Derren Brown

[Main Street]

I downloaded his first series yesterday and had a look at his first show from Trick of the Mind Season 1

London taxi driver gets lost taking Derren to the London Eye   the equivalent of getting in to a taxi in Dublin's Parnells sq  and asking the driver to take you to the GPO.
Cat playing with a mouse. Derren had the Cabbie's memory parked away in a dark spot in no time.

In beating 4 out of a mix of 7 chess masters/fides/expert  in a simultaneous games of chess,  he used fascinating tactics that the masters did not cop on to. Derren actually beat one of the chess expert using his own skills applied to his rusty chess technique..

But
In the street a random person reading the thought of another random person. 
Here a random girl put her hand on random mans head and read accurately the name of the man's friend

For Derren to interfere/be aware in some way with the results of that process or the likely outcome,
he would have had to be aware of the subliminal messages of the surrounding area in the street,
he would have to have a practiced awareness how subliminal messages affect his thinking/images process.

By having a practised awareness of how subliminal messages affect him, he is able to have a conscious awareness of what is recorded by the subconscious.

The random man was asked to think of the name of one of his friends, the man's selection of his friend's name is influenced by the images from his surroundings,
the random girl was asked to read the random man's thought,
the girl herself is also influenced by the subliminal images and the when she closed her eyes to read the mans thought the image which comes to her mind is similar to what the man experienced when he closed his eye when he first went through the mental process of selecting the name..

For Derren to do all this requires a much more than active smart intellectual/memory activity but an ability to be aware to a high enough degree of the activity in his subconscious and a well tuned belief in the activity of his intuition.

Overall, this type of sub conscious / subliminal /intuitive activity is denied by about half of the so called scientific community.

[ONeill]

Mentalism and NLP. If you dedicated your life to it and practiced to the hilt, even you MS could possibly master it.

[delboy]

Reminds me of the story about Uri geller when he first came on the scene yeasrs ago. Believe it or not Time magazine said that they would put him on the cover of the magazine if he could convince them of his powers. Needless to say the not to publicity shy Uri was in the offices straight away, bending spoons, reading peoples minds and doing all sorts of psychic stuff which he claimed were from a divine unknown source.
He left the offices with everyone convinced he was the real deal and fully expecting to see his mug on the front cover, unfortunately for him the editor then brought in a guy called James Randi who proceeded to bend spoons, stop clocks read peoples minds etc the exact same as Uri and all by simple magic tricks. At the end of it he said that he couldn't prove Uri wasn't doing these using supernatural powers but that if he was he was sure going about it the difficult way  

Derren Brown is a magaican pure and simple, what he does is mix a bit of psycho babble about reading body language and other such bumpf with good old fashioned magic tricks. He just the first to notice the gap in the market for this particular spin out of the magic trick.  

[Main Street]

Mentalism and NLP. If you dedicated your life to it and practiced to the hilt, even you MS could possibly master it.

Why would you be inspired to offer a condescending remark? Is that to somehow straighten the point you want to express?   

Mentalism, as an explanation for the incident I explained, is usually offered principally by people who deny the effect of subliminal images on the subconscious.
It does not explain the incident I outlined in detail.
I am not offering a hokus pokus explanation of how Derren can interpret subliminal images and make it appear as if one person can read another's thought.
Subliminal activity can be explained scientifically, but it is the science of intuitive activity, nothing mysterious about that at all.

[ONeill]

Jaysus you're a wile sensitive fellow. (Derren could help with that)

Let me rephrase it to avoid offence -

If I dedicated my life to it and practiced to the hilt, even I could possibly master it.

[screenexile]

The Chess trick was all memory MS. He had 7 chess masters and used his memory to mimic the moves they were doing against eachoher. In effect 3 chess masters were playing 3 chess masters through him. He then he said he played the last chess master himself.and lost.

[Main Street]

The Chess trick was all memory MS. He had 7 chess masters and used his memory to mimic the moves they were doing against eachoher. In effect 3 chess masters were playing 3 chess masters through him. He then he said he played the last chess master himself.and lost.

I understand that it was mostly memory, a fantastic picture memory, I didn't indicate otherwise   (or even subliminally indicate).
But as I just watched that episode last night I do not need a fantastic memory   to recall that he beat the president of the Chess Society Kings College in the 9th game.
The president said that it was similar experience to playing a chess master.
That was the game that Derren said he played "fairly" and won.

