51. Comment #52613 by Darwin's badger on June 27, 2007 at 1:56 pm

I'm a big fan of Derren's work - I've seen him live, watched all of his TV shows and read his book, "Tricks of the Mind" - and he is a devout atheist. In fact, it was by reading his book that I happened across the name of one Richard Dawkins, as he spends a large part of the book slating the circular beliefs of the religious and sending up himself, for he was once a Bible-thumping, shiny-eyed Christian...fortunately for both his audience and himself, he escaped Christianity's clutches and is all the better for it.

I recommend his live shows - he is very funny as well as being quite awe-inspiring in a "how the bloody hell did he do that?" way - and he goes out of his way to sign autographs, pose for photographs and even attempts to commit people's faces to memory (while I was queuing, he demonstrated this by telling a fan that he'd met her a couple of years back during a previous tour and he remembered her name, which made her night!), so if you get the opportunity to see him, don't miss it.

PS The show in question, "Messiah", was the final nail in the coffin of my wife's religiosity - she was once a visitor of mediums, aura-readers, mystics etc because she wanted to believe, much as I did, but seeing how easy it was to fake it made her realise that she'd been the victim of a bunch of charlatans. She and I are now happily Godless. :)

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52. Comment #52622 by Jamougha on June 27, 2007 at 2:36 pm

Ppl who want info on how he does this stuff -- I'm no expert but I know a bit about his techniques, I'll try my best to give an idea.

Reading pictures in another room
As he says himself, if he can't know what the person has chosen and he predicts/reads it then it has to be a force. The editing removes too much of the trick to work out how the force is done, excepting the 'overboard' and 'sail' bit that someone already pointed out.

Instant conversion
This is basically just a normal stage hypnosis show, but instead of getting them to hop on one leg while quacking like a duck he gets them to say they believe in god. He uses enhanced suggestability, social compliance and hypnotic language. He's supposedly a very, very good hypnotist and used to do stage hypnosis for a living. Note that more than half the audience leaves before the really amazing stuff goes down - those are the people who are resistant to hypnosis!

Dream Machine
Standard cold reading. He's astounding at this and it's being heavily edited to make him look even better.

Medical History
Pay a private investigator, he gets their medical history from a bent employee at their insurance company. The thing about her not taking drugs is probably public knowledge. Heck all of it could be.

Mediumship
Like he says, cold reading. Plus some editing.

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53. Comment #52653 by Jolly Wally on June 27, 2007 at 4:20 pm

Derren Brown is a very accomplished illusionist. Has anyone tried the falling backwards trick? I can do it to myself :P Close your eyes and it's hard to stay upright without adjusting your stance. It isn't hard to imagine what an effect it would have on someone who WANTS to fall, with someone else chanting mumbo-jumbo in the background.

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54. Comment #52659 by Jolly Wally on June 27, 2007 at 4:29 pm

It is interesting. With feet together and vision removed, there is no visual reference point for balance. You see those people in the video begin to rock gently at first? That is a slight change of weight distribution. With no way to rectify the displacement (since vision is impaired and stance is fastened), the gentle rocking increases and, with subtle suggestions from Mr Brown, balance is lost.

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55. Comment #52664 by CargoShip359 on June 27, 2007 at 4:46 pm

I have to agree with JazzX and the later comment by fin

I have a strong suspicion that whereas Uri Geller claims supernatural, Derren Brown claims psychological manipulation but both claims are false. I agree he does very impressive tricks, however, I suspect he has no more powers of psychological suggestion than I have (which is none, other than those every human probably has to some extent). I'm not saying it is not possible to use these powers but I have doubts they would be reliable enough to do sell-out shows night after night. You would have to be sure the suggestions would work every time. I think he gives the suggestion 'sail through your mind…don't go overboard on detail' etc, but in reality is using the same batch of very impressive but standard tricks and then markets himself as a great psychological manipulator, which is fair enough of course. In other words, I suggest he gives a rational explanation for his stunts but that doesn't mean it's the actual explanation. People have shown him attributing mind manipulation to card tricks that don't require any mind powers.

