Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • April 6, 2012 8:00 AM

@ Zo,

It would have been nice if he would explain some of that methodology employed in deliberate deception in the article.

First you might note that James Randi is a fairly wealthy “showman”, that is he makes a lot of money by not revealing “trade secrets”.

The article even admits so with,

We can’t make magicians out of scientists — we wouldn’t want to – but we can help scientists

Depending on how cynical you are this could mean “Pay me a lot of money to tell you it’s a fraud”…

Magic is just like any other “closed shop” business and thus it alows the unscrupulous to “take punters” for money.

The clasic example of this is the “Locksmithing” business, ask Matt Blaze (crypto.com) about how he was treated by the “membership” when he showed that some of their “trade secrets” actually harmed customers.

Likewise look at how the industry denies it’s high security locks are vulnerable even when it has been publicaly demonstrated that they can be quite easily picked…

Clive Robinson • April 10, 2012 3:10 AM

@ Nick P,

The Teller article is quite good but in it’s self it creates a deception…

The one key sentance in the artcle from which the rest of the whole cloth is spun is,

Magic’s about understanding—and then manipulating—how viewers digest the sensory information

It’s a fundemental principle I’ve often expressed on this blog. Only I was not talking about magic, but “lying by telling the truth”.

As I often explain to people there is no truth just incompleate perspectives, that is there is always one more “truth” than there are observers or listeners.

The fundemental trick behind “lying by telling the truth” is to move other peoples perspectives in a desired direction without telling a lie or otherwise raising suspicion. The thing is that most humans actually want to beleive what people say unless the person gives them reason to disbelieve.

As Teller points out Neuroscientists are late to the party on this one. However they have proved (as far as they are concerned) that a persons memory is malable. The mechanism by which it is done is the one that transfers memory from short term to long term storage and back again and the fact that human memory is more discrete than continuous. That is in general we remember distinct features not flow, and our memories are more often than not vivid features like photographs that our brain subsequently links together (hence the reason we experiance compression and expansion of time).

So to “sell a lie” and make some one believe it is a mater of making them shuffle and twist/distort their own memory. To do it you get them to pull the memory from long term into short term memory, twist it just a little and let it go back from short to long term, and repeat as often as required to make the adjustment of their perspective little by little. And in the process also shuffle the order and time spacing of their feature pictures.

Importantly you should not make direct or hard statments to them as this will cause them to be suspicious and thus wary of you. Because people know the difference between black and white but not the shades of grey.

For instance if you talk about the colour of something, don’t say “It was blue” when it was actually black, say “I think it was bluish black, but the light was not good”. You sow the seed of “blue” and distract the listener away from thinking about it by making them think about the lighting conditions. You then give them four or five other things to think about (thus pushing the colour “blue-black” back into longterm memory) before bringing the subject of colour back up again in a different way with “As they turned I got a brief flash of blue but it was gone in less than a moment in the poor light”. You have not at any point actually said “It was Blue” which means if challenged you can back down by again repeating about the poor lighting, thus you are not caught in a direct lie just the appearance of not being in a good position to see the colour well.

But as Teller pointed out what you are doing is several tricks at once. That is you combine the perception shift with another trick, which is the fact that most humans can only keep between three and five things in short term memory, if you can make them keep their mind focused on five fairly inconsequential items that are not relevant then you can slide your perception shifts past them more easily. Likewise you are including the trick of allowing them to beleive you because you have not lied to them only been uncertain due to circumstances at the time.

There is of course another asspect to this, most interviews are recorded if pushed you can show that your story evolving slowly was due to the duress of the interview, that is you start out telling what is very close to the truth and end up getting further and further from it which is what you would expect as an honest person gets tired and disoriented, where as a person lying you would expect the opposite.

As many people are begining to realise one of the Magicians main arts is controlling the audiances perspective via their field of view. They are greatly aided in this by the fact that due to either where the TV camera or audiance seating is the audiance already has a limited view. And further and perhaps more importantly the audiances eyes are drawn to bright colours and fast movment, thus missing the real action done slowly in the grey of shadow with the other hand.

To “lie by telling the truth” you can perform the same trick linguisticaly, by providing irrelevant “jive” to keep up a fast and colourful tempo as you slide the perception shifts by them verbally.

Then there is misdirection, it is said that people telling lies have facial ticks etc which people can be trained to recognise. If you do have to tell an actual lie then know in advance you need to provide a visual misdirection just fractionaly before hand. The audiances eyes flick towards the action by instinct. However the golden rule is “don’t lie” so rather than make a false statment which you can be caught out in, turn the question around. That is if some one says “Did you do X” you can say “Why on earth would I do X?” pause and then say “What on earth makes you think I would do that?” pause and say “Are you insane?” then you have given yourself an opening to move away from it, you have also hijacked the rythm and pattern of the questioner and forced them onto the back foot. As long as they persist you can keep it hijacked almost indefinatly which is to the questioners disadvantage. You can then turn the question against them by accusing them of saying that you did it and they have a closed mind to the truth etc etc, the longer they persist the more you can wrong foot them the more agitated you can get and the more reason you have for not continuing to talk to them.

Then there is stage dressing, Magicians and con artists know about this, you are what you look and sound like in most peoples minds. You nearly always get told about this indirectly with the “first impressions are lasting impressions” or “thirty second rule” when taught how to sell either yourself (interviews) or products. That is you take “blending in” and you use it to your advantage by being either pro or contrary as needed. Thus knowing how to speak in the same way your audiance expects you to do makes you subconciously fit their prejudices of the role you wish to play.

But as both magicians and con artists know you have to practice practice practice to get this to all appear natural, because the most important part of “lying by telling the truth” is to look natural not awkward.