Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

David Quinn wrote: Well, we would have to haul in a technical expert to examine the footage to see if your theory was correct.

But let's take it all on face value and see if we can work it out from an NLP standpoint.
The thing is: why bringing in some highly debatable and speculative mind manipulation while what we already know is that what we're looking at is a performer who used to be on a stage using smoke and mirrors making a paying audience believe all kinds of things? And a performer who is still admitting to lie about the complete picture for a reason? All kinds of devices could be used to make the room look differently, delaying part of the signal, whatever and we still would have basically the same as we have during the average stage magic trick with a complex set of mirrors. No change!

From where then would come this readiness displayed by you and so many others to believe we've left the world of smoke and mirrors altogether and now have 'real' mind manipulation going on? Derren makes some interesting statements about Uri Geller and the building of an 'image' over the years to make certain tricks work better. He seems to be saying he understands Geller although he might dismiss the focus on the supernatural in Geller's case.

Hey, if Derren was capable of doing even a fraction of what he appears to be doing, couldn't he just make documentaries, write scientific studies, become a world-leading investigator for these issues? Instead, he keeps merely entertaining so far. That in itself says enough about his intentions or more accurately: about the real scope of his psychological powers outside the indirect staging, the invisible curtains, the proverbial smoke and so on. He might come with a book one day with the real breakthrough: how easy we all believe something, blocking rational thought, if it confirms our suspicions or fulfills our wishes.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

prince wrote:The Derren Brown seance is the best trick of his I have seen.

Part 5 below, has the actual meat of the matter, but its best to watch all of the show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTc-c2DxUgQ
Just for fun, a non-hypnosis, non-insert-words-into-mind solution. One could wonder, during the seance there are basically three questions:

1. name of the cat ('harry')
2. name of the town the train is going to ('london')
3. job of the father ('builder')

Derren is supplying all the rest, the fact there was a cat, a train ride and a father with a job. So how many cat names are there, how many common destinations for a train and how many jobs? And if oneof those answers would be different than the main picks he could perhaps fire a fourth question, or a fifth, until he has three 'mainstream' answers collected. Then from a big collection of letters and DVD's he selects the right one? Or something is quickly printed or burned backstage (he used to inkjet print serial numbers on banknotes real-time in the past)? Of course the question remains how to swap the stuff on time - perhaps somewhere in the dark and the panic? Darren is a great pickpocket!
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by Kevin Solway »

Re: the zombies vid
David Quinn wrote:
There's way too much unbelievable stuff in that video for me to believe it. If the guy really believed that he shot that girl dead (deep in his mind), then he could be traumatized for life. Derren Brown isn't going to risk being sued for tens of millions dollars for causing that trauma.
I'm not so sure about that. He is a risk-taker by nature. His whole career is based on taking risks.
I reckon the guy would have got a bit suspicious when the stage crew had to keep on refilling his toy plastic cap-gun with caps. :-)
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

One afterthought on the seance: if someone really wanted to demonstrate insertion of a specific word into someone's mind, why not pick some historical item or something that would be already fixed before the show and could be verified and announced to the audience as such. But Derren seems to never do that. Like in this case the verification is done by paper letters and DVD's produced by an unknown source. Are they authentic? It's never demonstrated. It would be way more interesting if the cat's name and father's job was shown at the start of the show to a few other students but I have a suspicion such thing never happened....
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David Quinn
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

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Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
David Quinn wrote: Well, we would have to haul in a technical expert to examine the footage to see if your theory was correct.

But let's take it all on face value and see if we can work it out from an NLP standpoint.
The thing is: why bringing in some highly debatable and speculative mind manipulation while what we already know is that what we're looking at is a performer who used to be on a stage using smoke and mirrors making a paying audience believe all kinds of things? And a performer who is still admitting to lie about the complete picture for a reason? All kinds of devices could be used to make the room look differently, delaying part of the signal, whatever and we still would have basically the same as we have during the average stage magic trick with a complex set of mirrors. No change!

From where then would come this readiness displayed by you and so many others to believe we've left the world of smoke and mirrors altogether and now have 'real' mind manipulation going on? Derren makes some interesting statements about Uri Geller and the building of an 'image' over the years to make certain tricks work better. He seems to be saying he understands Geller although he might dismiss the focus on the supernatural in Geller's case.

Hey, if Derren was capable of doing even a fraction of what he appears to be doing, couldn't he just make documentaries, write scientific studies, become a world-leading investigator for these issues? Instead, he keeps merely entertaining so far. That in itself says enough about his intentions or more accurately: about the real scope of his psychological powers outside the indirect staging, the invisible curtains, the proverbial smoke and so on. He might come with a book one day with the real breakthrough: how easy we all believe something, blocking rational thought, if it confirms our suspicions or fulfills our wishes.
You make a strong point.

