That a magical feeling takes place when our expectations are violated is a fact that makes perfect sense to anybody who considers it. What is surprising is the horsepower necessary for the brain to form an expectation in the first place. It takes years of constant study for children to develop proper expectations of the world around them or even of the people they have loved their entire lives. This is despite the fact that, like adults, children possess the most powerful known computational device in the universe-the human brain-to guide them in developing expectations. The fact that magicians can collapse those long-held expectations like so many houses of cards is incredibly useful in developing new neuroscientific methods to find out the exact architecture of not only our adult minds but also the developing minds of our children.
May the Force be with you.
The Illusion of Choice.
James the Amaz!ng Randi is back onstage, only this time he"s at the Naples Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Florida. He"s doing us a favor by performing several mentalism tricks at the 2009 Best Illusion of the Year contest.35 Mentalists are magicians who use mathematical probabilities, human nature, sleight of hand, gimmicks, and trust to make it appear that they can read your mind. Their acts are highly theatrical, often invoking "mystical" powers of clairvoyance, telekinesis, telepathy, precognition, divination, and mind control.
Unlike many New Age psychics, who claim to possess supernatural powers,36 mentalists such as Randi, Max Maven, Derren Brown, and other top performers do not lay claim to paranormal faculties. Rather, their illusions are spun from an ability to exploit human gullibility and, as you will see, to carry out brilliantly sneaky, under-handed maneuvers.
Today Randi is performing a book test. In this act, the magician may ask a volunteer to exercise free will in picking out a magazine, finding a random word somewhere in the magazine, and thinking about the word silently. The magician divines the word by reading the volunteer"s mind.
Randi looks out into the audience, hand shielding his eyes from the spotlights like a sailor blocking the sun as he peers out to the horizon. "I met a young woman outside before the show who agreed to a.s.sist me with this next trick. Could you please stand up?" A young woman stands near the center of audience. Randi introduces her as Zoe.
"Now, before we get started, could you please confirm that we have never met before tonight?"
"Correct," she says.
"That you are in no way being coerced by me, that you haven"t been paid by me, and that any decision you may make has not been given to you by me?"
"No," says Zoe.
"When we met in front of the hall tonight you chose a word from a magazine completely at random and of your own free will?"
"Yes."
"Was that magazine a different copy of this specific magazine, which we chose from the rack of free literature outside this very building?" Randi says, as he pulls a folded free apartment rental guide from the breast pocket of his navy blazer and slowly opens each page to show the audience that there is lots of text.
"Yes."
"And I asked you, did I not, to open that magazine to any page you wanted having lots of text on it, and to choose any word you liked from that page freely, while I stood with my back to you?"
"Yes."
"And then you destroyed the magazine, correct?"
"Yes."
"It would be impossible for me to know what word you chose, right?"
"Right."
"Okay. You have a piece of paper with that word written on it. Could you please circle that word now, as I try to read your mind?"
"Okay," she says, and she circles the word on the page.
Then Randi begins to pace. He prowls to stage right and to stage left. The shadow he casts from the spotlight jumps in animation against the pleats of the red velvet curtain standing a full two stories high behind him. His brow knots severely as he rubs his forehead and temples. He mumbles to himself in a slightly disconcerting but amusing fashion.
Finally, Randi stops in front of an easel holding a large writing pad next to the podium. He uncaps a huge black Sharpie and, with his eyes closed, looking up into the lights, right hand pressing on his eyelids, left arm extended with unsheathed pen ready to strike, he speaks. "I"m starting to get something," he says as he writes an N on the paper. "It"s all coming now." He proceeds to receive mental vibrations for eight more characters as well, spelling out the phrase: NI+d3)3P.
Finished, and visibly exhausted from the effort, Randi pulls his hand from his face. He looks at the pad for a long time, totally silent, then turns back to the crowd. The throng starts to fidget as they become embarra.s.sed for the poor old coot.
"Is the magazine written in the English language?" Randi eventually asks, failing to hide the disappointment in his voice.
"Yes," giggles Zoe, as other nervous laughs arise from the audience. Zoe is still standing, and she is so embarra.s.sed for Randi that when she responds she has to lower the paper she has been using as a mask to hide her face.
"Are you a mathematician?" Randi hopes sadly.
"No," says Zoe.
