[HN Gopher] Penn and Teller's Lab Scam [video] (1990)
___________________________________________________________________
Penn and Teller's Lab Scam [video] (1990)
Author : 1970-01-01
Score : 133 points
Date : 2023-10-31 13:46 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| cs702 wrote:
| Awesome. Thank you for sharing this.
|
| I love the fact that Penn & Teller, along with Rob Pike & Dennis
| Ritchie (!), _knew_ that Arno Penzias (!!) would choose to watch
| clips of Penn & Teller over clips of some soap opera star and
| some daytime show host. At all times, Penzo _thought_ he had made
| a choice, but he actually hadn 't!
| irrational wrote:
| If I had to make this choice in front of another person, I'd
| always choose the one that came with higher social standing
| than whatever I really wanted to watch. In other words, I think
| he did make a choice, but it wasn't between what he wanted to
| watch and didn't want to watch, but between what would look
| better in front of another person and what wouldn't.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| In magic if there really is a free choice then the choice does
| not mater and something is marked/tagged in some way. Also many
| times there is a forced choice but it looks fair.
| bombcar wrote:
| What gets really fun is when you have a magician who's good
| enough _that which trick you 're going to see_ depends on
| your choice. It's a free choice, but each option is a force.
| RationalDino wrote:
| A fun version of the forced choice is that your patter makes
| it come out the same. "By your choice this animal is doomed!"
| versus "By your choice this animal is spared!"
|
| The person still feels that they made a choice, even though
| they didn't..
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Did they know what he would pick, or did they know they could
| have feigned some computer error in case Arno made the wrong
| choice and made it seem like he picked Penn & Teller straight
| away in post?
|
| The "magician's choice" wasn't a psychological trick like what
| you're suggesting. Penn & Teller were the only real people of
| the choices given.
| irrational wrote:
| What would have been a better test of choice would be between
| Penn and Teller and a science show (I'm not sure what was on TV
| back then, maybe Carl Sagan and an episode of Cosmos?)
| jbombadil wrote:
| In highschool, some friends and I came up with a prank that I'm
| still amazed how simple, yet hilarious it was.
|
| We wrote a small piece of software. Bare in mind that this was
| early 2000s and all we knew was some rudimentary Turbo Pascal 7.
| We would sit in front of the keyboard and have the pranked person
| next to us. We would tell them to ask a question to the program.
|
| So we would run the program and the first prompt would have you
| type something along the lines of: "oh magic program, please
| answer this question for us". The program would say "Ask
| away...". You would type your question, hit enter and oh and
| behold! a reasonable answer to your question.
|
| Needless to say, when we were "typing" the "oh magic program"
| quote, we were actually typing the answer to the question, but
| had rigged the output so that no matter what character we typed,
| it would always be that string. Thus the program "knew" the
| answer.
|
| Funny thing is, this worked because of it's timing. This was an
| era where a lot of kids had grown up with a computer around the
| house, but many hadn't (third world country). So while it wasn't
| uncommon that some of us could type quickly and without looking
| at the keyboard, it wasn't the norm either. I'm sure kids
| nowadays would immediately catch up to the trick in no time. A
| handful of our classmates did.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| That's hilarious and clever.
| mosselman wrote:
| Thanks for this funny memory! I can instantly imagine it
| working very well.
| mbork_pl wrote:
| This is brilliant! I'm stealing it, and my only problem now is
| that I have no idea who to prank with this...
| habitue wrote:
| Also LLMs have kind of made this prank moot, lol
| mikepurvis wrote:
| An LLM can't tell you what you had for lunch or what will
| be on the math test this afternoon though.
| autoexec wrote:
| An LLM might confidently tell you those kinds of things,
| it will just probably be wrong.
| krisoft wrote:
| > or what will be on the math test this afternoon though.
|
| Neither can this prank?
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Fair, but you could pretend-- then again, so could an
| LLM, as the sibling points out.
| dmd wrote:
| A program exactly like this was printed in one of the Commodore
| 64 magazines in the late 1980s; I used it to great effect on my
| family members.
| wredue wrote:
| >oh and behold
|
| Lo and behold
| topato wrote:
| I got too distracted to keep reading the comment after that
| error
| nick222226 wrote:
| I used something like this to study finger placement on touch
| screen keyboards in the early 2010s. You would type a prompt
| without any typos appearing regardless of how inaccurately you
| pressed the keys. I would think it helped with touch
| retargeting eventually though I was just an intern. I wish that
| Google pixel did it better as I always have issues pressing
| period instead of spacebar and other annoying things.
| anonova wrote:
| This has been around for a long time called Peter Answers as a
| modern take on the Ouija. See, e.g., https://www.peter-virtual-
| tarot.com/
| pubutil wrote:
| I reluctantly admit that a friend recently tricked me with
| something similar using a website called "Peter Answers"
|
| Same exact concept: you ask a question, your friend types a
| "petition" (which is actually the answer, disguised as another
| phrase), then types in the question. Then they submit and the
| site displays the answer your friend typed in.
|
| Initially this had me freaking out thinking there was some AI
| super scraper pulling from the chasm of shadow data. Then the
| logical part of my brain kicked in and asked a question only my
| friend would have the answer to, then watched his fingers as he
| typed, which quickly cleared things up.
|
| It's a smart concept though, and a damn good prank.
| anononaut wrote:
| Clearly the pranker needs to switch to Colemak or Dvorak to
| be maximally effective!
