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Hey, how's it going, DEF CON?

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Super excited to get to talk to you guys about one of these things I'm passionate about, which just happens to be security and magic.

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Today, we're going to be going over Outposts, Forces, and Equivocates, a treatise on how magicians speak.

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I learned that word all by myself, too.

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I'm very proud of it.

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But let's go ahead and get started here.

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So, starting off, I'm hex 90, no-op, not 0x90, whatever you want to call me.

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I don't really care.

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I'm a magician.

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I'm also a full-time software engineer.

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I have a background in security, love to break things, and most importantly, I don't need more than my current 200 Twitter followers, so no need for any handles or anything.

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But overall, a fairly unremarkable person, and you don't need to worry about it.

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What this talk is, I want to cover three major tenets within magic, specifically how we handle choices and how we handle making people feel like they're making choices, but ultimately, it's either something in our favor or something that we want to happen.

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So, we're going to be covering forcing, multiple outs, and equivocates.

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The interesting thing about these three techniques is that they're all super similar, but they do have some small key differences that make them worth talking about as an individual concept.

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Going forward, what this talk is not going to be...

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I don't want to feel like I'm giving people permission to heckle performers.

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Performing is extremely difficult, and honestly, if you have an interest in magic, the time to do it is not during a performance or a show.

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Honestly, a lot of magicians are pretty down-to-earth people.

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They're just people who are just as nerdy as you or I, just kind of doing a thing that they love.

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So, if you have an interest, honestly, take a magician aside, say, hey, I think that's really cool, and I want to try it.

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And they'll more often than not give you some cool books or some tips on how to get into magic.

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And I think that's really awesome because we're a really open community, but please don't harass them because you know how to do some stuff now.

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Also, this talk isn't about any secretly documented human cheat codes to make people act in ways that they normally wouldn't.

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You're not going to get someone to act against their interests by saying some magic words or hit some crazy synapses that are going to make them all of a sudden forget who they are.

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This is all very real, well-published, at least in the magic world, techniques that present the illusion of choice while you remain completely in control.

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I also want to take a moment to address the fact that we have...

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I am not in control of the slideshow right now.

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So, I'll be saying, next slide.

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And I'm sorry, it's not the most beautiful thing in the world, but I don't have a clicky thing.

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So, I won't be able to do that.

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And also, quarantine has made it so this week has been the most human interaction I've had to deal with in like six months.

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So, I apologize if I sound less than human.

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But let's go ahead and hit the first term.

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So, forces.

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Essentially, a force is the appearance of different values to be chosen, but through subterfuge, the only option is a single choice.

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This is when other choices cannot be selected.

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This is... I have 52 cards, and I really, really need someone to pick a specific thing.

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It's when you have no option but the primary choice that you want them to select.

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Can we go to the next slide?

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A super over-the-heads term.

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And honestly, next time you have an opportunity to do a coin flip, go ahead and try to say this, but tails I win, heads you lose.

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Very quickly, if you read it, it's easy to see how obvious that is.

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But ultimately, this is a force.

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There's no other option but to have them pick a wrong choice here.

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And if you actually try this, and you have confidence in your language, you'd be surprised with how many times you can actually get away with this.

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It's pretty fun, especially if you need to settle any bets within a bar.

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The next slide, we have multiple outs.

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This is the appearance of free choice, but ultimately all the possibilities, all the possible decisions are accounted for and expected.

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This is used when you need a freedom of choice, and they need to actually feel like they have a free choice, like everything is fully free.

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And the reason why you want to do this is just sometimes when you're forcing someone to pick a specific thing, unless that force is perfect, and it's designed for the situation, you can start to pick up on it.

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You can kind of detect something in your brain goes off and says, I'm being told to do something that I might not want to do.

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And there's an instant fight response.

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But if the pressure is no longer on the decision, and it's on the response, then you can get a little more into this.

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And if we go to the next slide, Penn and Teller, a while ago, they had the perfect example of multiple outs.

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They had a special called Penn and Teller off the deep end.

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And to give you an idea of how long ago this was, Aaron Carter was also on this special, and he sang a song underwater while they did magic tricks with scuba diving, as well as a bunch of other stuff on the beach.

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But one of the effects that they did was they had 52 reveals, which is sewing a playing card into your jacket, hiding a giant card in a pot of plants, kids having them written on them in sunscreen.

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They had 52 different values that they could potentially reveal, and essentially they had someone selecting a completely random card and naming it, and then suddenly they knew where it was, or they knew how to reveal it.

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And it made it seem like this was the only option that could have happened, because who would really set up 52 possible answers for this?

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And I think what they did was a perfect example to show the idea of what a multiple out is.

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Next slide.

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Equivocate.

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Equivocate essentially just means double entendre.

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I think it sounds cooler.

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But ultimately, you're using open-ended questions and vague language to create ambiguity around choice or knowledge, and I'm seeing that there's a typo in this slide, and I'm kicking myself, but I love it.

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You also use it when you need to control the perception of information, even having different definitions between different people.

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In magic, this is called dual reality.

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This allows you to have the same sentence, based on the context that two people are coming from, view it differently.

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And I feel like the equivocate is probably one of the most powerful terms when it comes to controlling decisions coming from people, as well as it's the most applicable to social engineering.

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And it's actually one of the many reasons why magicians won't perform a trick twice, very similar to multiple outs.

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Everyone's heard one of the rules of magic is you never perform a trick twice, and equivocates and multiple outs are a part of that.

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If you do the same effect, but you have to go a different direction, and someone's seeing it twice in a row, they're going to easily be able to pick up that there's two different paths that they possibly could have gone down.

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And it kind of does damage to the effect.

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As well as if you view magic like a joke, you wouldn't say the same joke twice in a row because everyone knows what the punchline is going to be, and it becomes substantially less special.

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But the example for equivocate, if we go to the next slide, is are you right-handed or left-handed?

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And if they respond left, then you say, great, I need this hand to be loose, so let's use your non-dominant hand because we want them to be using their right hand.

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But alternatively, if they would have said right, and you go to the next slide, are you right-handed or left-handed?

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And they say right, then you say, great, I need this hand to be strong, so let's go ahead and use your dominant hand.

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And if you notice here, if you saw these questions side-by-side and they're answered the same way, that would ruin this effect.

