[HN Gopher] Teller Reveals His Secrets (2012)
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Teller Reveals His Secrets (2012)
Author : Tomte
Score : 106 points
Date : 2021-12-22 10:37 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| pixelgeek wrote:
| What is magic is that this link appears to have pushed a ten year
| old article to #3 on their 'Most Popular' list.
|
| I wonder if you could glean information about the traffic
| patterns of a site by how much a link from a single social media
| site influences a list like that?
| dotancohen wrote:
| Astonishingly clickbait title. Teller is the name of a magician,
| telling about the secrets of his profession. There is no (bank)
| teller with secrets to tell, as would be the normal
| interpretation of such a headline.
| getlawgdon wrote:
| So interesting. I never thought this was ANYTHING but a piece
| about the magician Teller. "Bank teller" never registered until
| your comment.
|
| What's much more interesting about your comment is that is
| evidence of some of the points Teller makes in his piece. You
| were totally misdirected. You were sure of one pattern when
| another one was being used. You walked away, indignant and in
| disbelief.
| mwattsun wrote:
| I wondered why and how Edward Teller (inventor of hydrogen
| bomb) was revealing his secrets. I attended a lecture by him at
| UC Berkeley. A clearer title would have been "Teller (of Penn
| and Teller) reveals His Secrets"
| pixelgeek wrote:
| Probably just speaks to who their target audience is
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I was hoping for Ed Teller too. Also the inventor of
| geoengineering. His nukes made world peace possible (at the
| risk of global destruction). Maybe his geoengineering will
| make climate balance possible (with the same risk).
| Someone wrote:
| Less war, maybe, but world peace? The USA was involved in
| Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and zillions of smaller
| conflicts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_invol
| ving_the_Uni...). Quite a few of them involved other
| countries with nuclear capability.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Yep. Had the same moment wondering if was about Edward Teller
| or the magician. In both cases I think it would be worth
| reading the article not clickbaity at all.
|
| it is not like the title was "learn this clever trick from
| Einstein" and then you figure out the Einstein in the article
| is a dog.
| mwattsun wrote:
| Agreed. The article is very interesting.
| elzbardico wrote:
| As someone else here, I had the vague hope it also could be
| about Edward Teller.
|
| Imagine something like:
|
| "newly revealed documents show Edward Teller was a Soviet
| asset"
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's magic!
| Tomte wrote:
| I will never understand people who express their indignation
| about a title that is ambiguous. Would you really have
| preferred "Teller (magician) reveals his secrets"?
|
| Or maybe "Teller (magician (of duo Penn & Teller (known from
| Fool Me (a British TV show)))) reveals his secrets"
|
| Just because you would have preferred a story of a bank
| teller... and had it been this way, another one like you would
| have complained that it's not about the famous magician.
|
| Language is ambiguous. "Teller" is his name, there is no
| conceit in the headline.
|
| And as long as there is no conceit, your accusation is out of
| place.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Would you really have preferred "Teller (magician) reveals
| his secrets"?
|
| Yes. Or even just "Magician reveals his secrets".
| > Language is ambiguous. "Teller" is his name, there is no
| conceit in the headline.
|
| The ambiguity seems (to me) to have been exploited for
| clicks. But I see here that other people here seem to be more
| familiar with the magician than with the (possibly outdated)
| profession.
|
| I'm an old fart.
| fecak wrote:
| If you are genuinely "old", you'd be more likely to know
| who Teller is. Penn & Teller were pretty ubiquitous back in
| the 80s and 90s. Teller is 73. Fun fact - he taught Latin
| at the high school I went to (before my time) before making
| it as a magician.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I'm 44. Too old for autotune-music, apparently too young
| for Teller the magician. Or just spent too much time
| immersed in books instead of a glowing screen.
|
| I'm still of the opinion that the title is misleading,
| but I accept that most people think differently than
| myself. That's been a common thread my entire life )) I
| think that a popular technology company even made a
| slogan out of it.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| fecak wrote:
| Well you're in luck, young bibliophile. Teller has
| authored or co-authored five books, all published between
| your 12th and 28th birthdays.