"Okay, well, I guess I didn"t get it," Randi concludes, shoulders and chin slumping. "What was the word?"
"Deception," says Zoe.
"What? Hmm? I"m sorry, I didn"t hear you," says the suddenly frail octogenarian, bent over to bring his now cupped ear closer, eyes squinting into the glare.
"Deception!" yells Zoe.
"Hmm. Yes, well...sometimes these things fail," he says dejectedly. Looking up at the pad one last time, he does a double take and says, excitedly, "Oh, but wait a minute! I think I see what happened!" Now thirty years younger, he positively leaps as he lifts the page from the pad and rips it off. He turns to the crowd with the ripped page and slowly rotates it 180 degrees as he says, "I must have gotten the signal from you upside down and backwards!"
Once the rotation is complete, the page reveals the now legible message: d(P+I.
The crowd roars as Randi receives his standing ovation.
The next morning, Randi returned to his home in Fort Lauderdale, the James Randi Educational Foundation, or JREF. Susana and I were thrilled to drive him on the two-hour jaunt back from Naples. Take our word for it, we"ve traveled all over the world with magicians, and in the summer of 2009 we even flew, drove, and sailed across China with two hundred Spanish magicians, so we know: if you ever feel like taking a boisterous road trip, go with a magician.
The JREF serves as a skeptical third party, rooting out fraud and outrageous claims made by psychics, faith healers, hypnotists, and even deluded scientists. We arrived at the foundation building, a refurbished house surrounded by peac.o.c.ks, in time to find the staff celebrating the news that they had just sold out the next The Amaz!ng Meeting (TAM), to be held in London that fall. We were shown to the Isaac Asimov library, the foundation"s extensive collection of magic literature, with books that line every side of a large windowless wood-trimmed conference room complete with a huge central conference table that would be the envy of any CEO. Notes and paraphernalia pertaining to Randi"s next book, A Magician in the Laboratory, were strewn across the desk.
On the road trip, Randi had told us that the magazine test he did on Zoe is one variant among many for a cla.s.sic trick known as the Book Test. "Every mentalist does one," Randi says in the library. "It"s fundamentally an illusion of choice."
"Allow me to demonstrate. My dear," Randi says to Susana, "if you would please pick any book you like from the shelves." Susana comes back with a randomly chosen magic book and shows it to Randi. "Good, good," he says, "but let"s make sure it doesn"t have too many pictures. You need to have plenty of choices of text." He takes the book and flips rapidly through the pages. "Okay, great," he says, as he hands back the book. "That book will work nicely."
"Now I"ll choose a book of approximately the same size," he says, grabbing another tome from the shelves. "Next I"ll read your mind, but first you need to choose a page somewhere in the middle as I flip through the pages of this book." He holds the back of the book flat in his left hand as he lifts the cover and all the pages of the book to a forty-five-degree angle. He flips the pages down with his thumb in a cascade, and about halfway through Susana says, "There."
"Page 174," says Randi. "Now, let"s review. You chose a book of your own free will, correct?"
"Yes."
"You chose the page you wanted, right?"
"Correct."
"Now you will freely choose the word you want from that page in the book you are holding," Randi says.
"Uh-huh," Susana confirms.
"So there is no way for me to know what word you are about to choose, right?"
"Well, I"m sure you will, but I don"t see how you will do it!"
Randi chuckles, "Well, that"s where you"re right! Now, my dear, please open your book to page 174 and pick a word from the top line. Don"t choose an article or some unsubstantial word, pick a nice, meaningful, beefy word."
Susana flips to page 174 of her book, reads the first line, picks a word-"stellar"-and you already know what follows.
SPOILER ALERT! THE FOLLOWING SECTION DESCRIBES MAGIC SECRETS AND THEIR BRAIN MECHANISMS!.
But how does he do it? Randi can"t know what word Susana is about to choose, can he? Randi explains that book tests are an illusion of choice because the choices are known to or forced by the magician. In this case, Randi"s retelling of the trick and Susana"s choices are-well, we don"t want to say dishonest, but they are not quite accurate. Let"s go over them. First, Susana does indeed choose her own book. No forcing there. But does she choose page 174? Not really. Randi is the one who flips the pages, not Susana, and Susana never actually sees which page is showing when she says "Stop." Randi is lying when he tells her it is page 174. So now the question is, how can Randi know the first line of page 174 for a book Susana randomly chose? Has he memorized the first line in every book from the thousands in his library? No. When Randi flipped rapidly through the pages of Susana"s book to "check for pictures," he wasn"t really looking for pictures. He was looking for a glimpse of any page in which he could resolve both a word from the top line and also the page number from the upper corner. It just so happens he saw "stellar" as the pages flew by. It"s challenging with all the blurred movement because he flips the pages quite fast. But with practice it can be done, and Randi needed only the single word and its page number to make the trick work.
