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Terrible Wizard Inner circle 1973 Posts |
Fair enough, if you have a highly specialised audience. But then it's not about intelligence or the general public. Always be aware of who you're going to perform for - sensible.
If I was performing for people who I knew were likely to know this force, I'd probably pick a different one too. |
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RiderBacks Loyal user 251 Posts |
I probably overstated my case a little, and that may have hurt it. So let me clarify. My minimum bar for a move is whether or not I think it can reliably fool people with advanced degrees in fields which require strong critical thinking, problem solving, and analytic skills.) People in these categories include professional software engineers, those with PhD's in computer science, math, logic, physics, and so on... They don't need to be magicians or gamblers, but they do need to have a reasonable degree of familiarity with playing cards. They have played numerous games of poker, blackjack, hearts, bridge, or euchre. They have a good shuffle, and they understand the importance and purpose of a cut in a game of cards. They also know how to cut properly, obviously. And they have probably seen magic tricks more than a few times, and may have even looked one or more of them up, or even done a little themselves. After all, these are highly intelligent and curious people. But they don't need to *already* know what the "cross cut force" is.
I've now done a much better job of actually identifying the class of people I think a move should be able to fool to count as one worth using. Do you want to seriously tell me that you believe the cross-cut force, however well executed, is going to have any significant degree of success for members of this group? |
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Terrible Wizard Inner circle 1973 Posts |
I find your bar rather high, but I guess a lot depends upon who you perform for.
Regarding: 'Do you want to seriously tell me that you believe the cross-cut force, however well executed, is going to have any significant degree of success for members of this group?' I really cannot give a strong or confident answer at all, since I have little experience performing for such, and know of no studies. What little experience I do have, though (I've performed for two folks with advanced science degrees etc), and the 'evidence' that comes from things like Project Alpha etc, leads me to believe that it is entirely possible to fool such people with very simple tricks, including, perhaps, the cross-cut force. I certainly wouldn't believe that they wouldn't be fooled without more research. Perhaps we need to collect in as much personal experience as possible on this? |
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RiderBacks Loyal user 251 Posts |
Quote:
On Nov 17, 2015, Terrible Wizard wrote: I don't think the (revised and far more reasonable) bar I've set is too high. I think it's the minimum place to set the bar unless you're just performing at bars in a company town or something like that. Of course, you might know or reasonably believe that your audience will fall for the cross-cut force. If you know or reasonably believe that, then maybe use it. But if you have a better force available, why not opt for that one? And for god's sake, learn a better one! I have an advanced degree. A significant number of the people I know have them too. And in the cities I have lived in over the past decade, the proportion of people with advanced degrees to those without them has been very high. At no point will I reside in some place where a large percentage of the population is not highly educated, curious, or unfamiliar with cards. Try to pull the cross-cut force at some random bar in Silicon Valley and see how it works for you. My money is on you getting yourself into trouble even if your audience is drunk. |
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Terrible Wizard Inner circle 1973 Posts |
Dunno. Maybe your experience is different to mine. Have you tried the cross-cut (sensibly, and with good expectation) on all these academics you hang with?
As I said, I have very limited experience of doing magic for serious academics, but that limited experience plus some anecdotal evidence I've come across doesn't incline to think that these people are massively harder to fool than the rest. Experience with magic obviously makes a difference, but not a lot else as far as I've found. I think we would need to look at some large collections of data for me to be inclined eitherway. At the moment I see no reason to think they won't be fooled in roughly similar percentages to everyone else. I fully accept I may be wrong, but at present I don't know, nor can I find out. |
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RiderBacks Loyal user 251 Posts |
Quote:
On Nov 18, 2015, Terrible Wizard wrote: Dunno. Maybe your experience is different to mine. Have you tried the cross-cut (sensibly, and with good expectation) on all these academics you hang with? I have not, and never would. And yes, a significant percentage of the people I hang out with are or were advanced academics. This can come with the territory if you have a PhD. Quote:
On Nov 18, 2015, Terrible Wizard wrote: As I said, I have very limited experience of doing magic for serious academics, but that limited experience plus some anecdotal evidence I've come across doesn't incline to think that these people are massively harder to fool than the rest. Experience with magic obviously makes a difference, but not a lot else as far as I've found. I do have experience with doing magic for serious academics. And my bar for calling someone a "serious academic" is set very high. Most professors do not meet it. When I obtained my PhD, it was from a institution which was ranked in the top five in the world in my subject area. You do not, and can not, fool most of these people with a cross-cut force even though you can still fool them with a well-executed DL. The speed with which the intelligent people I have performed for can deduce what you have done is astonishing. They (usually) know that magic and voodoo isn't something that exists. They (usually) know there is always a rational explanation for how the effect was produced. And they can often instantly land on that (simply by process of elimination or deduction.) That said, it is just not the case that academics are automatically intelligent. Most of them believe that god exists, after all. And most of them publish ********, if they publish at all. |
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Terrible Wizard Inner circle 1973 Posts |
"You do not, and can not, fool most of these people with a cross-cut force even though you can still fool them with a well-executed DL."
