[HN Gopher] Sleight-of-hand magic trick only fools monkeys with ...
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Sleight-of-hand magic trick only fools monkeys with opposable
thumbs
Author : supermatou
Score : 159 points
Date : 2023-06-03 08:50 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cam.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cam.ac.uk)
| lisper wrote:
| Serious amateur magician here (magician member of the Magic
| Castle). Note that the trick done for the monkeys is not done the
| way that a real magician would do the trick to fool a human. The
| French Drop actually can have surprisingly deep subtleties. To
| fool a human, you would hold the coin between your thumb and
| forefinger so that there is a visible gap between the bottom of
| the coin and the palm of the hand holding it into which it will
| be dropped. Then the hand that grabs the coin is moved into place
| in a smooth continuous motion, covering this gap very briefly,
| during which time the coin is dropped. The key is that the gap is
| visible during most of this motion, after which the grasping hand
| pauses briefly before closing the thumb and forefingers to
| "grasp" the (now missing) coin. The key to making it convincing
| is that the trick actually happens _before_ the dramatic pause
| before grasping the coin, but the pause focuses the spectator 's
| attention on the fact that during the pause the gap is visible,
| making it "impossible" for the coin to be dropped without being
| seen. It's considered one of the most elementary of tricks, but
| it's actually quite challenging to do properly. In the hands of a
| skilled magician it can be very convincing even when you know how
| it's done.
|
| Magic is an art with vastly more subtlety and attention to detail
| than it generally appreciated by muggles.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| so are you now going to lose your membership for giving away
| the secret? ;-)
|
| on one of the nights out, there was a magician that would just
| walk around the club to do a couple of tricks to groups just
| hanging out as part of the entertainment. i think i must be the
| perfect mark, since i'm convinced if i watch close enough i'll
| prevent myself from getting fooled. which is precisely the
| thing i'm guessing makes me the perfect mark!
| empath75 wrote:
| There's some core moves like the "French drop" and "double
| lift" and "pass" that are well out of the bag right now, and
| tons and tons of youtube videos on how to do them.
| lisper wrote:
| This is true, but one of the things I never appreciated
| about magic before I started hanging out at the Castle and
| learning from actual humans was how little the "moves"
| actually matter. Magic is a performing art, and it's much
| more about the details of the performance than the "moves".
| I learned the "moves" as a kid, but I was a horrible
| performer [1] until someone started drawing my attention to
| all the other little details. It's the difference between
| playing the notes and what someone like Yo Yo Ma does.
|
| [1] I'm actually still not all that great, but at least now
| I know why!
| schwartzworld wrote:
| Additionally, well-performed basic slight of hand like this
| is still magical even when you know how it's done.
| lisper wrote:
| > i'm convinced if i watch close enough i'll prevent myself
| from getting fooled
|
| Yep, we magicians love people like you. :-)
| gretch wrote:
| One time I actually did watch close enough and saw
| something I wasn't supposed to see - the magician somehow
| flicked a card flat into his inside front jacket pocket.
|
| Even after I saw it I couldn't believe my eyes. Like, how
| could you flick it like that with such high precision.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| I do a great french drop. I don't know much other magic, but I
| can really vanish a quarter or other similarly sized object. My
| kids love it, so I still practice a fair amount.
|
| The drop itself is a very unnatural way to transfer a coin from
| one hand to the other, so the first step for me to doing it
| well was to practice actually transferring the coin without the
| vanish.
|
| Something about this process really blew my mind and changed
| the way I thought about learning new skills. It's a lot of work
| and effort to make something look casual and easy like that,
| and until you get to that level of comfort, it's honestly not
| even worth showing anybody.
| thunderbong wrote:
| That was wonderfully explained! Do you know of any video which
| shows this in a close up?
| CSSer wrote:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=EZ0C2wh5IyE
| cmdialog wrote:
| A lisper and a CSSer workting together towards a common
| goal. I love to see it
| lisper wrote:
| That's a great video, but note that it demonstrates a
| slightly different technique than the one I described.
| Still a very good video, and also a good illustration of
| the range of subtlety in even a very simple trick.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Muggle here. Ever incorporated Lisp into one of your magic
| tricks(pick a parenthesis...)?
| lisper wrote:
| No, but it's an interesting idea. There are magicians who
| specialize in mathematical magic. Arthur Benjamin is the best
| known:
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/arthur_benjamin_a_performance_of_m.
| ..
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| I just realised, you're Ron Garret, I had no idea!
|
| In that case, if we extend the definition of magic to
| include the SICP definition, I would say your work at JPL
| counts :D
| 6510 wrote:
| The one I do with dogs, cats and babies is much less
| sophisticated but works well. The left hand with the food is
| flat and open you pretend to pick it up with the tips of your
| fingers and move towards the spectator. Simply close the left
| hand and turn it over.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I have to say I love a good magic show. Like illusionists stuff
| is so cool to me even though I realize I'm just getting played
| the fool.
|
| Card tricks in particular I love. I could watch someone do card
| tricks all day.
|
| Does anyone know a good way to dabble in learning card tricks?
| I'd love to try and hone the skill myself
| dhosek wrote:
| Kind of reminds me of a video I saw on Twitter of someone doing a
| super-simple shell game trick with a mountain lion and the lion's
| favorite toy. Frankly, I expected the lion to react to the
| missing toy by biting the human's face off.
| karmakaze wrote:
| > "There is increasing evidence that the same parts of the
| nervous system used when we perform an action are also activated
| when we watch that action performed by others,"
|
| Certainly there has to be a 'theory of operation' in the viewers
| mind for the trick to work. One way is by having first-hand
| familiarity with the mechanics. I'd be curious if the trick would
| work on an animal very familiar with human mechanics but no
| thumbs, say a smart breed of dog.
