Perception and Reality | Jörg Alexander | TEDxIUBH

breakthrough I remember the very first bigger show that I did in front of what like felt like 8,000 people probably were 80 and I was carrying all my homemade props to the front plywood and my knees were literally shaking literally I had no control it was amazing and then and then a great thing happened I started to do my performance and I was suddenly completely calm I knew I'm home this this is it and that was at the age of maybe 14 so I I consider myself to be very very lucky having found my my

calling in life being I mean I'm an engineer also at least I studied it but then I turned the full-time magician and and speaker and you know what I find curious and this is part of the reason why I'm here I think it's very curious that people like me actually do have a job yeah in I mean in our age of technological marvels there come people like me who take a piece of rope some playing card some some banknotes and suddenly your mind goes bazoom what's happening and and using illusions that in part are several

hundred years old I think that that tells us a lot about how we how we work as people the title reality and other illusions and let's start to look by what is it a magician - what is a magic trick really and a magic trick would be like well the definition I can give you is probably the best buy by one of the great masters over our art Arturo de Ascanio from Spain he said a magic trick is the contrast between an initial and the final situation what does he mean by that let's use a

practical example standing in front of you with both my sleeves rolled up a 10 euro note in my hands that would be that would define our initial situation you can see both empty hands you can see the note I very slowly folded now five euros two euros 50 1 euro 25 if I fold it again half of that but once I unfold it the 10 becomes 20 the 20 becomes 50 the 50 becomes 100 and that again with the sleeves rolled up you like that one well that that is the definition of the final situation

what makes the magic trick is the space in between because these are obviously real situations you saw the 10 uses you see the hundred what happened in between is that your mind the way you perceive the world the way you learned about the world doesn't have a really good explanation how we came from A to B because of course there's a secret see so I went from A to C and from C to B but but that's that's just the method the interesting thing is then a magic trick obviously has not so much to do

with what happens here in reality a magic trick has a lot to do with what happens to you as a spectator as an audience and let's have a more better example of this and for this I would like to call on a courageous gentlemen this is loris somewhere in the audience loris if everyone gives you an encouraging applause please join me here on stage Laurie's ladies and gentlemen fight thanks a lot and Laurie I should say that your help is very much appreciated in fact I would like to make you a little gift of this

brand-new 100 I would like to cannot afford it really but Butler is for the moment let's pretend this is yours yep pretend because if some some cheating is is about to happen here it in case and chances are pretty good then it's not your money you don't have to be concerned Laurie so I'm not sure if it happened to you I'm sure to someone here in the audience or other people watching you're in a foreign country busy marketplace you want to pay you don't have the proper money with you suddenly out of nowhere there are

some very helpful people saying I change for you make good rate yeah you heard about this or something and your life experience Laurie's will tell you that you should not trust these people completely rather not at all but then you say okay but if i watch really closely so let's try what what happens but in this case it's not me that will count the money we make it even fare at you will count the money so please one by one onto my hand this is a one two three four five six seven eight nine and

ten and Laurie's for those sitting further away this is feels like real money they were all sinking there's an envelope there could I ask you to have a look inside make sure it's empty keep the envelope open for a moment the notes counted by Lori's one two three four five six seven eight nine and ten at the tips of my fingers right into the envelope if you hold it for a moment Lloris usually you would say a hundred for a hundred a fair deal good rate no but if and that's my point if this was

happening in real life somewhere in the street at this point Loris would have lost ten euros let's check loris is there anything left inside honestly there is thanks and yet these are just one two three four five six seven eight and nine but I can feel a certain skepticism in the audience you notice when there's no applause yeah so now you say no this is not possible baby he's so close we've watched so close Lisa's still 10 he only makes us believe it's like no no no llores you yourself you can count on to my

hand it's really just mine this is 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 where we're going to 4 6 8 anybody know this guy's no llores this okay I mean let's not fight over 10 euros or 20 I have an idea I have an ideas we have some more lures if you hold your left hand like this for a moment please let's just take one of these and say this is number one okay and we add like two three four five six seven eight and nine and then we put one more from here so

now we have a 10 again or 11 and maybe you count on to the the bullet I I don't touch anything there's 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 now what is this again that you're studying in connects well Doris this is not about you just let me put the round aside the rest because sometimes you know sometimes you think it's just seven here I mean it feels like seven if if you check they're all single yes but but the let's count just to make sure so if you hold this everyone can see so this