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56. Comment #52666 by msv on June 27, 2007 at 4:52 pm

Derren Brown is a very accomplished illusionist. Has anyone tried the falling backwards trick? I can do it to myself :P Close your eyes and it's hard to stay upright without adjusting your stance. It isn't hard to imagine what an effect it would have on someone who WANTS to fall, with someone else chanting mumbo-jumbo in the background.

Yeah, your body wavers a bit with your eyes closed. If you are close enough to the couch and the seating is lower than your knees, your knees bend making you trip slightly towards the couch.

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57. Comment #52674 by Jamougha on June 27, 2007 at 5:30 pm

'I have a strong suspicion that whereas Uri Geller claims supernatural, Derren Brown claims psychological manipulation but both claims are false. I agree he does very impressive tricks, however, I suspect he has no more powers of psychological suggestion than I have (which is none, other than those every human probably has to some extent).'

He uses both. Certainly in many, probably most, of is tricks he uses classic magic and passes it off as psychology, but he also uses psychological tricks, and sometimes he uses both in one trick to achieve an effect. You can download 'The Devil's Picturebook' via bittorrent, which contains his card magic repertoire, and goes through from standard card magic to psychological 'forces' for specific cards.

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58. Comment #52707 by Elentar on June 27, 2007 at 9:20 pm

The Amazing Kreskin used to do the same act, and prefaced each show with a notice that the tricks were done solely through stage magic. He too came to dispute the belief in hypnosis, and claimed that his stage subjects did what they did out of desire to please the crowd.

JazzX et al: Real people in real situations all look like bad actors. Actors look more real in front of a camera, because the performance is rehearsed and abbreviated. This is why very dumb actors come off looking brilliant and accomplished in front of the camera. This is also why the cult of celebrity expects miraculous things out of merely pretty people. If you have the two confused, it's because you watch too much television.

Brown's 'psychology' amounts to neuro-linguistic programming and cold reading, simple tricks of reading and mirroring body language. It takes about a year to learn, and requires no deep understanding of human psychology. It is, however, remarkably effective, and more than a few unscrupulous practitioners have used it to found cults. This is the whole point of the program--what he does is easy, and requires no extraordinary talent.

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59. Comment #52714 by CargoShip359 on June 27, 2007 at 10:36 pm

Thank you Jamougha for the link and Axulus for posting the link to the Simon Singh article (I read it ages ago but forgot who wrote and where). Taking this article at face value, it is clear that Derren Brown is happy to attribute cold reading/suggestion/manipulation to events that actually require no such skill. With this in mind, I think it has to be perfectly plausible to suggest that when he states no actors/stooges are used this may well not be the case. Clearly, I cannot be sure about this. However, to what extent people are susceptible to 'neuro-linguistic programming and cold reading, simple tricks of reading and mirroring body language' is very interesting and when watching Derren Brown it is impossible to be sure to what extent, if any, these are actually being employed. Perhaps I'm being too fussy but this ruins any of the real interest. Although I can see why he does it, as saying 'I'm going to get a group of extras that want to be actors to fake a heist on a security van' doesn't sound too great. However, I have seen this happen on an episode of The Bill.

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60. Comment #52749 by gcooke on June 28, 2007 at 1:46 am

will young wrote:
>Even with his disclaimer, too many bug-wits in my
>part of the U.S. would see it as mystical
>nonetheless -- sadly enough.

I don't really think it's intended to be mystical. It's trickery and hypnosis, that's all. What's fascinating is his ability to misdirect the viewer into thinking the trick is done one way (psychologically or whatever), when in fact it's 'just a trick'. This doesn't make it any less of a trick, though.

There have been times when he's been found out, like the Russian roulette stunt, (Wikipedia) and he's always encouraged it- ie encouraged people to think critically.

G.