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| As security-through-obscurity tricks go, using an unusual
| keyboard layout to avoid shoulder surfing is probably one
| of the better ones.
|
| (Note that like all obscurity-based systems, this isn't
| actually _secure_ so much as a minor impediment, but for
| this kind of trick that 's fine)
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| The above commenter's story reminded me of using that exact
| website to prank friends in middle school about 15 years ago
| - I was wondering if it is still up and fooling people!
| jetrink wrote:
| According to the copyright at the end, this is from 1990.
| (Speaking of pranks, I was completely fooled by the poster's
| username and thought that was a broken timestamp.)
| noman-land wrote:
| It's funny because if you live west of UTC, broken timestamps
| always say December 31, 1969 because of the timezone offset.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| I think that happens for anyone in UTC and to the west,
| because of leap seconds.
|
| I've seen 1969 more often, and I'm in a timezone synced with
| UTC. (as well as having that as the timezone on all my
| servers)
| hn92726819 wrote:
| Not because of leap seconds, but because of timezones. Us
| eastern is UTC-4:00 and 1 Jan 1970 - 4 hours (or more)
| would be 31 Dec 1969
| js2 wrote:
| Here's Dennis Ritchie's recounting of it[1]:
|
| https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/labscam.html
|
| [1]: Which it turns out I submitted to HN a long time ago[2], but
| neither that nor any of the re-submissions over the years have
| had much discussion[3].
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2404615
|
| [3]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=labscam
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| > This video was digitized (2002) by Gerard Holzmann, and is
| available as a big (88MB: caution!) MPEG here.
|
| 88mb! It'll take my dial-up all day to download that!
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I think the name is alluding to ABSCAM?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abscam
| serverlessmom wrote:
| Came here to say the same. It is funny that a term that felt so
| universal is forgotten today. Probably only memorable now due
| to the movie 'American Hustle'
| pests wrote:
| Huh, TIL.
| jeron wrote:
| Anyone else see this post as posted on Unix start time?
| noman-land wrote:
| It was posted _by_ Unix start time.
| jeron wrote:
| Whoops just realized that, confused me for a second
| jacquesm wrote:
| I suspect that was the goal :)
| EMM_386 wrote:
| Very clever given the computer capabilities of the time.
|
| I am a fan of Penn and Teller. Despite not being into magic in
| any way, and not someone who generally cares about what's on TV,
| I watch their current show when I can.
|
| They are about as "real deal" as you can get, despite the
| schtick. Street magicians from the start to their own theatre in
| Vegas, and still consistent and creative. At this point it is
| likely they don't do it because they have to, they do it because
| they still want to. With the new show being trying to have them
| unravel someone's trick, with the odds stacked greatly against
| the magician, it's pretty obvious they've almost "seen it all".
|
| It also gave me a glimpse on how secretive the magician community
| is. Since people earn a living selling required gimmicks or
| instructions on how to perform specific tricks, it is completely
| unacceptable to discuss how things are done. For the really
| puzzling ones on the show, if you go online to try to find the
| answers, you'll often find others asking the same thing, and the
| accompanying wall of silence. Even more so on forums dedicated
| specifically _to_ magicians. You 're likely to find a large
| discussion, usually with links to the official store for the
| trick, and zero answers. To do that would be breaking the
| magician's code, and apparently, you don't break the code.
| justinsaccount wrote:
| Very relevant to your last paragraph:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8osRaFTtgHo
| gspencley wrote:
| > It also gave me a glimpse on how secretive the magician
| community is.
|
| My wife and I are performing magicians. The topic of "exposure"
| can get downright stupid.
|
| Something you hinted at is intellectual property rights. Like
| you said, a lot of magicians market their inventions. And so if
| a "peer" of theirs were to explain the method to someone who
| didn't purchase it then it would be viewed as a dick move since
| it is affecting the livelihood of a fellow performer. For what
| it is worth, this is a position that I agree with. I don't
| market or publish my work but if I did I would be seriously
| pissed off from an intellectual property point of view if other
| people were giving it away for free and undercutting my ability
| to sell a "license" to perform my artistic creation.