However, I am curious about how he came up with an almost perfect prediction of the number of pieces left on the board by his opponents at the end of each of their games.
Derren says mischievously that he genuinely can't remember how he worked that one out

[Hardy]

Reminds me of the story about Uri geller when he first came on the scene yeasrs ago. Believe it or not Time magazine said that they would put him on the cover of the magazine if he could convince them of his powers. Needless to say the not to publicity shy Uri was in the offices straight away, bending spoons, reading peoples minds and doing all sorts of psychic stuff which he claimed were from a divine unknown source.
He left the offices with everyone convinced he was the real deal and fully expecting to see his mug on the front cover, unfortunately for him the editor then brought in a guy called James Randi who proceeded to bend spoons, stop clocks read peoples minds etc the exact same as Uri and all by simple magic tricks. At the end of it he said that he couldn't prove Uri wasn't doing these using supernatural powers but that if he was he was sure going about it the difficult way  

Derren Brown is a magaican pure and simple, what he does is mix a bit of psycho babble about reading body language and other such bumpf with good old fashioned magic tricks. He just the first to notice the gap in the market for this particular spin out of the magic trick.  

I admire James Randi's work (www.randi.org). The world needs more like him. Check out the Million Dollar Challenge. Scepticism should be the rational being's default position. It's the willingness of people to believe any ould shite that allows frauds and conmen like Geller to prosper, willingly aided by the media.

Main Street - what do you mean by "the so called scientific community"?

[Billys Boots]

Main Street - what do you mean by "the so called scientific community"?

I'd be interested in this too - I've been calling myself a scientist since I got that oul' degree, what should I be calling myself?

[Hardy]

Main Street - what do you mean by "the so called scientific community"?

I'd be interested in this too - I've been calling myself a scientist since I got that oul' degree, what should I be calling myself?

You'd get a lot more respect in our society (and certainly make a lot more money) if you called yourself (and remember that's all you'd have to do - call yourself one) a reflexologist or a feng shui consultant or made your living codding people that you can cure their toothache by giving them a candle to smell or something.

[Main Street]

Main Street - what do you mean by "the so called scientific community"?

I'd be interested in this too - I've been calling myself a scientist since I got that oul' degree, what should I be calling myself?

My comments are not directed in general.
The so called scientific community I referred to are those type of academics and/or charlatans who for different reasons claim to use a a scientific methodology to deny the rationality used to explain an event.
My reference was to the subliminal effect on the conscious mind. There are those who claim a place in the scientific community (as in doing research and getting research published in journals)  who deny the effect of subliminal advertising but instead claim the subliminal phenonoma  is a placebo effect. The split in those scientific circles is about 50/50 on that issue.
Imo that is an example of simply astonishing rigidity reflected in defective analysis.
Placebo is the effect from a conscious action. Subliminal, even in the simplest understanding of the idea, is sub conscious storage of images/sounds which do effect our conscious thought process.

I have no special grá for Derren Brown. What Derren does,  does not prove or disprove anything unless he subjects some of his work to an objective situation outside of his control. I have only seen one of his shows, edited and fine tuned for my entertainment.
However I remember I saw one test ages ago (and now I realise it must have been Derren) that he did with some advertising honchos and he was able to manipulate each of them separtly to compose a similar looking brochure for a Zoo (to attract children to it) just by being aware of the sights along the journey they would take in order to reach the tv studio. Not only that but arising from his awareness of the sights along the way he predicted the brochure design and graphics they would use before hand.
The advertising honchos were suitably stunned, awed and speechless that they too were "victims" of manipulated subliminal activity.

[heganboy]

I saw that episode with the ad for the zoo, it was very well done. And to be fair to Brown, he's pretty open about how he uses visual "cue cards" and suggestion to get people to do what he wants.

[rosnarun]

did you ever have a magic trick explained to you . my 1st reaction always  is ' well thats a load of shit' and would have been much happier kept in awe.
worst one ive seen was david copperfield making a space shuttle disappear all he did was move the camera and the whoke crowd of about 100 people were in on it .
so I wouldn't be suprised if all derrens browns audience were plants. and there are also many old foutune telling tricks where you actually tell the gypsy more than they tell you.
My advice is keep your innocence dont think too much about it and enjoy the show .
its just entertainment after all Tom and jerry are just dabs of ink but they're still funny

[ONeill]

after all Tom and jerry are just dabs of ink

Aye, right. Wise up.

[MW]

the book is brilliant...

I've just ordered it, but if this is some kind of trick Heganboy then you're in a lotta trouble mister.

It's excellent. Highly entertaining with some very lucid puncturing of nonsense such as homeopathy, psychic readin and NLP.