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But because of the vague language and the lack of intent being posed in the question, you can't actually tell what the reasoning is for the question, and so the answer doesn't seem so alien, but it is a little bit when you set them side-by-side.

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Let's go ahead and go to the next section.

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So how do these terms work?

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How come people don't instantly call a bull on a lot of this?

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And ultimately, it's not voodoo.

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There's no real magic here.

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You're simply taking advantage of people's laziness.

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There's a book actually called The Paradox of Choice, Why More is Less, and that was written by Barry Schwartz.

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And in it, he talks about the decision-making process that people have.

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And it's primarily about consumerism, but also in the book, it shows that people are less happy with their choices when there are too many, and often they'll take a lot longer to make a simple choice.

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So people much prefer to choose from three flavors of candy versus 50, because if they pick from 50, they're always going to be semi-disappointed.

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And the perfect example of this is anyone that's had to coordinate, especially now with Zoom calls, coordinate a time with multiple people.

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Anytime you ask, hey, what time works for everyone?

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Because you want to be a decent human being, and you want to accommodate everyone, it's going to result in a conversational gridlock.

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And this is because you have an infinite amount of times that could be selected.

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I can't imagine people are like, oh, yes, I want to meet at 12 p.m.

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and 16 picoseconds.

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But in theory, you could.

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And instead, if you say, hey, should we meet at 10 a.m.

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or 6 p.m.

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instead of what time works for everyone?

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More often than not, you're going to get an answer much quicker.

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Everyone's going to be able to come to a decision quicker.

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They won't always be exactly the times that you requested, but people will come.

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They will coalesce into a single time a lot faster because they're able to take that information and they pose it as a question to themselves as how does this apply to me?

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And how can I fit into this instead of also trying to account for all these external factors?

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And by limiting choices, you make people feel more confident in their choices instead of making it this open-ended world.

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And another issue with using equivocate or using multiple outs or even forces is that some of these methods can leave a trail of word crumbs that you can easily backtrack to figure out that there was manipulation.

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So if you were to rewatch a Zoom call where an equivocate was used, you could potentially figure out how vague that language is after the fact.

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Sometimes in the moment, you won't necessarily see that happening, but after the fact, you might be able to backtrack on it.

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But in that moment, you also want to avoid people being able to find and pick up on those word crumbs and backtrack on that conversation.

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And the way magicians get around this is we create little memory snapshots.

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So let's say we had to do a deck switch and do all these other crazy things.

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Instead of highlighting that moment of the deck switch, we're going to try to mentally have the picture that your mind takes, the thing that you remember, be much different.

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That's also why people, magicians at least, they'll work on blocking out their props.

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So for example, we had a magician who came on and he did a Zoom show, and part of it is he has a card under a box, and he wants you to make sure that you see that card and you remember it, and you remember that it didn't move.

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And that's very important because when you go back in your inferring method, you don't want to have your audience get distracted on that.

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And the way we do this is we reiterate on stories that we wanted to happen, not necessarily what exactly happened, but what we want to happen.

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And then we also let the manipulations fade into the background.

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We stop drawing attention to them.

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If I'm doing an effect where I need to choose someone's right hand or left hand, I'm not going to go back and say, and remember when I had you pick your hand?

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We're going to pretend like that never happened.

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And another misconception here is that misdirection is used, but it's not used in the way people think about it.

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A lot of people think misdirection is, hey, look over there, and then something sneaky happens over here.

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What actually happens with misdirection is you have something that you want to hide.

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You want this to be in the shadows, not in the light.

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So you make something interesting happen over here instead, and your focus comes here.

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And then this thing, it drops away into the background.

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And you can do this verbally.

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You can do it with props.

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You can do it with stage direction.

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If you've ever watched live theater before, even without magic, you'll notice when there's a monologue or something happens and they're bringing everyone to the front of the theater, things in the background start vanishing and they're pulling objects off of the stage.

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Maybe cast members are disappearing because they're changing out a set piece or something.

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But that's not because they're trying to misdirect you.

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They're not trying to fool you.

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They're simply encouraging you to keep your attention elsewhere, but they don't have to do it with a trick or like a, hey, look over here and ring a bunch of keys in your face.

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And that's a very important thing when it comes to making that snapshot, because if you're really aggressive with that, you will fail.

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And that's how people can backtrack, whether it's in a magic trick or whether you're doing this in a social engineering setting.

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If you could go ahead and hit the next slide.

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Now let's get into actual applications of these three concepts.

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Magical applications of forces.

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Obviously, there's a card force.

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If I have, let's say, a duplicate of a card somewhere, and maybe it's in my pocket or something.

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And I want to do this really seamless effect where I have a card selected, and then it goes back in the deck, and then without bringing my hand near it, I can pull it out of my pocket.

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That's a very simple way.

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But there's many ways to force a card.

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The classic of all forces is exactly that.

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It's the classic force.

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And it's the idea of timing it in such a way that when they go, that they naturally select it.

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And this is something that takes decades of practice, and it's something that I continuously am working on.

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There's also methods of sleight of hand for forcing a card.

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And there are books and books and books written on this subject for actually learning this.

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And if you guys are interested, I'm happy to show a few methods later after the Q&A is going on.

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There's also a billet or an object force.

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So this is one that I think actually applies more to...

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that could be used better for social engineering or an offensive attack.

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But a billet is essentially a folded piece of paper that might have a piece of information on it.

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And commonly, if you need to force something, you might allow your audience to collect and write a bunch of things down to get put into a box.

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But maybe that whole box gets switched out, or maybe there's a special gimmick with the box that allows when you open it, you can go in and you're only going to pull out the ones that you want.

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And that's really important to take notice of because you can do this with pieces of paper, you can do it with small objects.

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And of course, the last one here is a pattern force.

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This was less about swapping out an object that you're providing and more about swapping out information that a spectator is providing for you.

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So let's say we have someone who mixes up a Rubik's Cube behind their back, they're unaware of what that information might be, and then they bring it forward to you without looking at it.

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And you're able to put something like a shell over it, or something that allows you to change the values in it to something that you want to get to a specific value.

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And essentially in real life, if you think about it, this would be like if someone was able to generate a random value that they weren't able to look at, and then they gave it to you and you said, ah, yes, your random value is three.

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Of course it is.

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And that could be very damaging.

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I can only imagine the type of nonsense that could happen with crypto on that.

