Explaining why magic can trick us easily

Taking advantage of gaps in the brain, magicians easily put the audience in.

The magician when performing always seeks to bring us to the experience . very absurd. Like a ball that suddenly disappears, or a person floating in mid-air - things that are logically normal are impossible.

But of course, magic doesn't exist in this world. What we experience is actually very clever psychological tricks, taking advantage of the limitations in how the brain works to deceive awareness .

Genjutsu takes advantage of limitations in the brain to deceive awareness.

And what are those limitations? First, it is how the brain processes visual images. Be aware that visuals are the senses most trusted by the body. It greatly affects people's thoughts and behaviors.

Just like the phrase " Hundred Listening is not the same " - we often only believe in what we see firsthand. However, it turns out that the images we are looking at are not reliable at all. The evidence comes from a phenomenon that many people may have heard about, called "visual illusion".

Visual illusion occurs when images we perceive are deviated from the real world. For example, in the Müller-Lyer illusion below, the two lines are clearly a short one, but are essentially equal.

Müller-Lyer visual illusion.

In fact, almost everything we see today is a visual illusion . The reason is because our brain is very intelligent, and by a very complex process, it can predict and estimate the world around it.

But that is why, what we see is not 100% accurate as what is really happening. There will definitely be errors, and magicians have taken advantage of these errors to perform spectacular performances.

Can be taken for example, the magic screen " missing ball " below. In it, the magician will throw the ball on the air several times, but then the ball suddenly disappears.

The magic screen of the ball disappeared.

Of course, the ball did not go away but was hidden in the magic by the magician. However, what is surprising is that two-thirds of those who see this magic show that they saw the image of a ball leaving the magician's hand on the last throw.

The reason is also because our brain has inadvertently predicted a balloon will fly, but the truth is that none of the balls appear.

Besides, our brain still has a " bug " that has always been thoroughly exploited by magicians, which is the ability to confirm in detail what is happening around.

Most of us believe that we feel our surroundings clearly and vividly to every detail. However, to handle such a large amount of information, we will need a much larger brain than this.

And to be more relevant, people have evolved in a spectacular way: the brain has the ability to choose important details and ignore what is irrelevant. That means things we don't pay attention to, we won't see it. If you don't believe it, watch this video.

Magic videos distract our attention.

Taking advantage of this flaw, magicians easily put the audience in the room with some distracting movements. So you never understand why the ball disappears, the coin can be invisible, or why someone is cut in half and still alive.

That is the magic of magic.