Derren Brown: Pushed to the Edge

[Tiberius]

Personally I wasn't talking about the people he hypnotises but some other bit players who were "supposed" to not be in on it.

Like who? My point still stands. I've yet to hear of a single one of the participants from his big events coming forward and selling their story about how Derren secretly paid them to act this or that way.

[robvalue]

Sure, well his comment in the book may well have been a joke. It didn't seem written that way, but maybe he was seeing who would buy it.

You're right, he's probably duped me into thinking he's a lot less mathematically capable than he is.

But I can't be so easily tricked. There's no way he's going to con me into just going out and buying every one of his books and DVDs even if I don't want them. Again.

[Tiberius]

As long as he's entertaining, I'll keep watching him. Honestly, his big stunts are less entertaining these days, and I really love watching his stage shows. His method of selecting audience members (throwing a frisbee, then getting people to throw it again, and again) practically removes all chances of the participants being stooges, so you know what he's doing is genuine trickery.

[robvalue]

Yeah, I have to admit it seems borderline impossible that at least some of the people are stooges. He has me thoroughly confused, which probably means he's a lot smarter than me and has me just where he wants me.

[downbeatplumb]

Personally I wasn't talking about the people he hypnotises but some other bit players who were "supposed" to not be in on it.

Like who? My point still stands. I've yet to hear of a single one of the participants from his big events coming forward and selling their story about how Derren secretly paid them to act this or that way.

The particular incident I am thinking about was on one of his shows when the subject had to control by "thinking" at a person walking down the street, getting them to stop suddenly. The person that stopped did it in a way I would describe as "stage school" over the top lovey acting. Since then I have seen suspicious things time and again in his programmes that make me think that stooges would be the best and possibly only way to do that, but these were not the members of the public but the "random" people they were in some way interacting with if you get the difference. He's still a million times better than dynamo, 90% of whose act is explainable if you've seen any of those magicians secrets revealed programmes.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...-Edge.html

I'm a big fan of Derren Brown, an illusionist who used science and psychology to explore and explain the weirder aspects of the natural world, including how we as humans think and, importantly, how we are suspetible to indoctrination and being led to do things. I'd thoroughly recommend watching his shows, especially the ones where he exposes frauds and charlatans such as psychics (his experiment with cold reading is great).

His most recent show explored the phenomenon of suggestion and social compliance, the idea that people will suspend their convictions, beliefs and morals in order to 'fit in' with the situation around them, leaving them more suspetible to completing tasks that they otherwise wouldn't complete.

This show uses the premise of a charity fundraiser culminating in the subject being given the choice whether to ultimately murder someone to protect both themselves and others from having some other crimes they have committed during the show from being revealed.

Not sure people outside of the UK can access it but quite fascinating (dailymail link is just chock full of criticism which misses the point of the show but has all the info if you can't watch it).

LOFL, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram did this without 100 actors, high-profile celebrities, and groundbreaking special effects more than 50 years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

I really like the idea of pointing out the important truth on the dangers which our human socialization can subject us to, but Brown did absolutely nothing to point out how "easy" this is, therefore his show was completely pointless. Milgram accomplished what he did with no such ludicrous extravagances, which belie Brown's initial premise that he would "show how easy it is" to manipulate somebody to do something out of character for them. What a ludicrous joke it is to suggest that anybody who wants a patsy for their murder would go to so much trouble, and involve so many accomplices and skilled workers to be trusted in making you do their dirty work when there are far less complicated and reliable ways of getting away with anything. Milgrim needed no more than a handful of actors and what looked like battery electrodes to show this! What Brown did to the people he brought into his experiment was pointlessly traumatizing, because the scenario was ludicrously unlikely. In truth it doesn't deserve the title "experiment", that would be plagiarism!

[Reforged]

If its possible to predictably manipulate people to the point they would willingly push someone off a roof then Derren is doing a huge public service by revealing that.
The ramifications are obvious and terrifying.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

If its possible to predictably manipulate people to the point they would willingly push someone off a roof then Derren is doing a huge public service by revealing that.
The ramifications are obvious and terrifying.

Possible doesn't mean likely. It is of course possible and quite likely that you can predictably get someone to push another off a roof, or to torture another to death through electric shocks (as Milgrim showed us a long time ago), but Brown broke all credibility constraints in "Pushed to the Edge". That it works is beside the point - that it would be done this way in the real world, outside that of TV-land and movie special-effects is where the issue lies, which makes what he did to those people who were involved pointless. It's the unrealistic elaborations which Brown resorted to, in the name of entertainment, which cheapened what he did, reducing it to nothing above entertainment.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

The Milgram experiment is known by pretty much everyone. Doesn't make good TV though, which is all this ultimately was aiming to achieve (incidentally I believe Brown has already done a show or segment about Milgrams electrocutions).

[Excited Penguin]

I'm skeptical as to whether the people involved were actors or not. I don't think they'd be allowed to air that kind of thing if they weren't.

Speaking of Milgram, you guys should watch The Experimenter.