| kmoser wrote:
| When I watch people perform intricate physical movements (e.g.
| dance, gymnastics, yoga) I can actually feel in my "mind's eye"
| what it would be like to be in their place, including the
| sensations of movement and pressure against whatever they are
| making contact with. So to me it's obvious that my nervous
| system gets activated just by watching others, and I assumed
| (probably wrongly) that most people have the same experience.
|
| I also thought this would be obvious to scientists since it's
| well known that babies mimic adult facial expressions, and
| therefore there must be some correlation to the parts of the
| nervous system being activated in both individuals.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| It's mirror neurons, as mentioned in the article. Well known
| to the science community for decades now but still a lot of
| research that needs to be done.
| dhosek wrote:
| There's a very simple trick where you have someone twist their
| arms in such a way that there hands end up in the opposite
| places than is typical. You then have the person with twisted
| limbs move a finger that's pointed to but not touched. In most
| cases, the subject moves the finger on the wrong hand.
| MountainMan1312 wrote:
| I could totally see a Siberian Husky arguing with you about it
| yoyopa wrote:
| [flagged]
| coltonv wrote:
| I bet you're fun at parties.
| BasedAnon wrote:
| but it was posted to youtube
| fho wrote:
| Completely anecdotal, but the best magic "show" I "attended" was
| a close-up magician at a medieval fair. During his show the crowd
| grew dramatically and inched closer and closer to his little
| table. No fence no nothing, so in the end the closest guys
| basically had their noses touching his coins and cards.
|
| He ended his show with a snarky "of course i am messing with you
| ... these are magic coins, see? ... this one is this big from one
| side and ..." [flips coin on the table, no toss, just a simple
| half turn] "... and this big [larger] from the other".
|
| I don't have the faintest idea how he did any of his tricks.
| People were watching him from inches away from every angle even
| from behind.
|
| 10/10 would watch again.
| air7 wrote:
| The proper title for this article should be "sleight of hand
| magic tricks involving opposable thumbs only fool monkeys with
| opposable thumbs"
|
| This "Title Fluffing" trend is quite annoying
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Best HN subject title of the year?
| expazl wrote:
| I haven't read the study, but I think there is an extremely high
| chance that this is showing confirmation bias. And i feel the
| video they show supports this interpretation. I don't know
| monkeys so didn't know which ones had opposable thumbs but felt
| just from the hand movement that I understood when the researcher
| intended the monkey to follow the moving hand and when the
| researcher didn't, moving the hand more significantly when
| wanting the money to focus on it, and damping the movement when
| wanting it to focus on the still hand.
|
| If they didn't already do this, they should train some people to
| perform the trick that doesn't know the difference between the
| monkeys and don't know what the expected outcome is based on
| their current hypothesis.
| soxocx wrote:
| > Illusion involving a hidden thumb confounds capuchin and
| squirrel monkeys for the same reason as humans - it misdirects
| the expected outcomes of actions they can carry out.
|
| To be fair. As a human I would state you expect it to be a trick
| (a very easy one to spot in this case) and you can easily infer
| that the coin just _drops_ into the hand it was to start with. It
| does not feel that it has anything todo with what actions you can
| carry out. The coin is either grabbed by the non-coin hand or
| not, it depends on the magician, right?
| amelius wrote:
| Really after seeing the trick I could only conclude the coin
| could be in either hand.
| mannykannot wrote:
| True, but I don't think we can conclude that opposable thumbs
| correlate with a reduced capacity for deductive logic.
| soxocx wrote:
| That is what I am talking about. It could be either in the
| initial coin hand, because the performer just let it drop,
| or the performer could take it. There is no way of knowing.
| You have to guess based on the situation, and the thumb
| part feels like a stretch.
|
| It feels like more an intuition based thing that might
| relate to some level of intelligence which might correlate
| to having thumbs for certain mammals?
| mannykannot wrote:
| As a human, I would expect a trick given the article's title,
| or maybe in a context where it seems some sort of test or
| demonstration is being given, but then, I have seen these sort
| of things before.
|
| The trick works on humans, even when they know they are
| watching someone performing an illusion, if the performer can
| distract their attention at the right moment.
| eightnoneone wrote:
| As a monkey, I want treats.
| rrobukef wrote:
| Now I'm curious if you can teach either sleight-of-hand trick to
| the monkeys.
| rvba wrote:
| This video is of incredibly poor quality? It's hard to understand
| what the magician is doing, also it is quite clear that the coin
| is in his left hand (right side of the screen).
|
| Was the trick also done so poorly when used on monkeys too?
| JusticeJuice wrote:
| Interesting research.
|
| > The research suggest that sharing a biomechanical ability may
| be necessary for accurately anticipating the movements of those
| same limbs in other individuals.
|
| I wonder if it's really about _sharing_ a biomechanical ability,
| or just being _familiar_ with a bicomechanical ability. They 're
| familiar with how their oposable-thumbed hands work, and then can
| relate to how human hands work.
|
| But, if a non-oposable monkey was raised alongside another
| species that did have opposable thumbs, would they be familar
| enough with how opposable thumbs can operate - and therefore get
| fooled.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I'm reminded of the radio lab episode about the color blue which
| suggests that ancient cultures without the ability to make blue
| dye don't perceive that color (at the very least, they didn't
| have a word for it).
|
| Manipulation and perception appear to be quite linked.
| Tumblewood wrote:
| that's more about categorization than perception - some
| cultures don't have a word just for blue, but they still very
| much perceive it. it's just lumped into the same category as
| green ("grue").
| szundi wrote:
| This research is really just done with only 3 species and jumped
| to conclusions at once?
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