Human Hacking - Neuroscience and Magic: Stuart Palm at TEDxHKUST

let's give a big round of applause to your MCS you see the trick that I just did there that was my first trick to get you to start clapping before I even do anything so my talk today is called human hacking neuroscience and magic and I am a magician I am NOT a neuroscientist but I'll explain why the talk is called that in a moment too before magic to entertain as a magician you don't just need a fancy retro suit and a lovely assistant say hi to Michelle you need to open it virtually said hi you need to be able to show something that's impossible which is by definition not possible so if I show you something that's impossible I must be deceiving you and that's what I do but I have to deceive you and have you like it which is not an easy feat I have to do something I like to call poetic deception today I'm going to reveal some secrets but not what you're hoping for I actually heard people going yes I will tell you maybe how one day works but what I'm going to tell you the secrets I'm going to share with you are the secrets to why magic works and hopefully I can share a bit of how you can use this knowledge maybe in an interview maybe you want to use this knowledge to sell a product to sell yourself and I get to use crazy transition so there's one thing that I don't think is possible in the realm of mystery and that is to be able to tell the future so that said I'm going to start by trying to tell you the future but I'm going to do with a card trick I have here a very large deck of cards and I'm going to have somebody think of one but I want to get someone out of the audience at random so I'm going to take this rubber brain and throw it out amongst you I don't want to hit the cameras in the middle so I'm going to turn my back in a moment I'm going to toss the brain probably that way over my head if you see a rubber brain hurtling towards your face that is not an illusion okay so you've got your brain do this for me stand up hold it here and yell I have the brain are you ready alright here we go what two three thank you they're gonna do the same thing you want to get some other people that I can't get to that I can't touch you so you're going to throw that brain again over your head stand up toss it lightly toss it up over your head we want a third person now Michelle's going to run a rig no microphone I can't see you back there so that make like stand up I have the brain now so we can all hear you Michelle's bringing you a microphone there what's your name Henry Henry have you ever played a card game before um not much how much tea in that deck that I showed you a second ago and nobody ever wants to admit that they like to play Carter stack art Henry now if I told you right now to just name a card you probably well actually are you all thinking of one already you probably are yeah you probably most of you many of you thinking faces a spades the most commonly thought of Queen of Hearts the second most common how many aces god I got it in there your heads jumping that much of you how many Queens how many queens of hearts yeah but you okay so that said I don't want you know I'm not trying to influence if you wanted to go with those that's your choice that said you could change your mind you can go with a card you gone I want you to take a moment think about it and tell me the card you want to use Kings bait the King of Spades yeah are you sure yeah you don't want to change your mind you had a chance I'm giving a moment so the camera is concerned then I know it is very slow see that one card is upside down so I think that's a good start so what did I do Thank You Henry Henry is that right either I deceived you or she's talking right back to me so one-on-one conversation right here all right influenced you or I told you the future I tell that you decide is more fun that way from you now a lot of magicians uh if you if you go to a magic show in the United States where I'm from they will start their show saying I learned the mysteries of the Far East or for Egypt and there actually are mysteries from Egypt about living life that I find very important the most important advice that I could give anybody is to know yourself and if you go and look in a temple an ancient Egyptian temple in the center holiest of Holies of that temple it will say in hieroglyphs know thyself it says this in all of the major temples in Western culture it says this in the Oracle of Delphi not a site on know thyself and I think that by knowing yourself you will know better how to communicate with other people you will know better how to present yourself in any situation you'll know how to deal with family here as she told us we should do I'm going to tell you my story in a second and I'm going to give you three more just demonstrations of magical things so don't worry about more than coming I also am going to try to tell you not like the future but some of the goals that I had for this show and their intent envelope over there then they'll hold talks like thank you who noticed that was anybody like wondering like what is that was gonna happen I'm just going to toss this head again so heads up guys what two three I love Li you were so confident he didn't catch it but he was so confident you just raised his hand like this and thought of it bouncing off this thing okay grab the brain what what is your name Sabina I want something in this I said sippy Celina I want you to think of a place that you'd like to travel to anywhere in the world like to travel to New York City New York City I lived there for about nine years York City now this will make sense later humbled I grew up in a small town in Florida even and