Derren Brown explains how he predicted the lottery (sound is off-sync but it’s the best I can find):
So, in conclusion, he says he used a “wisdom of the crowds” method where people guessed random numbers, then he averaged them together, to get the result. I think we all know that’s bullshit with random numerical systems. At the end he gives another option that he could have had an insider working at the lottery and fixed the machines, but he says that would be illegal and he wouldn’t admit to that if he did it.
Personally I don’t think either are what really happened and the explanation is a much simpler trick — I’m a bit disappointed that Darren said he was going to reveal how he did it, but didn’t.
Or did he? What do you think?
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62 Comments
Complete nonsense. That’s not even a reasonable attempt at an explanation. If the lottery worked by having a person ‘randomly’ pick numbers, and you just hope yours match, then this might work (using some sort of general ‘people seem to like these numbers’ theory). But it’s balls falling out of a machine. What people feel like has no effect whatsoever on balls falling out a machine. I’m going to have to go with the theory suggested by your earlier post: simple, easy-to-do camera tricks.
He totally explained how he did it, and why he had to be evasive by it.
He gave absolutely agonizing detail about how he fixed the lottery.
That’s it.
If he fixed the lottery with heavy balls then he would be in jail!
There is a 4th way, y’see, even though he says there are only 3. (misleading the audience and lowering expectations)
The balls were not seen before they were put in the tube, which leads me to believe that you could have had atomic weights on them and it would have made no difference. The tube left with him. It seems that he changed the balls after the drawing.
HJ
Maybe he switched them when walking in front of them, or something like that. That’s what I mean by saying whatever he did was much simpler than he’s making it appear.
Which usually wouldn’t bother me — that’s part of the experience —but since he said he was going to reveal how he did it, I find that he didn’t actually do that a bit annoying.
I am annoyed that I actually **believed that he would** reveal the secret. I know good and well that, along with not using camera tricks, NOT REVEALING secrets to non-magicians is a key part of the “magician’s oath”.
A thought, though: he said in the ad that he had Four major feats of misdirection planned. I can’t watch the video on my handheld, but did he do, or mention, the other 3?
I have no problem with magicians not revealing their secrets — unless they say they are going to and then don’t. Instead of being impressed, I feel tricked.
Even bamboozled.
The fact that his prediction wasn’t revealed until after the draw was known implies that no actual prediction was made. The trick was in getting the right numbers to be revealed…
I agree the very fact that he did the calculations himself and not tell the people what numbers they chose. Also in the case with the much heavier balls he did not reveal the numbers before the lottery.
This is a dead giveway that he the numbers on the balls did not exist yet.
A false wall with a small slit behind the balls and a stick to put the numbers on would be the simplest low tech method I guess.
Camera trick would end his carreer of illusionist since that is cheating.
Tell that to Criss Angel
Yeah, that whole “leagal right to reveal the numbers first” thing would kind of be bullshit since it’s supposedly completely random and therefore no one could reveal the numbers first. I suppose the reason could have been that since he was sure he’d get it right, if he revealed his answer first everyone watching live would have chosen his numbers and there would have been millions of winners. And that would be bad.
That explanation was a complete red herring.
If I were to do it I would use a split screen with a video overlay shot earlier. That way someone places the balls as they are being called and you simply switch over when you walk to the other side. Any inconsistency in the images are masked by the constant movement of the camera.
But what do I know? Apparently we are wired to believe any old rubbish.
Split screen trick isn’t Derren’s style. He’s a magician. Of course he could have done it that way, but that would be lame IMO. ;)
Lame but still the best way to do it and get 3 million plus viewers. The maths explanation and heavy balls were misdirection from a simple camera trick. IMHO ;)
More likely for some kind of slight of hand.
The whole set up is just right for a split screen trick if he chose to do it that way. Everything about the show was consistent with what one would need to do to pull that off.
The lottery drawing happened before the balls were chosen. All we see is the video of the lottery drawing, we don’t know when it occurred.
The people who guessed the numbers knew the drawing had already happened and were paid and part of the trick.
Too many people, and they did not know the end result.
It was transmitted live on the other channel so people could swap from channels to see if the video got delayed. It could also be a inside job when the lottery was really drawn but again that would be cheating and the end of his carreer of magician.
I think he has done a disservice to the cause of reason and education by teaching all of Britain a bogus theory of how math works. What an enormous disappointment both entertainment-wise and ethically. He’d better have something up his sleeve by the end of the events series which reverses last night’s disgrace.
He is a magician, fooling people with hocus pocus stuff is part of the act.
