Psychology of Magic

[Bill Mullins]

HERE is an academic article about perception and psychology of magic. To me, the interesting thing is that it is co-authored by Mac King, The Amazing Randi, Apollo Robbins, Teller, and Johnny Thompson.

And a couple of other magic/academic papers:

Magic and Software design
and
another with Mac King as co-author.

[Jonathan Townsend]

Thanks Bill.

It looks like we might get a department of credulity going as pedants learn the distinction between audience view and backstage view of productions.

Is there a proper subset of philosophy which studies belief? (as opposed to knowledge) This would begin with presupposing that perception and motivation of/for behavior are properties of what the philosophers call a "mind" yet can't quite agree about whether or not the mind exists. Read: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/ Our offerings might put a focus upon the conditions and methods used to measure the relative strengths of beliefs and the conditions required to establish, maintain and destroy beliefs...

:)

[Bill Mullins]

Edit Reason: believability??? how about asking whether a proposition is credulant or whether it has a certificate of validificationability or evidence of poperfication.

Sometimes, Jonathan, I don't know WTF you are talking about. And I'm not sure you do either.

[Jonathan Townsend]

Take the time to parse the sentence, look up popper and falsification and then the construction of the jokes will be more evident. It's not just grammartism or vocabulation.

[Mark Collier]

That clarifies so much...
Jonathan has been doing poppers all this time.

[AJM]

.... and then the construction of the jokes will be more evident.

Is that so?

Hands up all those who, after proper parsing, have now found the construction of the Jonathan's jokes more evident.

No? Oh well, never mind.

[Tom Frame]

Thanks for the excellent article, Bill!

[David Alexander]

Sorry, Jon. All the actors for the Big Bang Theory have been cast. You can go back to speaking what Casey Stengel called "plain simple American." If possible.

[Jonathan Townsend]

It looks like we might get a department of credulity going as pedants learn the distinction between audience view and backstage view of productions.

Is there a proper subset of philosophy which studies belief? (as opposed to knowledge) This would begin with presupposing that perception and motivation of/for behavior are properties of what the philosophers call a "mind" yet can't quite agree about whether or not the mind exists. Read: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/ Our offerings might put a focus upon the conditions and methods used to measure the relative strengths of beliefs and the conditions required to establish, maintain and destroy beliefs...

There must be something in the text above to cause so many attempts at distraction cued by the attempt at humor in the that post's "edit reason" field.

They won't care how much (or little it seems) you know until they know how much you care. Fill in the deletions as you wont.

[David Alexander]

Take the time to parse the sentence, look up popper and falsification and then the construction of the jokes will be more evident. It's not just grammartism or vocabulation.

It's "Popper," not "popper."

And there is a whole lot'a vocabulation goin on not to mention grammartization.

Holy mackerel, Andy.

[Bill Mullins]

Maybe we could start over:

HERE is an academic article about perception and psychology of magic. To me, the interesting thing is that it is co-authored by Mac King, The Amazing Randi, Apollo Robbins, Teller, and Johnny Thompson.

And a couple of other magic/academic papers:

Magic and Software design
and
another with Mac King as co-author.

[Mark Collier]

Thanks for posting that, Bill. Someone recently sent me a similar but much shorter article by Devin Powell. It is titled, "Magicology" and is from the Dec 2008 New Scientist magazine.

It's only three pages but he starts off talking about Apollo Robbins and gives an overview of the interest some neuroscientists are showing in 'cognitive illusions' as opposed to optical illusions.

[Jonathan Townsend]

Designing user interfaces for a computer seems closer to theatrical production design than conjuring IMHO. Also surprised at the use of "believability" where credulity is the issue.

Did anyone else wonder about the references to "the eye" and "the moment" from Robert-Houdin's book in the second article?