The Superpower of the Conman | Alexis Conran | TEDxBerlin

ladies and gentlemen before I start I would quite like to use you all to try a little something so I need both your hands-free for this so if you're holding your mobile phone or a pen taking notes or a drink or something just put it down and eat both your hands to be free now everybody take part even if you're at the back I can still see you so hold your hands out in front of you like this I appreciate you might be holding them outside the ears of the person sitting in front of you this might get a little tricky twist your wrist so your palms are facing outwards good now put your right hand over your left this is where we get to find out who knows there right from their left always a couple oh it's a couple of people readjusting clasp your fingers together and put your thumbs to the floor just like this ladies doing right here excellent work now there's about a thousand of you in here so this should be interesting if you can't do what I'm about to do you all owe me a euro now you're a being roughly equal to a pound with the dreadful state of wrecks it I should do dwell in this back in the UK so three two one twist your wrists so your thumbs are pointing to the ceiling no no one who says crime doesn't pee um that's all right you can put your hands down don't break anything it's fine ladies gentlemen my name is Alexis Conrad and as Stefan mentioned earlier all of today we have been looking at the superpowers and when I say superpowers we all think of Superman we think of the good guys I'm gonna talk to you about the bad guys and I think there's a lot we can learn by studying their superpowers because their superpowers are pretty damn cool I'm gonna talk to you specifically about the superpowers of the con men what do I mean by con meant nonviolent criminals grifters hustlers scam artists and what is their super power well their super power is that using the right words asking the right questions and putting people in the right situation they get those people to do exactly as they're told pretty cool superpower you must agree people have been known to hand over cash cars houses credit card details bank details their entire life savings or their life savings of their corporations have gone to scrupulous con men using the super pounds we are about to talk of now I've spent 20 years of my life as a professional deceiver in fact people may argue even more than that because I started off as an actor still deceiving then I became a magician very much deceiving and then I did a show on the BBC called the real hustle we did over 100 episodes it was sold all over the world and I wrote and performed along with my co-stars over 500 scams and scammed people all over Europe in America and that has taught me a few things number one magic is exactly the same as sales it's exactly the same as scams and it's exactly the same as politics they're all in one big bucket folks why because it's all boils down to the same thing what are they selling they're selling a story it's a story and a narrative that they want you to buy into now I'm not saying they're all crooked I'm not saying they're all criminals but they're all trying to do the same thing they're trying to sell you on a story to get you to buy into their narrative the second thing I found out is that the good politicians the good magicians the good salespeople and the great con men have all got one thing in common they know us better than we know ourselves now I'm going to tell you a little story this happened early on in mind magic career and I learned something very very interesting I was hired to do a wedding and I brought my deck of cards to do this wedding I have to tell you it was very very early on in my career and I was very very impressed by the amount of money that I was being paid so I was a little bit nervous and I wanted to do a good job now traditionally in these things you go around you do card tricks you do all sorts of other tricks involving things that a grown man shouldn't really be seen with like sponge balls and giant cards and chains and all sorts of paraphernalia but the tradition is that you leave the lead table to last so the people who have paid you or the guests of honor to last in this case the groom who had hired me for entertainment for his wedding and the bride that was the top table now the trick that I had designed was my sort of ps2 resistance of the time was an effect where I would go and get somebody to pick a card the groom in this case he would return it and after a little bit of buy play a little bit of showmanship that card would be found in a sealed envelope inside my wallet pretty impressive trick right so I woke up he takes a card he puts it back in and I screw up I don't know what card he picked I also don't know where that card is I know it's in here but that's not much help so what am I do I keep talking I'm very good at talking whilst thinking about something else so I'm talking and talking and thinking what do i do what do i do what do I do and of course I'm thinking he's not gonna pay me he's just not gonna pay me why would he pay me I'm a rubbish magician why would he hand over money to a rubbish magician I have ruined this man's wedding so ah this is what I did and I'm going to show you exactly what I did a gentleman in the front you're gonna be the groom you stay where you are so you've taken a card out you've put it back in we've shuffled it I've lost it because I'm useless and I said I said okay um tell me what card you picked now name any card ace of heart or eight Ace of Hearts now what you'll find