The Art Of Deception -- A radical magic contest reveals the secrets of manipulation in a post-truth world

[ancianita]

Excerpt from The Lever -- a long read, but a necessary look at human manipulability.

... a fragile truth about the human mind: how easily we can be deceived by the senses we trust the most. It’s often challenging to accurately judge our own cognition, and misjudgments can have sweeping real-world consequences. We are not only often wrong about what we think we see — like viral fake videos of election workers tearing up ballots — but also the extent to which we can trust the things we remember, like how our current emotional state recasts our memories of past civil conflicts. Many of our experiences are, in fact, an illusion.

By studying magic, Kuhn hopes to gain insight into the mental shortcuts that influence our beliefs and decisions, revealing vulnerabilities that can be weaponized through misinformation and media.

As new technologies like generative AI and algorithm-driven platforms make reality harder than ever to parse, “deception is such a huge topic,” Kuhn says. “It’s always been a huge topic throughout history, but it’s particularly important now.”...

“Magicians are rarely lying to their audiences,” says Anthony Barnhart, an associate professor of psychological science at Carthage College in Wisconsin. “Instead, they’re setting up conditions that allow the audience to deceive themselves.”

To do so, performers often rely on storytelling to control their audiences’ attention. One popular technique called the “peak-end heuristic” exploits the fact that our memories skew toward moments of peak emotional content, as well as how experiences conclude. Politicians also regularly deploy this kind of reframing. At the end of the campaign trail, for instance, former President Donald Trump repeatedly described Jan. 6 as “a day of love” and its participants as “patriots,” minimizing the rioters’ violence and distancing himself from responsibility.

Magicians will also carefully script a trick’s climax, reshaping details to lead the audience to recall something different from what may have actually occurred. “They’re trying to draw your attention to things they want you to perceive,” Barnhart says.

While Donald Trump claimed to be “all about growth” on the campaign trail this fall, for example, claiming “the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff,” his first four years in office did not deliver huge economic gains. In fact, overall job growth, unemployment, national debt, and manufacturing investments have consistently fared better under Democratic presidents.

Patterns of repetition and other kinds of psychological manipulation hinge on deeply rooted cognitive habits. Many are socially influenced: We instinctively follow where someone else is looking, assuming it reveals something of importance. Performers exploit this tendency by looking away from the mechanics of their trick, knowing their audience’s gaze will follow their own. Like democracy, “magic is an inherently social endeavor,” Barnhart says: Its tools can exploit “automatic tendencies that people have that they can’t really shut off.”

These psychological shortcuts are powerful even when audiences are aware they’re being manipulated. Max Hui Bai, director of the Political Belief Lab, an independent research group, found over the course of five experiments that Americans’ beliefs were changed by reading something fake, even when they knew it was made up. The impacts were persistent, lasting for days and creating partisan divides where none existed.
https://www.levernews.com/the-art-of-deception/

[anciano]

1. Excellent post...

I was an amateur magician as a kid and misdirection is critical for most tricks. And what was really amazing for me to observe was how much the audience wanted to be manipulated and fooled, how much they really wanted to "believe".

[ancianita]

2. Gracias!

Yes, it seems that wanting to believe beyond our perceptions is another feature of us pattern seeking chimps.
There is, imo, a spirit and awe that exists in what others have called the "unseen realm,' and that spirit and awe is what magic points to, whether for good or for power. People feel the aura of both, but these days it looks as if power is more popular, harmful as it can be.

Some favorite lines to think about:

"...the thrill of performing comes from the relationships it creates — the way people’s defenses soften, everyday pretenses slipping away, and in their place, the seeds of childlike awe. “The magic is the interaction,” he says. Deception without wonder, after all, is just lying."

Thank you for your post, anciano.