|
| Where it gets stupid is when it comes to stuff that anyone can
| find in a book on Amazon or in a kid's magic kit. This is a
| mentality that I just cannot wrap my head around. Knowing what
| a thumb tip is, or how it can be used, has not ruined magic for
| people ... if it did, no one would pay to see a show. You go
| see a show to be entertained and surprised.
|
| The reason we don't "reveal" is purely artistic. When you go a
| see a movie, you go in willingly suspending your disbelief. But
| magic is more of an intellectual challenge. The entire point is
| to cause a jaw-dropping "that can't be possible" moment. To
| achieve that you go in kind of wanting to have your disbelief
| suspended for you. A revelation in the moment destroys that[1].
| But life is way too short for the average person to give the
| slightest crap about how something works when they go home and
| have to worry about getting up in the morning to go to work or
| getting their kids from the babysitter.
|
| And the genuinely curious are often the future generation of
| magicians.
|
| So yeah, the magic community can be utterly illogical when it
| comes to this.
|
| [1] - Unless it doesn't. To bring this back to Penn & Teller,
| something Penn once said is (paraphrasing) "A trick that has a
| method that is more interesting than the effect is not a good
| trick." P&T do more than one routine where they show the effect
| and then the method. They do this because, artistically, these
| are cases where knowing the method makes it even more
| spectacular and amazing because the method itself is genuinely
| interesting. Their cups & balls routine is probably the most
| famous example.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| To your point, where do you draw the line? Obviously the
| thumb tip was a secret once.
| gspencley wrote:
| I think I pretty much summed where my personal line is, at
| least when it comes to the "ethics" of "exposure." I'm not
| going to expose something that isn't mine to expose.
|
| Less in terms of ethics, every magician gets asked "how did
| you do that?" And every magician learns at a very early
| stage that if you answer it, the reaction is almost never
| interest and joy, it is disappointment.
|
| That's because methods are boring and often simple. And
| when people find out how something is done that truly
| amazed them, learning the method will just take that
| amazement and joy away from them. In the worst case they
| feel stupid for being fooled by it. And that's the exact
| opposite of what I want. I want people to enjoy a
| theatrical moment of astonishment. I don't want them to
| think that I'm trying to make a fool of them. Nor should
| they feel that way, since magic uses applied psychology
| that works on every single person ... including magicians
| before they understood what was happening.
|
| And it's a hard lesson for magician to learn because we
| were the people that _HAD_ to know. We love methods. We 're
| obsessed with them. Which is why I think that so many
| magicians get stupid about "exposure." Because they fall
| into that common psychological fallacy of assuming that
| other people think as they do. That if given the chance
| everyone is going to rush to find out how a trick is done.
| Whereas most people just don't care that much.
|
| So for me, the only ethics of it is respecting the IP
| rights of my peers. The rest is theatre. When it comes to
| widely available knowledge the only reason I have to
| withhold information is for the above artistic reasons. If
| someone who wants to get into magic and learn a few tricks
| to show their friends asks me to share some stuff with them
| I'm an open book as long as I'm not sharing something that
| isn't mine to share.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > And so if a "peer" of theirs were to explain the method to
| someone who didn't purchase it then it would be viewed as a
| dick move since it is affecting the livelihood of a fellow
| performer.
|
| Yep that's exactly how I interpreted it ... not because
| people are adhering to some sacred oath given deep in cavern
| in a secret location ... just that someone invented something
| new and unique, they are rightfully earning some money from
| that effort, and you could potentially destroy the whole
| thing simply by posting too much information about it. As you
| said, that would certainly be a "dick move", and since a lot
| of people don't want be that, they don't do that. In the end
| it seems to be pretty effective.
|
| I _still_ want answers to some of the tricks that I 've seen
| on Penn and Teller's show. Some of them do come across as
| impossible no matter what way I try to think about it.
|
| Dani DaOrtiz comes immediatly to mind ... no clue how it's
| done but he's pretty funny. This particular routine has
| various elements that each seem to be impossible.
|
| And honestly, I don't want to know how it's done. It's magic.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_KcQt0z-eE
| Marazan wrote:
| DaOrtiz is a primal force.
|
| I have bought instructional videos from him so I know the
| fundamentals of that routine.
|
| Knowing how it is done makes it _more_ impressive to me. It
| is incredible skill that truly only very few people could
| master and DaOrtiz makes it look effortless.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| Yes, while I "know" that what is going on is a
| combination of extremely precise, perfectly executed
| actions with cards combined with psychological stuff,
| it's the effortlessness many times, this routine in
| particular, that is incredible.
|
| The whole thing comes across as one huge free choice he
| is never in control of ... "stop where? here, or there?"
| .... "are you sure? you can change. change?".
|
| Apparently, there are ways to maintain control while
| still saying things like "whatever you want" all the
| time.