How does Randi know exactly which word Susana will choose? He doesn"t. But there are only so many big beefy or stellar-like words on a single line of any normal book. Even if Susana happens to choose a different big word, Randi can recover by saying, "Oh, but the word "stellar" is in fact there, isn"t it? You must have unconsciously found the word "stellar" to be more interesting than the other word you chose, and that"s why I picked it up more in your brain waves." Randi uses mentalism tricks to restrict her choices to a single word or just a few possible words. So when he "reads her mind," he is actually just making an educated guess that has a low probability of failure. And in the event of a failure, it"s an easy one to fix.
END OF SPOILER ALERT.
Let"s go back to the illusion contest on the previous night. Randi"s just received his standing ovation for reading Zoe"s mind. But how did he do it? What"s the method behind this particular book test? Zoe"s choices seemed essentially infinite. Has the Amaz!ng Randi (he"s told the members of the audience that since they are all friends now they should call him by his first name, Amaz!ng) somehow actually divined the word "deception" from all possible words, and in spectacular fashion to boot? No, Zoe is definitely being fooled. She may feel that she has thousands of secret choices and is being directed by nothing other than her own free will, but that is not the case.
SPOILER ALERT! THE FOLLOWING SECTION DESCRIBES MAGIC SECRETS AND THEIR BRAIN MECHANISMS!.
Again, Randi"s retelling of history is, well, telling. It"s true that Zoe chose a word from a magazine that was found outside the philharmonic hall. That"s Randi"s version of "found art." He likes to use local literature because it makes the illusion seem all that much more convincing, since he could not have prepared anything. And in a way, he didn"t. He relied on his wits.
It is also true that Zoe scanned the magazine without Randi"s seeing her do it, and she circled the word ("so as not to forget it," Randi had told her) with his pen before ripping out the page and discarding the magazine in a trash can. But wait-Randi announced during the show that the magazine had been "destroyed," not discarded. An important modification, to be sure, but not enough of a misstatement that Zoe would complain. For most people, when an object enters a trash can, it ceases to exist and is for all intents and purposes destroyed. But no act is beneath the Amaz!ng Randi. Once Zoe entered the philharmonic hall, Randi did indeed go dumpster diving to recover that ripped magazine. Zoe had torn the relevant page from it, true, but now he knew which page was missing. And because Zoe used Randi"s own specially selected pen to circle the word, a nice hard ballpoint pen, the circling of the word left an impression that was barely discernible on the adjacent page of the magazine. So Randi knew the page and its exact location. To find the word itself, Randi took a second copy of the magazine, ripped out Zoe"s chosen page, put it under the embossed page from Zoe"s magazine, and lined up their corners so that they overlapped perfectly. Randi then poked a hole through the embossed circle, marking the word Zoe chose on the page below. It was, of course, "deception."
In yet another incredibly devious move, Randi took a third pristine copy of the magazine and ripped out the same page Zoe had ripped out, with the same tear pattern, before putting it in the trash can to replace Zoe"s original. This new copy had never been touched by the pen and so it had no embossed circle in it. If Zoe, or some other person in the audience, reconstructed Randi"s methods and came back to do a little dumpster diving of their own, they would find what looked like Zoe"s original ripped magazine. They would remain mystified.
To further throw off the audience, Randi had Zoe circle the word during the act itself so that if any of the other audience members saw the ripped page during or after the act, they would a.s.sume that the circle had been created during the show and not before. (Randi was careful not to mention that the word had been circled before the show.) Randi similarly implied that Zoe had written down the word on a piece of paper rather than saying that she had the page ripped from the magazine, so that people wouldn"t even think of trying to get the evidence and reconstruct the trick.