is very very interesting is that if I give you this deck and you were to go through it and look at it right and even if you gave it a shuffle right it doesn't really matter because actually before I came to your table before I walked on the stage here I put one card away and I put it here in my back pocket and it was the ace of hearts okay ooh I know start the clapping I do it for cash it's much better huh now let's think about what happened this is the world's worst card trick and I'll tell you why he picked a card put it back in we shuffled then I asked him what the card was look through the deck used a little bit of sleight of hand to sneak it out of the deck put it in my pocket and take it back out again that's what you've just witnessed I thought to myself there's no way this guy is going to give me money for this that is the kind of card trick that a four-year-old would do not a professional highly paid magician so I finished the rest of my act to a smattering of polite applause and I do what all magicians do if you watch them we sneak off to the bathroom into the cubicles to reset everything to put everything back in the right pocket you know everything where things go all of that kind of stuff and as I was in the cubicle to my horror the groom and his best man enter the bathrooms and two even more my horror what are we talking about the best man said did you see the magician and I'm sitting there thinking no no no no no no do I really need to listen to this right now but this is what happened the groom said he was amazing he came over to the table I thought of a card and he was in his pocket and that taught me two things number one for anybody who performs or who's on stage speaking doing magic whatever never tell an audience what you are about to do had I walked up to that table and said the card that you thinking of will be in a sealed envelope in my wallet I would have been toast because that was never gonna happen right second and most importantly and this is where I want to talk to you a little bit more about I realized he fooled himself he lied to himself that's not what he witnessed what he witnessed was an incompetent magic trick but what he believed was a miracle so magic and sales and scams and political beliefs all happen in the mind of the spectator and we do it all the times we lie to ourselves all the times to fit our narrative how many of you in here have lied to yourself for a purchase you made something you didn't really need but you've convinced yourself that you want to buy it loads of people loads of people so so coming back to that if we are lying to ourselves and having done all these scams I started to realize what things do they have in common these scams and I started realizing this five basic principles of persuasion number one misdirection the trick I played on you in the beginning with her hands right I can't do that with my wrists you still all owe me a euro by the way you're not getting out of that I'll be collecting by the dots um I can't do that my husband I need a moment misdirection and that moment was when I pointed right here gave me a chance to disengage my hands and re-engage them in a different way right misdirection is used all the time in scams pickpockets use misdirection all the time because pickpockets need to invade your space right and they need to have an excuse to invade that space incidentally where would you find a pickpocket right next to the attention pickpocket sign why why because when you see that sign you do this right to see if your stuff still there but what you've done is you've identified where your valuables are to a watching pickpocket it works next up we've got time pressure putting people under pressure makes them make mistakes okay it's a genuine sales technique how many of you bought things on Black Friday or whatever they call it now and Cyber Monday and I don't know tremendous Tuesday's gonna be the next one bought stuff that you don't need why because the sales going to end it's much easier to manipulate people when they're acting under pressure that if you give them time to examine the facts also we have opportunity now in the scamming world we call this the good deal syndrome right everybody likes something for nothing here's a terrible example of one of those old four one nine scams the emails where they ask you to prove money into your account and the killer phrase is this is they're going to give you 20% of that money if you do what they ask you to now you see this email missed a particularly bad one um if you look at the email address Maur gov dot my where the hell is that from that probably will go straight into your filter you should spam now but the same exact deal from this guy sounds a bit more attractive that's Bernie Madoff he wears an expensive suit and has an expensive cigar he offers the same deal but if it's from him oh you might think about it right we love a good deal we love getting something for nothing the last two are probably the most important social compliance the idea that we respond to badges uniforms right this picture here that says authority to you right security high-vis jacket what you're actually looking at is a man with a costume on right but you ascribe you ascribe responsibility you ascribe some sense of authority and to be honest with you we have to do that and if we don't do that our society will grind to a halt imagine every time you dealt with an official you had to find out the whole life story to find out if they really are an official right life would grind to a halt and the last one is the most powerful one which is social