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If we could go to the next slide.

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Some IRL applications of forces.

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So there's a bunch of different ideas and you can get as cheeky as you want.

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And I just came up with a few.

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These are, of course, theoretical.

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I'm coming from a magic perspective, but I also like to break things.

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So I haven't actually had an opportunity to do any red teaming myself, but I have done lots of security contracting with black box and white box penetration tests.

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And a lot of these concepts could easily apply and leak in to a social engineering concept because they do work so well in magic.

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But when you're comparing forces in magic to forces in real life, I realize that forces are best used for getting objects in people's hands, thinking that they have chosen them from a group, that this is the object that's in their best intention.

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Like imagine going to a used car lot and for some reason they want you to take this specific car.

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You're like, I want this model, and you have three of them, and they're all the same color, but why do you want me to have this one?

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And of course, that should throw some red flags, but there might be reasons for wanting to do that.

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It might be advantageous for them to get it off the lot for whatever reason.

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It might even be benign, but you never know.

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And some other applications of forces, for example, if you had a batch of benign USB sticks and then you had a batch of USB sticks that had, for example, a human interface device attack on it, something that's going to simulate a keyboard and open up the terminal and it's going to do lots of terrible stuff.

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I've written plenty of them.

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If you ever get into hit attacks, they're a lot of fun.

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But if you only want a specific person to get them, imagine if you're able to be a vendor at a party or you're able to pose as a vendor at a party, and everyone's getting their things and you could do some sort of grab bag switch, which is super common in Magic.

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They look very benign, but it basically makes it so certain people can choose from one compartment and another person can only choose from a specific compartment.

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And it's a great way to get people to select a specific object.

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Also, rigging a contest.

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If you think about something like the lottery, the whole lottery is based around making sure that you can't force the value of the ping pong ball.

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I don't know if they still do that.

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But if you're able to force that value or force the object of it, that's all game over, really.

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Another example is if you could easily, using a cross-site scripting exploit on a website, you could change all of the link values on a website and point it towards malicious software.

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And, of course, you can point it to a phishing website, you can point it to a piece of software, malware, whatever you want.

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But, of course, you're taking this environment of open choices.

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They think that they can go anywhere, but, of course, you're forcing them into a funnel.

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They're forcing them to a single choice.

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And then for a social engineering application, if you had, for example, a small directory of people, all with different phone numbers and names, and these are all your teammates, well, if you get caught in an attack or someone wants to verify your credentials,

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and instead of saying, here's my boss, go ahead and call him, you're like, here's my team, I don't have time to deal with this, because now you're putting weight on them.

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But you're like, I don't have time to deal with this.

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Go ahead and call one of them and they'll verify.

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Well, they're ultimately going to end up with the same person, but that illusion of choice, it makes it seem there's a legitimacy behind quantity.

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Because if I was a vendor, and it's the difference between going into a place and handing out a handful of flash drives from a baggie, and then having a box of 2,000 of them, one of them, you're going to go, okay, that guy's clearly handing out viruses,

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and another one, you're going to go, oh, maybe who's going to create 2,000 pieces of malicious hardware?

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I mean, I might.

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That sounds like a great attack, actually.

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Expensive, but it could be useful.

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If we could go ahead and get to the next slide.

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And the magic applications of multiple apps.

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There's a couple of... there's hundreds of tricks.

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There's thousands.

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You can find these in books everywhere, but I actually came up with a small little bar bet for this.

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And the idea is pretty simple.

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If you play a game of rock, paper, scissors, and the proposition is, I am going to win this game of rock, paper, scissors on the first round.

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And ultimately, whatever you do, you just pick rock.

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So if they go rock, paper, scissors, and this person picks rock, well, the idea is you can say, I told you I was going to win on the first round, and that's why I chose paper.

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And all you do is you have a piece of paper in your hand because they chose rock.

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Now, let's say they went ahead and they chose scissors.

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Of course, you win because it's rock.

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And if they went ahead and they chose paper to cover you, unfortunately, on your paper, you do have scissors.

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I don't know if that can make it out, but essentially, you understand the constraints of where you're in.

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They have three choices to pick from.

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And of course, it's a con, and you're more likely going to get punched than rewarded, but maybe you'll get a good laugh out of it.

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But the idea is that you see the constraints where they have three choices, and you're able to account to every single one of them and make it work in your favor, even if it is going to get you punched in the face.

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Another one, this is a classic effect.

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There's a queen's holdout.

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So if you were to have four queens, what you can do is you can get these sleeve garters .

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You can even do it with a rolled cuff.

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But essentially, you put these queens in your sleeve garter.

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They're pinned to your arm, and you spread them like so .

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And I'll put them in a specific order.

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It's called chased order.

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It's clubs, hearts, spades, and diamonds.

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And all you do is you have these on your sleeve, pinned, and in an effect, you can have a queen freely named and claim it's in your pocket.

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And when you open up your jacket, instead of reaching into the pocket, you reach into the sleeve, and you can feel the index and easily pull out whatever specific queen it is, deposit it in your pocket as you're opening up your body language a little more,

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revealing the queen.

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And of course, the first thing that's going to happen is people are going to say, there's more than one queen in there.

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So you can easily empty that pocket completely.

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Then they might imply that you have a queen in each pocket, and you're just going to change pockets, which you can also easily disprove.

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And this is a good example of an out, because they feel like everything is clean, everything's happening into a single location, but you've been able to determine that there are four choices.

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One of them has to end up here, and you know a way to account for all of them, whether it's through verbiage or it's through a physical manipulation, albeit this one is very simple.

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And then this is a classic, classic in Magic.

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You have them name any card, and you weren't ready for the one they named.

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Often, what I'll do is I will stack my deck, but not in all 52 kind of way.

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I will do something like a Queen of Hearts on top, and like a Jack of Spades on the bottom, and then maybe in my pocket I might have an Ace of Spades.

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And I just have a mental catalog of what cards get named the most.

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Usually one of those, sometimes like a King of Clubs might get thrown in there.

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And it depends on the person, really.

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But if I'm ready with that Queen of Hearts on top, and I have something that can blow someone's mind if I have them name a card that I know is on the top of the deck, then if they name it, great.

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If they name one of the other cards in a different position, I work with that.

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But if they don't name anything, it's not like there's this massive failure.