A possible objection to it is that he has a kind of personality disorder, in that he prefers to be a maverick, an outsider, a person of notoriety, rather than a serious, upstanding citizen working for the benefit of mankind.

I haven't read his books and I'm only now starting to read up on his history. According to his Wikipedia entry, he first studied hypnotherapy prior to becoming involved in stage magic and then combined the two. So it would seem reasonable to conclude that he does have genuine skills in hypnotism and suggestibility. The question is, how far do they go?

Are you saying that my account of what happened with the psychologist is too implausible to be taken seriously and that we should just regard him as a common stage illusionist?

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David Quinn
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

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Kevin Solway wrote:Re: the zombies vid
David Quinn wrote:
There's way too much unbelievable stuff in that video for me to believe it. If the guy really believed that he shot that girl dead (deep in his mind), then he could be traumatized for life. Derren Brown isn't going to risk being sued for tens of millions dollars for causing that trauma.
I'm not so sure about that. He is a risk-taker by nature. His whole career is based on taking risks.
I reckon the guy would have got a bit suspicious when the stage crew had to keep on refilling his toy plastic cap-gun with caps. :-)
What relevance would this have to a man in a hypnotic trance experiencing a reality that he has been "told" to experience? You know how easily the mind blocks things out, even in normal circumstances.

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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by David Quinn »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
prince wrote:The Derren Brown seance is the best trick of his I have seen.

Part 5 below, has the actual meat of the matter, but its best to watch all of the show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTc-c2DxUgQ
Just for fun, a non-hypnosis, non-insert-words-into-mind solution. One could wonder, during the seance there are basically three questions:

1. name of the cat ('harry')
2. name of the town the train is going to ('london')
3. job of the father ('builder')

Derren is supplying all the rest, the fact there was a cat, a train ride and a father with a job. So how many cat names are there, how many common destinations for a train and how many jobs? And if oneof those answers would be different than the main picks he could perhaps fire a fourth question, or a fifth, until he has three 'mainstream' answers collected. Then from a big collection of letters and DVD's he selects the right one? Or something is quickly printed or burned backstage (he used to inkjet print serial numbers on banknotes real-time in the past)? Of course the question remains how to swap the stuff on time - perhaps somewhere in the dark and the panic? Darren is a great pickpocket!
But was the point of the exercise to display Brown's ability to create first-class, head-scratching trickery, or to show how easily it is to dupe those who want to be duped? If the latter, then the unconvincing, amateurish tricks he used (the same kind that psychics and mediums normally use) were actually perfect for the job. They enhanced the overall trick.

Causing the students to forget the knowledge that the seance was fake with such ease is what makes the show.

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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

David Quinn wrote:Are you saying that my account of what happened with the psychologist is too implausible to be taken seriously and that we should just regard him as a common stage illusionist?
Definitively an uncommon stage illusionist. He wants to shake up the game a little, redefining the stage and the audience participation. In how far the subliminal messaging works or in how far he actually hypnotizes people varies from act to act. I'm quite certain he doesn't rely on it. It might enhance or boost some of his tricks. In some of his videos I wonder if he only puts them in as red herring for an educated audience looking for these things, to build this largely fictional character as mind-controller. Altogether quite a playing field for him to work with! A brilliant concept in my opinion.
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

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David Quinn wrote:Causing the students to forget the knowledge that the seance was fake with such ease is what makes the show.
Definitely! In my opinion he just let the seance develop on its own after supplying all the ingredients. What I suspect is that he did single out one of the more emotional, suggestible types who was then 'coincidentally' (using a very old trick) selected to be medium to enlarge the degree of success. Darren kept in control and steered the interviewing of the 'ghost', leading her to give three very common words without much effort in that stage. For the show it doesn't matter how he got those words, her imagined channeling is way more fascinating! She must have expressed in earlier exchanges more fascination with the subject and the channeling aspect than the others, my guess would be. It's the same principle as hypnosis.

So this clip indeed shows how the average emotion-ridden mind can be put into a mode of "make believe" and even one of "make up shit as it goes along" when put in the right circumstances. Makes one wonder about hypnotic regression into childhood memories though.
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

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Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
David Quinn wrote:Are you saying that my account of what happened with the psychologist is too implausible to be taken seriously and that we should just regard him as a common stage illusionist?
Definitively an uncommon stage illusionist. He wants to shake up the game a little, redefining the stage and the audience participation. In how far the subliminal messaging works or in how far he actually hypnotizes people varies from act to act. I'm quite certain he doesn't rely on it. It might enhance or boost some of his tricks. In some of his videos I wonder if he only puts them in as red herring for an educated audience looking for these things, to build this largely fictional character as mind-controller. Altogether quite a playing field for him to work with! A brilliant concept in my opinion.
It would certainly underline his cunningness as an entertainer. However, if your red-herring theory is true of the psychologist clip, or indeed your previous theories involving video trickery and the like, then how do you explain the psychologist's amazement at the end? That could only occur if Brown had genuinely bamboozled him in real life.