I did magic as far as I can remember the story about the diapers is a story that's true my parents tell and I wanted to know what it was like to really fool people I mean I was a middle child so middle children have this tendency to wanna like attention and that was my thing but actually that's not what I studied I mean I studied it as a hobby on my own it was kind of a hobby that I had in my closet you know in the little lock box and nobody would tell my secrets and I even through University that's what I had but in university I studied fine art I have a degree in painting minor in liberal arts so I was on the the outlier path from the beginning there's there was no you know back up from doing something that probably wasn't going to make me a lot of money I was blessed in a sense because my mother is a painter my dad studied architecture so they cultivated the interest that I had in theater and art after I graduated no idea what to do yeah that's me I have no idea what to do with myself I moved to New York City and where you want to go yeah I moved to New York City and I took a job as a bartender and this is where I really started to become a magician this is where I started to learn how to influence people how to read people and if you really want to learn about people go go be a bartender because you're going to have to deal with stuff that you don't expect you're going to have to do with drunk people you're gonna have to learn to calm them down and calmly make them want to leave especially when they arrive to drug me you don't want to serve them but there are benefits as well to being a bartender you needle and you know the one good thing if you want to crank rapport with somebody just really quick if you want to create rapport best thing the simplest thing to do other than like them is is you mimic them so you stand or sit the way they're sitting it's amazing how quickly you can get them to mimic you and that's really the game you should try to play try playing this game like sit at a cafe to somebody and start sitting how they're sitting and then see how long it takes for you to do something and then to change you do it you're going you'll do it if you believe in you do it you're going to do it now I after being a bartender and performing magic has made the customers come back people started to say can you come and work at my party and I was like oh yeah I guess so do do that I didn't realize that it was a like job to do magic that you could be an entertainer socially like that I guess I had a concept of it but I didn't ever strive for it it kind of just happened to me which is very much like a lot of the people have been saying today is that life just sort of happens and you're like okay I'll follow that path and I did and I did well at it night I did have to go learn a bunch of stuff about how to run a business as an entertainer but it happened to me now another thing happened to me as well that brings me to what the neuroscience part of this is in 2006 I had I woke up to my sister was living with me at the time over me and my arms weren't working because I had had a grand mal seizure at night and I both of my shoulders that dislocated I dislocated in both during a seizure which they tell me is very rare and I didn't know what was going on I went to a lot of doctors emergency rooms and things until they realized that I had a malformation to my brain that had him reached which is a great story if you do mentalism so if you can see there's a big scar my hair is covering it and this was a crazy experience because I had to decide if if I wanted to be medicated for the rest of my life or take the risk of going under brain surgery and they actually had one of the symposiums like a bunch of doctors in a room like this about my case to decide what what do you think you should do and they said we all talked I don't know how many of them there were but apparently a bunch and we decided that the best thing for you would need to have the raspberry removed it was the size and shape of a raspberry and so I went under brain surgery which is a very frightening experience if you've never been under a major surgery before it's a lot of anxiety there but just like the moment before you go onstage if you have to go onstage there's that moment before they put you under and that's probably the most memorable moment for me it looks like this one difference though is by anesthesiologists very hard to say anesthesiologist he had a big difference he had an American flag and eagles all over his scrubs which made me extra fresh a lot political brainwashing they're actually operating on my brain so he's explaining the things that are going to happen to me he says okay so we're going to put the mask on your face if you just count backwards from 100 and you'll not get very far you'll go to sleep then we put this tube down your throat so that you can breathe and stuff and then you have a surgery and that surgery will wake you up and then we pull the tube out of your throat and then that's wait a minute what you're going to wake me up and then pause and do not do that before you won't get me those you die that's not really a subtle thing that I want to hear right before I go into brain surgery the next thing I'm going to be conscious though is a 229 don't worry don't worry you won't remember that like well why are you telling you so it's just so confusing conversation this man was trying to have the egos eigenspace button listen man just tell me it's gonna be okay all I want to hear and actually at that moment they all realize that this is ridiculous and they all like and the next thing I know I'm in some dream with family and I'm talking to my uncle and my