|
| Oh, and joking around, because clearly such things don't
| require any focus!
| pvitz wrote:
| > Knowing how it is done makes it _more_ impressive to
| me.
|
| I agree to an extent: The choice of the number in his
| ACAANs makes me always wonder how he would recover from a
| "bad" spectator.
|
| What always impressed me even more was Tamariz' handling
| of the Mnemonica stack. For example, he could ask to name
| a card and could immediately bring it to the top of the
| stack with one cut in a second.
| gspencley wrote:
| Since you brought up Dani Dortiz, he is a "magician's
| magician." And if you want to learn what he does and how he
| does it, he is an open book. A true gem of a human being
| and someone we all look up to in the magic community. He
| really values sharing knowledge and teaching.
|
| Fair warning, his way of performing and executing his
| routines is not easy to learn and master. There is no "one
| single" method that explains an entire routine of his. He
| stacks methods, as all good magicians do. There are layers
| and layers misdirection, getting one or two moves ahead of
| the audience at every stage, using applied psychology with
| a fair share of sleight of hand in between. That's why what
| he does seems so freakin' impossible.
|
| But he is very open about teaching it all.
|
| So if you (or anyone) genuinely wants to understand how
| that routine works, he published it. You can buy it here:
| https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/card-magic/dani-daortiz-
| fo...
|
| Again, not beginner stuff. But his books and videos are so
| great for taking card magic to the next level. He was a
| student of Juan Tamariz, who is another one of the greatest
| card magicians of all time ... and who also published so
| much on magic theory and applied psychology and is an open
| book when it comes to teaching new magicians.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| Interesting, thanks.
|
| I got the feeling just from watching it that he is
| obviously a master of the psychological side of it. It
| comes across as completely effortless, even bordering on
| onfocused ... as if at any point he could literally say
| "wait what was I doing?" and be serious. But he's clearly
| mentally many steps in front of whatever you are seeing.
|
| I probably won't be a customer, as curious as I am. I
| have read how other, far less impressive tricks are done,
| and they require a unique combination of skills, none of
| which I have. That doesn't really matter, as I am not nor
| will be a performing magician. It's still interesting to
| learn about, but most leave me realizing the "secret" to
| that trick is "expertly do these very difficult things
| precisely right while always being on top of the
| psychological game, while at the same time acting as if
| you are just having a little fun".
|
| Realizing that what you are seeing is a masterclass in
| all of those things at the same time is impressive
| though.
|
| I just watched it again after noting all of this. I still
| declare parts of it impossible!
| js2 wrote:
| > You go see a show to be entertained and surprised.
|
| _Teller_ : What's the end goal for any work of art? The
| answer is it's not one thing. In almost every work of art
| there is on one level--and this is the level at which magic
| is, I think, the most fundamental--at which you must amaze
| the audience. When you're an actor, you must, for the moment
| you're there, convince the audience that you are possessed by
| the spirit of this character. And there is a level in which
| you go, "Wow, I really thought for that moment, that the
| character onstage was Hamlet." That amazement is the bottom
| line of any work of art.
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/09/penn-and-
| teller-f...
| RationalDino wrote:
| Don't they also show a trick, show the method, then do the
| trick again in such a way that they must have been using
| another method?
|
| Or am I thinking of someone else?
| gspencley wrote:
| Their version of "Buzz Saw" follows that formula. Sawing a
| person in half is one of the most exposed tricks of all
| time. So they turn that on its head by exposing several
| principles employed in the classic method only to pull the
| rug out from under you with a gory surprise ending. Man I
| love Penn & Teller so much.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| So a lot of it boils down to an entire industry being
| predicated entirely on trade secrets. Which does sound like
| something that would create notably different cultural
| effects relative to, say, software engineering where open
| source is an extremely popular model.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| That is one the the reasons I really like scam nation.
| Brushwood does not come at with an air of I am going to
| deceive you 'ha ha' but 'I am going to teach you how cool
| this is'. After seeing several hundred you start to see the
| patterns of how many tricks work. I think he mostly sticks to
| tricks that are sold in magic books for that.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| I saw a P&T live show once where Penn was explaining about
| juggling dangerous things. He light the torch on fire and
| then said it was not very dangerous, which he proved by
| catching the fire end and immediately dropping it. Then he
| broke a glass bottle and juggled that, which was very
| dangerous (it would leave a nasty gash on the hand). Then he
| pointed out we had gasped for the fire but didn't gasp for
| the broken glass because it doesn't _look_ dangerous.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| I've seen that on Youtube. Pretty cool to have seen it
| live.
| AaronM wrote:
| I wonder if the bottle was fake glass. He has said before
| that they won't do tricks that are dangerous.
| gspencley wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they're not fake.