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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

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Diebert van Rhijn wrote:[

So this clip indeed shows how the average emotion-ridden mind can be put into a mode of "make believe" and even one of "make up shit as it goes along" when put in the right circumstances. Makes one wonder about hypnotic regression into childhood memories though.
For sure. I'm studying psychology at Uni ATM so find guys like Brown particularly fascinating. Real insight into the operations of the mind are pretty dangerous in the hands of politicians, clergymen, salesmen, advertisers and even psychologists (as you allude). The potential for misuse is mind boggling.

I mean how hard would it be to convince that girl who was channeling "Jane" that she should join a particular cult, buy a time share or send her life savings to an anonymous Nigerian bank account?
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

David Quinn wrote:However, if your red-herring theory is true of the psychologist clip, or indeed your previous theories involving video trickery and the like, then how do you explain the psychologist's amazement at the end? That could only occur if Brown had genuinely bamboozled him in real life.
This I already explained before but it somehow escaped your attention :-)

To recap: the psychologist is bamboozled by a different trick, quite a coarse one. This is possible because the psychologist is not looking at the written words during the experiment like we are doing. The only thing he gets in the end are a stack of written words. There's no way he can know the order in which they were written. All he has to go on was the sound of the marker and words of satisfaction from Derren when there was a hit. And with good magicians no little detail is accidental, it all serves the effect if not plain misdirection. Nothing is ever wasted.

So imagine Derren writing the words after the shrink was uttering them, after being instructed not to look to Derren, which was very convenient of course. Why not one glance to see how he was doing? How cynical, even the thought! But this is how unglamorous many magic tricks are and it was a trick, not some scientific experiment with James Randi.

It's possible the psychologist reviewed the recording right away but instead of modifying it in a studio I suspect the trick lied in the way it was recorded: electronics, lenses, delayed or split signals, whatever. Nothing too fancy. What you see is what really happened in that room but perhaps not exactly in the suggested order?

The drawn image is a different story. When challenged I might offer some clues.
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by David Quinn »

Don't be coy. Let's hear them.

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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

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Diebert van Rhijn wrote:. Makes one wonder about hypnotic regression into childhood memories though.
Last I heard, at least regarding hypnotic regression into memories about alien abduction, for instance, is that they have been utterly dismissed by the scientific community for the unreliability of the chosen method. The very act of being hypnotized is to submit your will before another's, and is consequently unreliable.

I imagine the same would hold true for childhood hypnotic regression, just so I would imagine that besides the obvious potential for distortion and manipulation by the hypnotist, the unconscious desires and drives of the hypnotized may motivate a more colorful remembrance for any number of reasons.

In an AP psychology class my senior year in High School, one of the rewards at the end of a good semester was for the teacher, who was a psychologist, to hypnotize the entire class and plant suggestions to help with excelling on the final exam. It was an odd sensation to be hypnotized, very close to that feeling of hugging someone you truly love; being physically and mentally relaxed your mind and subsequent boundaries seem to blur and expand to fill the hollow, fuzzy space between, and in, yourself and the other. Once awakened, it feels like ages passed while under. The resultant happiness of the hypnotized state exists, I believe because of the joy felt at the freedom from your own self and will. Much the same reason why people submit to organizations and others for any number of other, more "important" reasons.

The irony lies in the joyful paradox of freedom and free will. This same joy can be felt truly and without defilement in light of causation.
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by Carl G »

BMcGilly07 wrote:been utterly dismissed by the scientific community
Good reason to think there may be something to it, then.
The very act of being hypnotized is to submit your will before another's, and is consequently unreliable.
Unreliable and dismissable are two very different things.
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

After reviewing the clip with the psychologist again, I suspect one of the ways to achieve the effect without NLP or hypnosis would be the simple matter of Darren's demand of thinking about something 'simple and recognizable'. This is something which probably translates into a small set consisting of variants on house, tree, flower, cat, dog, person. When a second image is drawn that has to oppose this first image, a lot of options fall away. So I think Darren is left with only a few options. A tree could even be too much reminding of a stick man so a building or a pet is left, with a house being perhaps too obvious and other buildings too complex or featureless. Darren seems to quickly try dog/cat and reads out of the reaction, possibly eye movement, directly 'cat'. If the reaction would have been negative or blank he might have gone to rabbit straight. It's a matter of cleverly homing in and some statistics on this.