|
| I may be more familiar with his work than the average
| person because of his connection to my high school. But
| saying the title was "clickbait" (as if there is some
| large contingent of people that were hoping to hear the
| secrets of bank tellers) is a little much.
| [deleted]
| yupper32 wrote:
| Maybe take some time to think about why you find the need
| to try and insult people by saying stuff like "[I] spent
| too much time immersed in books instead of a glowing
| screen" instead of just acknowledging your gap in pop
| culture knowledge and moving on with your day?
|
| "Ah, I see Teller is a well known pop culture figure. My
| mistake." would be a more appropriate way to respond.
| Searching "Teller" on Google outputs the magician as the
| first four results. It's not like it's some super small
| name.
| mikestew wrote:
| _" Ah, I see Teller is a well known pop culture figure.
| My mistake." would be a more appropriate way to respond._
|
| Be nice, I'm sure it took some genuine effort on OP's
| part not to tell you that they don't even own a TV.
| Tomte wrote:
| Keep in mind, that HN is intentionally structured around
| curiosity, and we're not tagging our submissions with
| ultra-controlled vocabulary, or annotate them with RDF
| triples.
|
| Because stumbling across something that surprises us as
| isn't what we first expected is good.
|
| If semantic precision was the goal, using the original
| titles wouldn't be mandated, but prohibited.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Interesting perspective, thank you.
| yesenadam wrote:
| Did you read it? Teller is awesome, always worth reading,
| a very thoughtful guy as well as a master of his art.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teller_(magician)
|
| TIL: Penn & Teller met as painters at art school!
| throwawayboise wrote:
| "Magician Teller reveals his secrets" would be a good
| stand-alone title. Not needed in the print/online article
| since a picture (captioned _According to magician
| Teller..._ ) is at the front of the article, removing at a
| glance any ambiguity.
| [deleted]
| twic wrote:
| Now, if dotancohen had been complaining that it wasn't Edward
| Teller revealing his secrets, i would have had a lot more
| sympathy. Although i'd be worrying about what he was planning
| to do over the holidays.
| mikkergp wrote:
| 1. I assume you're trolling.
|
| 2. If not, what incredible secrets were you hoping to learn
| from a bank teller?
| acheron wrote:
| It's a recent addition to the HN guidelines, but it's there
| now, and I think it's a good one: don't complain about name
| collisions.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Erm, I immediately understood it as the very famous magician
| Teller, of Penn & Teller. The bank teller interpretation didn't
| occur to me and I wouldn't have clicked if I thought it was
| that. The article was exactly as expected and I read to the end
| with interest.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| My first association was with Teller from Penn & Teller. But to
| be fair, English is not my first language, and bank tellers are
| a thing of the long past to me - everything a normal teller
| would do is self-service and has been for many years, where I
| live, and my last interaction with a regular teller was maybe
| just before the turn of the century.
| asdffdsa wrote:
| This comment is the natural result when a magician and software
| engineer collide
| [deleted]
| ttyprintk wrote:
| I guess it could have also meant Edward Teller. I'm glad it
| turned out to be the magician.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Or maybe his grandson Astro! That'd have been a fun
| interview.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Man, congratulations to making the cut to be included in the
| 2021 edition of "The Great Annals of Over-reacting Comments
| About Absolutely Irrelevant Stuff in the Internet from the
| Ancient Great Society of Bike Shedding and other Occult Arts."
|
| We, from The Society, greatly appreciate your comment. Please
| keep up the good work and take this in jest.
| arrakis2021 wrote:
| R u in need of assistance
| [deleted]
| funOtter wrote:
| He mentions a ball with string trick, here's a video of that:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhnATlPdG6A
| klenwell wrote:
| One of my favorite This American Life episodes where Penn and
| Teller talk about the genesis of this trick:
|
| https://www.thisamericanlife.org/619/the-magic-show
|
| Explains the significance of Penn's ball kick at the end.