uncle is telling him jokes and I'm trying to laugh at them but I'm more like because gagging I'm confused that I come too and then pull your tube out of my throat totally remember that they took me to the MRI they did a test to see if I could touch my fingers together touch my nose just placed it right there and I know lots of thumbs up I think I'm okay head hurts and I started to realize a lot of strange things were going on first of all I had no peripheral vision on this side done surgery on yeah there you go they done surgery on the left side so I lost my right peripheral vision they the words that I wanted to use I had a hard time coming up with like like even like I wanted to say car and you know I want to talk about something I'm trying to say car can figure out a car and eventually I'd be like automobile but it's true why did I did if I couldn't get the short ones weird and then I was laying in the recovery room and I was like bored looking over at the IV drip bag and I'm trying to read it like what is this IV drug bag and Russian I don't wine in I couldn't read I was like this is freezing why can't I read because I knew I could read but I couldn't this doesn't make any sense so I brought all these things up to the neurologist and she's telling me oh that's normal you tell me gonna happen no no no it's okay and a few weeks you'll get it all back so why is that because your brain will reconnect you reroute it's very Appeals really look amazing great okay so I'll be able to peripheral vision come back to sit yeah I'll be able to come up the words and the memories and I lost I'll come back for most of them I'll be able to read it well you think so yes they're not certain you know and I think they're trained not to Peter but then she said actually really impressed you can talk so they didn't worried they would even tell me that was gonna happen so I was happy to get to talk moment but I realized a few things this experience I realized that I'm not just me I have three parts of me some of you might have this understanding himself through some sort of spiritual way or some sort of a self understanding that you've gone through an experience but I realized that I'm the six foot six physical me I'm a mental me that kind of controls everything and then I'm this other me the me that was inside there going yeah I know how to read but I can't I don't understand that that was the third me the me that we might call spirit or soul and that I communicate I receive information and messages and then post you know but like to other people in these three ways so I'm going to break down how you can sort of influence people and how you can better read other people by understanding that you have these three parts first ones the body sixty to seventy seventy percent of our communication a little of all of our communication is nonverbal is his body language actually some people who can say ninety two percent of all of our communication is body language I'm gonna try a little test with you guys here where's the brain you put that with okay let's try somewhere in the middle here guys heads up you ready this is how to keep your audience alert one two three trying to pass it off all right you got the ring actually you can come on down you can come on done just never get off a robbery baggage shorter Robert urging you just you mode Bob okay Bob we're going to play a little game Gillette games what kind of games do you like like games all right so I have a hundred dollar bill and we're going to play like a roll over $100 bill and which hand is it in game really that game before cause I'm just going to happen I'm going to give you the money you're going to hold it behind your hand you're going to pick a hand to hold it in and then you're going to hold your hands out like this I'm going to try to tell you where it is okay Bob but don't go to the tricky Hey are you good Bob Mabel Dan's like this little further apart think about the hand that it's in Bob that's your right hand open that show me show ya okay Bob I love this is good no pocket now we get to learn about Bob okay so easy the kind of person who's going to keep it the same hand or is he the kind of person who's gonna try to trick me and put it the other yeah what is he the third time yeah okay ready hold up you ready what if I fail you're having this hard choice I know it's hard to is a little bit harder I think he's the third time what that means is the type that kind of like takes an extra long second so it seems like he's doing something and then he leaves it in the same hand that it was good okay here's how you do it it's really easy a bunch of ways to do this but I'm gonna teach you guys when you guys want to learn right so if you want to want to do the which hand thing right notice that when somebody holds something in their hand out like this that their nose will slightly point to that hand Bob which hand is it in yes a big round of applause for Bob experience Bob yes how did I know he was going to try to hide in his pocket experience baba before you go there there I want to do number two here let's say you were going on a vacation to New York City who would you be a famous person who would you want to meet there no no just name it any a lot who would you want to meet name a famous person famous Pleasant yeah I mean it could be another famous person that's more entertaining for them in the body language reading by educational capacity and it will help you out are you able to effectively read and influence others basically if you use body language you'll create a better report more quickly the mine I'm what we every time sorry guys the mind okay so the mental self we all think mentally visually