Fooling people with hocus pokus where they understand he’s an illusionist. In presenting himself as coming bearing a mathematical theory with predictive powers and involving them in a process of believing that their abilities to tap into their subconscious can generate special knowledge if they do so collectively is tampering with their beliefs about reality. It’s a reckless disregard for these people’s minds, a willingness to fill their heads with bullshit while pumping them up to believe they did something truly and really magical.
If you’re against religion, you should be against this.
He not only did this to these people but to all viewers. It is part of the act.
You don’t want to see a illusionist that explains a perfect scientific story, you want to be fooled, to be teased how he did this.
Unlike religion he never claimes that you just have to believe. He tells you that it is a trick.
I agree, camels. As a magician, he couldn’t REALLY give away the secret on national (international?) TV, (although I’ll admit, I fell for it when he said he would) but he should have faked a DIFFERENT reason. Teaching millions of people that probability works in this magical way is just as bad as teaching the “Law of Attraction” or any other paranormal BS.
You do have to lie as a magician, but the lie should always be “I can do magical things”, NEVER should it be”YOU can do magical things.”
I dunno, I’m pretty much with Olaf on this one. Deception is at the heart of nearly all entertainment, and an entertainer cannot be held responsible for the abject credulity of his or her audience, especially if the particular milieu is one where the deception is explicit (such as in performance magic).
like Uri Gellar’s “performance magic”?
I finally watched the video, and I want to be sick. The guy at around the 3:15 mark said something like “all of us believing it could happen, made it happen” or some Law of Attraction sounding malarkey. Derren made him think that, no matter what disclaimers he threw out there. Hell, even the sellers of the most egregious snake oil put the proper disclaimers on their packaging, but then they fool people and harm people. That’s what Uri Jr. just did in that video.
So the guy doesn’t have a good handle on how causation and probability works, and he’s taking cues on what to believe regarding these weighty issues from a stage magician.
Some people can’t be helped, and I can’t bring myself to blame the magician.
You don’t have to; I can blame the magician for you. You don’t encourage woo, and then go looking for love from skeptics. Not this one, anyway.
For FSM’s Sake, he repeatedly encouraged people to try this for themselves. As a person who used to sell lotto tickets in a very poor part of Tennessee, I have seen the harm that people can do themselves with lottery gambling without any outside encouragement. Any nudge you give people toward thinking that their “subconscious” will guide them to the right numbers is adding wood to a fire that you should be dousing. Magical Thinking is easy enough for gamblers, they do NOT need any help in the mind-manipulation department.
Good point on the Gambling issue! – It may have been a good trick overall, if you want to look at the big picture with the view that a “Magician” should always leave his audience wondering – even tho it seems probable that it was camera trickery. But shouldn’t people with this kind of audience exposure & potential influence over at least some of those people take responsibility for this, just like any celebrity?
An alternative explanation would have been more benign, & maybe even more plausible, hence a better “over-all trick”?
Assuming that the order of the balls mattered, and no balls could be counted twice, the formula for all the varieties would be: nPermutation6, where n is the number of possible balls. For instance, if there are 50 numbers to choose from, the formula would be 50Permutation6, or 1/32441381280.
Why are people getting so worked up about this? Derren’s an entertainer. As soon as he listed the three ways that he could have performed the trick on the show I knew that it was none of them; misdirection is the magician’s creed. Derren likes psychological trickery and the main recipients were the 24 volunteers and the gradual “improving” results designed to reinforce a belief that something genuinely out-of-this-world was happening and they were part of it. People complaining about his not revealing the exact means by which he worked the live lottery-predicting portion of the trick are deluding themselves if they really thought he ever would.
The one place he does not misdirect (lie) is near the very end when he says “it was a trick.” What I have learned from the magicians I know is that the secret to most tricks is a simple one, and once you know it, the elegance of seeing the illusion performed is lost. So, that was a good trick! The one’s who are wrongly cheated are the 24 dunderheads who are left believing that they were actually part of the solution.
He used REAL magic. Thats how he did it.
lol
The balls were replaced when part of the screen stopped moving about 5:51
here are some screenshots of that very moment:
http://pokazywarka.pl/dupaanieprzewidywanie/
Bluescreen/chroma key technique might have been used as well…
Derren is always honest about the fact that he is going to lie to you. I agree neither the wisdom of crowds nor the elaborate fixing of the draw are really likely.
He showed us, with the mouse and the knife, that he was changing the rules mid stream, so I agree that there was no prediction until after the draw and that is when he did something clever.
I will defer regarding this to my mantra:
what is more likely – that the whole order of the universe should suddenly come to a halt – or that someone should tell a lie?