Randi allowed Zoe to make her word choice in truly free manner, but it was not a secret choice, though it felt like one to everybody, including Zoe. Randi had controlled her every move from the minute he said h.e.l.lo. Then, all he needed to do was figure out how to spell "deception" upside down and backwards. For a master magician like Randi, that little bit was the hardest part of the whole trick.
Since watching Randi perform, we have investigated other mentalist tricks to see what they reveal about human nature. Here are three of our favorites.
In the 1089 Force, the magician first asks you to pick a three-digit number whose first and last digits differ by two or more. Let"s say you pick 478. You write it down. Step two, the magician asks you to reverse the order of the number and write it down: 874. Third, you are asked to subtract the smaller number from the larger number, in this case 874-478 = 396. Fourth, reverse that number to become 693 and add it to 396. Your answer is 1,089.
So far, so good. Now the magician hands you three or four books (or more if he wants to lug them around). You choose one, any one, your free choice. The books look normal, not marked in any way. He says, "Excellent choice! Now turn to page 108 and look at the first line. Count over to the ninth word and hold it in your mind. Got it?" You follow his instructions. The word is "yellow."
"Concentrate now," says the magician. "I am going to read your mind. The word is coming into focus, slowly, slowly. I see a, hmm, a color? It starts with, let me see, it starts with a y? Yellow! The word is "yellow." Am I right?"
Indeed he is. The ninth word at the top of page 108 in the book you picked is "yellow." He memorized it before the show. He also memorized the ninth word at the top of page 108 in all the other books. If you had chosen any one of them, he would have known the word you"d find.
The 1089 Force is a mathematical trick based on the fact that any three-digit number manipulated in this manner always-always!-adds up to 1,089. The magician simply picks the books and looks up the word he wants you to find. He could, for example, tell you to turn to page 10, count down to the eighth line, and look up the ninth word in that line (1089.) The effect is astounding and always entertaining.
Another mathematical force convinces you that everyone in the room can be made to share the same mental picture. You all are asked to think of a small number and then silently perform the following operations. Double the number. Add 8 to the result. Divide the result by 2. Subtract the original number. Now convert this number into a letter of the alphabet (1=A, 2=B, 3=C, 4=D, and so on). Next, think of the name of a country that starts with this letter. Got it? Now think of an animal whose name starts with the next letter. Finally, think of the color of that animal.
The magician makes a dramatic pause. "Oh, my, your collective image must be wrong. There must be a problem. There are no gray elephants in Denmark." The trick works because everyone must choose a country that starts with D, and Denmark is the most common. The next letter is e, and most people think of an elephant. And who isn"t going to think of a gray elephant?
People usually make the same choices because when they are asked to stand up and speak in front of hundreds of other people, they tend to say the first thing that comes to mind. Mentalists know that the number of countries starting with D is vanishingly small, and that the likelihood that they"ll pick the Dominican Republic is low unless they are either unusually cool under fire or have some time to consider. Most people then choose "elephant" and not "emu" for the same reasons. They are nervous. They"re scared of looking stupid in front of so many people, and they can"t think clearly enough to come up with something clever.
Mentalists may also use something they call the "one-ahead principle": to give the impression of reading your mind, they stay one step ahead of you at all times. The coincidences are multiplied in your mind, resulting in the illusory feeling that the only explanation is supernatural ability.
Magic Tony showed us a trick based on this principle. He gave us a deck of cards to shuffle thoroughly and then he spread the deck facedown on a table and announced that he would predict our choices. "First, you will choose the nine of hearts," he said. We slid a card out of the spread, Tony looked at it, and set it aside.
Without showing it to us, he exclaimed, "Good job! Now I predict you"ll choose the two of clubs."
We chose another card at random and slid it to him, still facedown. He looked at it and said, "Excellent!"
Tony gathered the remaining cards and shuffled them. "Now you will choose the queen of spades. "Pick any card as I run my thumb down the corner of the deck by saying "stop."" He held the deck in one hand and riffled his thumb down the deck.
About halfway through the deck we said, "Stop."
Tony removed the card, picked up the other two cards we had chosen, and turned over all three in front of us: the nine of hearts, the two of clubs, and the queen of spades. Wow!
To accomplish this trick, Tony first surrept.i.tiously memorized the card at the bottom of the deck: the nine of hearts. He then spread the cards facedown and asked us to make our choices, announcing that we would choose the nine of hearts.
