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Derren Brown: Master Mind-Manipulator

Aben_Zin

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Someone-or-other Brown: Mind control 2

Did anyone else see that program on Channel 4 the other day? It was, and I quote "Really Freaky!". The bit in the Mental asylum. That was pretty weird. And the thing with his version of the One Inch Punch (which in itself was impressive)! I sooo want to know how he did that...

Anyway. Did any of y'all see it? Or are you wondering wht the heck I'm on about?


Az
 
Was that the one with the ginger haired psychologist chap with the goatee?

In my defense I had just got back from the pub so I'm probably thinking about something completely different arent I? :D

I'll get my coat :eek:
 
Re: Someone-or-other Brown: Mind control 2

Aben Zin said:
And the thing with his version of the One Inch Punch (which in itself was impressive)! I sooo want to know how he did that...

Anyway. Did any of y'all see it? Or are you wondering wht the heck I'm on about?


Az

I know the guy you mean - I saw a program where he was predicting people's guesses and doing some mind-reading tricks. I know what the one-inch punch is, but what was his version? Tell us what he did...!
 
What he did was put his spread hand on the stomach of his volenteer, say "can you feel this?", Pull his hand back 2' or so, say "Can you still feel this?" ("Yes"), then he clenched his fist and made a small punch, still over a foot away from the volenteer. The guy doubled up! He had to tell him to straighted up, and said it was all in th mind.
Then he did it again, but first bringing his hand round behind the volenteer, so he couldn't see him. Then he punched again, and again the guy doubled up.
After he did this you could see the martial arts expert (who just demonstrated the one inch punch), and he looked really amazed!

Az
 
Pity I missed that. Sounds interesting. Along the same lines, I did see something on Ripley's a while ago where a martial arts master demonstrated the Dim Mak (have I spelled this right?) death touch. Basically he knocked out four people and brought them back around in under a minute. But, the weird thing about it is how he did it. For one of the guys all he did was take hold of his forearm - and he collapsed unconcious. All the guys had electrodes, etc. attached to them and teams of medics monitoring their bodily readings, so none of it was faked. One of the medics afterwards said the whole thing made him very uneasy.
 
THE DEATH TOUCH

I practice kung-fu and have done other martial arts over the years, and have been fortunate to see many examples of what ordinarily most people would find odd.

The easiest way to understand all of this would be to go and read up on it or attend a respectable martial arts class.

Basically we all have an energy flowing around our bodies, this energy is known as CHI - in China, Ki in Japan, and so the list goes on, they are all talking about the same thing though.

Chi flows around your body through what are known as the meridians, these meridians aren't however visible and would not be found if you were to disect a human.

There are certain points throughout the body that if pressed/manipulated in the correct way, can bring about various changes, either good or bad.

Acupunture for example is one way of doing this, but a trained practitioner could just use his/her hands.

Trained practitioners can at advanced level also affect the bodies energy flow by supposedly just thinking about it/the person they want to affect.

This is not bull, merely something which is very slowly being understood by Western medicine.

Then again I also beleive that this type of information is not for all and should therefore to an extent be shrouded in secrecy.
 
It must be pointed out the he never touched the guy, and it actually was all in his mind. It was pretty impressive to watch...

Az
 
Re: THE DEATH TOUCH

DONKAMELEON said:
Then again I also beleive that this type of information is not for all and should therefore to an extent be shrouded in secrecy.

I though the concept was that this knowledge should be available to all and it's the requirement for control and discipline in the person who puts it into effect that prevents its misuse, not the restriction of the information in the first place. In effect, if a person doesn't have the maturity to use these abilities wisely in the first place then that's OK because that person is incapable of learning them.

As an aside, the other day I was reading an account of this guy (excuse my memory - it's crap!) who went to Nepal in the 60's. He was walking down a narrow street with a monk who was rumoured to have amazing powers, including the ability to kill with a single glance. Anyhow, as they walked, some goofy local lost control of his rickshaw and it went out of control and rolled towards the two men; the Western guy threw himself out of the way but the monk just stood there and the rickshaw hit him full on. According to the account, the rickshaw was smashed to pieces and the monk just continued walking without even looking round.
 
The Derren Brown program was really quite disturbing - I thought the sections where he appeared to get people travelling on the tube to completly blank out about what stop they were getting off at was particularly scary.

Assuming that it wasn't all totally faked, I couldn't really see an explanation for this. I suppose it could be argued that, as in a lot of 'hypnosis' routines, the 'victim' tends to play along for the audience (or in this case the cameras), but the effect seemed a bit subtle for that.

Most of me is quite sure that there IS an explanation other than that Brown is a red-hot psychic, but he's so good that he does leave a core of doubt even in this skeptical viewer.