and and we think visually first they call the reptilian brain it's the brain inside your brain the very center the part that connects the two halves and if you think about it there's a would way to demonstrate this I want you to think about maybe your living room and your kitchen whatever room you eat in and I want you to think about how many windows there are in that room and if you think about that you'll notice that you're picturing in your mind you're thinking visually first like that since before she was like oh gosh isn't yes I like it yeah and and people study how people use their visual thought process have learned that your attention is completely selective there's this great video that I think you're going to see later and somebody else's talk where people are passing the ball I'm not going to ruin the what happens in this video but it'll totally show you how you can't actually pay attention to everything that's going on and you will pay attention to only what you're told agents do or what you are interested in here's a little love test here I'm going to show you some pictures the pictures of me and my kitchen or living room and and each picture something differents going to happen okay don't you see if you can catch the differences and there will be a little black space between now my body will move Pikul I'm in the picture and I didn't Photoshop gun but so that's not a difference but watch to see if you can see the other difference okay do people freeze you can just if you solve one one difference not something yeah okay good so you probably saw that the ball moved to they would see the red ball not so many nice many okay good but what happens is it's really hard to see because this is black space between and that's how you see normally if you're looking around a room your brain is creating most of the images you see it's just when you stop that you're actually seeing something I'll show it to you again this time no black space between you'll just see it go it's call code ball book so much easier than what's happening is is if you have a spotlight focus your brain focuses on one spot at a time out in space a spotlight of attention if you all hold your hands out like that that's what you pay attention to it any given time all that other stuff is your brain just creating it actually it's only one megapixel in terms of the digital world which really is more like this you're really only focused on you really only see one spot of detailed information and the soul so controlling your mind and your body is is either you of you whatever you want to call it and this is the part that is completely slave to your own perceptions you might believe that it's a cold day you might believe that it's a warm day it's all about how you view the world your belief in something control so much that we're able to manipulate you based on it that's why I magic works I need a third person back over here you guys ready one two three one two what's your name sir Daniel Daniel the people like you I Daniel Daniel do me a favor let's say you're in New York and you're meeting Bob's extraordinary what do you talk about what's your topic of conversation but you want to go for drink I'm gonna give you another secret here right now you should tell her where you're gonna go for it you should come up with that a drink is the topic yeah okay drink thank you very much guys give them a big round of applause so belief controls reality I'm going to try to show you something that some believe for a second but this is one my favorite quotes from a Mentalist from the 30s Joseph dunninger for those who believe no explanation is necessary for those who do not know suffice I think this is true for more than just watching a magic show or a Mentalist I'm going to radiate reiterate the word I'm going to reiterate some of the things that talked about real quick here think about the body how do you read influence others through body language the mind you've got to challenge assumptions and you've got to learn to focus that spotlight of attention the spirit you got to question reality and believe in yourself and you've got to get yourself in other people's spotlights if you want to sell yourself if you want to be effective this is another favorite image of Mike started with the picture of Einstein this is Michelangelo's view of God the brain now I'm going to need another person out here but um the brain is gone so actually you know about yeah come on up yeah give her a big round what's your name Natalia I think okay so I have this envelope it's been here all day and we've come up with a trip to New York City I've been to New York City I will like it you're going to meet Sarah and you're going to have a drink okay so do me a favor open that up that in there I go ahead okay kill it I want you to reach a sign there and inside there should be another inside the envelope another no no a little piece of paper I want you do me a favor and read that out loud to everyone thank you HD you see for having me at your d/dx event yeah and our goal is to control for outcomes and they came straight king of space was the first fear hopefully you all are enjoying your conversation about a dream with xsara in your imaginary imaginary vacation vacation to New York City this impressive been read by a woman wearing a white top with short red brown hair give her a

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 198,725

Rating: 4.6757774 out of 5

Keywords: tedx talks, hacking, tedx talk, ted, neuroscience, hkust, \hong kong\, ted x, ted talks, ted talk, english, tedx, magic, mind, tedxhkust

Id: VFc2QSyt_-8

Length: 32min 12sec (1932 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 02 2013