![]() Magic is one of the most enduring forms of entertainment. “There’s a deep-rooted cognitive mechanism that draws us to things we don’t understand.” #Mind magic game free#You’re talking about how magic manipulates our free will, exploits our limitations, uses trickery and deception - why do people like this? What happens inside your brain when you’re experiencing something that you know to be impossible? Over the last 15 years, magicians and scientists have come together to try and study the psychology that underpins magic - and by doing so, we’ve really learned a lot about the human mind. Think of a situation where a magician picks up a coin, blows on it, and suddenly it disappears. But the key to magic is that magic really only works if you’re not aware of these limitations. For example, they will hijack your attentional system to manipulate what you see, and most importantly, what you miss. ![]() Magic works not because magicians have got real supernatural powers, but instead they hijack our brain and manipulate and exploit a lot of our blindspots and limitations to create their illusions. What is the science of magic? Isn’t that a contradiction? This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. The Verge spoke with Kuhn about magical thinking, fake news, and how humans and dogs see objects the same way. “It’s all about you making a guess about what the world is actually like, rather than what the world is like in reality. “Perception is all about problem solving,” he says. For Kuhn, magic is a window into the shortcuts our minds use to make sense of the world. Now, Kuhn is director of the MAGIC Lab at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he leads a team of researchers to probe the ways that magic and illusions can help us understand free will, perception, and even cybersecurity and game design. “If I wanted to create powerful magic tricks, I needed to understand the system that actually allows me to create them.” “That’s really what started it for me, to try and bridge this gap between magic and science, and trying to use magic as a way of understanding human cognition.” “I realized that a lot of the questions that psychologists are interested in, magicians have been exploiting for centuries,” he says. ![]() “It was always clear that if I wanted to create powerful magic tricks, I needed to understand the system that actually allows me to create them,” he says.ĭuring his PhD research studying consciousness, he discovered that magic occupied a realm of psychology that few scientists were really investigating. ![]() #Mind magic game professional#After a stop in London to work as a professional magician, Kuhn eventually decided to turn his attention away from the tricks themselves, and toward the minds that he was fooling during his shows. Kuhn’s passion for magic was sparked at age 13 when a friend pulled an egg out of his ear. The book’s immersive dive into the worlds of magic and science is only possible because of Kuhn’s deep experience with both. ![]()
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