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| rdfs:label | - Orphaned/WMG/Derren Brown
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| rdfs:comment | - (At whom else would it be aimed?) How To Win The Lottery gave two possible explanations for how the trick was done. The "official" explanation is that a group of people were able to predict random numbers that, when averaged out, gave the correct lottery results; the "unofficial" answer was that Derren personally sabotaged the Lottery draw. The official explanation fails because "the wisdom of crowds" requires some level of accuracy from the participants - in the example of guessing the weight of a cow, everyone had a rough idea of how much a cow weighs, and so the fairly small errors above and below would cancel out when the average was taken. The unofficial answer fails because Derren Brown is not Jack Bauer; nor is he MacGyver.
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| abstract | - (At whom else would it be aimed?) How To Win The Lottery gave two possible explanations for how the trick was done. The "official" explanation is that a group of people were able to predict random numbers that, when averaged out, gave the correct lottery results; the "unofficial" answer was that Derren personally sabotaged the Lottery draw. The official explanation fails because "the wisdom of crowds" requires some level of accuracy from the participants - in the example of guessing the weight of a cow, everyone had a rough idea of how much a cow weighs, and so the fairly small errors above and below would cancel out when the average was taken. The unofficial answer fails because Derren Brown is not Jack Bauer; nor is he MacGyver. So we're left with two unsatisfying explanations. But if you look back on the other shows Derren has done, he has had a tendency to give An Aesop about critical thinking. Seance was about how easy it is to fool yourself into thinking you've seen a ghost. Messiah was about not believing things just because they fit your preconceptions. The System had An Aesop about how you shouldn't trust personal experience without looking at the bigger picture. So finally, the prediction: the remaining Events will each have similarly unsatisfying, vaguely supernatural explanations. This will lead to the final episode, in which the audience is called out for believing the explanations given so far; we see the real way the tricks were performed, and everyone learns An Aesop about not leaving answers unquestioned. Further Wild Mass Guessing following How To Control The Nation: The misdirection this time was the importance placed on the video. Any weird-looking clip could have been shown in that slot and had the same effect; the important thing was the hype built up around the video planting a suggestion of how to react when you see it. This is why Derren claims it won't work if it's posted on the internet - you need the whole show to get the effect.
* The effect of Control The Nation is similar to a hypnotist's trick; the blue screen at the end is essentially the hypnotist clicking his fingers. A key mantra of hypnotism is that you can't get the participant to do anything they don't want to; this is not only to assay the fear of people who have watched The Manchurian Candidate too many times, but also because it fundamentally works by making the person receptive and suggestible. Brown does directly state that people acting defiantly aren't going to have the right effect; he also reinforces the positives of those who do. The physical body lock and bearing weight sensations are things that hypnotists employ. And onto How To Be A Psychic Spy. The classified ads really were placed in various papers, but a much stronger bit of suggestion came right as Derren was telling the audience to think of what to draw while showing a picture of the woman's eyes with a circle reflected in them. The iris, pupil and this circle created a set of concentric circles similar to the picture.
* And the reference to Stonehenge?
* Stonehenge is the world's most famous set of stone concentric circles.
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