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61. Comment #52766 by RabbitDynamite on June 28, 2007 at 3:26 am

I have seen the "conversion at a touch" part before. The man's skills are genuinely intimidating. Cheers for posting the whole thing.

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62. Comment #52772 by Hal9000 on June 28, 2007 at 3:50 am

Note this may contain minor magic spoilers (as a non magician I have no issue with this but don't read if you don't want to know – they are not full spoilers)……..

My beef with Derren Brown is that he makes out that he is using suggestion and psychology in his tricks but I am pretty sure that it is 95%-100% conjuring. I recently watched the televised – 'Something Wicked This Way Comes Tour' and could see that every trick that was sold as involving mental ability was in fact a conjuring trick. He does a big explanation at the end where he tells you that he created an effect by dropping phrases into his in-show banter – but this is a lie, the effect is achieved using traditional magicians techniques (IE creating forces, the impression of choice when none exists, slight of hand and other such techniques.). Another trick involves him guessing which one of 5 people is lying and then guessing a name she is thinking of, and again this is done by forcing the selection of the liar and ensuring that she is observed why writing the name she thinks of. Another trick involves walking on glass – he makes out he is doing it by stopping his heart, but this is not true, the heart stopping is a trick and he walks on glass because, surprisingly, walking on glass, like walking on hot coals is not actually painful.

Having seen his various stage shows and the Messiah program, I am quite sceptical of the effects that are achieved. I don't think he uses stooges, but I don't think he uses 'mind control' techniques either.

He is a great magician and I love watching him perform and I applaud his exposure of physics and other woo woo artists. I just feel uneasy that he makes and breaks a 'contract' with his audience in the presentation of his work and that this makes him uncomfortably close to the woo woo artists he would seek to expose. How many people leave his stage show thinking that they are in on the trick (ie that its about suggestion and the power of the mind) but are really not. Maybe it doesn't matter, I can see both sides of this argument I guess.

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63. Comment #52838 by RAS on June 28, 2007 at 7:21 am

Stephen Fry had a wonderfull comment about Derren Brown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92ldFMtO7q0

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64. Comment #52847 by Rachel Holmes on June 28, 2007 at 8:05 am

Interesting post, Hal9000. Still not in a hurry to try the glass-walking thing, though...

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65. Comment #52863 by Thrall on June 28, 2007 at 9:30 am

I wish he would go over how he did these tricks, of course he won't, because most of it is "magic". Suggestion from an authority figure is pretty damn powerful. I bet if he showed up as a guy off the street, dressed in casual duds, without an english accent (yes it does have an effect on us 'mericans), without the "backstory" he provided for each of the characters, and tried this same thing, the psychics would have laughed him out of the room, the alien autopsy lady would still believe him, and the pastor could go either way depending on the "skeptical" crowd reaction.

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66. Comment #52869 by sheepscarer on June 28, 2007 at 9:58 am

One of his better tricks consisted of him giving just met individuals who were part of a small group extemely detailed written descriptions of their personalities (after much fake ritual). Depressingly, all of them were shocked at the accuracy of his scripts and believed he had some magic insight into their minds. The kick came after their rapture when DB asks them to look at each other's scripts. They were all identical. People as we know from horoscopes are apt to see what they expect to see.
Also check out the chess games against grandmasters - ingeniously simple but sharp as a knife.

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67. Comment #52870 by Neal on June 28, 2007 at 10:02 am

The important thing here is not how he does it, but just how easy people can be led to believe in, or to re-inforce their beliefs in, the supernatural.

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68. Comment #52886 by thorninyourflesh on June 28, 2007 at 11:49 am

How about next time he invites an audience of people with illnesses,because this guy probably can heal them,right? I mean if he is the messiah?

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69. Comment #52887 by Darwin's badger on June 28, 2007 at 11:54 am

Thorninyourflesh: You've either missed the point spectacularly or are being sarcastic - if it's the latter, I apologise, but it's difficult to tell on internet forums sometimes. If it's the former, watch the show ("Messiah") and then comment - at no point does DVB claim to have supernatural powers.