| dang wrote:
| Past discussions:
|
| _Teller Reveals His Secrets (2012)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28379347 - Sept 2021 (3
| comments)
|
| _Teller Reveals His Secrets_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18627594 - Dec 2018 (3
| comments)
|
| _Teller Reveals His Secrets (2012)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14211242 - April 2017 (144
| comments)
|
| _Teller Reveals His Secrets_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3632821 - Feb 2012 (36
| comments)
| rnoorda wrote:
| I've read this several times over the years. My favourite quote
| is:
|
| > _Make the secret a lot more trouble than the trick seems worth.
| You will be fooled by a trick if it involves more time, money and
| practice than you (or any other sane onlooker) would be willing
| to invest._
| taneq wrote:
| This reminds me of a principle I've seen in action many times,
| which is that usually even seemingly highly invested parties
| aren't really 'playing for keeps'. Think of heists - if your
| treasure is worth $X million dollars then you should be
| prepared for attacks costing $X - $attack_cost.
|
| Are you an art thief and is your Van Gough in transit worth
| $1.5mil? Be pretty dumb not to spend $1mil to recover it for
| your team of 3, then, right? But nobody does. And nobody spends
| $1mil to protect said artwork. It's like we collectively agree
| that official valuations are BS.
| benlivengood wrote:
| Owners of $1.5M artworks buy insurance to cover their theft
| or destruction for significantly less than $1M, and the
| insurers do not go bankrupt.
|
| As the other commenter points out the expected value of the
| heist of a $1.5M painting is a lot less than $1M for
| potential thieves.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Risk/reward. Spend $1M on a heist? It better have a 100%
| chance of working. Any heist can fail, for a number of
| reasons. Plus the risk side isn't just financial -- jail time
| is a heavy risk too.
| taneq wrote:
| > It better have a 100% chance of working.
|
| If the reward is $1M. If it's $10m then 10% is worth it.
| $1B? Why are the many, many billionaires around the world
| not making this kind of play?
| aaroninsf wrote:
| This is an interesting idea.
|
| I am now curious if there is a formalization of this idea of
| variable value which seems to be a function of some kind of
| friction/work requirement. And I imagine is a function of
| scale relative to the context.
|
| What I mean is, if you're an auction house or a major museum,
| with an operating budget in the $100Ms or more, at some point
| it is at least cognitively simpler (if not prudent) to accept
| a certain amount of shrinkage/fraud/loss etc., which you
| might prevent with even minimal effort, because the minimal
| effort is too costly in some other way. Cognitively.
| Administratively. Whatever.
|
| I remember learning from relatives who had worked in the FBI
| that their had been in their day thresholds for what level of
| check fraud merited investigation. Below a certain level it
| was not a good use of limited resources to waste time chasing
| it.
|
| This has an interesting follow-on effect, that it _was_ worth
| consistent effort to obscure that actuality and promote
| belief in a much more comprehensively aware and interested
| (and competent) FBI than existed, because that was itself
| effective in discouraging a certain amount of crime. "Not
| worth the risk" is miscalculated when you overestimate the
| risk. And you have little ability to test the system.
|
| I find this interesting because it is a reminder that e.g.
| value is not BS, exactly; but it's multidimensionally
| contingent and contextual. Which I guess you can see in other
| places all the time but this is an interesting angle.
|
| Not least because it suggests where to look for rich veins of
| "arbitrage," the places you can exploit differences in
| relative value.
|
| A la Superman III!
| xtiansimon wrote:
| This principle works in art also.
| omk wrote:
| Not a security expert, but I believe security applies too. It
| is difficult to claim a system as 100% secure. So long as
| what is being secured is less worth than the effort to hack
| into, you are good.
| [deleted]
| hannob wrote:
| I've seen people think like that who learned the hard way
| they were wrong.
|
| The crucial thing people tend to miss: Attacks scale. They
| can be automated. Your blog may not be worth the trouble
| hacking it, but hacking thousands of private blogs and
| abusing them for spam and only having to work out the
| attack once is.
| ta988 wrote:
| Works in software development as well. I've seen magicians
| make piles of money disappear by switching to k8s. We never
| figured out how they did it.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| David Dockerfield
| mbg721 wrote:
| Penn and Teller are afaik the best in the business at
| highlighting how much being a magician relies on steering the
| audience much more than the quality of any individual trick.
