Tricks Of The Mind
The definitive book by Britain's favourite illusionist..."Derren Brown's television and stage performances have entranced and dumbfounded millions. His baffling illusions and stunning set pieces - such as The Seance, Russian Roulette and The Heist - have set new standards of what's possible, as well as causing more than their fair share of controversy. Now, for the first time, he reveals the secrets behind his craft, what makes him tick and just why he grew that beard. Tricks of the Mind takes you on a journey into the structure and pyschology of magic. Derren teaches you how to read clues in people's behaviour and spot liars. He discusses the whys and wherefores of hypnosis and shows how to do it. And he investigates the power of suggestion and how you can massively improve your memory. He also takes a long hard look at the paranormal industry and why some of us feel the need to believe in it in the first place. Alternately hilarious, controversial and challenging, Tricks of the Mind is essential reading for Derren's legions of fans, and pretty bloody irresistible even if you don't like him that much..."
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What Hacker News says
- I listened to the audiobook version of Dominic O'Brien's Quantum Memory Power years ago. He explains this system, along with several others, like memory palaces. The mnemonics he uses for numbering are:
1: candle, 2: swan, 3: handcuffs, 4: sailboat, 5: curtain hook, 6: elephant’s trunk, 7: boomerang, 8: snowman, 9: balloon and string, 10: stick and hoop
Combining it with the journey method helps remember longer sequences. The funny thing is that you might remember the number two by imagining a giant swan in the next room. When you don't need to remember it anymore, you imagine yourself throwing a grenade into the room and blowing up the swan. It really works!
Darren Brown's Tricks of the Mind is generally about his life history in becoming a mentalist, but it has a lot of fun tidbits about methods to get over traumatic memories, amp yourself up for things you don't want you to, defuse arguments/fights, and it was the first place I ever heard of memory palaces.
- He wrote Tricks of the Mind and that was a great book. One piece that has stuck with me for ~15 years now is the 20 word series that I can recite forward or backward after spending 5 minutes visualizing them in a "linked list". For example, telephone - sausage - monkey. Vividly imagine dialing a payphone with a sausage. Next up, sausage monkey. Vividly, using all your senses imagine a monkey flinging sausages to the point of absurdity where he's swimming through sausages.
You just created a mental linked list that you can traverse from either direction, and that you'll remember for as long as you want to. Push it to the extremes, build up your method of loci to arbitrary lengths, build your memory palaces and become Hannibal Lecter.
- The UK mentalist Derren Brown has a brilliant example passage of this in his 2007 book "Tricks of the Mind". It was all about what you felt like as a child and your relationship to your parents. Very clever. I remember showing it to a friend at university who became extremely emotional and couldn't believe it wasn't tailored to them.
- I came across his work years ago and adore it. He's really carved out a niche for himself. I also recommend his book "Tricks of the Mind" as a gift for young nerds: https://www.amazon.com/Tricks-Mind-Paperback-DERREN-BROWN/dp...
It's a nice combination of charm, trickery, and skepticism. Bits about his life, teaching techniques he uses in his mentalism, and interesting items from his work. For example, he goes into this trick in detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haP7Ys9ocTk
For those who don't watch it, he pretends to be an astrologer and gives a group of people a reading. They are shocked at how accurate it is. He then has them randomly trade readings and try to guess who the reading applies to. It turns out that he gave them all the same reading, making use of the Forer effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect
In the book, he explains how he constructed it and gives the text of the reading. It was a pleasure to read through and see how artfully it was done.
- For memory techniques, including memory palaces, I can recommend "Quantum Memory Power" by Dominic O'Brien. He was (is?) a world champion at memorization, and does pretty well at presenting in his audio book. Some of it feels a bit out of date (e.g. popular names he uses to help with memorization), but if you can get past it there's a lot to learn.
"Tricks of the Mind" by Derren Brown also has some basic information on memorization, along with a host of other interesting topics.
- In Derren Brown's excellent Tricks of the Mind[1], he mentions the lengths that audiences are willing to go. In one example, he says something about "this coin in my hand" while holding his hand up near his face for a moment, index finger and thumb spaced to the approximate distance of a coin, yet there's not actually a coin there, just empty space! Afterward, people will swear that there was a coin in his hand, going so far as to describe what sort of coin it was.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Tricks-Mind-DERREN-BROWN/dp/1905026358...
