Slights of Mind - Macknik et al

Having just read a remarkable book by the writer/physicist/magician Alex Stone, called “Fooling Houdini” a friend of mine recommended I should also read “Sleights of Mind” by the husband and wife team of Stephen Macknik and Susana  Martinez-Conde.  What started out as a potential gold mine of facts pertaining to neuroscience interlaced with the secrets of illusion practiced by magicians, turned into something quite different.  With a couple of anecdotal connections Stephen and Susanna discovered between their training in neuroscience and how magicians have been tricking the human mind for centuries, they headed off on a year long crusade to discover how the mechanisms of our brain are fooled by magicians.  A seemingly interesting topic. What results, however, fails to reveal much scientific discovery but does reveal a whole lot of magical secrets. This book would sell as a cheat sheet for those wanting to spoil magic even without any of the explanatory scientific claims that have been scattered here and there.

Apparently the scientific team, through their own sleight of mind, was able to gain the confidence of a few leading and well meaning magicians into revealing their hard earned magical techniques in the “Interest of Science”. This has to be the con of the century.  I would caution all further magicians who work with any scientific research team to fully understand the science they think they are supporting prior to revealing the secrets of their livelihood.  Particularly if their secrets are going to be published.  Remember, scientist have an overwhelming urge to publish. It’s shameful that instead of publishing science, they’ve published a book that reveals magic tricks.

Alex Stone, on the other hand, is an honest magician who provides a  fascinating story about life in the magic business.  In the process, he reveals some secrets, but those reveals are necessary for his readers to understand what constitutes the culture of magic.  It is wholly necessary and important.  Magicians, you see, love the trick, just as much as we love the trick even though we are fooled, and even though, what we perceive has nothing to do with what actually happened in our presence.  To Macknik and Martinez-Conde that constitutes something scientific to be studied.  

Take spoon bending for instance.  Spoon bending is treated in both books.  In the magic book Mr. Stone explains the craft necessary to accomplish the trick.  In the science book, our research team debunks the use of telekinesis, the method claimed by the spoon bender, solely on the fact that the spoon bending is a trick.  Basically they are saying, look, it’s not telekinesis, it’s a trick, they are not bending spoons with their mind the spoons are already bent, it’s an optical illusion and this is how it’s accomplished.  You are being fooled because your brain can’t detect that you are being fooled.  This is where I start cussing like the comedian Lewis Black…

What’s even worse about this book is that the research  team takes their science one step further...they are not forceful in their assertions but they do point out, without apology, that the phenomenon that is our consciousness,  which gives rise to our  “free will”, is the biggest illusion of them all.  So, provided what the authors say is true, magic reveals chinks in our sensory and perception system that can be exploited.  These chinks are flaws in our humanness and point to the fact that we are essentially very sophisticated and highly evolved machines.  Magic, is no different from what would occur if we were a video camera, turned on and staring at a black top-hat.  Someone then shuts us off (the camera) and then quickly places a rabbit in the top-hat.  Then, when they switch the camera back on,  behold, a rabbit is magically pulled out of a hat. Magic therefore leads directly to Descartes's, “ I think, therefore I am”  becoming “I can be fooled, therefore I am not”.  This is far from science.  In the end this book is simply a bunch of magic tricks revealed.   One star for science and five  stars because, right or wrong,  they reveal so many juicy secrets about magic.  Three stars overall.