Stumble This | You should also watch “BBC Brain Story part 3 The Mind's Eye - Optical Illusion” |
He considers himself a hacker of the human brain. It's actually pretty nifty.
From TED: First, Keith Barry shows us how our brains can fool our bodies -- in a trick that works via podcast too. Then he involves the audience in some jaw-dropping (and even a bit dangerous) feats of brain magic.
From TED: First, Keith Barry shows us how our brains can fool our bodies -- in a trick that works via podcast too. Then he involves the audience in some jaw-dropping (and even a bit dangerous) feats of brain magic.
But awesome tricks.
[edit] Oooh, I saw people going nuts trying to figure out the driving the car blindfolded thing... and yet... it's really simple if you think about misdirection. (People were saying it was using the BMW satellite driving aid etc. etc. man people get complex sometimes).
He puts on the blindfold and THEN a bag, the woman had on the blindfold AND the bag... what if when he put on the bag he slipped off the blindfold and looked THROUGH the bag, noone ever checks the bag on its own. Then as he takes off the bag, he slips the blindfold back on. Tricky, simple, but brilliant.
Also the driving thing is probably just road feel and the fact that you can gauge by the girls reaction if you are about to hit anything, plus he probably drove the road a few times before and just like a blind person can navigate a house or mall, it would be easy to drive a car if your muscles knew the route.
As to the spike thing, I think it is based upon the subtle feeling of when your hand is on the cup you can probably tell if it is just resting on a coaster, or possibly the spike makes it a more sturdy structure. ie. the cup has no lateral movement when you initially place your hand on it. Also the 'magician' probably recoginizes the wood plints. They look similar but I'll bet he can tell by sight by the edges of the wood or whatever it is which one is which. Maybe the bottoms are different sizes or some slight mark so he knows exactly which coaster is which.
Also the driving thing is probably just road feel and the fact that you can gauge by the girls reaction if you are about to hit anything, plus he probably drove the road a few times before and just like a blind person can navigate a house or mall, it would be easy to drive a car if your muscles knew the route.
I'm sorry, but the speeds he's driving and the amount of fake swerving etc. he does... he can see where he's going. I'm still firmly of the belief he can see through the bag because he moves the blindfold under it. It's a lot simpler than trying to do the drive by feel, especially as he's done it now on many, many roads, including a cliff side one.