“No imitation can be perfect without being the real thing.”
Jones (1942)
Thirty men and women in military uniforms sit at desks in front of me. Most of them lean forwards slightly, eyeing me up expectantly. Behind me, large red letters spell out the words “A Demonstration of Influence” on a projector screen. In my hands is a deck of cards.
I ask a young naval officer if he would mind joining me at the front of the classroom; I hand him the deck, ask him to inspect it, and when he is happy, request that he shuffles it thoroughly. I take back the deck and give it another shuffle, then casually place it on the table in front of us. I ask the officer to cut the deck into two piles, and I then put one pile across the top of the other, telling the officer that I will just mark the location to which he cut. I ask him if he believes that I could have influenced the card that he cut to in the deck? Given that his Naval job role includes the word ‘Influence’, I am genuinely interested in his answer: “You study this stuff, so… probably. I’d still be impressed, though.”
I inform the audience I was trying to get the officer to cut to the two of spades. I take the card he cut to from the deck and show it to the audience, revealing that the officer did indeed cut to the two of spades. Unexpectedly, the audience bursts into applause and an excited buzz swells rapidly in volume, pairs of heads leaning in to exchange theories.
Ironically, I note, I need to raise my voice to request silence. I then ask the audience, as individuals, and without conferring, to spend a couple of minutes trying to establish in as much detail as possible the methods used to enable the effect. And so begins the counter-deception course.
In an article published in Volume 3 of The Shift, I examine the relationship between magic and counter-deception. I discuss how all deception inevitably creates anomalies that provide clues as to its presence. This means that, in principle, a target can always detect your deception – if they look in the right place, at the right time, and in the right way. Critical challenges for those working in counter-deception (i.e., those whose job involves spotting and managing others’ deception) therefore involve knowing where to look, when to look, and how to look so that a deceiver’s anomalies might be detected. And the challenge for those that employ deception professionally, including magicians, is to manage and control the anomalies that their craft necessarily entails.
To discover more, read the full article here.
References
Jones, R. V. (1942). Air Scientific Intelligence Report Number 13: D.T.: Beams/Radar. 10th January 1942. London: National Archives (National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists).