How does she read minds?

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Just asking?

Many of the techniques of mentalism are described here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentalism#Techniques

I didn't watch the video, for several reasons, but my guess is that her techniques aren't particularly different from those of other accomplished mentalists. If there was a complete and accurate description of the most impressive techniques in the public domain, the mentalists probably wouldn't sell so many tickets, and the fun would be spoiled.

I anticipate that mentalists use several lines of questioning to increase the chance of solving an unknown. However, I have tried to use the same line of questions and I couldn't never possibly guess the names or answers.

I do encourage watching Suhani Shah, my conclusion is she either set this up prior with the host or she really has psychic abilities.

Short answer: She doesn't.

Ok so how?

There are many tricks “mentalists” employ to do what they do. The woman in the video said that a mentalist is a magician who uses people instead of props. Like other forms of magic tricks, it comes down to trickery, illusion, being able to pick up on small details, leading people to give themselves away or to give some desired response, acquiring information in advance, lies and fraud, etc.

With the passcode on the phone, she could’ve been helped along with the smudges on the screen and, maybe, where the guy’s eyes appeared to be looking if she didn’t have him secretly filmed unlocking his phone before the show. (I won a game once due to picking up on where someone - my brother - was looking. The game centered on guessing which card containing a written statement a person would choose among various possibilities. I correctly surmised that my bro would look more at the card he liked the most.)

There are lots of methods out there people use, so it’s hard to say which technique(s) she employed on every trick.

There’s plenty of debunking information to be found although it often goes ignored because believing in magic is more fun. At any rate, YouTube still has a fair amount of debunking videos which may be useful. I’ve watched some of Derren Brown’s. This short one is quite entertaining:

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 28 Feb 2025, 1:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

^
I've enjoyed a lot of Derren Brown's shows. There was one in which he converted an atheist to Christianity - and then had to tell her it had all been a trick. On another show he somehow got a rather racist redneck to take a bullet for an illegal immigrant. Of course it wasn't a real bullet but the guy thought it was. Of course it might not all have been as impressive as it looked, but until I find out how he did it all, it remains very entertaining stuff. Sometimes he fully explains his tricks. He showed a film where he tossed a coin about 20 times and id came up heads every time. The trick was that he'd just filmed thousands of failed attempts until by chance he got one to work.

What I like about Derren Brown is that he admits he has no psychic powers and that it's all clever fakery. I also like that he exposes fake spirit mediums etc. Apparently he doesn't believe any of these faith healers and "psychic" people are innocent of deliberate fraud, because they all use techniques that he's familiar with, which strongly suggests they know exactly what they're up to.

But I think one Victorian guy was innocent. He'd ask his horse to count out the answer to a numerical question by tapping its foreleg on the ground. It usually got the answer right. It turned out that as the horse approached the correct number of taps, the owner would become slightly tense, and the horse would pick up on that and stop counting. So, horses can't count, but they're remarkably good at picking up on certain human emotions. Well, that's the story. I wasn't there at the time to check for myself.

I don't believe anybody can actually read minds to the degree that mentalists seem able to.

^ I watched a lot of those videos from Derren Brown a few years ago, especially when I was going through the process of deconstructing from a cult. Getting to see how and why humans are so easily manipulated and duped into believing nonsense was extremely useful. So often when people don’t know or understand how something was achieved, some form of the god of the gaps is invoked, especially when it nicely aligns with what they want to believe.

I don't think that anyone can read anybody's mind completely.

Yeah the phone code could be observation of smudges on the phone screen (although I woudn't bank my budding magician career on it). But coming up with cold mind reading with one question is pretty impressive. that isn't something one can do with tricks. I am interested in specifics rather than "oh we know its fake".

Last edited by cyberdora on 28 Feb 2025, 8:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Mind reading is currently a hot topic in the autism community - even bigger than Joe Rogan

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroelof ... no-1-spot/

Have you looked into any debunking videos on the topic? If you’re interesting in specifics, it seems like it might be worth investigating on your own. Some people have devoted a lot of time and research into debunking this sort of stuff which is something most of us here haven’t done or, at least, not to the point where it’s easy to demonstrate, especially without visual aids. Derren Brown videos could be a good start.

I don’t think she did a “cold mind read.” Some ideas:

1. It could be entirely fake. We only have the woman’s word to go on that Jason was who she was thinking of. She works in show business, so acting doesn’t seem unreasonable. It may have been encouraged by those behind the camera because of ratings.
2. It could be somewhat faked (i.e. the woman isn’t acting) using some combination of the techniques I mentioned in a previous post or others I haven’t thought of.

I think it’s impossible to know exactly what method she employed unless someone blabs about it. When people pull off stunts like this that aren’t entirely fake, they typically engage in research about people first. The woman was asked a question I found interesting. She was initially asked, not the name of someone she liked, but the name of a crush. That combined with background knowledge and planting references to the crush in some fashion earlier in the day/leading up to the interview as Brown did in the video I posted could’ve led the woman to give a specific response. Interestingly, one of the woman’s coworkers said that she was an “open book.” At any rate, it’s all very complicated to explain, so watching videos on the topic may be more useful.

Speaking of tricks that aren’t performed on informed actors, Shah, like Brown, are professionals who devoted lots of time, study, and practice into perfecting what they do. Comparing our results to theirs isn’t likely to mean much. Shah also appears highly skilled socially which gives her specific advantages that most of us likely don’t have.

Yeah the technique used by Derren Brown to get the guy to choose the Verve song may work some of the time, but its not likely to work all of the time. I also wonder if Brown himself may have staged this for the camera using a confederate?.