I say "No" ,

and it'll only cost $40...

Wow, your truth is cheap!

It has to be, otherwise I wouldn't be willing to toss it aside for the sake of convenience.

This reminds me of a books done by bannachek where he explains his abillities to a particular trick by reading peopls body expressions when it actually was done through a different method.

When it comes to this topic you could say that this is about our intentions and our presentation. All magic is tricking the person but the trickery can be done with the intention of fooling people inorder to entertain them, making it then something more ethical.

How we present ourself and how we present the illusion might be questionable tho. Someone presenting themself as a magician puts out to the audience that their going to be tricked and they know what the situation is, although saying that you can still get some people who believe the magician has magical powers. Compared to this we then have the people who present them self as actually having psychic powers which is cool to experience and show but something maybe questionable.

One of the things we could atleast say we have, is that we have the idea of suspension of disbelief where we can create an experience of something appearing magical and real but at the same time people coming out of it afterwards knowing that it was a trick but still amazed?


This could bring up the topic of psychological magic when maybe some of those psychological effects might be done through a non psychological method. By doing this we might give people the false idea that a person can be fooled in that way and they work off that experience as evidence to believe in something.

Magic = Art of lying and deception

No no no. I do that all day long in my day job, and I ain't doing magic.

Wife: Where did you get that book?
Me: Oh, I've had it for years... (I always check the copyright date and write my name with that date on the front piece)
(luckily, I have a barn full of books that she has never examined closely)
And if Father Photius is listening, I'll see you in confession next Sunday

Magic is a form of acting.

I suppose this might be true. But the observation is meaningless.

Did you ever hear of Margo Stilley?

She was (supposedly) a born-again Christian when she starred in a film with explicit sexual contact. She was just "acting", so it was OK.

Remember that this is the ethics forum. Does being an "actor" excuse you for whatever activity you do while you are "acting", or do other ethical considerations still remain while you're on the job?

If a magician doesn't like deceiving the audience then he's seriously in the wrong game

But, deceive using movements, thinking and gimmickry that would inspire thoughts of cleverness and intelligence if found out, not methods that would be a let down upon inspection.

For example, most pre-show would elicit feelings of being hoaxed or contrivance.

When stooging is explained, there is always a let down, compared to what I and many people who I associate with consider to be a 'higher' magic, practicing at a more artistic level.

Lie as little as possible, and become a great entertainer. The audience wants as much truth as they can get, and this will make your magic pop in contrast, even more. The irony is that the audience wants to see an entertainer that they find to be very honest and truthful. They're saying that they want you to lie with your methods, but they DO want to be treated with respect.

Quite frankly, the fake explanations sometimes become 'fake' exposure of methods that I actually am using. Why not just tell them that this is for entertainment purposes, and forget the explanations completely?

If you don't understand this or are looking for 'outs' to absolve yourself from this criteria, then you're just doing things differently than the people that I hang with do.

Some people get it, some don't, and I'm not really trying to change anyone's mind. This is just what I consider to be higher art, take it or leave it.

A great entertainer and creator can go out there with creative versions of effects using a t**** t**, a nw and coins, and entertain everyone in the crowd, magicians and laymen alike.

For my inspiration, it's the organic, not the contrived work, that makes this an art form worth loving and living for.

If someone is interested, I will relate a similar story that I encountered during an Imago therapy workshop that I attended recently, where one of the facilitators was a practicing attorney, and how he was actually abusing a concept that was meant to heal and create communication, not something that was being proposed to deceive.

Jimmy

Not sure if this has been posted in this thread yet, but here's an interesting interview of Ricky Jay on deception: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/200......-part-1/