Penn and Teller's Lab Scam [video] (1990)

Yep that's exactly how I interpreted it ... not because people are adhering to some sacred oath given deep in cavern in a secret location ... just that someone invented something new and unique, they are rightfully earning some money from that effort, and you could potentially destroy the whole thing simply by posting too much information about it. As you said, that would certainly be a "dick move", and since a lot of people don't want be that, they don't do that. In the end it seems to be pretty effective.

I still want answers to some of the tricks that I've seen on Penn and Teller's show. Some of them do come across as impossible no matter what way I try to think about it.

Dani DaOrtiz comes immediatly to mind ... no clue how it's done but he's pretty funny. This particular routine has various elements that each seem to be impossible.

And honestly, I don't want to know how it's done. It's magic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_KcQt0z-eE

Teller: What’s the end goal for any work of art? The answer is it’s not one thing. In almost every work of art there is on one level—and this is the level at which magic is, I think, the most fundamental—at which you must amaze the audience. When you’re an actor, you must, for the moment you’re there, convince the audience that you are possessed by the spirit of this character. And there is a level in which you go, “Wow, I really thought for that moment, that the character onstage was Hamlet.” That amazement is the bottom line of any work of art.

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/09/penn-and-teller-f...

Or am I thinking of someone else?

So cool to find magicians here on HN. I'm a (very) amateur magician, or maybe more correctly someone very interested in magic.

Do you and your wife perform together? Are there any clips of yours to watch anywhere?

> The reason we don't "reveal" is purely artistic.

Yes, this is something that Penn also often says, and it's changed my thinking about this topic. In general his morality is very inspiring to me, and especially his moral thinking about magic and performance in general. It's been something that's bothered me over the years - is it really ok to "lie" or "mislead" people for performance reasons? Or to keep secrets from them?

I especially appreciate how little tolerance Penn has for people who do any kind of performance that leaves people with an incorrect impression at the end. This actually changed my thinking about all the people doing the "I'm using psychology to manipulate you" bits, which as we both know are usually just magic tricks with different patter.

IIRC, Penn once said that a long time ago, they would perform seances, while fully informing the audiences that nothing they're doing is supernatural and there's no actual spirits being summoned; just that they're using the same techniques that con-men mediums use. No matter what they prefaced their performances with, or assured after the performance, many members of the audience didn't believe that these weren't supernatural events, and would believe that they actually communicated with spirits. For that reason, Penn said, they stopped doing them permanently.

Edit: Found the interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PltJpL1C2s&t=8m12s (8:12)

Granted, those are two major benefits that occur as a result of the show, I still wouldn't way they are the "point" of it. The intended audience is not "people who want to see an unfamiliar young magician", and a TV network wouldn't air something just to get modern video of acts. Unlike magic, in this case I don't think there is a trick going on ... the point of it is to amaze an audience and the formula is "try to fool us". As a result, you have many unknown magicians who are trying to make a name for themselves, and a modern recording.

It may be the point of the show to Penn and Teller themselves, but not to the audience.

> Very, very, very, few people make a living selling tricks

Making a living ... yes, that would take a lot of $50 props for your unique creation to be sold consistently. The number of people who are magicians is already a relatively small group, and the amount in that group who do it for a living is smaller still.

I agree that being able to Google the methods of someone's unique new trick may not cause them financial ruin. At the same time, it may have some impact. The good news here being there is a good chance that the relatively small number of people who would even bother to try to find that answer are likely just to want to satisfy their curiosity and then move on, making them unlikely to have any impact at all.

In the end, to me, it comes down to those magicians that for their own reasons don't want something they probably worked hard to perfect, that may have not existed before, and dedicated a lot of time practicing, to show up on a website.

To me, it's that group that causes people to not want to post stuff online about a routine. If you are unsure if the magician is ok with that idea, then why bother? Let them post it if they want, or sell a book explaining it.

Penn and Teller do reveals, but they explain in many cases why that particular trick is being revealed, and then often add the additional step of doing it again in a different way. Taking a common trick that has been around forever and making people think about it again. Or, its one of those tricks where the answer is so widespread for so long, that it doesn't really matter. Many may not have seen it, and will find it entertaining, but nobody will be upset if yet another person knows how it's done.

