[From xorcist offlist] Cloudflare & NoDAPL again w/ a ROTF

[John Newman]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 09:36:53PM -0300, juan wrote:
> > The skills of illusion, and "mentalism" are quite real.. and if you
> > watch more of his stuff, especially the longer videos or full
> > episodes where he breaks down the hows and whys of it working,
> > perhaps you'll be less likely to say its fake. It's easy to dismiss a
> > magic trick as "camera edits" when you just have a 3 minute video.
> > It's a bit harder when the magician explains the whole thing to you.
> 
> 
> 	Magic tricks don't have much to do with this. Magic tricks rely
> 	on exploiting shortcomings of perception, "the hand is quicker
> 	than the eye", that sort of thing. But indeed nobody believes
> 	that those magic tricks are 'real' magic. If anything they prove
> 	that people are rational and know that magicians can't make
> 	rabbits dissapear - they know it's 'illusion'.
> 	
> 
> 	If on the other hand Derren is 'staging' the jewelry store
> 	video, that means he and the guy at the shop are playing a
> 	part and the video isn't even 'illusion', it's outright fake.
> 

This guy had a show in the UK for a while.. on one of his specials
he "programmed" 4 people to perform armed robberies without being
directly told to, supposedly using visual cues and a whole bunch
of other total NLP bullshit. Suffice it to say I think the thing
is a total fucking fake. I would have no problem with Darren if he
just claimed to be an illusionist like David Copperfield and performed
tricks, but he tries to act like James Randi, and like all his shit
is on the level - he really convinced X to do Y using psychological
methods...

The heist episode I mentioned is particularly preposterous.

Link to the full episode for anyone who wants to waste 45mins:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaHbACoYNSA


> > He uses a lot of techniques, but "neuro-linguistic programming" (NLP)
> > is the bread-and-butter.

NLP is widely discredited pseudo-science crap. 

http://skepdic.com/neurolin.html

"..It seems that NLP develops models which can't be verified,
from which it develops techniques which may have nothing to do with
either the models or the sources of the models. NLP makes claims
about thinking and perception which do not seem to be supported by
neuroscience.."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming

"..There is no scientific evidence supporting the claims made by
NLP advocates and it has been discredited as a pseudoscience by
experts.."


John
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