Experiencing the Impossible: The Science of Magic (The MIT Press)

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Elisabeth Loftus, Distinguished Professor, University of California, Irvine, and author of Eyewitness Testimony

To achieve this, we propose replacing the sequence of individual observations o ⃗ = o 1 , ‥ , o n of Definition 1 with a sequence of sets, where each set comprises all potential observations newly available (or refreshed) at the current time-step, only one of which is ultimately encoded and remembered. Triplett, N. (1900). The psychology of conjuring deceptions. American Journal of Psychology, 11(4), 439–510.After really throwing the ball into the air numerous times and then simply performing the same movement in every way but without the ball, most people will see a ball fly into the air and disappear.

Observe that o ⃗ t − 1 ⋅ o in the denominator of Eq. 5 represents the observations available so far (i.e., at time-step t− 1) to which each newly available observation o ∈ O t is appended. Recall also that s t−1 is the first remembered observation—or effective starting point—at time-step t. We are all trapped inside our own heads; and our beliefs and our understandings about the world are limited by that perspective. Which means we tell ourselves stories…So here we are in this infinite data source. There’s an infinite number of things that we could think about but we edit and delete. We choose what to think about, what to pay attention to. We make up a story—to make sense of what’s going on. And we all get it wrong” ( Brown, 2019). 3 Technical Framework

Looking but not seeing

We could say something similar about Isaac Newton. It is well-known that Newton was obsessed with alchemy and hidden codes in the Bible. But Newtonian physics was also not a stripped-down mechanics, but a dynamic cosmos inclined toward apocalypse and dissolution. Not only was gravity an occult force, but, and this is an important point, Newton’s physics required active divine intervention and the supernatural. As he put it, “ nothing is done without [God’s] continual government and inspection,” and added: In 1893, French psychologist Alfred Binet managed to co-opt five of the country’s most prominent magicians to help him understand illusions.

To reflect the current beliefs of a human, prior probabilities—which represent previously-held beliefs— must be kept up-to-date, even if the system thereby seems to return the “wrong” answer. MIT Press Direct is a distinctive collection of influential MIT Press books curated for scholars and libraries worldwide. To formalise this, we build on the notion of a rationality measure (RM) from ( Masters and Sardina, 2019b). The documented purpose of the RM is to evaluate an agent’s future expected degree of rationality, given their past behaviour. Here, we use it to evaluate and compare the apparent rationality of the observation sequences that would result from adding each of multiple potential observations (each o ∈ O t) to the recalled observation sequence ( o ⃗ t − 1) assembled so far. That is, given what we know, which potential observation provides the most rational continuation towards any one of the known possible goals. In summary, the very notion of the “supernatural” was historically short-lived and not the defining feature of premodern notions of witches, demons, or magic—all of which were described as unusual but neither supernatural nor miraculous. So any rejection of the supernatural by modern science would seem to have been unnecessary.

Magic, which has exploited such aspects of the visual for centuries, offers us a framework to explore perception in an intriguing way, and the potential for understanding our perceptual system by investigating how magic exploits its blindness and gaps is enormous. A human-centric goal recognition system should recognise that some observable phenomena are more noticeable than others. In this paper we have considered how magic, with its deep understanding of the idiosyncrasies surrounding human cognition and belief-formation, can inform the theory and practice of goal recognition. Our contribution is not a framework that performs goal recognition “better” than other models. If anything, our framework is less likely to determine the observed agent’s most likely goal than alternative contemporary models are able to do. Rather, we have aimed to present a framework that more accurately simulates human-like reasoning, even where that reasoning may lead to error.

In the US we meet with professor Anthony Barnhart. He’s a magician turned scientist who is using ancient knowledge to provide new insights into why – even when there are no distractions — we sometimes don’t see what’s right under our noses. We also meet Professor Amory Danek who is using the conjuror’s craft to study creativity and the “Aha!” moment when we get a sudden insight into how a problem can be solved. There is a further problem with the popular narrative about the rise of science. While a number of candidates have been proposed as the progenitor of the “scientific revolution,” most of these, in some sense, saw themselves as magicians. For instance, Giordano Bruno has been popularly described as a martyr to science, but, now that more of his works are available—including his De magia (On Magic)—it’s clear that Bruno’s aim was not to despiritualize astronomy, as was once thought, but to elaborate an infinite and richly animated cosmos that was full of magical forces, spirits, and demons.detail supporting the current article, including a preliminary version of the XGR model, appeared previously in Masters et al. (2021). Attention is a finite resource. When multiple events occur simultaneously, people must decide—whether consciously (top-down) or unconsciously (bottom-up)—which is most deserving of consideration. Importantly, our purpose is not to defeat the goal recognition system but to extend it in such a way that it better reflects what an average human is most likely to believe, given the observable phenomena to which they may be exposed. Inevitably, of course, this does result in a goal recognition system that can be fooled. 5.1 Method and Effect Might it be possible to harness this expansive interest to boost creativity? There is evidence that experiencing magic encourages people to explore things from new angles. In one such study, children watched movie clips from a Harry Potter film that either did or did not contain strong magical content (Subbotsky et al., 2010). Immediately after watching these clips, the children completed several standard creativity tests. Those who had watched the clips with the magical content were significantly more creative than those who had not.