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Temperature and season. I know people who feel cold simply because the calendar says winter and wear heavy jackets yet outside it's like a nice cool Summer day.
I also know people who refuse to bow to cold and instead dress for fashion. On a more serious note, bear in mind that as we age our tolerance for cold drops off markedly. We need to know the people we talk about to fully understand their actions.
Magic and mentalism has been my lifelong hobby (although I am not a working magician/mentalist), and I appreciate the myriad ways that peoples' cognitive shortcomings can easily be exploited. Magic/mentalism makes use of: Misdirection False assumptions Verbal ambiguity Memory manipulation (mostly by reframing the spectator's experience after the fact) Clever sleight of hand techniques Multiple "outs" Blatant lying All of these methods, either individually or in combination, serve to setup a spectator's expectations and then deliver something ostensibly impossible (the "magical" moment). It's a wonderful and entertaining art form. But it's also a serious exploration of human psychology. Anyway, great interview. Thanks Michael! 🙂
1:01:22 Is there a name for that phenomenon, and is there a way to prevent it? I often can't find something, because the thing I'm looking for looks like unidentifiable background stuff.
I've always thought of hypnosis as the closest thing we have to something verifiably "paranormal" or "anomalous". It's a real phenomenon, that you can replicate in a lab. You can (with the right patient) do proper, serious internal surgery, slice open someone's abdominal cavity and chop up their innards, using ONLY hypnosis as anaesthetic, and it works fine... ...Yet we have no idea what the actual mechanism is. Some people deny that hypnosis even exists at all; They say it's just ALL people "playing along" (but "playing along" with painless surgery takes a pretty impressive actor...) My understanding is that certain drugs, used for heroin addicts, which block the opiate receptors in your brain, also stop hypnosis from preventing pain. So I guess that's a PARTIAL explanation for a mechanism... But there's still giant enough gaps in our knowledge, to make it a genuinely bizarre, mysterious phenomena.
This is a matter of What Is Reality, and difference between actual reality (Noumena) and perceived relity (Phenomena). There is a diff between thinking of a theory and what you accept as real to be trusted and acted upon by instructions. Remember that Value System determines reality. When you know people are liars & lying, you do not trust them or the info they are presenting. What is the Source from which you get info? Or what do place value in and accept as reliable? If I can control your source & flow of info, I control your thinking (garbage in garbage out) and your perceptions and instructions of choosing to act.
A Dr once said, my sickest patients are intellectuals. This was an excellent discussion! The trains of thought we develope and trying to actively change it is not for the weak 😅
Thanks Shermer for the great discussion. Just picked up the book on Kindle after finishing the free preview! Super interesting. I can't wait to get further into it!
![Method Writing: The First Four Concepts - Jack Grapes [FULL INTERVIEW]](/img/n.gif)
To try everything Brilliant has to offer-free-for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/Skeptic/ . You’ll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription.
Temperature and season. I know people who feel cold simply because the calendar says winter and wear heavy jackets yet outside it's like a nice cool Summer day.
I also know people who refuse to bow to cold and instead dress for fashion. On a more serious note, bear in mind that as we age our tolerance for cold drops off markedly. We need to know the people we talk about to fully understand their actions.
Magic and mentalism has been my lifelong hobby (although I am not a working magician/mentalist), and I appreciate the myriad ways that peoples' cognitive shortcomings can easily be exploited. Magic/mentalism makes use of:
Misdirection
False assumptions
Verbal ambiguity
Memory manipulation (mostly by reframing the spectator's experience after the fact)
Clever sleight of hand techniques
Multiple "outs"
Blatant lying
All of these methods, either individually or in combination, serve to setup a spectator's expectations and then deliver something ostensibly impossible (the "magical" moment). It's a wonderful and entertaining art form. But it's also a serious exploration of human psychology. Anyway, great interview. Thanks Michael! 🙂
Brilliant presentation. Thank you!
1:01:22 Is there a name for that phenomenon, and is there a way to prevent it? I often can't find something, because the thing I'm looking for looks like unidentifiable background stuff.
I've always thought of hypnosis as the closest thing we have to something verifiably "paranormal" or "anomalous".
It's a real phenomenon, that you can replicate in a lab. You can (with the right patient) do proper, serious internal surgery, slice open someone's abdominal cavity and chop up their innards, using ONLY hypnosis as anaesthetic, and it works fine...
...Yet we have no idea what the actual mechanism is. Some people deny that hypnosis even exists at all; They say it's just ALL people "playing along" (but "playing along" with painless surgery takes a pretty impressive actor...)
My understanding is that certain drugs, used for heroin addicts, which block the opiate receptors in your brain, also stop hypnosis from preventing pain. So I guess that's a PARTIAL explanation for a mechanism... But there's still giant enough gaps in our knowledge, to make it a genuinely bizarre, mysterious phenomena.
This is a matter of What Is Reality, and difference between actual reality (Noumena) and perceived relity (Phenomena). There is a diff between thinking of a theory and what you accept as real to be trusted and acted upon by instructions. Remember that Value System determines reality. When you know people are liars & lying, you do not trust them or the info they are presenting. What is the Source from which you get info? Or what do place value in and accept as reliable? If I can control your source & flow of info, I control your thinking (garbage in garbage out) and your perceptions and instructions of choosing to act.
A Dr once said, my sickest patients are intellectuals.
This was an excellent discussion! The trains of thought we develope and trying to actively change it is not for the weak 😅
Bravo for "The Great Drone Panic of 2024 ... and 1914," that just dropped in my inbox!
Thanks Shermer for the great discussion. Just picked up the book on Kindle after finishing the free preview! Super interesting. I can't wait to get further into it!
You forgot about The Great Houdini!
53:30 Why is it difficult to understand? Millions of people are cheeering on genocide right now.
What you’re talking about around minute 53 is a condition called cognitive dissonance
Something doesn’t seem quite right.