|
| Penn has clarified what he means by "dangerous." I don't
| have a source for this, so take my memory and my word for
| what it is worth, but their definition of "dangerous" is
| something that could result in an overnight hospital
| visit. Cutting yourself is ok, even a stunt gone wrong
| that breaks a (non-serious) bone. But anything
| potentially serious they would consider to be unethical.
|
| The other reason I don't think that the glass is "fake"
| is that Penn began his career in entertainment as a
| juggler. He also eats fire. Juggling knives, fire
| torches, glass etc. comes with _some_ risk but not
| serious risk. The worst of all of the above is
| potentially fire eating and that 's only if you
| accidentally inhale and burn your lungs with hot vapour,
| which can be serious but avoiding that is everyone's very
| first lesson. Juggling glass could result in a cut, even
| one that could potentially require stitches. But it's not
| a serious injury.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| One of my favorite Penn and Teller routines is "Lift Off of
| Love" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PoDhuIp3I0 - The
| first act is a variant of the old sawing a woman in half
| trick. The second act is the same trick again, but with clear
| boxes.
| lunatuna wrote:
| To add to the understanding of Penn and Teller, they love their
| fans and beyond. I've been to two of their shows and their
| efforts are to entertain and teach you about scams and
| confidence games so that you question what you see and are
| being told. They go to great lengths to tell you how they are
| scamming you and then show you the trick and still trick you so
| you aren't so confident. You're not as smart as you think you
| are. At the end of the show they meet with the audience at the
| main entrance to take pictures with them and show their
| appreciation. They should be a high school credit.
| medmunds wrote:
| > it is completely unacceptable to discuss how things are done
|
| My all time favorite Penn & Teller routine is "Lift Off," which
| breaks not only this rule, but also the one that you never
| repeat a trick. And finding out how it's done makes it no less
| magical.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=55&v=qS1Gfrb-T20
| exabrial wrote:
| Penn and Teller will tell you how they do their _own_ tricks,
| I think with the OP was saying you don 't reveal other
| magician's tricks without permission, especially if they're
| still for sale.
| snitty wrote:
| >With the new show being trying to have them unravel someone's
| trick, with the odds stacked greatly against the magician, it's
| pretty obvious they've almost "seen it all".
|
| The two main points of the show are to feature and raise the
| profile of younger magicians, and to get modern video records
| of their tricks. The "fool us" thing, while genuine is pretty
| ancillary the point of the show.
|
| >It also gave me a glimpse on how secretive the magician
| community is. Since people earn a living selling required
| gimmicks or instructions on how to perform specific tricks, it
| is completely unacceptable to discuss how things are done. For
| the really puzzling ones on the show, if you go online to try
| to find the answers, you'll often find others asking the same
| thing, and the accompanying wall of silence. Even more so on
| forums dedicated specifically to magicians. You're likely to
| find a large discussion, usually with links to the official
| store for the trick, and zero answers. To do that would be
| breaking the magician's code, and apparently, you don't break
| the code.
|
| Very, very, very, few people make a living selling tricks, and
| most of those are people who design and manufacture large stage
| illusions for the best magicians. A small handful of performing
| magicians ALSO sell tricks at retail magic shops. A few more
| than that write and publish books through magic publishing.
|
| Some folks take the code of silence VERY seriously, but notably
| Penn and Teller do not. They do a cups and balls with
| transparent cups. They do Lift Off Of Love, which shows in
| detail how to do a pretty involved stage illusion. They LOVE
| telling people how things are done. They share similarity with
| Houdini in wanting to expose people who pretend that they
| actually have supernatural powers, and some of their tricks are
| aimed at showing that it's really just a high skill profession.
| mrandish wrote:
| > To do that would be breaking the magician's code, and
| apparently, you don't break the code.
|
| Long-time magician here. The "don't break the code" thing is
| really just a fun fiction to maintain, mostly for kids. There
| are a variety of excellent reasons most magicians rarely reveal
| a trick.
|
| 1. It's no fun. Not only for the magician but, surprisingly,
| for the person you tell. This is because the method behind a
| trick is usually far, far less interesting and more mundane
| than the effect. People usually aren't happy or even really
| satisfied if you describe the method to them.
|
| 2. It's unproductive. Describing the method to a layperson
| enough to expose the trick usually doesn't put the person any
| closer to being able to _do_ the trick. It especially won 't
| put a novice any closer to even understanding _why_ the trick
| works - which is actually the interesting and often quite
| subtle part.
