Derren Brown

[CFTraveler]

Holy Moly! I just watched his special on the SciFi channel. I'm blown away.

[Rhone]

I'm not familiar with Derren Brown, but from his Wikipedia entry he reminds me of James ♥♥♥♥♥.

[orygbus]

Holy Moly! I just watched his special on the SciFi channel. I'm blown away.

I saw the show....I'm now a big fan, that guy is awesome....that's why I like psychology, hypnosis, NLP soo much....

[Mishell]

After the first post, I did a search for him on youtube. A lot of different show segments popped up. My favorite was the one on photographic memory. (Maybe because I used to read the dictionary as a kid.)

Oh, here's the youtube link...
http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...&search=Search

[rrichy]

Oh I love this show!
I have only watched some of them online, will have to buy the DVD's!

[Rhone]

I've been enjoying watching Derren Brown's stuff on Youtube. I think the most genius thing he does is convince people of false (or at least partially false) explanations for his tricks.

Stage magic uses tricks to create the illusion of effects that people know are not really what they seem--so people know it's "just a trick" even if they don't know how it is done. Mentalists (which is essentially what Derren Brown is) use tricks that emulate psychic abilities; but most people realize that they aren't really psychic, and that, again, they are just using tricks.

Derren Brown, on the other hand, is adamantly skeptical of "paranormal" phenomena and explains his tricks as being done with psychological tactics. While it's possible that he uses some hypnosis (specifically with Handshake Induction) and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (he's certainly good at making it look like it), he definitely also uses some simple (but very well-hidden) tricks under the guise of psychological tactics. The psychological explanations seem extraordinary but plausible enough to be accepted by many people; that combination makes Derren seem quite brilliant.

He is brilliant--not because he can recite any spot of the dictionary from photographic memory, or because he can figure out someone's PIN number from subtle facial cues--but because he has successfully convinced people he can do those things.

[Three_Nails]

I like this guy... Youtubed him. I like the "Subliminal Advertising" one... And the chess one is good as well.

[Three_Nails]

This inspired me to look up David Blane and Criss Angel as well... Just for fun... Criss Angel has this clip where he uses hypnotism in the middle of a las vegas street to "levitate" a woman he has never met before. It was pretty cool. Dunno if it was bull or not. It really makes you think.

[Louise43]

A couple of friends of mine saw Derren Brown live and said he was absolutely brilliant. They waited outside for him after the show to say hi and he spent loads of time with everyone just chatting and having pictures taken. They said he seemed a really nice guy.

Lou