When we picked the first card, we thought it must be the nine of hearts (after all, this was a trick by a terrific magician) but we could not verify that with our own eyes. In fact, the card was the two of clubs, which Tony saw with his own eyes.
Then Tony announced that for our next card we would choose the two of clubs. (Hmmm, he already had that card on the table but we followed his direction and pulled another card. He saw that it was the queen of spades.) Tony then collected the remaining cards, did a false shuffle so as to keep the nine of hearts exactly where he wanted it, and asked us to choose a card as he riffled the deck with his thumb. We chose a "random" card in the middle of the deck, but he lifted the cards from where he was keeping the nine of hearts while distracting us from the sleight with eye contact. He removed the nine and laid it out with the other two chosen cards to show that his three predictions were correct. In fact, he had simply "predicted" whatever card had previously been chosen.
END OF SPOILER ALERT.
You get the idea. Mind reading is a setup, flimflam, bunk.u.m, even treachery-but why does it work again and again? Why are you so taken in? Why do you entertain a nanosecond of belief that a magician could even begin to have this ability? How does he force you to follow his will?
Forcing is a method used by magicians to make you think you"ve made a free choice when in fact the magician knows in advance exactly what you will do-what card you"ll choose from a deck, what word you"ll choose from a book, what object you"ll choose from an array of items on a table. He is in complete control. When a mentalist has you in his clutches, your sense of free will is an illusion.
A cla.s.sic method of forcing is called magician"s choice. You are asked to make a free choice among items but, no matter what you choose, the magician calls the shots by how he verbally responds to your choices.
SPOILER ALERT! THE FOLLOWING SECTION DESCRIBES MAGIC SECRETS AND THEIR BRAIN MECHANISMS!.
For example, if the magician puts two cards facedown on the table and wants you to choose the one on the right, he will say "Choose either one." If you choose the one on the right, he goes on with the trick. If you choose the one on the left, he will say, "Good, you keep that card and I"ll use the remaining one." Thus he forces the card he wants.
END OF SPOILER ALERT.
A "force" is not unlike the cinematic version you may have seen in George Lucas"s original Star Wars movie. There"s a scene in which the Jedi master Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi and our hero Luke Skywalker, along with robot sidekicks R2-D2 and C-3PO, are trying to leave the planet Tatooine. En route to the s.p.a.ceport they are stopped by two armor-clad, gun-toting imperial storm troopers. Obi-Wan gives a sly smile and wave of his hand as he tells them, "These aren"t the droids you"re looking for." The storm troopers appear confused. One of them parrots back, "These aren"t the droids we"re looking for." Obi-Wan dominates their minds, forcing them to believe and say whatever he tells them. After the storm troopers wave our heroes past the checkpoint, Obi-Wan explains to the young Luke Skywalker, "The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded."
Except that in the real universe we are all weak-minded, and magicians are the Jedi masters.
Forcing works because your brain is on a constant, active lookout for order, pattern, and explanation and has a built-in abhorrence of the random, the patternless, the nonnarrable. In the absence of explicability, you impose it. When you think you are choosing something, but the choice is changed on you or distorted in some way, you nevertheless stick to your guns and justify your "choice." You confabulate.
Confabulating is a fancy term for shamelessly making things up. It is another of those potent and ubiquitous brain processes that occur all the time but to which you are seldom wise. Normally this process is beneficial. For instance, confabulation is what allows you to "see" people and objects in drawings instead of the tangle of dark lines that you are actually looking at. It is also what allows you to "see" faces in clouds; it allows your perception to be flexible and creative. But when this sort of pattern imposition goes on at higher levels of cognition, the implications can get a little uncomfortable. Your mind will go to surprising lengths to preserve its sense of agency and choice and continuity of the self. When you are influenced by others, you rationalize their influence as being good decision making on your part.
The breadth and depth of confabulation is revealed following some kinds of brain injury, when the mind"s normal system of checks and balances is perturbed. For example, when the right brain hemisphere is damaged, spectacular delusions can arise about the state of the body. Here is Dr. Anna Berti, a neuroscientist at the University of Turin in Italy, interviewing one her patients, "Carla," whose paralyzed left arm rests in her lap next to her good right arm.
"Can you raise your right arm?"
"Yes." Carla"s arm goes up.
"Can you raise you left arm?"