Abracadabra!

In his awesome book, Fooling Houdini, Alex Stone said that magic is all about breaking the laws of physics. Or appearing to do so. I never thought of it that way, but on reflecting, I feel that’s a great definition. After all, isn’t magic all about the card that tunnels through the deck to the top, the girl who gets cut in two and lives, the magician who escapes from a box dropped into water while he was chained?

Later in the book, Stone talks about a category of magicians called mentalists. Those are the folks who claim to be able to read your mind and to communicate with the dead. But there’s a key difference, says Stone:
“A magician should pull off every trick perfectly; a mentalist should not. Mentalists should only be about 85 percent accurate…The idea is that the sixth sense, like the other five senses, should be fallible.”
Ironical, isn’t it? The very definition of science is repeatability; but if you break the laws of physics with repeatability, we call it magic, a trick. But do it 85% of the time and people feel there’s something genuine there! I agree with Stone’s takeaway of this tendency among many:
“It was scary, because people actually believed it was real. You could start a religion with this stuff.”
And many did exactly that, Alex.

But what if there were actually people out there who could break the laws of physics with impunity? In the movie, Next, Nicolas Cage answered exactly that question:
“You've probably seen a lot of those shows. Mentalists. Magicians. Illusionists. You'd be shocked to know that sometimes, not often, but sometimes, it's the real deal. Masquerading as an act. Hiding behind a few $50 tricks. Hiding in plain sight. Because if the magician doesn't do that, the alternative is impossible for others to live with.”
If Cage is right and people with such “powers” are hiding behind a magician’s façade, does it mean we’re no better than the witch burners of the middle ages? Does safety for such people really lie in doing what Kevin Spacey said in the movie, The Usual Suspects?
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.”

I prefer to believe that such people do what Spacey said (convince everyone they don’t exist) and then off they go to Hogwarts. C’mon, did you really think I would write a blog on magic without a Harry Potter reference?

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarFebruary 28, 2018 at 9:45 AM

    This blog starts with, "Alex Stone said that magic is all about breaking the laws of physics. Or appearing to do so. I never thought of it that way, but on reflecting, I feel that’s a great definition."

    True it is a great definition. The truth behind is that laws of physics cannot be set aside at all; now way. This is what is confirmed by clearly quoting in this blog, "Or appearing to do so". So magic is all about deception!

    While it is true that magic is deception, the same author Alex Stone, somewhere in his books states that, "We magicians, whose profession is to deceive, actually declare directly or indirectly that is what we do".

    But see what the ordinary people sometimes and conmen always do: deceiving people with intent! They they play with the human mind which is prone to be deceived, for their selfish gains uncaring about harming others.

    It is strange that deception can be honest kind and dishonest kind! Right and wrong in life never once stopped being a tricky issue. :-) Human mind is the most complex thing imaginable anyway!

    ReplyDelete

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