Do you believe this is a psychic ability....or not?

Question

If it is...what would you call it? Does this mean that everyone is a mind reader....or no one is....that it's normal?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1Xop411uKE&NR=1

Answer 1

yeh i believe it

Answer 2

Personally I am sceptical. No I don't believe it.

Answer 3

Derren Brown is a mentalist.  It's like a magician, but rather the illusion is psychological rather than visual.

Answer 4

No this is a extremely typical bag of magic tricks called mentalism by one of the faithful disbelievers (or deniers) of psychic phenomena that imitates (poorly) psychic abilities in his attempts to discredit all psychic phenomena without examining the evidence or offering to help with controls in scientific experiments.

I suppose he doesn't have a million dollars to offer (either does he who is too often named) so he gets publicity for his anti psychic (and anti science) crusade with his magic tricks.

If he presented his "tricks" and explained them in the context of helping people avoid obvious frauds posing at psychics then he would be using his publicity to help people.

Psiexploration

Answer 5

Like I said in your other question, Derren Brown is an illusionist but doesn't claim any psychic abilities. He is upfront about it all being misdirection and psychology.  By understanding a bit about human psychology he can manipulate someone into (usually) thinking of a certain symbol, making it appear as if he is a mind reader. It's very interesting.