tyb and chk
>>17541412 pb
>We sent them nudes, a mix-tape, and directions to our house already
The first thing aliens are going to receive if they can receive radio transmissions is going to be Hitler rallies.
The Science of Magic
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18297272/magic-psychology-optical-illusions-perception-cognition-experiencing-the-impossible
Magic works not because magicians have got real supernatural powers, but instead they hijack our brain and manipulate and exploit a lot of our blindspots and limitations to create their illusions.
Pick a card, any card, and you might feel that you’re in control when you pull the queen of hearts from a magician’s deck. But magicians have strategies that force their audience’s choice — from packing the deck with identical cards, to fanning out the deck with just the right timing so that the choice becomes all but inevitable.
This illusion of free will is one of the many illusions and magic tricks that Gustav Kuhn, a magician turned psychology researcher at Goldsmiths, University London, describes in his new book Experiencing the Impossible: The Science of Magic. Published in March by The MIT Press, the book explores the ways in which magic tricks and illusions can teach us about our brains. Kuhn takes the reader into the psychological underpinnings of tricks — from optical illusions that reveal gaps in perception, to failures of memory that make people think they’ve seen a ball vanish, when in fact there was no ball to see in the first place.
The book’s immersive dive into the worlds of magic and science is only possible because of Kuhn’s deep experience with both. Kuhn’s passion for magic was sparked at age 13 when a friend pulled an egg out of his ear. After a stop in London to work as a professional magician, Kuhn eventually decided to turn his attention away from the tricks themselves, and toward the minds that he was fooling during his shows. “It was always clear that if I wanted to create powerful magic tricks, I needed to understand the system that actually allows me to create them,” he says.
During his PhD research studying consciousness, he discovered that magic occupied a realm of psychology that few scientists were really investigating. “I realized that a lot of the questions that psychologists are interested in, magicians have been exploiting for centuries,” he says. “That’s really what started it for me, to try and bridge this gap between magic and science, and trying to use magic as a way of understanding human cognition.”
Now, Kuhn is director of the MAGIC Lab at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he leads a team of researchers to probe the ways that magic and illusions can help us understand free will, perception, and even cybersecurity and game design. For Kuhn, magic is a window into the shortcuts our minds use to make sense of the world. “Perception is all about problem solving,” he says. “It’s all about you making a guess about what the world is actually like, rather than what the world is like in reality. So seeing is very much believing.”
The Verge spoke with Kuhn about magical thinking,fake news, and how humans and dogs see objects the same way.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Magicians' tactics found in politics and marketing
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-56352500
11 March 2021
Understanding how magic tricks work could help to protect people from manipulation by politicians and marketing, say researchers.
A study from Goldsmiths, University of London, says the psychology used by magicians to deceive audiences can also be used to influence consumer choices.
Magic tricks use "powerful tools" to control behaviour, say the researchers.
The psychologists looked at how tricks create an "illusion of choice", when the audience has no real control.
The research - Mind control trick: magicians' forcing and free will, by psychologists Alice Pailhes and Gustav Kuhn - examines how magicians control their audiences' decisions - and how this can be applied to other areas.
'Full control'
"A lot of these magic principles show that you can very easily manipulate and influence decisions that people make - and even though they feel free to have made that decision, the magician has pretty much full control," says Dr Kuhn.
He says in the same way that someone might be directed to choose the "right" card in a magic trick, so, too, we can be "nudged" towards buying products in the supermarket.
The study, published in Trends in Cognitive Science, identifies different psychological tools used by magicians.
At its most simple it can be recognising that people tend to behave in similar ways - so the researchers say that if people are asked to pick one of four cards laid in front of them, 60% of right-handed people will pick the one that is third from the left.
This "position force" can be used to push customers towards certain products, depending on where they have been placed.
"Mental priming" uses a repeated series of visual and verbal cues to steer an audience in a trick - and researchers found that many people could not explain why they had picked the same "random" number or card.
'Illusion of choice'
There is also the so-called "equivoke" used by magicians - where the audience believes they are making independent decisions during a trick, while in reality nothing they do has "any impact on the outcome".
"Regardless of the spectator's choice, the sequences result in the same outcome. The equivoke is highly effective in providing an illusory sense of control," says the study.
An example of this would be a card trick in which someone is invited to cut a pack of cards, with a series of stages of cutting and putting cards back on top - the "vast majority" fail to realise they have no impact on the target card.
Dr Kuhn says the magician's "illusion of choice", playing on the need to feel in control, can be applied elsewhere - to consumer decisions, online entertainment or political debates.
"It really deals with one of the most fundamental concepts in humanity - do we genuinely have free will?
"We feel we need it, but this experience of free will might actually be an illusion - and it's an illusion that magicians often manipulate," says the psychologist.
Political 'misdirection'
Dr Kuhn, part of the Magic Lab research team, says there is growing interest in understanding how magicians' "forcing techniques" can be used to influence behaviour.
He sees politicians increasingly drawing on the tactic of "misdirection", where a magician draws the audience's attention in one direction, with something noisy or spectacular, while the real moves are being made out of sight.
"Even if you know you're being misdirected, the problem is these principles are just incredibly effective and they still have an impact," says Dr Kuhn.
Using techniques from magic to "modify behaviour" can bring positive benefits, says co-author Alice Pailhes.
"They might provide new ways of encouraging better decisions in health and wellbeing," she says, such as steering people towards healthier food.
"But covert control and modification of people's thoughts raises serious ethical issues, too."
And she warns of "unwanted influences, such as political propaganda".
"We believe that understanding magicians' forcing techniques is a valuable tool to raise awareness about the ease by which our choices can be manipulated," says the psychologist.
This is part two. >>17542203
I missed it. GJ Baker.
saved kekt
Oh give'em a break. Anon probably didn't make it.