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70. Comment #52891 by Nastikananda on June 28, 2007 at 12:19 pm

Thanks to so many of you for having given me links as to how Derren Brown does his tricks.

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71. Comment #52947 by baal on June 28, 2007 at 4:23 pm

To Nastikananda:

This book is quite a good one, and interesting to boot: it's called "The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading"
http://www.ianrowland.com/ItemsToBuy/ColdReading/ColdReadingMain1.html

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72. Comment #52983 by Mr. Grape on June 28, 2007 at 11:05 pm

Many planting of ideas and careful word choices. During the atheist conversion, you hear him say to the man who gets on stage something along the lines of, 'don't worry, I'll catch you.' So there is the suggestion that he is supposed to fall backwards. He also uses a sort of 'pavlov'/planting technique on the woman when he touches her. As for the dream machine, it is a cold reading, but the woman was told beforehand that the device can capture dreams. If she assumes that it's catching dreams, obviously she is going to start paying more attention to dreams: something that most people never do. It's then not uncommon to suddenly notice that a couple of dreams don't have color... or spinning wheels and white buildings.

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73. Comment #53036 by AntonAAK on June 29, 2007 at 3:53 am

Derren Brown is a highly accomplished stage illusionist and his job is to deceive us. He does this very effectively and it genuinely surprises me when people, as many have here, complain that they are being deceived. What do you expect? The often false claims that he is using psychological manipulation and the false explanations (such as at the end of the Something Wicked show) are all still part of the trick.

Lots of people also seem to be missing the point of the Messiah show. His point is not 'Look how clever I am for performing this astounding and impossible feat' but 'Look how naive these so-called experts are for not even considering the possibility that they might be being duped'. He causes us to consider how often they might have been duped in the past by charlatans with similar skills.

The easier these cons were to perform the more effectively his point is proven.

I really hope that the information about the UFO lady's medical history was very easy to come by. I wouldn't be surprised if some of it was on her website somewhere. The fact that she only takes alternative medicines for instance is almost certainly common knowledge and her surprise at his 'revelation' of this fact all the more saddening for this very reason.

People like this are just desperate for something to believe, as this programme admirably demonstrates.

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74. Comment #53043 by Neal on June 29, 2007 at 4:32 am

Comment 76, AntonAAK.
Exactly, This is not meant to be a discussion of how Derren Brown's achieves his illusions, if that's the best way of describing them, but an extremely delightful expose of how many respected believers suspend their critical faculties when presented with something they would prefer to believe in.

Showing how easy this is to achieve may be a better way of breaking down a believer's barriers (e.g. Darwin's Badgers wife in post 52 above) rather than trying to argue science vs supernatural with believers ultimately taking refuge behind the NOMA argument.

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75. Comment #53126 by GoatBoy36 on June 29, 2007 at 3:08 pm

I used to work with a doctor who was very interested in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and who was also a fan of Derren Brown; one evening he said he would show me how one could convince other people to do something through the use of language; he proceeded to try to "sell" me a car, and after a couple of minutes I wanted to buy that (non-existent) car! So while I would take some of the ideas behind NLP with a pinch of salt, there is no doubt that there's something to it, and if you get someone as good as Derren Brown together with an audience who don't have any idea what he's doing (or how he's doing it) then it wouldn't surprise me at all if he got them to think whatever he wanted them to think.

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76. Comment #53166 by CargoShip359 on June 29, 2007 at 10:40 pm

It really does matter how he does it. If we are trying to understand the ease with which people are willing to suspend their critical faculties, which I think this program is demonstrating, should we not be reasonably confident the whole thing is not a set up. Read the article posted by Axulus by Simon Singh. Derren Brown takes a card trick that only requires him to play the correct cards in the correct order (a perfectly good card trick) but is willing to say the following about that same trick:

"through watching the three of you I think that your signals are the easiest to read."