If you haven't tried, and there's no studies, how do you know? |
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RiderBacks Loyal user 251 Posts |
Quote:
On Nov 19, 2015, Terrible Wizard wrote: "You do not, and can not, fool most of these people with a cross-cut force even though you can still fool them with a well-executed DL." The first thing most of these folks will be checking for is whether you are (or might possibly be) relying on the position of the top or bottom card. These types of people don't listen to your patter. They ignore what you're saying. They know you're trying to distract them. And they watch what you're doing carefully. They take mental notes. They don't lose the position of the top or bottom of the deck unless you do something fancy. They are already quite familiar with silly key card stuff. No form of misdirection that is remotely sane is going to get them to forget which packet went where. They have excellent spatial reasoning skills and usually possess a very strong visual memory. Attention to detail is what they excel at. Please stop trying to so vociferously defend one of the world's most juvenile forces. You know, or should know, that this force is one of the most juvenile one's around. I hope and pray you are trying to do better and completely excise reliance upon it from your routines. If you do, your routines will be much better for it. You know that, as does everybody else. Just give it up. |
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Terrible Wizard Inner circle 1973 Posts |
Errrr.... So you don't know then, you just assume.
Fair enough. I guess we'll end it there since you seem to be moving into insulting language territory. Thanks for the exchange, I guess. |
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LesL Regular user 185 Posts |
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On Nov 21, 2015, Terrible Wizard wrote: Thank G_d!!! |
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RiderBacks Loyal user 251 Posts |
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On Nov 21, 2015, Terrible Wizard wrote: I guess we'll end it there since you seem to be moving into insulting language territory. Thanks for the exchange, I guess. I don't think I've descended into insulting territory. Calling the cross-cut force one of the most juvenile forces is not insulting. It's a simple truth. Up your game. |
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MikeBeaudet Loyal user Becancour 228 Posts |
RiderBacks,
I totally disagree with you that the cross-cut force will not fool “any serious academics”. Having a Ph.D. in a “scientific” domain doesn’t mean that these people are superior or have superior skills and can or want to reverse engineered every magic trick. It’s all about presentation, misdirection and getting their interest with a good story or patter. Of course if your trick is just “pick a card and find the card” the cross-cut force is not the best force… Also you have to perform for people who really want to be entertained. My 14 years old son doesn’t own a Ph.D. (even if he’s very intelligent) and he’s always trying to find how it works and he’s very good. But he is not enjoying the tricks because he just wants to know, to understand the working. Not a good audience for a magician. Oh, before I forget, I own a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from a university which is ranked amongst the best one in my domain. Mike
Do your best and forget the rest
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ThomasJ Special user Chicago 999 Posts |
The problem with this force, aside from being in every beginner book on magic, is this - if you use the needed time delay / misdirection, your audience rarely recalls which half was the top. They will naturally question (be it internal or outright) if that was the card they cut to. Sure they'll play along and (pretend to) take your word for it, but the force is not convincing at all. Cross Cut might be a decent principle to use for other purposes within the context of an effect, but as a force? No way. Vernon always said, "Confusion is not magic," and this force is borderline confusion.
TJ |
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Terrible Wizard Inner circle 1973 Posts |
If you're saying the force isn't convincing at all, are you saying it doesn't work? I myself (being stupid, I guess), have been fooled by it. I've fooled others with it. Seemed convincing enough at the time.
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ThomasJ Special user Chicago 999 Posts |
There are definitely people out there who are fooled by it. I don't see the need to use it as a force when there are more convincing forces that haven't been exposed in juvenile magic texts. Even if it works during the effect, the spectator will naturally think back on the phases of the effect and the criss cross cut will likely be the first thing they question. It doesn't take much thought to reconstruct how the magi might have forced the card.
To me a force is convincing when the audience cannot reconstruct how the card could have been chosen by any other means than free will. i.e. Jennings/Marlo's Convincing Control, Hofzinser spread cull force, dribble force, timing force, classic force - the audience is actively engaged while the selection is made and the process is extremely fair. The time delay necessary for the criss cross separates the moment of free will from the moment the card is shown, so the strength is lost. Also from a logical standpoint, if someone is selecting a card by cutting the deck, why can't the magi immediately turn that card over? Overall a widely known and weak force I will never use. |
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Professor Marvel New user 51 Posts |
It's the time delay that's the key. The brain is a funny thing. Yes, it's in every beginner book. That doesn't mean it's not useful. I've never been caught out with it. People look up and by the time they look back down, the scene looks normal to them. Yes there are a lot of other great forces out there and you shouldn't use the cross cut for every trick in your set, but abandoning it wholesale doesn't make sense. Also RiderBacks, if you're not having fun performing for academic audiences, maybe you should find a better quality of people to perform for. Like people in a bar in a company town. Smart guys like my dad who didn't need an "advanced degree" to feel good about themselves and enjoyed a good trick without going out of their way to try to embarrass people or make them feel small by telling them how smart they are for figuring out their trick.
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RiderBacks Loyal user 251 Posts |
Quote:
On Nov 24, 2015, ThePhoenix wrote: RiderBacks, I totally disagree with you that the cross-cut force will not fool “any serious academics”. Having a Ph.D. in a “scientific” domain doesn’t mean that these people are superior or have superior skills and can or want to reverse engineered every magic trick. Please don't misquote me. I think you can at least do me that one favor. Go back and read my Nov 18, 2015 post made at 11:50 PM. You've misread it, and I assume that your misreading of it is responsible for you mistakenly attributing to me the statement you just attributed to me (by placing it in quotation marks!) I would take more care in reading in the future, especially when you're going to place some kind of paraphrase of my remarks in quotation marks, as if I stated what you've placed in those quotation marks! The mistake you've made is common to engineers. It is also common to casual readers of Erdnase. Quote:
Oh, before I forget, I own a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from a university which is ranked amongst the best one in my domain. I would and do expect engineers to be much more easily fooled (in general) by this kind of force than the academics I was talking about. |
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RiderBacks Loyal user 251 Posts |
I agree completely with ThomasJ's last two posts. And I might ask Professor Marvel why he isn't using a better force that doesn't require some absurd kind of time delay? I suspect that proponents or defenders of the cross-cut force are just too lazy to actually learn how to force a card in a competent and fair manner that arouses no suspicion and doesn't possibly provide the relatively oblivious spectator with the opportunity to think to themselves, "Well, I wasn't paying close enough attention. Maybe this guy cheated there..." If the only force you can pull off is the cross-cut, then I guess keep using it. But again, please, and for the love of all that is holy, learn how to force better. And please do not suggest that one should count only performing only for drunken coal miners in a company town. If that's your only kind of gig, maybe all you need is the cross-cut. Know your audience. And if that's it, I'm sure you'll be fine with the cross-cut.
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lcwright1964 Special user Toronto 569 Posts |
In his newest book, Simon Aronson describes a combo of a milk shuffle with a crosscut positioning that confuses which packet is which and I think is really deceptive and worth getting to know.
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lcwright1964 Special user Toronto 569 Posts |
I also want to put in a plug of Roberto Giobbi's latest video download, Simply Amazing, available at the site named for a certain flightless bird. The six effects therein are hardly groundbreakers. However, Giobbi brings sophistication and style to the presentation, and there are lots of learning points and subtleties that help make the crosscut, Balducci, and 10-20 forces seem natural and convincing with a lay audience.
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