I am pretty sure it's mostly "I don't want someone else to steal this." Generally, I'm pretty unconcerned about telling people unimplemented ideas. If they want to rearrange their life to "steal" my idea, good for them. But they probably won't be able to execute it as well, so it's not really a concern I have. But, magic is tough... you want to have new material for your acts, and if someone beats you to the punch, you don't get paid. So I see why magicians are paranoid. But if we get a new generation of Penns and Tellers, I'd personally be happy.

There's actually less to learn than you might think. The vast majority of magic comes down to a handful of basic principles. What the magician adds is showmanship, and a butt-ton of practice.

Once you know the basic principles, you can usually figure out the tricks. It might take multiple viewings -- which is part of the reason that it's less impressive to explain the trick. Once seen, it's hard to un-see it. Even performing the same trick twice identically gives the audience a huge opportunity to figure out what to look for.

What the magician really wants is your respect for how much work went into making it work out. The trickiness is usually not that big of an insight. The hard part is that it takes hours and hours and hours to learn to, say, deal a card from the bottom of the deck while making it look exactly as if it were drawn from the top. It's taking a deeply unnatural motion and making it look as if it were a different, natural motion.

So from the magician's point of view, you really would be disappointed to hear "All I did was to put your card on the bottom of the deck and deal it out." It's easy to describe and hard to do -- the least rewarding kind of skill.

Most magicians already know how everybody else's tricks are done. Stealing tricks isn't really the issue. What they really want to do is steal the trick and make it their own -- which may involve elaborate construction. Many magicians are pretty competent engineers, and the big acts all have a team of engineers in their workshop.

So really, if you want to know how the trick is done, go read some magic books. There are fewer secrets than you think. Once you've got the basics, watching a magic act is like solving a puzzle. It's more fun than having them tell you the solution. And you can really respect the effort that went into making it happen.

The person still feels that they made a choice, even though they didn't..

edit: a more serious answer is that this is an escape trick, and generally when you do an escape trick:

1) The magician is doing the escaping 2) You _show the escape_

In this case, the volunteer is basically just shoved into the water and (presumably) drowns. The audience is left to _infer_ that there was an escape, if they choose to, or I guess they could infer that Penn and Teller are cold blooded murderers and got away with it. Either inference would be quite the good trick.

- At the end of the trick, there's a reveal that wraps things up. In the case of escapes, it would be showing the magician safe and not actually drowned or eaten by sharks, etc.

- The "volunteer" is just there to be a surrogate for the audience, to verify some things, they're not _really_ involved in the trick

- You must hide that the volunteer is a plant when they are (they're not always). They couldn't do a lot of that stuff to some random person, so this rule is broken.

- The magician would generally not talk about eg how Houdini would have done that trick (even if I think they're intentionally mis-stating how Houdini would have done it, for most tricks there'd be absolutely no reason to use picks, you'd use a key or a faked lock or a faked locking mechanism, because why not).

It's an anti-trick because they're doing everything the wrong way around. The volunteer is the one that does the dangerous part, the magician isn't doing anything, the volunteer is obviously not a volunteer, the "trick" doesn't actually visibly show anything magical happening (visually, you just watched a murder essentially, no escape ... you only know it's an escape because they _probably_ didn't really just murder somebody for a show), and they "told" you how the trick was being done.

All against the basic rules of magic. Perfect for Penn and Teller, they love playing meta games and having fun with the rules of magic.

I've seen 1969 more often, and I'm in a timezone synced with UTC. (as well as having that as the timezone on all my servers)

One I remember and found funny was that one time Penn saw Rob talking to someone, and Rob asked for their phone number. From Penn’s vantage point he sees Rob pick a pen and paper and mimics writing the phone number, but doesn’t write anything at all. When he questions Rob about it he says something to the effect of “Oh, I can just memorize a phone number without a problem, but if I say that out loud they’ll think I’m blowing them off or I’m not really interested in the number, so it’s easier to just fake write it”.