Interestingly, he denies using hypnosis, but talks about, 'a heightend state of synchronicity' - whatever THAT means!

If you haven't seen the prog, I would urge you to try, its more impressive than most 'street magic' TV>
 
wintermute said:
The Derren Brown program was really quite disturbing - I thought the sections where he appeared to get people travelling on the tube to completly blank out about what stop they were getting off at was particularly scary.
Did you notice the way he waved his hands in front of thier eyes as he was talking to them? I reckon that the hand waving was to focus the mind on something else; so they're listening to him talking, but are distracted by the hand waving, and his words were entering at a deeper subconcious level.
But wasn't it just so tight that he made one guy miss his stop...?

Az
 
Yeah, I saw the show. My mom and dad were pretty amazed as was I. I have to learn how to do that, but quicker, like instantaniously. Just like clicking my finger, That quick...:spinning

Hey, look at these cool new smilies!
 
i think i saw this ages ago. If it was the one where he used his "powers" to chat up supermodels? Hats off to the man. I was impressed by the stunt where he had a person stand in the dark being illuminated only by a light that was behind himand the subject. Then he told them to imagine a wall with all sorts of monsters behind it. Then he took a brick away and the person kakked themselves. very impressive but not paranormal.
 
i think i saw this ages ago. If it was the one where he used his "powers" to chat up supermodels? Hats off to the man. I was impressed by the stunt where he had a person stand in the dark being illuminated only by a light that was behind himand the subject. Then he told them to imagine a wall with all sorts of monsters behind it. Then he took a brick away and the person kakked themselves. very impressive but not paranormal.
 
Ah, but it has everything to do with the paranormal. Alright, something.
Showing that you can "read someone's mind" without any form of paranormal phenomenom (ie. telepathy) is an pretty strong arguement against that kind of thing (though it's not water-tight). His demonstrations of pain resistance act as evidence against people who can walk over hot coals having devine protection. Even the example you stated could be used to help explain away ghosts...

I'm not saying it does you understand, but it could.

Thoughts?

Az
 
Aben Zin said:
Ah, but it has everything to do with the paranormal. Alright, something.
Showing that you can "read someone's mind" without any form of paranormal phenomenom (ie. telepathy) is an pretty strong arguement against that kind of thing (though it's not water-tight). His demonstrations of pain resistance act as evidence against people who can walk over hot coals having devine protection. Even the example you stated could be used to help explain away ghosts...

I'm not saying it does you understand, but it could.

Thoughts?

Az

True. Too many people (although I'm not refering to anyone posting in this thread) say that something must be paranormal because they don't understand how it works. If a so-called psychic makes a pack of cards disappear then he might be using teleportation, agreed. But if a magician makes the cards disappear and proves that it's not being done paranormally, then there is absolutely no reason to suspect that the first guy is not using sleight of hand too. Occam's Razor and all that.

Having said that, it doesn't prove that he's not using the power of his mind... :eek!!!!:
 
Yes, agree totally with aben zin and mr. bingo. I've always thought that if you can show that something can be done without invoking psychic/magic/god-given powers then that pretty much negates the use of it as proof for said powers. I especially like the work James Randi did in discrediting Uri Geller and his bendy spoons (although he's still perceived by some as genuine).:devil:
 
Hello

I saw both shows and must say they were very impressive!

I think Derrin maintains there is nothing paranormal about the things he does. Just subtle psychological techniques, accute observation, and a photographic memory. He seems to be able to pick up on the slightest speech inflection or body movement and feed that back into the suggestive techniques he uses. A higher level of awareness than usual.

Also, at the end of the latest programme (freaking out advertising designers) you could see just how much trouble he goes to beforehand to set up the perfect set and setting for his experiments to work...

Bye

Martin
 
I am sorry I missed the show that gave rise to this thread but
mention of the guy waving hands about sounds like classic
Mesmeric passes.

The notion of animal magnetism whose flow was to be restored
by the Mesmerist bears an obvious resemblance to the chi.

Both stage magicians and psychics perform feats which confound
our common sense view, yet they seem to be at war with each other
over what exactly? It is like a religious dispute. Or a Humpty
Dumpty argument, essentially over who shall be boss.

It has been disputed whether hypnosis exists at all - we maybe
underrate the power of conformity to expectations, especially on
suggestible people. As for the people who consult psychics, well
they select themselves.

I read a couple of years ago about an Indian magician who had
caused the Taj Mahal to vanish before a large audience. It was
widely described as an exercise in misdirection and suggestion.
Elsewhere on the message board, we have references to the
lifting of a person on four fingers - a phenomenon I believe is
real. Now, maybe I am not too fussy, but it seems to me that
these are wonders whether performed by a Randi or a Geller.