"Are you aware of your own signals when you play a game of poker? You're telling me with your nose which one you're going to go for. This time I am going to rearrange the cards into an order that I can sort of influence you with."

If we didn't know any better, you could say isn't it interesting how people give signals without knowing etc. However, although that is an interesting subject, this card trick tells us nothing about this phenomenon.

If he interested in these subjects why bother wasting time on your show with this type of stuff, other than to get on TV and sell books (a very difficult thing to do if you are a magician) In the same light, is this an attempt to demonstrate how easily people suspend their critical faculties, or is it a group of actors demonstrating how easy it is to pretend to suspend their critical faculties. From the point of view of understanding religious belief, isn't that is a massive difference? One tells us a lot and the other tells us nothing, other than people are willing to accept his explanation of events at face value? Which I suppose does tell us something but only he and the people/actors know what the lesson is.

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77. Comment #53168 by Roy_H on June 29, 2007 at 11:11 pm

I enjoyed every minute of that video. I hear that Derren has just landed a job in Antarctica selling refridgerators .......

I posted a link to the video on another forum, I only got one response, but an interesting one. The reply was to the effect "This is an example of flawed logic, i.e. Derren could convince you that you had a pain in your leg, even though you really did not, but that does not mean that physical pain itself is false and does not exist."

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78. Comment #53189 by Neal on June 30, 2007 at 3:04 am

79. CargoShip359
I agree, if Derren is using actors/stooges then the whole premise of the program, be wary of any supernatural claims, is compromised. However, the fact that these people/organisations really do seem to exist (see post 41 from Insomicman) make me think this is not the case especially as some of these websites are pretty big and 8 or 9 years old (i.e. unlikely to have been set up to propogate the hoax).

But even if Derren was using actors then consider this; it is the target audience of this program who are being encouraged to suspend their critical faculties, not the actors in the program, in order to re-inforce their own beliefs, or lack of as the case may be. Either way the program amply demonstrates that it is relatively easy to promote ones own beliefs (theism/atheism) through trickery.

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79. Comment #53208 by CargoShip359 on June 30, 2007 at 5:38 am

Post 81 by Neal

Yeah I think you're right in saying the programme is useful. Also, I really can't work out if he's actually able to reliably use suggestion to the level he suggests in performing his tricks. No doubt he does use some, as it is a part of being a magician. I also agree with insomicman that it is very easy to dismiss this stuff as a fake, and on the basis of just this programme I doubt I would have questioned it. However, stunts like The Heist. Take four people out of thirteen and expose them to the correct colours, phrases and music and three of the four will commit armed robbery. Is this true? It could be, but it sounds amazing. I mean truly ground-breaking science amazing. I realize the card trick Simon Singh mentions is just one part of one show but it does demonstrate his apparent willingness to attribute completely the wrong rational reason for what we see him do. At the same time he also does things like reenact the Milgram experiment and therefore starts to associate himself with scientists carrying out peer-reviewed research in order to add credibility to what he is doing. As is almost suggested in the Simon Singh article we need a Derren Brown version of the James Randi prize to find out if any of his suggestive techniques work under controlled conditions and to what extent. I feel this is even more necessary for Derren Brown than for Uri Geller, who is clearly talking nonsense and, as far as I know, doesn't invoke science to back up his claims. Anyway I'm probably taking this Derren Brown thing way too seriously as in the long run he does make people question and that's got to be good.

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80. Comment #53381 by Tawn on July 1, 2007 at 6:25 am

" The reply was to the effect "This is an example of flawed logic, i.e. Derren could convince you that you had a pain in your leg, even though you really did not, but that does not mean that physical pain itself is false and does not exist." "

The reply you got is an example of someone missing the point.

The point isn't that supernatural claims MUST be false because we can emulate them with trickery.

The point is that they COULD be false and we need to question them. The fact that the so called 'experts' of these areas never question Derren directly, should make us very wary of accepting these claims on authority or 'eye-witness' claims alone.

