When a magician is involved there is no choice, and if there is a choice, it doesn't matter. In today's episode we'll take a look at how magicians give you the sensation of free will while controlling your every move and guarantee, by way of a "force", the decisions you make. How important is free will? If you knew everything was already decided, would you still value the sensation? Are there times where you want to guide a decision? If these questions are interesting to you (and that may be a force), listen to today's episode, Magician's Choice.
Hunter Powers: Welcome to The One. I'm your host, Hunter Powers, broadcasting live from our nation's capital, DC proper, Washington, DC. Today's One idea is magician's choice. You should know that when a magician is involved, there is no choice. If there is a choice, then that choice doesn't actually matter. In magic, they use what is known as a force. A force is a method of controlling a choice made by another person, and magician's choice is an example of a force of controlling the choice of another. It is an equivocation, an informal fallacy where a series of words can be interpreted in multiple ways to the magician's advantage.
Hunter Powers: At its most basic, it's a magic trick. I want to give you a few examples, but this is a little bit tricky over audio, yet I'm still going to do my best to try and paint a picture so that you understand what is magician's choice. Let's start with something really simple. Imagine you're sitting directly across from me and I place two playing cards between us. There's a card on your left and there's a card on your right. On the left, let's call that card A. On your right, let's call that card B. I know both cards. My goal is to get you to choose card A, the card that's on your left. I've placed two cards in front of you. The card on your left is card A. The card on your right is card B. Again, what I'm going to do is get you to exercise your own free will and choose card A.
Hunter Powers: Here's how it works. I tell you, select one card. It can be either card, card A or card B. Which would you like? Go ahead. Think for yourself. Imagine these two cards. Which one would you choose? I've said choose one of these two cards, card A or card B. Which do you choose? Perhaps you say card a. I say go ahead, take card A and I'll take card B. In this scenario, remember I wanted you to choose card A. You didn't know that. I did. I wanted it. Through random luck, you have chosen card A.
Hunter Powers: Let's play this scenario again. I placed the two cards in front of you, one on the left, one on the right. The one on the left is card A. The one in the rightest card B. I say choose one of these two cards. Remember, I want you to choose A. You don't know that. This is what's going on in my head. Choose A, choose A, choose A, choose A, but you can't hear that because it's inside my head. You're staring and you're thinking and you say out loud card B. I choose card B. I say are you sure? Are you really sure that you want card B? You could change your opinion. You have complete free will in this. No one is forcing anything. Which card are you choosing? You say, no, I'm sticking with it. I choose card B.
Hunter Powers: I say very well. You have chosen card B for me and that means that you take card A and you see you've ended up with card A. The equivocation or the informal fallacy or the magician's choice was when I said select one of the two cards. I didn't tell you what was going to happen after you selected one of the two cards. I didn't tell you whether you were going to take it or you were going to give it to me. I simply said select one of the two cards.
Hunter Powers: We can expand this to larger choices. Let's imagine there are three options; option A, option B and option C. Once again, I am going to make you choose option A even though you don't know it. You're going to have complete free choice and yet you are going to choose option A. I tell you, I say, look, I'm really good at being intuitive about things. I have this intuitive sense, and I get a sense of you as a person right now just looking at you. What I'm going to do is see this piece of paper, it's blank on both sides. I'm going to write a little note on it right now. You can't see this by the way. Inside I'm writing. You are going to choose A. You don't see that though, but if you were inside my head, you can hear me thinking that as I write, you are going to choose A.
Hunter Powers: I fold the piece of paper up and I say I'm going to give you this piece of paper and I'm going to place it in your hand and I want you to hold it. I want you to cover it. Don't let anyone see it. I am never going to touch it again. I'm not going to touch it for the rest of this time. You're going to hold it deep in your hands because I have made a prediction. I have made a prediction of what you are going to choose.
Hunter Powers: In fact, I'll tell you how most people do these kinds of tricks. They go through this elaborate series where you choose various things and then at the end, they would say, hey, okay, go ahead and hand me that piece of paper. When you hand it to me, I'll switch it out with whatever you said and then I'll show you that answer. Pick a number between zero and 100, and you say 75. That doesn't matter what that piece of paper is because you're going to hand me that piece of paper and then I'm going to swap it for a piece of paper that I just wrote 75 on. I'll show you that. That's how most of these things work, but this, what we're doing right now, this is real. It's real because that piece of paper is going to stay in your hands and I'm never going to touch it again.
Hunter Powers: You're standing there and you're holding this piece of paper deep in your hands and you're not going to let me see it and you haven't seen it yet. On it, again, if you were inside my head, you would know it says you are going to choose A. I lay before you three options; option A, option B and option C. I have three options for you. One of these options is directly connected with you. It represents you. I can see this, option A and option B and option C. We're going to figure out ... You're going to choose which one and then we're going to test to see whether you and I are connected.
Hunter Powers: Three options; option A, option B and option C. I ask you, pick two. There's a couple different ways that this could go. Maybe you pick B and C. At which point, I say, okay, we're taking away B and C. That means you have chosen A. Now please take a look at the piece of paper in your hand. You go and you look in your hand and it says you will choose A. Oh my, gosh, I had complete free choice and I chose A.
Hunter Powers: Let's imagine the other scenario. You say A and B. These are the two things you choose. I say there's three. Choose two. You choose A and B. I say, okay, that means we throw C away. Now we're left with A and B. Choose one. You see now we're back at the previous example where we had the two cards. I've got an A and a B. If you say I choose a, I say, okay, we throw B away. You have chosen A. Take a look at the piece of paper in your hand. Again, we have two options, A or B, and you say I choose B. We'll throw B away. That means only A is left. You have chosen A. Take a look at the piece of paper in your hand. You see we always end up back at A. We always end up exactly where I wanted you to be. That is magician's choice.
Hunter Powers: The insight here or the thing to think about as you're going through your day is what choices that you're making are actually a magician's choice. To what degree do you have free will in what you are doing? How much satisfaction do you get out of participating in the exercise even if it is a magician's choice? Even if you know you're going to end up right where they always wanted you all along, perhaps you still enjoy going through the exercise. I like having a sense of choice even if that choice doesn't matter. A lot of people do. They like having that place in there.
Hunter Powers: An example from management, if you've made a decision, you're going to do something. You know that no one is going to like this idea, but you want to soften the blow. Well, you can bring everyone forward and you can say I want to listen to all of your ideas on this subject and talk about the different ways that we could possibly go. What are the different options? Talk about them. Present them, and then just do whatever you originally planned to do. This was a form of magician's choice, but people felt like, well, I was heard. My voice was heard. They assume because their voice was heard that their voice was considered, and they will accept the change much easier. It will go over far better than just coming out with this crazy idea.
Hunter Powers: If you were given that scenario, if I told you, look, we can have this meeting where I'll listen to all of your options but I'm still going to choose the same thing, or we can skip the meeting where I listen to your options and it doesn't actually matter because I've already chosen. Which would you want? Would you want to come to the meeting and talk through your options even though you know it's not going to have any impact? other By the way, most people, the answer is yes, they still want to go to the meeting. They still want to present their options.
Hunter Powers: On the other side of this, what if you want to have someone feel as though they have a lot of different options and make different choices along the way? Well, you can engineer a force in that situation as well. You can give them a magician's choice.
Hunter Powers: Think about it. Where can you use this technique to get someone else to align with you or to get what you want or to help manage a process of change? That is your one idea for today. I am Hunter Powers broadcasting live from our nation's capital, as we say in the city, DC proper. Until next time-