| bgroat wrote:
| There's a wonderful British television story called "Jonathan
| Creek" were the eponymous Johnathan is a stage-hand and magic
| trick developer who helps a reporter solve locked-room
| mysteries.
|
| In the pilot episode he says something to the effect of, "It's
| not magic. It's never magic. People just can't imagine, or
| can't be bothered to do this much bloody work"
| maxwelldone wrote:
| Jonathan Creek is a great show, at least the first few
| seasons. I like the portrayal of Jonathan; calm and
| unassuming.
| lowercased wrote:
| First few seasons _were_ really good. Chemistry changed and
| stories went downhill a bit when Caroline Quentin left. I
| 'll need to dig that series out to rewatch :)
| bgroat wrote:
| Jonathan remains in my mind the most perfect version of a
| "smart person" in media.
|
| Deep domain expertise, with plodding, methodical
| deliberative thinking until he finds a solution.
|
| No flashy mental superpowers, just patience, trial-and-
| error and lateral thinking.
| 1ibsq wrote:
| That reminds me of a quote from Trumps 'the art of the deal',
| that goes something like: the receipt for success is under-
| promise and over-deliver.
| sophacles wrote:
| The real magic trick was Trump getting you to attribute the
| idea to him. Like all magic tricks (and all Trumps): it's
| just a con.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| I have never read Art of the Deal, but that idea is a lot
| older than that book.
|
| I mean, even Scotty from Star Trek verifiably beat Trump's
| ghost writer to the punch on that wisdom by years and it was
| already an ancient idea before that.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9SVhg6ZENw
| 1ibsq wrote:
| Probably yes, but I remember it from the book I mentioned.
| That's all I wanted to share.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Reading this makes me think of dark patterns of things like
| cookie banners. The modern day magicians are trying to grift you
| out of a lot more than a ticket to their show.
|
| _Exploit pattern recognition_ - This is the big one, of course
|
| _It's hard to think critically if you're laughing._ - Yeah you
| 're probably not laughing when you come across a cookie banner,
| but you might be distracted by something else, like your desire
| to get to that recipe, how-to answer, etc., or maybe a huge pop
| up ad.
|
| _Make the secret a lot more trouble than the trick seems worth_
| - good luck trying to change your cookie settings after you 've
| set them
|
| _If you are given a choice, you believe you have acted freely_ -
| it 's really a misleading choice with how these banners are
| designed.
|
| etc.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It made me think of dark patterns of things like
| misinformation.
| mhb wrote:
| How a small but beautiful trick illuminates the mind of a master
| magician
|
| https://lasvegasweekly.com/news/2008/nov/20/man-ball-hoop-be...
| herodotus wrote:
| Magic was a hobby of mine for many years. I even produced the
| world's first online Magic Magazine (Merlin's Web - no longer
| available). I am a big fan of Penn and Teller. However, there is
| both good and bad magic on YouTube. If you want to see a true
| magical genius at work doing an effect that demonstrates several
| of Teller's principles, have a look at this (my all time
| favourite online performance):
|
| https://youtu.be/yvURE6ueeEk
|
| (Actually, I think it uses all the principles 1 through 7)!
| colordrops wrote:
| Is there an explanation of all the techniques used somewhere?
| herodotus wrote:
| Tommy Wonder wrote a two volume book (for magicians) which
| includes this effect. But although it is described, the
| reality is that many years of diligent work and thought is
| required to do this. The basic mechanics of the trick just
| scratch the surface.
|
| https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/stage-and-parlor-
| magic/the...
| lathiat wrote:
| If you're a fan of Penn & Teller (or magic) but haven't seen
| their TV show "Fool Us" you should try a few episodes :) now in
| its 8th season!
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| This is the article, I think I read linked here in 2012 that
| started me on a journey of learning magic.
|
| Since then I've traveled all over the world studying with Master
| Magicians. Lovely to see the article again, I haven't read it
| since.
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