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You don't know what my intention was.

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If you went ahead and you named the Nine of Spades, then I just go ahead and go, okay, we'll use your free selected card.

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This is the one you were thinking about.

255
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Now let's work with this.

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There's no force in there.

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There's nothing that can make them go, oh, that was weird.

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It's just, I'm having you select a card.

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You don't know what's about to happen.

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And that's something that happens a lot in magic is this concept of don't run when no one is chasing you.

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And I feel like social engineering can really gather a lot from that because when you're nervous, when you are trying to make excuses for everything, when something doesn't work exactly how you want it, that's when things fall apart.

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People are weird.

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People are just inherently weird.

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And take advantage of that.

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So no one is a mind reader.

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No one can see exactly what you're about to do.

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Don't run when you're not being chased.

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Let's go ahead and get to the next section.

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This is the IRL application of multiple outs.

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Originally, I said this as a joke, but Batman is the master of multiple outs, even the Adam West one.

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And if you see here, he has both he's clearly being attacked by a shark but he's ready because he knows, he's like, I'm going to be attacked by a manta ray repellent, by manta rays, or I'm going to be attacked by a shark.

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And so he has repellents for both.

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And if both of those don't work, then he has fists.

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Batman is the king of multiple outs.

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He is always ready for different scenarios, whether it's Joker toxins, or maybe just throwing someone off a building.

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Who cares?

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He's Batman.

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But in actual real life, if we go to the next slide, the IRL applications of multiple outs, a really good example that I've used when I've done phishing attacks on on jobs is multi-layer phishing attacks.

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More often than not, a phishing attack is, here's my website, I want someone to go to it, and I want them to get tricked into going in, and I want them to try to type in their information, and I want them to send it to me, and I want to log it.

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No.

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Phishing attacks need to get way more sophisticated.

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And through multiple outs, you could easily do that.

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So if you think about it, you need to figure out what are all your constraints, and how can you have an outcome that serves you the best.

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So if you take phishing websites, for example, think about the outcomes.

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One, they leave immediately.

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Two, they type in their info, then they read the URL at the last second, and then they leave.

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Or three, they fall for it completely, and then they send you your information.

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All of those...

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the only one that wins is the very last case.

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But if you think about it, what if you actually, when they type in their info, you have a JavaScript keylogger that is taking note of everything they're sending, and it's sending it off to a command server.

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Every time.

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Anytime you make a phishing website, put a keylogger on it.

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Because I have gone onto websites plenty of times, I start typing my username and password, and then the oh shit moment hits, and then I read the URL, realize I'm fine, and then I keep going.

294
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But if there was a keylogger on that, I'd be fucked.

295
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That would not be okay.

296
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And then also, another way to serve yourself a little bit better, if someone leaves immediately, instead of letting them just leave immediately, why not attempt to have a JavaScript popup that uses some identifiable trademark language or a company name information from your target,

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and it says, hey, we just detected that this is a phishing website.

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Go ahead and fill in this form with your name or your email or your phone and your extension.

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Get privileged information.

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You might not get credentials, but privileged information is also gold.

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Not everyone has an easy-to-access company directory where you can start flexing around and getting stuff like this.

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You can even have when they try to leave a JavaScript popup that says, great job, this is an internal test from the company.

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You passed our security audit.

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Congratulations.

305
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Fill in this form so we can make sure that your manager knows.

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Boom.

307
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Taking advantage of that desire to build and feel good about themselves, you've given them more, and all of these options are way better than it either works or it doesn't.

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And then, of course, there's the option that they might be able to realize that there's a scam within the scam and you can go as many layers deep as you want with this.

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You can even follow up with an email afterwards and be like, hey, we noticed this, and try to contact them directly.

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But ultimately, those three layers are better than the original one.

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And an example of doing this in the physical world is think about crash key sets where you have keys for all of the entry boxes in Los Angeles or all of the elevator keys.

312
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There have been so many DEF CON talks.

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There are so many keys available.

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Everyone is aware of these.

315
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There's also the TSA key pack.

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Oh, bless the TSA.

317
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They have made this so easy.

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They took the constraint of everyone in an airport has to have a bag with a lock that fits this constraint.

319
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What type of outs do you need to have to make sure you can manage everything in this constraint?

320
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The TSA key pack.

321
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You get a copy of each one of those keys and suddenly you have an out for every single lock.

322
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And this works, of course, for other different systems.

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And you can just kind of view that exercise of think about challenges in a security scenario where you say, what are the constraints?

324
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How many choices are there?

325
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What are all the permutations of this?

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And how many can I realistically have a response to?

327
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And then how many can you do if you're being unrealistic?

328
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Maybe it takes having 400 different ISP uniforms in a van.

329
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Screw it.

330
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If it gets you in the building, it gets you in the building.

331
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Basically, any plan B attacks or additional layers in real life, that makes for a good multiple out.

332
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Can we get the next slide?

333
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So stage whispers.

334
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This is actually something that's used in both magic and also just on stage.

335
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Normally, a stage whisper on stage is just like you're communicating a direction that the audience isn't supposed to know about it.

336
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You can have full conversations on stage depending on the size of where you're at.

337
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But in magic, a stage whisper is you call up an audience member.

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You don't make a fanfare or anything.

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You bring them up.

340
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And while you're bringing them up, you look them in the eyes helping them up and you say, what is your name?

341
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But you don't say it loudly.

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You don't move your mouth a whole lot.

343
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You don't articulate.

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They say, I'm John.

345
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And you pull them up and you do a magic trick.

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You do whatever, maybe it's a mentalism piece.

347
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And you're doing your mentalism piece and then you say and your name is John.

348
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And everyone loses their mind when they nod because you've just figured out their name.

349
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And then you quickly have to hush them because you're like, no, this isn't where the magic begins.

350
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I'm more magical than this.

351
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And to John, it just looks like you're telling them, oh no, that wasn't actually magic.

352
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But this is an example of a dual reality.

353
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This is where the audience thinks one very specific thing and John is aware of a completely different thing.

354
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But the thing is, is that you don't want John to be in on it.

355
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You want him to be an unwilling participant.

356
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And you're doing this with an ambiguity of language.

357
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You're doing this with an ambiguity of knowledge.

358
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Another effect, and this is a classic thing, you have a box set aside.

359
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You have a watch, a knife, and a card.

