Jeff Goldblum is back with his always inquisitive and highly entertaining mind for Season 2 of the Disney+ series The World According to Jeff Goldblum. This time, he returns to uncover the secrets in the world of dogs, monsters, and fireworks, to name a few. One particular topic that pique our curiosity was the world of magic.
Whether it is optical illusions, magicians, or even witchcraft, Goldblum examines why we seem to be amazed and mesmerized with magic. In one particular segment of the episode, Goldblum tries to unravel how people are fooled by magic tricks. While watching Penn and Teller perform the classic ball in the cup trick, the science behind how the brain processes the trick was offered by Dr. Stephen Macknik and Dr. Susana Martinez-Conde.
Dr. Macknik and Dr. Martinez-Conde are the founders of Neuromagic. Since 2007, they have been using magic tricks as cognitive illusions to understand how the brain processes cognition. Simply put, they study how magic and its principles can be applied to our behavior. Luckily, Geek Anything was able to pick the brains of these neuroscientists for a little in-depth prestidigitation demystification.
Geek Anything (GA): How did you start the discipline of Neuromagic?
Dr. Macknik: When we started working on this, we’ve never even been to a major magic show before. We studied visual illusions and we were asked to run a conference in Las Vegas on consciousness, which is our field of study, and how consciousness develops in the brain. We thought: how can we bring the public interest into our conference? While driving up and down the strip in Las Vegas, we kept passing by magician signs and we realize the magicians are illusionists of cognition and attention and awareness and that by studying them, we could actually get into this. So when we started this project, they joined us in our conference to talk about what they know about cognition and to compare what cognitive scientists know about cognition. We realized that it was a really important field and we really didn’t know much about it going into it. We were basically very happily surprised by both the overlap
GA: Why do you think people love magic so much?
Dr. Macknik: There’s a general effect that’s known in psychology, in which people and all animals are attracted to things that are not normal and the novelty where things happen that you’re not expecting to happen. So I think that when you see an illusion, a visual illusion or a cognitive illusion like magic tricks, they’re interesting because they’re aside from your usual experience in life. They are aware the physical reality doesn’t match the perception and they know it and that is something that needs to be answered. It demands your attention. So, I think that is a large part of why.
Dr. Martinez-Conde: There are also some interesting parallels between magic and humor. The same reasons that attract us to magic are the same reasons people are attracted to jokes. Something that somebody pointed out that you can experience yourself is that when people watch a magic show, at the end of it they laugh even though it’s not necessarily funny. There’s something that appears or disappears magically but it is this element of surprise that you also get with the punchline of a good joke. That seems to evoke the sensation of mirth. This is not very well understood, and it’s something that I’m personally very curious about. We don’t really have an answer yet but there are some intriguing elements there.
GA: What can magic teach us about the brain?
Dr. Macknik: Magic tells us what the brain is actually doing because it’s where the physical reality doesn’t match perception. So if we see something in a certain way during a magic trick or during a visual illusion, we can know what the brain is actually doing at that time and not the way that it’s not just parroting what’s actually happening in the real world. That gives us a clue that we know the brain is actually doing something and there’s a limited number of things the brain can actually do, so it tells us what the building blocks of all cognition are.
Dr. Martinez-Conde: Magic provides more tools in our toolkit to understand the cases in which perception is very different than reality. We almost never have a situation in where reality and perception are in complete correspondence. what magic and other illusions do is give us examples in which this discrepancy is really great. Then we can use them in the laboratory to try to understand what’s going on, not only during the magic show itself but in many times in your life.
GA: What surprises you about how illusions affect the brain?
Dr. Martinez-Conde: Something that actually surprises us today is when you realize that some very simple sleight of hand modulations are incredibly effective in tricking our perception. Like, if they told you something about them in advance you would never think that that should work but it does. That reveals some very interesting aspects of how our brain operates, not just at a magic show but outside in normal everyday conditions.
GA: What would you recommend for people who really want to try to figure out how a magic trick is done?
Dr. Macknik: (laughing) We are sworn to secrecy.
Dr. Martinez-Conde: Well I think I can make a general recommendation. I think that focusing is the very worst thing that you can do so if you can, try to not pay attention. Just let your mind wander a bit. Let your eyes wander. That would be your best bet at catching something. Unfortunately, magicians are very engaging and are really good at exactly where and when they want you to pay attention.
GA: OK, my last question. Can you finally resolve the conflict of whether that famous black dress is white and gold or blue and black?
Dr. Macknik: There is no way to know. Your brain has three different colored cells in its eye to look at the world and all the millions and millions of different colors that you see are based on comparing those three things, the context and understanding of the light source, and the environmental conditions that you’re in. So the brain is just basically guessing all the time what color anything is, so there’s no good answer.
Dr. Martinez-Conde: I can give a different answer. I would say with that famous dress, people with normal vision look at the dress, while the dress is illuminated by white light, and if they have a healthy color vision, they are going to see that address is black and blue. Now, what does that mean because like Steve said, color is constructed in our brain and that dress looks like black and blue under white light for human beings. Probably to bees or fish, depending on the species, it might look very different. It’s not necessarily the case of their perception is better than ours or the other way around. Color is really a concept. We can talk about wavelengths, but color perception is really something that we make up.
Season 2 of The World According To Jeff Goldblum premieres tonight, November 12th, on Disney+.