|
| 3. It's boring. Truly understanding the principles behind why a
| particular trick that a performer has perfected to the point of
| working really well, in fact works so well, is usually not only
| complicated but _complex_. The "meta" behind magic is
| something non-magicians (and even some less experienced
| magicians) are completely unaware of. It's this hidden
| structure and deep theory that's actually the fun part. But
| learning what magicians call "the real work" behind an effect
| takes a significant amount of time. For example, I wanted to
| start getting into the deep work behind one card effect
| magicians call ACAAN. The plot is simple. A randomly named card
| appears at a randomly named number of cards down in a shuffled
| deck. The effect is over a hundred years old and there are well
| over a dozen books focused solely on it (I own several). There
| are hundreds of different "methods" which can be used to
| accomplish that one "effect". I can already do a serviceable
| ACAAN effect several different ways. Yet I went to an intensive
| three day workshop focused on teaching nothing but ACAAN. After
| those three days I now feel like I have a good start on really
| mastering the effect but I still have a long way to go - and
| honestly, now that I have insight into the deep work on ACAAN
| taught directly by one of the greatest living masters of ACAAN,
| I'm not sure I'm willing to put the level of work into it
| required to take my ACAAN to a level I'd enjoy performing.
|
| Finally, far from being some kind of secretive fraternity, most
| magicians would be delighted to teach you how to create an
| effect yourself because many of us are worried magic is a dying
| art form. However, that requires someone interested enough to
| devote at least a couple hours to it. Even if you never perform
| what you learn, you'll get some understanding of how and why
| magic can be such fun to study and develop - and maybe get
| bitten by the bug. But if you just want a one sentence drive-by
| "quickie" exposure of one method of one effect - most magicians
| have learned the kindest thing we can do in response to such
| temporary and fleeting curiosity is a polite fiction about some
| "Magicians Code."
| danrl wrote:
| I can second that. I published a Copperfield illusion analysis
| and got approached to take it down from other magicians (not
| Copperfield himself). I left it out there in the open. For me,
| trying to crack the puzzle is part of the fun and why I spend
| money seeing magic shows multiple times.
|
| My blog post which they asked me to take down:
| https://danrl.com/magic-mail
| jacquesm wrote:
| Classy.
| tshaddox wrote:
| The thing that bugs me about the magic community is the
| sentiment that "the trick is better when you don't know how it
| works." It's obviously understandable to protect your secrets
| to make your performances harder to copy or even to license
| them to other magicians, but don't tell me that I will enjoy
| the trick less if I know how it worked! I assure you that is
| not the case!
| jrockway wrote:
| I agree with you completely. I enjoy it more when I know how
| it's done but don't notice it myself. Kind of like
| woodworking where someone patches a hole in the wood and you
| don't notice it, but they point it out anyway. With all that
| information, you can say "wow, I still don't even see it
| really" which is more impressive than just not noticing at
| first glance. The extra information proves how good the
| illusion actually is. (Penn & Teller obviously based their
| career around this stuff. I imagine many of the HN types also
| like Penn & Teller a lot as a result.)
|
| I am pretty sure it's mostly "I don't want someone else to
| steal this." Generally, I'm pretty unconcerned about telling
| people unimplemented ideas. If they want to rearrange their
| life to "steal" my idea, good for them. But they probably
| won't be able to execute it as well, so it's not really a
| concern I have. But, magic is tough... you want to have new
| material for your acts, and if someone beats you to the
| punch, you don't get paid. So I see why magicians are
| paranoid. But if we get a new generation of Penns and
| Tellers, I'd personally be happy.
| lesinski wrote:
| There are most definitely performances that you will enjoy
| less if you learn how it works. You're trading off "knowing"
| for being suspended in awe or mystery.
| jfengel wrote:
| You should go out and learn some magic. There are plenty of
| books, videos, etc.
|
| There's actually less to learn than you might think. The vast
| majority of magic comes down to a handful of basic
| principles. What the magician adds is showmanship, and a
| butt-ton of practice.
|
| Once you know the basic principles, you can usually figure
| out the tricks. It might take multiple viewings -- which is
| part of the reason that it's less impressive to explain the
| trick. Once seen, it's hard to un-see it. Even performing the
| same trick twice identically gives the audience a huge
| opportunity to figure out what to look for.
|
| What the magician really wants is your respect for how much
| work went into making it work out. The trickiness is usually
| not that big of an insight. The hard part is that it takes
| hours and hours and hours to learn to, say, deal a card from
| the bottom of the deck while making it look exactly as if it
| were drawn from the top. It's taking a deeply unnatural
| motion and making it look as if it were a different, natural
| motion.
|
| So from the magician's point of view, you really would be
| disappointed to hear "All I did was to put your card on the
| bottom of the deck and deal it out." It's easy to describe
| and hard to do -- the least rewarding kind of skill.
|
| Most magicians already know how everybody else's tricks are
| done. Stealing tricks isn't really the issue. What they
| really want to do is steal the trick and make it their own --
| which may involve elaborate construction. Many magicians are
| pretty competent engineers, and the big acts all have a team
| of engineers in their workshop.