Anyone else notice how at about the 4 minute mark he listed 3 options, and only 3 options (1. Fake a lottery ticket, 2. Genuinely predict the numbers, 3. Fix the machine) a la C.S. Lewis (Lord, Liar, Lunatic)? Couldn’t have been 2 out of the 3, so it must have been the third… I’m disappointed that he said he would reveal how he did it and actually didn’t, but in the end I guess he said it all- ‘It was just a trick.’
p.s. I’m pretty sure I’m not the first to mention this, but some sort of preview function for comments on this blog would be awesome ; )
I think the explanation boing boing offered is probably the best. It was camera trickery. (Half the screen was a still image, while someone put in the right balls)
Question isn’t how he predicted the results of the lottery, but how he got the numbers of a lottery shown on his tv onto his balls. He’d like us to add “without the audience knowing” but since many television magicians regularly use accomplices as audience members, I’m not sure we should go that far.
Since the camera is cutting in and out a lot and the timing of the lottery is uncertain (was it live or taped?), it’s all too easy to make the trick appear much harder than it possibly was. Do we mentally assume that the balls weren’t fixed off camera?
I can think of a dozen possible explanations from trick balls, a delay in the lottery announcement, a totally faked lottery draw, slight of hand to swap the balls, camera trickery, an audience that’s in on the gag or possibly many more. The wisdom of the crowd is a great misdirection.
This reminds me of a video that Brown made for other magicians where he teaches some of his mentalism tricks. In one classic trick where he uses “mental powers” to guess the cards in a deck, he says that he’s either reading the person’s mind or memorized the order of the deck, ha ha ha. It’s a great misdirection because that’s exactly what he did – memorized the first dozen cards in the deck! Lesson is that the explanation a magician gives is meant to trick you, sometimes in unexpected ways. You can’t even trust them to always lie :)
Hehe. “On to his balls”. Hehehe.
People keep saying that they should have known he would lie, but I don’t think so. Plenty of magicians like to reveal some of their tricks as a publicity stunt. Just look at Penn and Teller.
exactly. And he has videos online where he shows how he does stuff.
And it’s not so much the lie about how he did it—I don’t care about that except in that it’s false advertising for ratings—but it’s the miseducation that is socially irresponsible. Keep your secrets or tell your lies, but don’t help delude people for real. That’s just maddening.
Sometimes Derren reveals how he did the trick, and sometimes he lies. It is all part of the effect. I think he said he’d show “how *you* can” do it too, which is not the same as how he did it
OK folks – first off Derren is an entertainer – a magician and as such his deceptions are for entertainment and not necessarily education.
Secondly surely any individual that really believed that he would ‘tell all’ in his show needs to think carefully about the nature and reality of TV programmes.
Finally Derren’s superb word play and well knoiwn penchant for leaqding folks ‘up the garden path’ needs to be considered. The three options all part of the misdirection – the fact that he did allude to the method in the show BUT NOT when he was apparenty blowing the gaff would be obvious to all who really listened and thought rationally.
The draw was LIVE – no tampering there…
The lottery balls were not switched – no tricks there..
Watch the original 10 minute lottery draw section again… the questions you need to ask can all be found in that…
Alan – The Enigmatist
I’m not saying he has any obligation to educate rather than entertain, I’m saying that he has an obligation not to miseducate under the pretenses of educating. That’s the problem. If he just said, I’m an illusionist and I’m going to lie to you all night and you’re going to wonder what’s really going on, THAT’s entertainment. Saying, “now I’m going to teach you how I did the trick and here’s this mathematical theory and here’s this power of automatic writing and reaching into the subconscious to get truth”, etc. encourages the audience’s natural susceptibilities to superstitious mumbo jumbo.
On the actual broadcast they led with Derren’s standard “Tricks of the Mind” disclaimer that he will employ “magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship”
in other words Derren always opens by saying “at least some of this will probably be lies”
Unfortunately the clip above skips that bit
Totally agree on these points –
The propogation of pseudoscience is a concern professionally, so I take the on board the criticism (I made a similar point on my blog). As a mentalist I find that there can sometimes be a grey line between performance frames and apparent promotion of pseudoscience – but then I don’t command such large audiences nor do I promise to teach the secrets of ‘universal influence’…
Kindest regards
Alan
He lied about revealing the trick. It’s a magician’s job to lie, so I don’t hold it against him ethically. But I do hold this against him professionally.
Tricks of the Mind was on my reading list partly because he claimed elsewhere that a few tricks are revealed in it. I still might read it, but this is worth keeping in mind.
Hi Jeffrey..
True a magician is an ‘honest deciever’…
In terms of the book Tricks of the Mind – if you’re expecting a magicians ‘how to’ book you’ll be disappointed BUT the thinking behind the art of the magician is talked about. It will disappoint devotees of the Masked Magician and You Tube wannabees who want to be given ’secrets’ for free – but as a magician it provides some valuable insights if you read between the lines.