360
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And on the card, it simply says, I have the card, you have the knife, the watch is in the box.

361
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It's very simple.

362
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And you place these objects.

363
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You let your audience member shuffle them around.

364
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Your person that you're doing this is great for one-on-one.

365
00:36:06,650 --> 00:36:10,670
And you say, put both hands on any two of these objects.

366
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The box is set aside.

367
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It's not part of this.

368
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And let's say they put their hands on the knife and the card.

369
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And you go ahead and you say, okay, hand one of those to me and you take one, leaving the watch on the table and you go ahead and just put it in the box.

370
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If they get the card, you say, read what the card says.

371
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And then they read it out loud and all of the qualifications for it are true.

372
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If you end up with the card, you simply read it out loud.

373
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And all the qualifications are true because it's from your perspective.

374
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The only instance where it gets a little weird is if they put both of their hands on the watch and one of the other objects.

375
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But you say, okay, now go ahead and lift up one of your hands.

376
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And if they lift up the hand that's on the knife, you can go ahead and say, okay, we'll set these aside.

377
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And then the watch, I want you to put that in the box.

378
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If they lift their hand off of the watch, you say, okay, we'll discard the watch.

379
00:37:09,330 --> 00:37:18,650
And this gets back into the idea of you don't want to do the same trick twice because this is a perfect example of if someone watches this twice, it's instantly going to fall apart.

380
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But if you can present this well and you can present your equivocate well and your method for it and your language and your confidence in it and how much you believe what you say is happening is happening, it becomes the truth.

381
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It's no longer optional.

382
00:37:33,810 --> 00:37:34,950
It is the truth.

383
00:37:34,950 --> 00:37:43,790
And that's why magic magicians like Aaron Brown are so effective because when he speaks, it's the truth.

384
00:37:43,970 --> 00:37:46,270
And that's absolutely wonderful.

385
00:37:46,430 --> 00:37:50,410
And then another effect is called ashen hand.

386
00:37:50,550 --> 00:37:55,650
Earlier I did a slide where I asked if someone's right-handed or left-handed and it didn't matter.

387
00:37:55,830 --> 00:38:00,150
The reason for this is for an effect called ashen hand.

388
00:38:00,230 --> 00:38:03,590
What you do is you have someone put both of their hands out flat like this.

389
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And all you do is you grab their hand and you adjust them a little bit like this.

390
00:38:06,910 --> 00:38:08,450
You maybe move it lower or higher.

391
00:38:08,450 --> 00:38:10,550
You give some bullshit stage direction.

392
00:38:10,610 --> 00:38:17,510
And what you're doing is you're secretly depositing a little bit of ash on your finger onto their left hand.

393
00:38:17,510 --> 00:38:18,430
You can do it on their right.

394
00:38:18,430 --> 00:38:19,650
It doesn't really matter.

395
00:38:19,670 --> 00:38:22,630
But you're going to force one of those hands with an equivocate.

396
00:38:22,630 --> 00:38:25,530
And so let's say you put it on their right.

397
00:38:25,530 --> 00:38:28,490
So you smudge it on their right hand and their hands are like this.

398
00:38:28,490 --> 00:38:29,290
You've moved them.

399
00:38:29,290 --> 00:38:30,330
They now have a smudge.

400
00:38:30,330 --> 00:38:31,970
You are now completely hands-free.

401
00:38:31,970 --> 00:38:34,350
And then you say, are you right-handed or left-handed?

402
00:38:34,530 --> 00:38:39,130
And this is where that choice makes it seem like they have full control over the situation.

403
00:38:39,190 --> 00:38:40,370
They say, I'm left-handed.

404
00:38:40,370 --> 00:38:41,210
You say, okay, great.

405
00:38:41,210 --> 00:38:42,770
We want to use your weak hand.

406
00:38:42,770 --> 00:38:44,390
So we're going to use your right hand.

407
00:38:44,470 --> 00:38:46,130
And go ahead and drop your left hand.

408
00:38:46,530 --> 00:38:47,170
They leave it out.

409
00:38:47,170 --> 00:38:49,170
If they say, I'm right-handed.

410
00:38:49,170 --> 00:38:52,430
You say, okay, leave your right hand out and drop your left.

411
00:38:52,830 --> 00:38:54,370
You have them make a fist.

412
00:38:55,190 --> 00:39:02,450
And from here, all you have to do is take a little bit of ash and you sprinkle it on the back of their hands and rub it in until it vanishes.

413
00:39:03,070 --> 00:39:04,310
That's not the magic.

414
00:39:05,230 --> 00:39:07,410
But you can play that up.

415
00:39:07,410 --> 00:39:09,910
Whatever your character, whatever your writing is.

416
00:39:09,930 --> 00:39:18,290
But then you say that the ash has gone through their hand and has ended up inside of their palm and they open up and then they have ash inside of their hand.

417
00:39:18,310 --> 00:39:22,650
And the reason why this is magical is because you've been stepped away.

418
00:39:22,930 --> 00:39:28,590
Even if they remember the actual fact that they made a choice of which hand, it's couldn't...

419
00:39:28,590 --> 00:39:29,870
because it's not on both hands.

420
00:39:29,870 --> 00:39:31,050
It's only on the one.

421
00:39:31,050 --> 00:39:36,650
And you never touched them because you've made this memory of, hey, you're fucking up.

422
00:39:36,650 --> 00:39:37,810
I'm helping you here.

423
00:39:37,810 --> 00:39:39,290
They're going to wipe that.

424
00:39:39,690 --> 00:39:51,850
And that's a perfect example of taking that snapshot as well as using an equivocate and that vague intent on your question to make them follow instructions with you a little bit better.

425
00:39:52,210 --> 00:39:54,110
If we can go ahead to the next slide.

426
00:39:55,290 --> 00:39:57,630
Real life applications of equivocate.

427
00:39:59,810 --> 00:40:03,930
Honestly, equivocates are best for inferred information.

428
00:40:03,930 --> 00:40:08,470
On a job, let's say you notice on Facebook the big boss had a barbecue.

429
00:40:08,470 --> 00:40:11,250
You're doing some big red team thing.

430
00:40:11,390 --> 00:40:13,150
And you want everyone to...

431
00:40:13,710 --> 00:40:14,850
you've done a bunch of research.