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81. Comment #53489 by Ethin on July 1, 2007 at 5:04 pm

derren brown is not realy subliminally manipulating people, it is all a magic show simmilair to david blain or copperfield, it is still fun to watch though. He has admitted that it is actually not real
In Brown's latest book Tricks of the Mind, he writes 'I am often dishonest in my techniques, but always honest about my dishonesty. As I say in each show, "I mix magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship". I happily admit cheating, as it's all part of the game. I hope some of the fun for the viewer comes from not knowing what's real and what isn't. I am an entertainer first and foremost, and I am careful not to cross any moral line that would take me into manipulating people's real-life decisions or belief systems

in short what he does is use psychology to trick the viewer into thinking he is messing with people s brains, the subliminal words in sentences to influence behavior and using misdirection and pattern breaks to hypnotize people is pure bullshit. It's fun to watch but people have to know this is all fake.

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82. Comment #53717 by windfall on July 2, 2007 at 9:10 pm

This is all well and good, but after watching several clips in which he appears to be hypnotizing people into being drunk, staring at people till they feel sick or mad with rage (within a few seconds), guesses cards people are thinking of - how does he do this stuff?

I mean, there is something here, isn't there? I'm a hard-nosed skeptic about everything, but this stuff is amazing!

Whatever his technique, I give him great credit for demonstrating how it's quite straightforward to deceive people in the most shattering ways.

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83. Comment #53727 by Darwin's badger on July 3, 2007 at 12:08 am

In response to GoatBoy36's post (78), this is Derren using similar techniques to those that you described.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5DB5crSsrA

Enjoy!

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84. Comment #53743 by markiemark on July 3, 2007 at 2:30 am

I think you are all missing the point. This show is proof positive that there is a GOD. Its obviously Derren himself but it is a worrying trend that he is totally denying that religion exists let alone that he does!

How will we ever spot the phoney's if they themselves claim to be fakes!

For more details on this revelation go to www.derrenbrownisgod.con......NOT

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85. Comment #54600 by John Phillips on July 8, 2007 at 4:16 am

Recent research appears to show under certain conditions that parts of the brain react to subliminal images.

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/media/library/notaware

Of course, how relevant this may be to the techniques that Derren Brown uses, or says he uses, is another matter.

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86. Comment #54709 by Frostbit on July 8, 2007 at 3:51 pm

I'm skeptic to the entire program. The fact that there was a note in the beginning stating that the individuals were not stooges has me convinced that it was staged. I require much more evidence then just a note that it was legitimate.

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87. Comment #55346 by Barnacle on July 10, 2007 at 5:33 pm

Are we all agreed that the 'experts' were real?

Assuming the answer is yes and that they are not willing to put their 'reputations' on the line by playing a knowing role in this programme, I don't think how Derren Brown actually does his tricks matters in this context (except as a matter of interest). The show was supposed to expose the 'experts' and how readily they will endorse someone claiming to have whatever ability and that we should not, therefore, be willing to accept an individual's claims simply because they have the backing of some 'reputable' authority figure.

Whether the other people involved were actors or whatnot really doesn't matter - the 'experts' fell for it.

It was relatively entertaining to watch anyway and I genuinely hope the conversion bit was staged because those 'skeptics' were pathetic as far as skepticism goes... There was, I think, one woman still left standing at the end of it though.

BTW, about the alien abduction lady - anyone could see that she's an 'alternative-treatments-person-who-doesn't-trust-western-medicine' come on! You don't need to look that up!

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88. Comment #56802 by sane1 on July 17, 2007 at 9:51 am

OK - Derren is quite convincing. Why doesn't he explain how he does the illusions, since his point seems to be that people are gullible. Just showing that "experts" are gullible, isn't satisfying enough. He should also show how the charlatans fool folks.

Did he read up on the ufo lady? Did he use the power of suggstion?

WTF?!?!?!

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