|
| So really, if you want to know how the trick is done, go read
| some magic books. There are fewer secrets than you think.
| Once you've got the basics, watching a magic act is like
| solving a puzzle. It's more fun than having them tell you the
| solution. And you can really respect the effort that went
| into making it happen.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I've consumed a decent amount of content about techniques
| in magic, mostly card tricks and other close-up magic but
| also some stage illusions. I'm familiar with the basics and
| I absolutely respect how much work goes into most tricks.
|
| The point isn't that I'm necessarily completely stumped by
| a trick (although that does happen), or that I can't enjoy
| a trick without knowing how it works, but rather that
| knowing the techniques required to perform the trick is
| _additional_ enjoyable content to me. It 's really no
| different than watching behind-the-scenes or visual effects
| breakdowns for a movie that I enjoyed. It's an additional
| piece of content that I enjoy and it almost always enhances
| my appreciation for the original content.
|
| > So from the magician's point of view, you really would be
| disappointed to hear "All I did was to put your card on the
| bottom of the deck and deal it out."
|
| If the magician thinks that I would be disappointed, that's
| precisely the misconception I am trying to point out. I
| absolutely am not disappointed when I hear such
| explanations.
| jfengel wrote:
| I do particularly enjoy tricks of the form "Do the trick,
| explain the trick, do the trick again a different way
| that precludes the first explanation". Those are fun.
| Penn and Teller use that format a lot.
|
| I do know that when I explain tricks to people, they're
| often disappointed. I often hear, "Oh, they just lied to
| me." Yeah, they did. I mean just really bald-faced lies,
| not sleight-of-hand or illusions or misdirection or other
| cleverness.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| My favorite penn and teller trick of all time is this one, which
| is kind of an anti-trick:
|
| https://youtu.be/3m8DsQisjXQ?si=4x0Dhrf_2Byg_Bzh&t=958 (16
| minutes in).
|
| It breaks a fundamental rule about magic tricks that you probably
| never even realized was a rule until they fade to black.
| BtM909 wrote:
| And that rule is?
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| "Don't kill your volunteers"?
|
| edit: a more serious answer is that this is an escape trick,
| and generally when you do an escape trick:
|
| 1) The magician is doing the escaping 2) You _show the
| escape_
|
| In this case, the volunteer is basically just shoved into the
| water and (presumably) drowns. The audience is left to
| _infer_ that there was an escape, if they choose to, or I
| guess they could infer that Penn and Teller are cold blooded
| murderers and got away with it. Either inference would be
| quite the good trick.
| kadoban wrote:
| I'm not OP, but there's a few rules being broken there that I
| can think of:
|
| - At the end of the trick, there's a reveal that wraps things
| up. In the case of escapes, it would be showing the magician
| safe and not actually drowned or eaten by sharks, etc.
|
| - The "volunteer" is just there to be a surrogate for the
| audience, to verify some things, they're not _really_
| involved in the trick
|
| - You must hide that the volunteer is a plant when they are
| (they're not always). They couldn't do a lot of that stuff to
| some random person, so this rule is broken.
|
| - The magician would generally not talk about eg how Houdini
| would have done that trick (even if I think they're
| intentionally mis-stating how Houdini would have done it, for
| most tricks there'd be absolutely no reason to use picks,
| you'd use a key or a faked lock or a faked locking mechanism,
| because why not).
|
| It's an anti-trick because they're doing everything the wrong
| way around. The volunteer is the one that does the dangerous
| part, the magician isn't doing anything, the volunteer is
| obviously not a volunteer, the "trick" doesn't actually
| visibly show anything magical happening (visually, you just
| watched a murder essentially, no escape ... you only know
| it's an escape because they _probably_ didn't really just
| murder somebody for a show), and they "told" you how the
| trick was being done.
|
| All against the basic rules of magic. Perfect for Penn and
| Teller, they love playing meta games and having fun with the
| rules of magic.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| > the volunteer is obviously not a volunteer,
|
| I think that's only a gradual realization on the part of
| the audience, or at least, only intended to be.
| kadoban wrote:
| True, but in classical magic you should hide that fact as
| much as possible. They're intentionally drawing attention
| to it, if only over time (and you could still miss it if
| you're not thinking about it, so maybe I shouldn't use
| the word "obviously", depends on the audience I suppose).
| croes wrote:
| My favorite is the nail gun
|
| https://youtu.be/Jko5BGhc-Ys
| YoumuChan wrote:
| It reminds me of the "Hello Computer" scene from IT Crowd:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyV0IVItlM4
| Jun8 wrote:
| This is hilarious! I saw that "Kenneth, what is the frequency?"
| is included in the initial training phrases, pure genius! Do
| people still remember this meme?