432
00:40:14,850 --> 00:40:16,970
You know the guy that runs the building or whatever.

433
00:40:17,070 --> 00:40:18,030
His name is Bob.

434
00:40:18,410 --> 00:40:27,750
And you can now weaponize the fact that he had a barbecue that weekend because while you're building rapport with one of your targets, you can say, hey, were you at Bob's barbecue?

435
00:40:27,890 --> 00:40:29,810
And they have two realistic responses.

436
00:40:29,810 --> 00:40:31,990
They can either say yes or they can say no.

437
00:40:32,150 --> 00:40:43,710
And by leveraging this, because of this vague intent, this vague language, you can make it seem like you're either invited but didn't go, which makes that person your equal instantly because you're now... they were invited to the barbecue.

438
00:40:43,710 --> 00:40:44,750
So were you.

439
00:40:44,850 --> 00:40:49,810
And if they didn't know about it or they didn't go, you can now be their superior.

440
00:40:49,810 --> 00:40:53,870
You are now the person that's friends with the big boss and they aren't.

441
00:40:54,150 --> 00:41:02,990
And suddenly this relationship dynamic, one, you've inserted yourself close to someone that they're supposed to respect and be under.

442
00:41:02,990 --> 00:41:06,690
But also you have given yourself a history.

443
00:41:06,710 --> 00:41:11,590
You have a background story just from one single piece of information and a vague question.

444
00:41:12,930 --> 00:41:19,650
And more often than not, though, in magic you leverage your social position to get away with equivocates.

445
00:41:19,650 --> 00:41:21,930
It allows you to get away with things that might not make sense.

446
00:41:21,930 --> 00:41:28,170
But when it comes to influencing people's choices in real life using equivocate, people say no and they'll walk away.

447
00:41:28,930 --> 00:41:34,690
You can't make realistic situations by forcing people to choose things with equivocates.

448
00:41:34,690 --> 00:41:35,870
It's very weird.

449
00:41:36,070 --> 00:41:43,390
But you can get away with it, but you have to be a bit of a jerk and you have to write it off as a misunderstanding later and you have to act quickly.

450
00:41:44,490 --> 00:41:55,670
An example of doing this with an ambiguous intent is, I don't know how many people know about the trick of asking when your partner says, hey, I'm hungry, you say, and instead of saying, okay, where do you want to go eat?

451
00:41:55,670 --> 00:41:58,470
You say, I already know where I want to take you, but you have to guess.

452
00:41:58,890 --> 00:42:00,350
And then they do.

453
00:42:00,350 --> 00:42:05,590
And instead of being like, oh, you're right, you just take them there because you use this ambiguous intent.

454
00:42:05,590 --> 00:42:13,370
They don't know any of the information that you know, but it's basically just a big lie to get them to give you more information.

455
00:42:13,770 --> 00:42:15,990
And sometimes people don't even know it themselves.

456
00:42:17,590 --> 00:42:22,930
And another way I've noticed equivocate in real life is in dark patterns.

457
00:42:23,010 --> 00:42:43,730
A lot of them, if you're not familiar with what a dark pattern is on the Internet, is when a UI is creating language or is creating a UI experience around sometimes preventing you from doing something or trying to mitigate the amount of people doing a specific action.

458
00:42:43,730 --> 00:42:48,370
Like, I don't know if you've ever tried to cancel an Amazon account, but there's like 16 menus to go through.

459
00:42:48,370 --> 00:42:49,570
And it's ridiculous.

460
00:42:49,570 --> 00:42:51,150
And that's the dark pattern.

461
00:42:51,150 --> 00:43:00,270
And a quick dark pattern here is do not uncheck this box if you wish to be contacted via about product updates, upgraded special offers, and pricing.

462
00:43:00,270 --> 00:43:01,390
It doesn't make sense.

463
00:43:01,750 --> 00:43:02,790
It's confusing.

464
00:43:02,790 --> 00:43:03,470
It's vague.

465
00:43:03,490 --> 00:43:04,850
It's ambiguous.

466
00:43:05,130 --> 00:43:11,050
And it's how they're preventing you from doing an action, which is unsubscribing, which is something that they don't want you to do.

467
00:43:11,850 --> 00:43:17,370
And actually, even in our game, which if you haven't had a chance to check out the Rogues Village game, go for it.

468
00:43:17,370 --> 00:43:19,170
It's beautiful, lots of fun.

469
00:43:19,170 --> 00:43:22,510
But we have an Equivoque Easter egg hidden there.

470
00:43:22,550 --> 00:43:25,370
You're asked what one of your strengths are.

471
00:43:25,590 --> 00:43:35,290
And regardless of what you respond with, we're always going to give you the same item because we're either going to bolster your weaknesses or we're going to enhance your strength.

472
00:43:35,290 --> 00:43:42,410
And it doesn't matter, but it's an Equivoque, but you feel like you have a free choice, but both paths lead to the same road.

473
00:43:42,410 --> 00:43:45,890
And once again, it comes down to those constraints.

474
00:43:45,890 --> 00:43:51,130
You're figuring out what paths you have available to you and how can you merge them in a direction that you want.

475
00:43:52,110 --> 00:43:54,990
And let's go ahead and get to the takeaways.

476
00:43:57,370 --> 00:44:02,170
Forces are direct decisions that the target has zero control in.

477
00:44:02,530 --> 00:44:06,530
This is good for direct attacks that introduce a specific object.

478
00:44:06,530 --> 00:44:21,230
For example, if you're using a switch bag for getting in a piece of hardware or maybe forcing a value on something like a contest or a lottery, multiple outs are fully free selections that you cannot control.

479
00:44:21,250 --> 00:44:23,290
You can't control the amount of constraints.

480
00:44:23,290 --> 00:44:26,850
You can accept them, but you can be prepared for them.

481
00:44:26,850 --> 00:44:30,630
And this is good for having responses for a narrow selection of answers.

482
00:44:30,630 --> 00:44:37,150
For example, a deck of cards is a 52 question object.

483
00:44:37,650 --> 00:44:43,490
And once you can figure out how to mitigate those 52 questions, it becomes a lot easier to deal with.

484
00:44:43,630 --> 00:44:50,190
And equivocates, they're for creating ambiguity around definitions, allowing your will to be imposed on a target.

