Complex Numbers

That's Mental

Starting off August with a bit of history, courtesy of Cracked...

How Exactly Did 'Mind Readers' In The 1950s Fool Millions?  

Apparently, lots of people were easily fooled in the 1950s. UFO sightings, nuclear proliferation and families, and the lie that communism was the greatest threat to our way of life.

But there was also this.

In any case, today we’re talking about mentalists.

You know, speaking of the 50s, rock could have headed in a completely different direction had it gone with "heavy mental" instead of "heavy metal."

In the 50s, there was a mentalist act that was famous throughout the English-speaking world. Sydney and Lesley Piddington were a married couple from Australia, but with a name like “Sydney Piddington” it was only a matter of time before they found fame in the UK.

Um, you know where most of the white people in Australia came from, right?

You see, Sydney and Lesley seemed to have an incredible ability: they could communicate things to each other without speaking, seemingly over vast distances.

As opposed to most married people, whose minds are utterly unknowable to each other. In retrospect, them being a married couple that could read each other's minds should have been the first five red flags.

As their popularity grew, they began to perform over even greater distances, often sponsored by the BBC. In one famous instance, Lesley spoke a phrase taken at random from a book by a panel of judges while under armed guard in the Tower of London while Sydney was broadcasting from some other, unimportant, non-London town. England: a country that conquered most of the known world instead of simply building a second city of their own.

You hear that sound, Cracked? That angry rumbling in the distance, getting louder? That's a mob of Mancunians and a mob of Yorkers. If you're really lucky, they'll notice each other before they get to you and start a new War of the Roses. Otherwise, you're boned.

(Technically, London is one of the smallest cities   in the UK. But even if you consider Greater London, non-London cities in England are, based on my experience, fiercely protective of their status as Not London.)

Underwater. In the sky. Separated by many miles and both watched by live audiences – there was seemingly no explanation for how they were able to do what they did. All of the popular explanations of the time were disproven by the Piddingtons in subsequent shows.

You know, even though there's no such thing as telepathy, I gotta respect the creativity it takes to come up with an act like that. Anyone can learn to do cold readings—I used to be pretty good at that, myself—but setting up a "mentalist" act that fools a lot of people for a long time? Props.

The Piddington’s act was as confounding to the British public as a national delicacy that isn’t revolting.

Oh, look, the Northerners heard that. They've stopped their internecine bickering and are once more on their way. If you're luckly, they'll stop for some fish and chips and give you a short respite.

Mentalism. Telepathy. ESP. Mind reading. Oh, speaking of ESP, when Sydney remarried they named their first child Edwin Sydney Piddington. ESP. Real class acts, those Piddingtons.

Again, I can't help but marvel here.

Mind reading. We’ve all wished we could do it at one time or another, whether to cheat at poker, manipulate people, or to save money on walkie-talkies.

Yeah, I used to think that would be a cool superpower. Then I started to realize what other people must actually be thinking, and now I'm grateful to just have my own twisted brain to worry about.

In fact, the Piddingtons were actually pretty respectable since they framed their shows as a puzzle for the public to solve rather than claiming they had godlike powers. We’ll get more into that later.

See? For this reason I can't hate the concept. If some people ended up believing the fiction, well, Barnum had something to say about that.

So what’s going on with the Piddingtons? To be honest, no one’s really exactly sure. Well, almost nobody.

And that's too bad; I know a lot of the allure of "magic" is a) trying to figure out how it's done and b) not figuring out how it's done. But after 70 years, you'd think their tricks would be as well-known as Houdini's.

There are lots of theories out there as to how the Piddingtons did it, and here’s mine: steganography. Not the more modern definition of hiding a file within the information of another file, but the more traditional meaning of encoding a message within mundane information.

Gotta side with the author here. Too bad he's about to get roasted by Northerners.

I’ll tell you what leaps out to me. Sydney Piddington has a stutter. He’ll trip over words and use lots of fillers – lots of “ums,” and “ahs,” things like that. It’s possible that’s just a vocal tic, but admittedly that’s kind of a weird one for a man who makes his entire living performing on stage and on the radio. There was an entire movie about one dude overcoming his stammer to give just one speech.

Throwing out a neutral reference to The King's Speech (an excellent movie, by the way) isn't going to save you. The British are coming.

Maybe that’s not how the Piddingtons did it (although I’m pretty sure I’m on to something). But the overall point is that there is always, always a trick with mentalists. And if they’re not admitting that there IS a trick, then it’s because they’re picking your pocket. While the Piddingtons are harmless fun, there is a more nefarious side to this.

Yes. Superpowers are just as often used for evil.

Because that’s the real tragedy about mentalists: the more unscrupulous among them prey on people who are looking for answers. The hopeless want nothing so much as hope, and they’re willing to pay big money for anyone who can give it to them.

It's one thing to knowingly spend money on entertainment for the sake of entertainment. It's another thing to be so gullible that you're going to be fleeced. It's the reason I sometimes gamble in Vegas, and also the reason I still have money after gambling in Vegas.