Comments on: How to Bend a Spoon with Just Your Mind

By: Kelli

Kelli — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:18:46 +0000

The only time I have bent metal with such ease was less than a month ago while I was on LSD. I was twisting my sterling silver ring around while on my finger with only my pointer finger and thumb until I noticed it felt loose. I looked and it was split open. I was a little shocked at first and thought I may have possibly bent and broke it mentally but thought “eh, I’m on LSD… it’s all in my head.” But continued to roll it around my 2 fingers and I noticed minutes later it was in half. And again, in threes… ONLY when I wasn’t paying too much attention to it like it kept happening on accident. All I know is that it broke way too easily and silver has always been a metal that I found attraction to since I was a kid.

By: taria

taria — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 05:44:18 +0000

OMG LMAO I’m still laughing here.

By: Herris

Herris — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:00:12 +0000

I tried to bend spoons and it’s amazing! (I’m a 14 year old girl) I was a skeptic, because I thought you could just bend the spoon based on pure strength. So i tried to bend a 3mm thick spoon at the neck with pure strength, and couldn’t do it at all. Then when i watched this “tutorial” on spoon bending on youtube, and tried to mentally prepare myself, I could actually feel the spoon warming up at the neck after a while! And then i twisted the spoon easily! Everyone should try it out before they say it’s a trick!

By: matrix

matrix — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:41:20 +0000

good magic show !! just a simple trick

By: Occam's Spork

Occam's Spork — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:14:23 +0000

The only problem with the bent bar trick is it only works on camera, I doubt that an illusionist could manage to maintain the bar’s angle to his audience long enough to convince them that it is straight.

Rory: the broken spoon would have been weakened beforehand, so that the heat from the light wobbling Shermer was subjecting it to broke it, allowing for the rest of the trick.

Also, scientifically speaking, simply because a phenomenon CAN be faked, doesn’t mean it IS. We need studies of the psychics claiming to have these abilities, rather than editorials by stage magicians showing us how they would achieve the same results.

By: Jim Zwinge

Jim Zwinge — Fri, 29 May 2009 07:48:12 +0000

Kinda boring.

We’ve all seen magicians fake real phenomenon.

I say, “If you want to use magic tricks to bend spoons, you’re doing it the hard way.”

If you haven’t experienced a real ‘spoon bending,’ you have no right to criticize it – from a distance – as cowards do.

By: rory

rory — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:21:42 +0000

the steel bar is easy to do. just get a bar, bend it in your hands and rotate it so it looks straight. then, as you start to rub it with your fingers, roll it gently away from you and it looks like its bending there and then before your eyes. piece of piss. cant explain the spoon breaking though, would love to know how its done

By: tmac57

tmac57 — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 17:50:45 +0000

Richard- Paraphrased “Shermer is wrong to expose spoon bending as a trick, because it can ultimately cause magicians to lose money” I see this as argument from final consequences,with a little dose of slippery slope.
Richard-”The masked magician exposed many stage illusions and because of his show, many magicians lost a LOT of money: they couldn’t present their illusions anymore and lost contracts, had to rebuild new illusions which is very expensive and retrain themselves and their staff for the new illusions.” This strikes me as a straw man argument, since this is not what Shermer is doing and I doubt that he has cost anyone any money, but I take your bigger point about the masked magician.
Richard-”But seriously, I think it is unfair to expect magicians (or anybody else for that matter) to become “active skeptics” (i.e. part of what looks to my secular point of view like a religious movement) if we are to protect our secrets.” This is just a misrepresentation of what I said :”You would not have had to give anything away, just show, as Randi did that it could be a trick.” Fair or not fair, I never said anything about giving up your secrets. On the contrary, my point was that if you proactively showed, without giving anything away, that these feats could be done without supernatural powers then that might not have led to other non-magicians feeling that they needed to show explicitly what was happening.
Richard-”I am against poverty but I don’t go around robbing rich people because “I” feel they should share with poor people!” False analogy. Shermer is not robbing anyone, the trick is already widely known and not ‘owned’ by anyone. He is merely showing how a common parlor trick is being misused as psychic powers. A worthy goal in my mind.
Richard-”Althought I do not have a scientific study on this, at least Mr Swiss shared a personal experience as a magician with a spoon bending believer and it clearly didn’t work. The believer remained a believer. You “assume” that there “WILL” be those who will see the truth. Where’s the proof?” Well I told you my own story which while anecdotal ,is proof enough for me.I’ll tell you what, you accept my anecdote, and I’ll accept your’s about Mr. Swiss.Deal?
Richard-”And then, you say that the others will have a seed of doubt planted in their brain… Your claim is unfalsifiable. ” Well only to the extent that any study in psychology is dependent on the subjective experience of the subjects. But sometimes you just have to accept what people say about changes in their belief.Remember your anecdote?
Richard-”I personaly often have to remind people that my tricks are illusions and yet, some still believe I must have some psychic powers… Those are the very people you are trying to “save”. Not very effective, is it?” You seem to have set up a false dichotomy between those that don’t believe at all, and those that will never be shaken from their belief. This leaves out a full spectrum of people who just aren’t sure, and could go either way. I full understand that ‘true believers’ are a difficult case.
Is that enough? I doubt it.