485
00:44:51,390 --> 00:44:58,390
Equivocates aren't perfect, but it allows you to enhance your percentages.

486
00:44:58,450 --> 00:45:03,610
And it's great for warping decisions or creating inferred knowledge.

487
00:45:03,790 --> 00:45:06,970
And the next slide, this is the defensive takeaways.

488
00:45:06,970 --> 00:45:17,130
I think this is something that everyone can actually gather something from, whether you're in security, whether you're in magic, or you're just a plain Joe.

489
00:45:17,290 --> 00:45:19,710
Because scams exist everywhere.

490
00:45:20,270 --> 00:45:22,870
But also, please don't ever do this to magicians.

491
00:45:22,870 --> 00:45:23,630
I beg of you.

492
00:45:23,630 --> 00:45:28,530
If I have someone do this to me and I'm doing a magic trick and it turns out they saw this talk, I'm going to be very sad.

493
00:45:28,830 --> 00:45:36,770
But forces, if you feel like you didn't have a free choice, attempt to make another one where you can change the rules of the selection.

494
00:45:37,030 --> 00:45:38,650
Be prepared for an out.

495
00:45:38,790 --> 00:45:42,090
Always be ready to try to change your choice.

496
00:45:42,090 --> 00:45:45,430
If you're at that car lot and they say, here's the green Subaru.

497
00:45:45,430 --> 00:45:48,030
And you can say, let me look at another green Subaru.

498
00:45:48,030 --> 00:45:52,190
And if they're really antsy about that, maybe just leave.

499
00:45:52,430 --> 00:45:53,710
You're an adult.

500
00:45:53,710 --> 00:45:55,770
Go buy a car somewhere else.

501
00:45:56,870 --> 00:45:58,290
Multiple outs.

502
00:45:58,330 --> 00:45:59,910
Go through the scenarios.

503
00:45:59,910 --> 00:46:01,790
What were your actual choices here?

504
00:46:01,790 --> 00:46:04,010
Because maybe you're actually in a force.

505
00:46:04,010 --> 00:46:05,930
Maybe you're in an equivocate.

506
00:46:06,030 --> 00:46:11,190
But go through your scenarios and see if it's possible to prepare for each of them.

507
00:46:11,190 --> 00:46:14,690
And if that intent on that preparation could be negative to you.

508
00:46:15,090 --> 00:46:17,910
And like I said, try to change your mind.

509
00:46:17,910 --> 00:46:19,570
Try to change the rules.

510
00:46:19,570 --> 00:46:23,690
If you can change the rules or you can change your mind, you have a lot more freedom.

511
00:46:24,030 --> 00:46:28,450
But also, chances that you can never be 100% sure.

512
00:46:28,450 --> 00:46:32,130
So always be able to stand your ground and redact.

513
00:46:32,410 --> 00:46:40,470
In equivocates, when you're given vague decisions, verify the intent of the question and what responses will be used for.

514
00:46:40,910 --> 00:46:50,890
So if you get a weird question and it seems very open-ended and weird and it's not from someone you trust, clarify what they want to use the answer for.

515
00:46:50,890 --> 00:46:53,010
You don't have to answer questions.

516
00:46:53,010 --> 00:46:58,250
You don't have to answer someone you've never met who's asking you in an elevator if you went to Bob's BBQ.

517
00:46:58,250 --> 00:47:00,130
You can say, what does it matter to you, guy?

518
00:47:00,130 --> 00:47:01,610
I don't know you.

519
00:47:01,850 --> 00:47:02,750
That's my purse.

520
00:47:02,750 --> 00:47:04,010
Get away from here.

521
00:47:04,370 --> 00:47:05,590
Always validate.

522
00:47:06,350 --> 00:47:07,470
And that's pretty much it.

523
00:47:07,470 --> 00:47:17,270
If you can validate, if you can change your mind, if you can change the rules or what gives you your selection of answers, you'll be safe.

524
00:47:17,270 --> 00:47:19,270
Or safer, as it were.

525
00:47:19,530 --> 00:47:21,650
And I think that's pretty much it.

526
00:47:21,650 --> 00:47:24,930
Yeah, I think I'm ready for my Q&A, Jay.

527
00:47:26,970 --> 00:47:38,850
So first up, 0x90, in your experience, what is the percentage of time that somebody uses some of the defense mechanisms you discussed?

528
00:47:39,910 --> 00:47:50,410
Yeah, when it comes to doing this in a magic scenario, it really depends on how you're approaching.

529
00:47:50,410 --> 00:48:01,450
I've noticed that if you treat anything that you're doing in magic like a puzzle, people will shut down and they will inherently get defensive and they will not want to interact.

530
00:48:01,470 --> 00:48:07,970
Where if you haven't selected a card, they'll wait until the very end because they don't trust you and it's because you haven't built up rapport.

531
00:48:08,610 --> 00:48:11,090
So it's a case-by-case scenario.

532
00:48:11,090 --> 00:48:13,330
It happens on an individual basis.

533
00:48:14,370 --> 00:48:18,350
The longer I've been doing magic, though, the less it has happened.

534
00:48:20,190 --> 00:48:29,930
It's gotten to the point for me... I remember when I first started almost 10 years ago, when I would be doing a trick and then someone would say, let me see those cards.

535
00:48:29,930 --> 00:48:30,670
And I'd be like, oh, no.

536
00:48:30,670 --> 00:48:32,610
And I would shut down and get all clammy.

537
00:48:32,810 --> 00:48:35,610
And all of a sudden, there goes all the magic.

538
00:48:35,790 --> 00:48:44,530
But now, I could have something that I'm preparing for hours ahead of time and I have every single card exactly where I need it.

539
00:48:44,530 --> 00:49:00,230
If someone says, whatever, magic boy, let me see that deck, I want to shuffle it, and it's not a show where I can tell them to go screw themselves, I'm going to hand them the deck and say, okay, shuffle it, and I will change my entire set just to preserve that magic.

540
00:49:01,690 --> 00:49:07,030
But basically, short answer, as you get better, the longer you do it, it happens less and less.

541
00:49:07,030 --> 00:49:15,310
It was at a point where it was maybe 1 out of 10 people, and now maybe if I'm performing a lot, it might happen once a month.

542
00:49:15,590 --> 00:49:21,630
But it really depends on how able you're to disarm your people and how much you can connect with them.