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Rather#%22Kenneth,_what_is...)
| cpach wrote:
| I sure do! Thanks to the REM song.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I just saw Penn and Teller 2 weeks ago; it was a great show. They
| really try to involve guests and specifically children in the
| act. They also seem like pretty good people. Only downside is the
| Casino/Hotel they are in is run down at this point relative to
| the rest of Vegas, and the walk from the strip is
| questionable...Vegas isn't a very good walkable city, even on the
| strip, IMO.
| bentcorner wrote:
| I did something similar (without their reveal) to my mom back in
| the 90's. Using the parrot program that shipped with my Sound
| Blaster Pro sound card, I rubber-banded a microphone to the
| earpiece of a telephone. I asked my mom to come in and talk to
| the computer, and my friend on the telephone would respond, and
| the parrot program would repeat what he said out of the computer
| speakers.
|
| It wasn't 100% perfect but for a few moments my mom was amazed at
| what our computer could do.
|
| A few years later I also pulled a similar prank on my uncle, who
| bought a new CD player. He asked me and my cousin to set it up
| and we found a remote in the box. We told him it was voice
| activated and we used the remote while he asked it to
| play/pause/skip. Again for a few moments he thought it was the
| coolest thing ever until our disappointing reveal.
|
| I think this goes to show that people have always wanted to talk
| to computers, and 30 years later we're still trying to get it
| right.
| saghm wrote:
| > A few years later I also pulled a similar prank on my uncle,
| who bought a new CD player. He asked me and my cousin to set it
| up and we found a remote in the box. We told him it was voice
| activated and we used the remote while he asked it to
| play/pause/skip. Again for a few moments he thought it was the
| coolest thing ever until our disappointing reveal.
|
| When I first got a Pixel phone with the fingerprint sensor on
| the back, I told my father that the phone responded to voice
| commands to unlock, but it only would listen to my voice. I
| demonstrated by telling it "unlock" (and pressing the sensor on
| the back) and then locked it and handed it to him to try to
| unlock it, and it was amusing to watch him say "unlock!" in
| amazement a few times before I showed him how it actually
| worked.
|
| Ironically, a couple years later, I ended up getting a Google
| Home smart speaker and showed him it, and he was reluctant to
| use voice commands to try it out at first (possibly due to
| being wary of being tricked again). He ended up having fun
| seeing how it would respond to silly phrasings of questions
| though; I think his favorite was when he told it "Play that
| funky music, white cylinder!" and it obediently started playing
| "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry.
| coding123 wrote:
| The scam part was the program seemed to be "scanning" and playing
| back bits from Letterman, when in reality they were just
| broadcasting funny stuff live as the joke/scam.
|
| What's crazy is that in a few years or even a year from now, it
| might be conceivable to have a program that you talk to, like
| you're talking to Penn and Teller, but then have it respond with
| Jokes that they would say - and video that matches.
|
| I guess the only part of that we won't be able to replicate, for
| a while, is Penn and Teller walking into your room and shaking
| your hand.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Yeah that was what I was thinking as I was watching, it's
| pretty wild that we've advanced to the point where a working
| version of their fantasy technology would seem completely
| normal if a little cutting edge.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| People might not be interested in P&T (I am though!) but this
| video involves Rob Pike and Dennis Ritchie, which is highly
| relevant to the HN crowd.
| mirrorlake wrote:
| When I was first learning Go last year, Penn mentioned on his
| podcast that he had a friend Rob who worked at Google.
|
| I realized that he was talking about Rob Pike who helped create
| Go. Truly felt like a "small world" moment.
| npilk wrote:
| A friend fooled me in the ~late 2000s by pretending to have a
| program installed that could recognize hand gestures to control
| the screen's UI. So if you moved your hand in the air in front of
| the webcam, the mouse would follow it around (clunkily), and you
| could squeeze your hand into a fist to click.
|
| It was slow, but mindblowing given the capabilities of the time.
| I couldn't quite believe it was real, but also couldn't figure
| out how it was working.
|
| As it turned out, their cell phone had a feature where they could
| use the control pad to control the mouse on a computer. They were
| holding it under the table and using it to mirror the hand's
| movements. They kept 3 or 4 of us going for about 15 minutes
| before they finally showed us the secret!
| jacquesm wrote:
| On the SGI Indy there was a game called Eye Catcher that did
| that IRL much earlier than the late 2000's, that was more like
| the mid 90's.
| verisimi wrote:
| One might consider magic tricks, why they are accepted by the
| audience, and conspiracies in the same breath, I think. Eg:
|
| How is it possible that the woman appears to be sawn in half?
|
| How is it possible that most people believed jfk was shot by a
| lone gunman from great distance?
|
| The same principles apply.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Oh, that's absolutely priceless, thank you for posting this.
| Those two...
|
| > `What do you do with rats and cockroaches?'
|
| > `That's the way we have sex.'
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