All the best
Alan
I dont know how he did what he said, but a couple of points on the “Wisdom of Crowds” theory come quickly to mind.-First, this theory (as Derren said) comes from 1906, at a country fair where 800 people guessed the weight of an ox, & the average of all the guesses was exactly the oxs’ weight.This is vastly different from a group of people guessing a lottery!-The people at the fair were not in fact “guessing”-they were “estimating a certain property of a tangible thing, of which they had previous experience & knowledge”.It is not a stretch to say that all their guesses would have fallen within a certain range, certainly far less than the odds of predicting a lottery,(44mill, or so).Therefore it is entirely logical to suggest that the average would be very close, if not exactly correct. – as I already said, this is not “guessing”, or “predicting” as Derren said, & therefore is NOT a possible explanation for what he did! – (Think about it!)
- I dont know how he did it, but his explanation is not plausible, & I feel “ripped off”, only because he said he would reveal how he did it!
P.S
I do believe in certain “physic phenomenon”, & what I actually take exception to is that Derren said it was a “trick”, & he would reveal how he did it, & his explanation is not logically plausible.
It was the split-screen. A full explanation is here.
I wish Derren would use his talents to debunk bullshit, rather than propagate it. His Messiah and The System shows were masterpieces.
Oops – explanation link didn’t work:
http://poeljames.googlepages.com/HowDerrenDidIt.html
Thanx David! – Makes total sense, especially the couple of “give-away” slips!
I knew Derrens explanation was B.S. – but was hoping for something better than “Camera Trickery”.
-Im more Ripped Off than before!
yeah, thanks!
While it’s easy to say “Camera tricks” are cheating, having studied the explanation, I have to say this was a LOT more than just a camera trick. It was a very challenging trick, with several aspects, some of which had to be pulled off in real-time with great precision. The very fact that he (very slightly) botched it shows what a difficult set-up it was.
He still gets a HUGE skeptic-fail for the bogus, woo-woo, “wisdom of crowds/collective subconscious” B.S. “explanation”, but at least he has spared me from having to declare him a bad skeptic AND a bad magician.
The trick was awesome, even if it was technically “camera trickery”. If he had left it there, and not promised an explanation, I would be declaring him super-bad-ass right now.
On reflection, I think the promise of an explanation – & giving a false one & still leaving a big question mark may have been part of the overall trick? – (”leave them wondering”) – and the “cleverness” lies within its conception, & not the execution, which if you believe Davids explanation, wasn’t all Derrens’ doing, but all the same maybe should have been flawless given the high professional “stage” on which it was attempted?
But I still think phrankygee s’ previous comment of the potential effect on gamblers is very real – & worrying!
Maybe Derren’s point is that you should always seek truth yourself and not accept answers from authority.
He’s done great work for critical thinking before, I hope he has a better goal here then confusion.
I think it was a simple creative use of the video switcher board. Take a screen shot of the live events, and transition between still, and live camera only half way, most switchers, especially newer ones (which I’m positive they used cause it was broadcast in hi def, you need a newer switcher do that) will allow you to push a “t-bar” up or down to control your fades, or wipes. set a wipe to go from left to right and push the t-bar up halfway. so the balls on the left side of the screen are actually the still image, while the camera doesn’t move and derren remains on the right side of the screen. At that point it’s easy someone walks onstage under the cover of that still image only on the left of the screen (it works in layers on the switcher board, the still image would be the top layer, making anything under it unseen, just like if they finished the wipe, derren would be gone) with a marker, writes on the balls as the numbers are announced, leaves as Derren finishes scribbling on his card. You then transition back so the half of the still screen is off the broadcast, the numbers are on the balls and they are the correct numbers. “It was just a trick” didn’t say what type of trick.
While the production crew is doing all the work, Derren talks fast, babbles about whatever he can, to distract you from seeing any reflections or any studio “nat sounds” of the guy writing on the balls. We pulled stuff like that all the time at work, we make instructional videos and doing this trick, you can have someone standing on set broad as day, and never see him. stick out his hand, wipe just a bit back to just the camera, and his hand appears from “thin air”
I’m proud of myself. I wrote all that before I looked at DavidMMW’s post. go me.
Isn’t the fact that people are talking about it this much the achievement in itself, that people are really trying to work out how he did it. The guy is a genius who knows how to manipulate thought and opinion. Let’s hope he never starts a cult!
If Im not mistaken – (Im in Australia, so Im not totally “up to speed” on all of Derrens’ exploits) – isn’t his next stunt supposed to involve him “hypnotising” his T.V audience?
- If it is, this could be seen as a step in the direction to further “manipulate though & opinion” of the public in a direct way!