There are quite some indications Darren tried to drop suggestions like "try to CATch me out". But also the "feel free to change your mind" is interesting as it might suggest Darren might override the choice later because of the authoritative stance and positions he assumes. The psychologist looks very meek and small on the couch, drifting along on Darren's direction. But again, I don't think the trick totally relies on this, it could be mostly thrown in for effect. Although one could say: a psychologist, expert in this field chooses such an easy and common image of a cat, of all things? He doesn't even seem to try.
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

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BMcGilly07 wrote:The very act of being hypnotized is to submit your will before another's, and is consequently unreliable.
Some people working in the field openly doubt the existence of any specific 'hypnotic' state. They would claim a certain degree of the population just goes through life like this, from one suggestion to another, often in a hightened emotional state. It's a matter of picking them out in an audience although often they'd volunteer openly as well.

Another observation made by some hypnotists is this apparent desire to submit ones will, like a secret wish to surrender and to be steered. In some people this is so strong that taking control, gradually, just makes them completely vulnerable. In a way seducers use some of the same tactics at time, using this desire to be seduced, to surrender in a safe environment or to a trusted ('strong') entity.

There are a lot of aspects of our society easier to understand when the above perspective is taken. It's like people feel oppressed by their own mind, conscience or even their consciousness so much that any excuse to give it up, to release this pressure is welcomed and justified by dressing it up with a lot of reasons.
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

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Carl G wrote:
BMcGilly07 wrote:been utterly dismissed by the scientific community
Good reason to think there may be something to it, then.
The very act of being hypnotized is to submit your will before another's, and is consequently unreliable.
Unreliable and dismissable are two very different things.
Gee, it couldn't be that it's dismissed because it's unreliable, could it?
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by Leaf768 »

I only this "TheAbsolute TV" here in this discussion .,What is all about this ? Is this a TV show?



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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

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Whabba dibba booger.; hug a huh? I s there a god?
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by Foreigner »

Kevin Solway wrote:New Video: "The Power of Suggestion"

(Sorry, not accessible from the UK, for copyright reasons)
Hey, dont I deserve a "sorry" too? for your dodge of my question on page 6 even as i respectfully responded to your own?

Now what kind of an example is that for the fans.

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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

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David Quinn wrote:
|read| wrote:In this video (which is awesome), Brown's victim is pretty clearly in on it. Derren, meet Criss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrmFYGO-_T0
What makes you think he was in on it?

My impression is that Brown rarely, if ever, indulges in that kind of fakery. Having said that, there are a certain percentage of his clips (around 20%) that still mystify me, where I haven't yet worked out how he has performed the trick.

For example, there is a clip on one of his shows (not yet on youtube, unfortunately) where he meets a woman (a middle-aged housewife) on the street and takes her upstairs to a second-floor room and then "teaches" her to stop pedestrians in their tracks on the street below using just her mind. I haven't worked that one out yet, short of invoking the fakery card.

Perhaps he does indulge in fakery on occasion, but I think it is more fruitful to relegate that as a last resort explanation.

Here is an interesting clip of his with a psychologist. I'd be interested in anyone's explanation on his methods in this one.

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Is this one of your 20%ers?

I know what he's doing. Nothing magical. Brown's quite good at putting himself in anothers shoes.
His success depends very much on how well he knows the man in the chair and the life he leads, and also knowing what things may be on his immediate mind as a result of ingesting his enviro, which Brown himself has carefully ingested in advance. He selects words that were likely to have flashed on the subject's mind of late and then jots down the most weighty idea or feeling that one might associate with that word, with the exclusion of related words.

I couldnt quite make out how many he got right, or wrong, i think he missed the first two but nailed perhaps the next three??

As far as the woman stopping pedestrians I havent seen it, does he wisper what to do in her ear or do we all get to hear it i dont know..... but Brown probably pre-studies the street activities and notes where, when and why walkers most often stop walking, what similars are up to moments before, then waits for those cues and conditions before instructing the subject.
He does admit to the use of some magic, in this case it would be the illusion that minds are controlling other minds and bodies.

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Kevin Solway
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by Kevin Solway »

New video on Genius (Observations on Genius by Otto Weininger).

The images that scientists are getting from their telescopes these days are impressive.
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by Foreigner »

Impressive!

blue meanies or was it gold tops this time?
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Re: Announcing "TheAbsolute TV"

Post by Kevin Solway »

Recent videos on the "MenoftheInfinite" channel:

God and Purpose:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0W-eLjuGJw

Is it rational to believe in miracles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0W-eLjuGJw

The Book of Wife (Serious Humour):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDbAgWFNn_o

Insanity in Buddhism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THY28q_PVEQ

The curse of unconsciousness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtkC42i7q6Q

Anarchism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN0o7rJ7GZY
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