is one this is two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seven I knew there was one more eighteen for 100 very good rate loris but all my money but the applause that we care thanks so much thank the loris honestly I love my job just see me in a bank it's now what does this example tell us and I think it's a very important point something that you know intellectually I guess but something that even though we know it we don't really believe from the bottom of our

heart what just happened here in stage Lloris and I experienced I mean it was the same situation but we experienced it completely differently I hope because Loras was wondering where the hell does all the money come from when more importantly where does it go to where as I was busy doing it so I knew exactly what was going on I was actually managing but the point I want to make is this is not just true for this situation or for you as an audience this is true whenever there are two or more people experienced in

one situation because there's always that that personal point of view defined by the knowledge you have by your preferences by your cultural background whenever two people experience the same situation it's not the same for them the the result the impact on each of them is different and this is something we should know yeah we know sometimes yeah there's this quarrel starting over this but yet we cling to our own view and saying yeah well he's wrong yeah not me and in fact we're both wrong or everyone is because we are not made to perceive reality

if it is out there somewhere perfectly we are not made for that we're not capable for this instead instead what we do and the magic shows us this we have a model of the world in our head a model of what's happening around us that we create and that we frantically try to keep up with what's outside through all the input that we get with our senses but again this is defined by our background our knowledge by so many things and there's a very important point here that I cannot stress enough this model and and

there a lot of students here this model who is responsible for this model don't blame your teachers don't blame your teacher your your leaders be they political or religious or whatever of course they shape your model they influence your model science all these things but the responsibility for the model is yours because you have to choose who are the people that I trust and you have the responsibility to check this model make sure is it still more or less fitting for what is going on out there and again the important point whoever controls the model

controls you so it's your responsibility you cannot say are all these other people did it end and we live in in the day where we have drastic there you go and and we live in in in in an agent but I guess it's always been like this where this is used against people people with power know how to manipulate the models of other people so that is something you should be aware of let's use another experiment we're not just one person can participate but everyone here it's a simple math question I have a paper bag

that I wrote on the train this has let's see exactly exactly 172 pages and a double page in this book has I would say about 600 words okay 172 pages 600 words for double page question to you more or less how many words are in this book but careful there's a little catch there's a little trick involved so I can see some of you are going calculating some of you say leave me alone but of course what you what you should not do is just say oh six hundred times a hundred seventy-two because it's a

double page that has six hundred words so so the intelligent answer is okay one page has about three hundred so you have three hundred times 170 is around 52,000 whatever works very good answer very intelligent answer but completely wrong because actually I can tell you precisely how many words are in these books because I counted them the number of words in this book is 575 because the page you're seeing here is the only page in this book that has words on them all the other pages are blank now if you feel a little cheated at

this point and I can see the body reactions people go oh the question is who did the cheating because I told you this book has 107 272 pages which is correct and I told you one double page has about 600 words which is also true all the rest you add it yourself so you deceived yourself which by the way is a very useful mechanism of our brain that that is helpful for our survival because we know what a book is we know what a car is we know what a what a what a mobile phone

is and what you can do with it this is all stored within us and and this is very this it's a fabulous mechanism just like like creating this model in our head is a fabulous feature that no computer can even dream to to assimilate at least at this point but it is prone to error because it works most of the time but in some cases it doesn't and what this obviously very specially crowd the example shows us not only are we unable to properly perceive the world that is around us we also project our own

expectations out into this world our own belief systems influence the world that we create in our head changes the world around us it's like a filter that you put over a photograph so if we put all this together what does that mean that means the world as we perceive it the world that we create quite effortlessly I must say we've been doing this our entire life the world that we create for us in our head is an illusion it's not true what are the consequences of that well one consequence is that that the way you

think about the world what is happening around you has a profound influence on that world so I can I cannot recommend enough a fabulous talk by David Foster Wallace the the writer maybe after the talk you you should go to the internet no don't go run to the internet and search for this is water by David Foster Wallace a fabulous speech where he talks about this especially the the everyday challenge of how you think about the world because it's your choice knowing all these things and I believe very strongly gives us choice it may shake

us in the first moment because we're so used to the illusion be we've been using this since since our mind started to form so this for us is reality but it isn't so knowing this gives us choice it gives us choice to question our experiences gives us choice to question our world and you know the best thing about this and I have to say this is a magician changing how we think about the world changes or world just like real magic and if that is not a breakthrough I don't know thank you very much and

thanks to Lois