes, substitution of
names, selectivity, lying, repetition, assertion, pinpointing
the enemy, and appeal to authority. The images are strange,
but they're instantly linked in my mind to the principles
they help me remember. The more automatic you can make
This is why the tcchni~ue ha~ become known as the "memory palace". The
larger space you map in your journey, the more places there will he into which you
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the associations the better. The stereo instantly reminds me
of stereotypes, for example.
What's really good about the method of loci is that when
you become very familiar with a data model stored using it,
you'll find that you can dip in at random to access most if
not all the data it represents.
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2. Princess Diana Never Shagged36 Prince Andrew
In each case, the initial letters of each word spell out a
sequence of data that must appear in a strict order. The first
lists the colours of the rainbow; from long to short
wavelengths 37 , but the second is more obscure. It's the ISO
7-Iayer model of networking protocols 38 I overheard the
latter being said many years ago by a tutor on a network
security course as she reminded herself of the order of the
layers. She said it just once, but the striking imagery it
produced stuck with me.
All you need for the mnemonic approach is to generate a
nonsense phrase with the same number of words as the
sequence you need to memorise. The phrase itself should
have its own inner logic. Richard of York really did give
battle in vain, and Princess Diana never did go to bed with
Prince Andrew (as far as I'm aware).
J
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peg. Here's the basic method. We'll cover how to make
things easier to remember later. For now, just familiarise
yourself with the method.
Let's suppose we need to memorise eleven unique items.
First, we need to find something that naturally rhymes with
each number. Here's the list I came up with:
NUIIBJ!.JL l.UIYIIIS
Zero
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
WITH
Hero
Bomb
Loo
Tree
Door
Live
Sticks
Heaven
Weight
Line
Ben
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NUKBD.
OBJECT
Zero
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Glass
Chain
Life belt
Lion
Telephone
Television
Horse
Cigarette
Candle
Book
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Three is a tree. The tree has a lion taking a pee up against
it. It's a striking image and the association leads you from
three to lion with little effort. With a little practice, you can
remember large amounts of data using pegging, and the
locations in the original list don't have to be numeric.
When I first developed the Naked Book Test that appeared
in volume I of Naked Mentalism, I had to memorise all the
word lists and the orders in which the six words appeared
in each. I decided to use the bizarre imagery conjured up
by the nonsense phrases the lists made when read in order.
This made it very easy to remember the lists. Charles
Dickens in a snowy Victorian London street scene
lamenting that poverty is "the PART the POOR PLAY" is
how I remember the "P" words, for example.
Positional Pictures
Using mental imagery that includes the physical position of
the things you need to remember can vastly improve their
subsequent recall. For example, the Naked Day Test
demands you learn a 12-digit sequence. Presenting the data
as follows is tough to learn:
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1 ~1F~I~I
1
l~l~yl 1~1
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I.S
FINAL 'IkouGHTs
I0I
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