proof and you're all doing it right now we all do it the idea that we constantly look to others around us for clues as to how to behave now there's a very very powerful thing because as a hustler if I know that all I have to do is manipulate your environment to get you to behave the way I want you to a good example is people queuing in the airport right people who queue at gates when the plane hasn't even arrived how does that happen well watch it next time when you go on holiday in a couple of weeks how it happens is one person starts and then another person that goes on well maybe maybe we should chew as well and then people like well there's five people queuing maybe we should join the queue before you know it everyone's waiting for a plane that's gonna take another two hours to arrive insane now none of which I have told you is new ok it's been out there what we need to come to terms with is this for too long we have been ignorant of these things of how we function and for too long politicians admin hustlers magicians have been scrupulously studying these conditions and taking advantage of them so it's time we woke up to these techniques now you can use what I've shown you here for good and for that you can use it for good to promote your own narrative your own stories and use these techniques by all means but you can also use them as a shield why because you can use these five principles to recognize scams next time somebody approaches you with a big opportunity that sounds a little bit dodgy and that pushes you to act quickly well you know to scam because two of those manipulating factors are in there the thing we need to do is we need to arm ourselves with knowledge we need to start understanding what we use how we use it and what the vulnerabilities are everybody in this room has got a smartphone but none of us really know how they work and more importantly none of us know the vulnerabilities now let's take a very simple example simple within a smartphone okay these locks do you recognize these these mechanical push-button locks okay who's used one of these put your hand up pretty much everyone right now they're very very good locks they don't require any power you can change the code hourly we'll what every minute if you like you give the code out it's for a transient workforce you can change it whenever you like people don't need a key people not anything the code usually works like this you push C and then you put a four-digit code and the door will open but they have a vulnerability these locks can be broken in two minutes using a UV pen right you go up to the lock you put your UV ink all over the buttons UV ink is invisible so no one can see it you wait for a couple of minutes until the lock is used once or twice you go back with your UV light and you find out which buttons have not got paid anymore because they've been used now the more astute of you in this audience will say yes but you know the four-digit digits that have been used but you don't know the order and this is where the vulnerability is the order doesn't matter if the code is 1 2 3 4 and you enter 4 3 2 1 the door will open any combination of that four-digit code will open this door now I am NOT saying that these are terrible locks they're very very good locks but now that I know their vulnerability I use mine from my garden shed rather than an important room so that's what we can do armed ourselves with knowledge and facts when it comes to technical stuff for example but also when it comes to social media and news and politics there is more that we should be doing and I agree with earlier speakers here that we need to become a little bit more responsible and realize when we are being manipulated a good friend told me because I now do a radio show and I talk a lot about politics a lot about brexit god help me and he said to me be careful when you read headlines and news be careful when you feel emotionally moved by the headline and be even more careful when you agree with the headline when the headline makes you happy because that's when you need to watch out so I'll give you a couple of quick examples this we saw during the brexit referendum from vote leave turkeys joining the EU and a 76 million people are all going to come to the UK or join the EU a blatant lie but a blatant best piece of misdirection had nothing to do with a vote but you miss directing people to vote for something that will harm them right and a perfect good use of misdirection and of course social compliance and social proof come into it social compliance is because it's from a reputable site vote leave was the official campaign and it's on Facebook a lot of people mistakenly trust what they read on Facebook right and it's getting thousands of likes so social compliance millions of people share it well if they shared it it must be true all of the things we talked about all of those superpowers come together in that one poster last one this remember this one just for the Trump election now if you happen to be a Catholic and a Trump fan this is great news right but again it's a piece of fake news so we need to use our super power and that super power is knowledge and we need to start learning how to use it and use the tech we have available to know how to share it thank you very much for your time [Applause] [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 111,417

Rating: 4.8607426 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Education, Corruption, Magic, Media, Social Interaction

Id: wF5CE2zrATc

Length: 18min 40sec (1120 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 25 2019