Found in 3 comments on Hacker News
georgieporgie · 2012-02-25
· Original
thread
In Derren Brown's excellent Tricks of the Mind[1], he mentions the lengths that audiences are willing to go. In one example, he says something about "this coin in my hand" while holding his hand up near his face for a moment, index finger and thumb spaced to the approximate distance of a coin, yet there's not actually a coin there, just empty space! Afterward, people will swear that there was a coin in his hand, going so far as to describe what sort of coin it was.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Tricks-Mind-DERREN-BROWN/dp/1905026358...
baha_man · 2008-04-30
· Original
thread
Derren Brown's book, 'Tricks of the Mind', has an interesting section on memory:
http://www.amazon.com/Tricks-Mind-Derren-Brown/dp/1905026358...
He discusses the 'loci system', 'memory palaces', and 'peg system':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_peg_system
I haven't tried them out myself yet.
It's a nice combination of charm, trickery, and skepticism. Bits about his life, teaching techniques he uses in his mentalism, and interesting items from his work. For example, he goes into this trick in detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haP7Ys9ocTk
For those who don't watch it, he pretends to be an astrologer and gives a group of people a reading. They are shocked at how accurate it is. He then has them randomly trade readings and try to guess who the reading applies to. It turns out that he gave them all the same reading, making use of the Forer effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect
In the book, he explains how he constructed it and gives the text of the reading. It was a pleasure to read through and see how artfully it was done.