Sleight of hand is something else again and why bend spoons
when mind-bending is so much more interesting? :blah:
 
Having watched the programme again I think the most interesting sequence for FOrteans (and anyone else who relies on witness evidence) was where he took some young women into a derelict mental hospital. 'prepped' them with scary talk and then sat them down, in pairs at a table. he was able to convince them that a fork was bending, and a glass moving on the table, despite the fact that the camera clearly showed nothing was happening. Although the basic technique was fairly obvious, what was interesting was that he was able to convince two people at once to be so completly fooled.

To my mind this has to have implications for the veracity of multi-witness cases, as its clear that with the proper level of expectation (this house is haunted/lets skywatch/hunting ABC's), multiple witnesses don't always act as a 'reality check.
 
Hi - it's Mind Control night on E4, they're showing all the Derren Brown shows again.
I've seen this guy a couple of times now on TV and he's brilliant.

I think that by saying it's psychological and not paranormal is like saying it's water and it's not wet. I believe that it's possible that we are the source of apparent paranomal occurances. What Brown has done is focus his own mind's abilities and mastered the ability to communicate and observe to such a degree that it appears as though he is doing something "out of this world". He is an example of what we could all be, given the right situation and a lot of training.

He started out as a magician and probably found that his charm got him into people's trust more easily, and he developed from there.
Quite frankly I've fallen completely in love with the guy. A confidant, insanely intelligent and sensitive man, gorgeous as hell and very sexy (especially when he pulls off a "trick" and smiles like a kid) - I can't help myself.

:madeyes:

pinkle
 
I've seen Derren Brown on stage (he's from round here, and used to perform in pub theatre a lot and so on) - he's brilliant. A mate of mine volunteered once, genuinely had never met him, and Brown accurately named the song he was thinking of, completely at random.

He does maintain it's all about body language and subtle cues, but it's so freaky just how accurate and consistent he is.
 
Stu, shame you can't have a word with him and get him to turn up to Uncon (perhaps as a speaker). I've found him fascinating and, if I were trying for Randi's million, I'd want Derren Brown on my team keeping an eye on the old faker... :rolleyes:
 
I think I know how he's doing one of his 'tricks' - the one where he guesses a word a person is thinking of.

I think he's using sub-vocalisations. This is something we all do when we're thinking of a word. We rehearse the movements necessary to say the word with out actually speaking out loud. The muscles in our face and throat tense as they go through the motions. The harder we think of the word the more clearly we sub-vocalise.

You'll notice that he get's the person to repeat the word in their mind over and over again. He also usually gets the person to choose a word that has a strong significance for them.

Cujo
(big fan)
 
Psyhics/Derren Brown

Im not sure where to put this, but here seemed ok.
I have recently seen a programme about the entertainer Derren Brown. Some of what he does is clearly manipulation of the subject, but some of the details that he manages to come out with are quite amazing. It seems to me that in many cases he demonstrates the same sort of results that mediums etc produce.
Any one have any thoughts on this?
 
If you do what he does long enough, you're bound to get good. I'm sure they don't show you all the ones that didn't work, as with David Blaine.
 
Actually...

... Derren Brown has shown his techniques not working. I recall the trick he was doing on the Underground not working at least once (he gave figures) and at least once working so well the subject missed his stop.

The "Underground Trick" was, for those of you who missed it (or live overseas) was making people forget where they were going and was fairly funny.

I can also remember the "Jedi Mind Trick" ("This is the winning ticket") not working immeadiatly and having to be repeated a few times...
 
The secret to doing this kind of trick is to lie about what you've actually achieved, rather than to actually pull off the trick.
 
Who knows the depths of deception people will stoop to in order to make an entertaining TV program?
I am very impressed with the things Derren Brown does on TV, but until he does it to me, I remain healthily skeptical.
As someone who has small involvement with the TV industry, I am aware that these things are so easily set up. Not that I would say that he's a fraud, he would probably admit that anyway, but it is so easily possible to put it forward as a truth, not unlike a trick many novels employ in order to suspend the belief of the reader.
I would prefer to see this type of thing as an interesting possibility than an actual truth. At least then, I could say,' Well I did say it might be a fake', rather than the conclusion I came to after seeing Uri Geller on that celebrity thing after having respected the guy for so long. That, in my opinion is not the behaviour of someone who is mentally stable. Still, who am I to judge?....... oh, yes, I'm me. Still,..... I could be wrong.........I think it's generally referred to as covering one's ass.
 
Steve said:
Still,..... I could be wrong.........I think it's generally referred to as covering one's ass.
Always a good policy where Uri's concerned. I personally thought that it was very generous of him not to use his powers when he was in an environment that wasn't under his control. ;)
 
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