By: Richard Cadot

Richard Cadot — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:56:32 +0000

tmac57 – When someone says I’m being illogical but does not care to prove this point, he or she may as well tell me he or she believes my magic is the work of the devil but does not care to prove it other than by saying that it will be clear to other christians… You said: “Other readers will readily see [my logical fallacies]” It is thus clear to me that other people who “think” as you do will “see” what you see, not that it is true. And you talk about “my” logical fallacies?

This is exactly what irritates me… Most so-called “skeptics” make as many unsubstanciated claims as believers, are just as condenscending in the certainty of possessing the “Truth” and rely as much on their “gang” for support. That is why (among other things) I consider the so-called skeptical movement as being religious.

That being said, I totally understand how seeing a magic trick may have changed “your” mind on psychics but what I meant to say was that neither of us has “scientific proof” that exposure helps or not, just personal anecdotes. But you seem to acknowlegde this point which is a good starting point for a fruitful exchange.

As for how other magicians react to all this, I cannot talk for them. But again, you appeal to a sense or a lack of morality (like christians often do) on the part of magicians for their silence. Do I need to remind you that “morality” has to do with “beliefs” whatever they might be? So again, hurting the trade of magicians who rely on those secrets to put bread on the table to feed their children may seem quite immoral to others. The world is not black and white as religious believers seem to think; there are many other valid points of view and disagreeing with skeptics don’t make others “illogical”.

I agree with you that spoon bending has already been widely exposed. But there must still be a lot of people who don’t know about this trick since it continues to be exposed by skeptics… Hmmm… Sounds pretty logical to me. And my point (I encourage you to read my last comment again) was not specifically about the “spoon bending trick” but rather about a highly regarded skeptic exposing a trick… Any trick. How many other tricks will need to be exposed before the world is “converted” to skepticism?

Finally, I’m happy that you don’t try to learn tricks the “easy way” and that you realize that magic can be so much fun. Unfortunately, as a magician, I can tell you that given the opportunity, a great number of people WILL want to learn the secrets of our trade because uncertainty is hard to cope with for most people… And yes, uncertainty is part of the magical art and should remain this way.

If you want to make a difference, I suggest you should concentrate on exposing financial, scientific and political frauds… They harm us more than anything else in this world. Remember that most of us all want to do good in this life… We are all aiming at the same goal from different perspectives and nobody has a hold on Truth with a capital “T”.

By: tmac57

tmac57 — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:59:47 +0000

Richard-Your response was so full of logical fallacies that it would take more time than I want to spend pointing them out. Other readers will readily see them, but to your specific assertion:”You “assume” that there “WILL” be those who will see the truth. Where’s the proof? “..no I am no assuming here because in 1980 I was watching James Hydrick on “That’s Incredible” TV show, performing ‘psychic’ feats of moving objects with his mind, and I was totally buying into it, until he did a ‘feat’ where he caused a toothpick laid crosswise across another to hop up and down. I’m sure that you know the trick, and so did I, and I instantly realized that the guy was a total fake. Randi famously exposed him on another TV show, without disclosing any secret by the way, other than showing that he couldn’t perform under controlled conditions. But the thing that did it for me ,was knowing that one trick, the rest came tumbling down like a house of cards.
I have heard many similar stories since joining the skeptics movement, and although I can’t ‘prove’ them I do believe them based on my own experience. I am not advocating that we all go out and expose every magic trick, but do you really want people to actually believe that your craft is real? I can’t help but get the impression that some magicians really want people to sincerely believe that they are doing something supernatural so that it enhances their abilities, which is why they(for the most part) remained mute when they saw con men (and women) out there fleecing the public (hey, why should we blow their cover,they have to make a living too you know?) In any case, just like the fact that my learning the simple toothpick trick didn’t bring down the magic industry, I don’t think exposing an already widely known spoon bending trick will either. I still enjoy magic very much because 99.9 % of it is still mysterious to me, and I personally like it that way. I turn off the ‘magic tricks exposed’ shows whenever I see them, because I don’t want them spoiled for me, just like I don’t turn to the last page of a mystery novel to spoil the ending.