The most dangerous man alive?

What you need to ask yourself is what did I sumliminably program you to do during that 5 minutes of distraction

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THat's exactly it, and he's very up front about it.

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Which may just be another form of misdirection...Personally I'm not convinced by some of Derren Brown's performances. I saw one of his live shows and I was impressed by his intuition and his showmanship. But some of his television stuff strikes me as being not very credible, such as the one involving the man who thinks he's become a puppet, purely because the man was referred to as a 'dummy' by random people in the street every now and then. Derren Brown's pleading for me to believe that what I see on the show is a result of real mind control does nothing to reassure me that what I'm seeing is trickery or acting.There is also the matter of Derren Brown using clever card tricks, most of which are known among the Magic Circle, and dressing them up as mind control performances. I myself know a few of these tricks, but because I'm a crap showman, people tend to suss out the trick after a few times of me doing it.And I suppose that's Derren Brown's real gift. He's got so much confidence, and an awful lot of intuition with respect to 'reading' people, meaning that he can truly perform some genuine feats of mind control. But I think he embellishes these natural gifts and makes people believe that he has more powers than he really has.

I'm not so sure... I think he is quite up front that he uses plenty of magic (i.e. conjuring) in his acts. That was blatently apparent last night and partly why I was a bit bored in the latter part of the second half. I'm too much the scientist to be that interested in 'magic' shows. And having read a good deal of the history and practitioners behind DBs methodology, there is nothing much that suprises me. It is just nice to see it in action.For example, the way he made the sun vanish on that poor American guy was classic. The level of hypnosis used was minimal, but the idea and the execution was genius. But had I not been in on the act, I would have had no interest.Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

CD, this just shows how very gullible you are. This is the oldest trick in the book. DB simply had 1,000,000 ten pound notes in his pocket, all differing in their last six digits, and then just pulled out the one corresponding to the numbers the father had given. See, there is always a simple scientific answer to even the most perplexing mysteries.

Even more gullible for not realising that we had the legendary James Randi with us, hiding behind that enigmatic AiG But seriously, it's with this kind of stunt that Zawi may be right... a blurring of the suggestion with a good conjuring trick - he loves mis-direction, and his final piece was to reveal the message he had written pre-show, sealed in a box suspended over the stage all night. It revealed many of the unpredicatble events of the night, down to the clothes worn by his final volunteer on stage. Of course, that's a trick - at least I hope so

This reminds me of the case several years ago when scientists at SRI - Stanford Research International, not in any way associated with Stanford University - subjected Uri Geller (who made $millions by cornering the market for bent spoons just when the demand was taking off) to a series of tests and concluded that his 'magic' was genuine. James Randi then stepped in and showed that his 'magic' was not only actually slights-of-hand, but that they were pretty basic first year magicians tricks. Randi stated that scientists were often the most easily fooled by such chicanery because they were so completely attuned to seeking non-deceptive explanations. As my sainted mother often said, "You don't go to a proctologist if your feet hurt." I think the real issue of interest to this board is to what extent can people be influenced and controlled by suggestion. This would have to include the complete range of variability amongst people and circumstances. I can't think of any way to pin down how much of DB's performance is fraudulent and how much really reveals the limits of human free will.

I took part in that (the selection process - I didn't get passed the second stage ) The one issue I had with that was that it was filmed on Jersey, and the Jersey police said: "There was no live ammunition involved and at no time was anyone at risk." sourceStill - he's entertaining. I like the one where he got the girl who didn't know her way around a piano to learn how to play like an expert piano player in a few weeks. Turns out he had actually taken an expert piano player and made her forget she could play only so that she would 'miraculously' remember on stage.

Yep, there's a whole host of rumour and counter-rumour surrounding this. That said, firing a blank at your head from point-blank is not exactly risk-free - quite the opposite in fact!

One boldly makes the assumption that if a former physicist and a software tester can figure that out, a police superintendent is also aware of this. The statement then that 'We were absolutely satisfied that...no-one was in any danger whatsoever', would seem to indicate that nobody was in danger of firing blanks at their own heads either.

True, but as ever where he is concernred, you never know what to think when someone says something. Face it, the only way anyone is going to allow this to go ahead is if there is no danger of things becoming messy...For some reason, I recognise much of his smugness, apparent arrogance, ego... must be qualities in someone I know - just can't think who Obviosuly he is into making good TV, but if I were he, I would find nothing interesting in faking this - in fact it would be exceptionally poor form.There are two amazing parts of RR - actually performing the act and - just as incredible - getting it televised. Either one would be good enough, but both fall utterly flat if there was both no danger at all AND the authorities (police, TV execs, etc, etc) knew there was no danger at all.

You saw Derren live, CD? That's so cool! I love Brown's routines... he is an absolute genius. Ever see the one where he plays a heap of chess masters at the same time, then at the end reveals how he did it (by playing them against each other)? How cunning is that? It's one of those things that makes me think, "Damn, why didn't I think of that?" It's so obvious when you know.On the other hand, he didn't explain how he predicted the number of pieces each player would have left, and I certainly haven't been able to figure it out. I love his closing statement... "As for how I predicted the number of pieces left on each board, I genuinely can't remember." So says the man with a photographic memory.

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Ferret brain activity increased just 20 percent when looking at Keanu Reeves compared to looking at darkness, the study found.

Thanks for this! I was just imagining the posibilities that must have rushed past your mind's eye... a very heavy doodle... a weighty musical parp... Great!

Aha! Easily my favourite Derren Brown routine. It was an insanely elegant trick and I was very impressed by it (though I'm sure people thought of the trick before, nevertheless his execution was top notch ). I'm sure there's a clever way of sussing out the number prediction at the end. It's my mission for the next few weeks to see if there's a way!Edited by Zawi, : No reason given.

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I am personally skeptical of this guys abilities as implied in the video. There is no way that I would give him anything if I just ran into him on the street.
Humans only have as much power over us as we give them.

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Phat, what does 30 seconds of ad time during the Superbowl cost?When you find that out, ask yourself, "Why would a company pay that much money to advertize to a lot of people for only 30 seconds if it didn't work, and work fabulously well?"

That's the thing that gets me about magic... how simple the secrets usually are. You're always scratching your head expecting some complex, elaborate form of trickery, and it generally turns out to be a very simple and "obvious" explanation. That is to say, it seems obvious in retrospect. Like a slap-yourself-on-the-forehead "Why didn't I think of that?" kind of moment. It seems so obvious when you know, yet somehow you never think of it, which is kind of frustrating.But I love the mentalism tricks that he does. I came across a couple of videos some time back (I think they were on badpsychics.com) where Derren was a guest on a couple of different shows. In one of them he does a reading on someone and I'll say this... Assuming it's not a set up, he is a far, far better cold reader than any self-proclaimed psychic I've ever seen.

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Ferret brain activity increased just 20 percent when looking at Keanu Reeves compared to looking at darkness, the study found.