543
00:49:21,630 --> 00:49:27,290
Because if you're their friend before you start doing magic, they're not going to be a jerk to their friend.

544
00:49:28,430 --> 00:49:32,330
Someone asked the question, are you right-handed or left-handed?

545
00:49:33,290 --> 00:49:35,290
I am right-handed.

546
00:49:35,290 --> 00:49:43,390
I don't know exactly how the screen stuff is set up, so it might appear that this is my left hand, but I am right-handed.

547
00:49:44,410 --> 00:49:47,590
And we have a question for you, another one.

548
00:49:47,590 --> 00:49:50,290
What kind of ash is it that you're talking about?

549
00:49:50,290 --> 00:49:52,170
Something special or just burnt paper?

550
00:49:52,170 --> 00:49:53,990
Do you make the ash yourself?

551
00:49:54,610 --> 00:49:58,450
Actually, this is a classic impromptu effect.

552
00:49:58,890 --> 00:50:01,870
You used to do it originally with a cigar ash.

553
00:50:01,990 --> 00:50:11,570
The reason why it was neat is because you could just quickly dip your thumb in an ash tray, which is disgusting if it's public, but you know, it's magic.

554
00:50:11,570 --> 00:50:13,090
We do disgusting stuff sometimes.

555
00:50:13,590 --> 00:50:19,090
And then you can just sit at a party with your thumb behind your hand as you're gesticulating and talking to people.

556
00:50:19,110 --> 00:50:22,690
And you can go ahead and do the effect that way.

557
00:50:22,710 --> 00:50:24,690
But basically, cigarette ash.

558
00:50:24,730 --> 00:50:27,810
You might potentially want to do this a different way.

559
00:50:28,170 --> 00:50:36,270
There are a couple of other effects that have taken this approach and they are published and they're still currently manufactured.

560
00:50:36,270 --> 00:50:41,150
So if you want to go ahead and DM me, I'll actually give you a link to the product.

561
00:50:41,230 --> 00:50:42,550
I don't make anything off of it.

562
00:50:42,550 --> 00:50:48,630
I just don't want to imply that it uses the same equivocate and stuff because I didn't make the effect itself.

563
00:50:48,670 --> 00:50:51,070
But it's very good and it's modern.

564
00:50:51,070 --> 00:50:52,530
You've probably seen it on AGT.

565
00:50:52,530 --> 00:50:53,370
It's great.

566
00:50:54,430 --> 00:51:00,110
We have one person that is claiming you as a Fed.

567
00:51:01,270 --> 00:51:03,770
Oh, who's claiming me as a Fed?

568
00:51:04,850 --> 00:51:07,070
What's their social security number?

569
00:51:08,910 --> 00:51:11,230
No, I'm not a Fed.

570
00:51:11,410 --> 00:51:13,030
I have way too much hair.

571
00:51:13,030 --> 00:51:19,390
I have so much hair, especially for being a Fed, that you can't actually tell that I'm wearing Bose headphones.

572
00:51:19,450 --> 00:51:21,930
Like the full ear cup.

573
00:51:23,130 --> 00:51:25,170
Feds don't have this much hair.

574
00:51:25,170 --> 00:51:27,570
But no, I'm not a Fed.

575
00:51:27,610 --> 00:51:29,510
I'm a software engineer.

576
00:51:29,510 --> 00:51:31,930
I've done some security contract stuff.

577
00:51:33,270 --> 00:51:33,750
Ultimately...

578
00:51:33,750 --> 00:51:38,470
If you want to find me on Twitter, DM me and I'll send you my page.

579
00:51:38,470 --> 00:51:40,410
And you can be very disappointed.

580
00:51:41,810 --> 00:51:43,110
That's beautiful.

581
00:51:43,230 --> 00:51:47,510
I'm going to wait for one more question that's coming in.

582
00:51:49,630 --> 00:51:52,050
I think we can probably just field that on the Discord.

583
00:51:52,050 --> 00:51:55,850
I'm going to give them 10 seconds to get a 10, 9, 8, 7, 6...

584
00:51:55,850 --> 00:51:56,930
I mean, Jade's typing.

585
00:51:56,930 --> 00:51:58,150
Oh, okay.

586
00:51:58,370 --> 00:51:59,150
Alright.

587
00:52:00,090 --> 00:52:01,830
Ooh, AngelRain's typing.

588
00:52:04,190 --> 00:52:07,090
Maybe if I just keep saying people are typing, I'll get more and more.

589
00:52:07,090 --> 00:52:09,730
Maybe they'll just start typing and never fill it.

590
00:52:10,570 --> 00:52:16,190
Alright, to what extent admitting a failure can be used as an out?

591
00:52:17,270 --> 00:52:23,750
So, I wouldn't ever consider a flat-out failure as an out.

592
00:52:24,170 --> 00:52:31,570
There have been times where I have set up for an effect and you're so far in it.

593
00:52:31,570 --> 00:52:35,590
It's like where you're at the table and you need to turn over the card and it has to be your thing.

594
00:52:35,690 --> 00:52:45,230
And there have been some times years ago where I've turned that card over and it's the wrong thing and there's just no way of getting back to it.

595
00:52:45,230 --> 00:52:47,630
And I say, ladies and gentlemen, this is theater.

596
00:52:47,630 --> 00:52:48,450
It's live.

597
00:52:48,450 --> 00:52:50,190
I am so sorry.

598
00:52:50,590 --> 00:52:52,370
This is a fuck up.

599
00:52:53,170 --> 00:52:56,270
And every magician this has happened to.

600
00:52:56,950 --> 00:53:08,630
But ideally, if you have even the smallest window or where you can be clever about something you rarely have to accept failure.

601
00:53:08,850 --> 00:53:23,790
If I'm doing something that is dramatic and there is a lot of intention and emotion behind a certain moment or meaning behind something artistically, I make the decision to take the fall and the full blame of it.

602
00:53:24,730 --> 00:53:35,730
Similar to singing a horrible note on stage and you just kind of go I'm sorry, but I have my artistic integrity and I'm not going to do jazz magic over this to try to recover.

603
00:53:38,770 --> 00:53:41,550
I think that might be it.

604
00:53:42,610 --> 00:53:44,650
But thank you 0x90.

605
00:53:44,730 --> 00:53:47,490
Oh wait, sorry, this will be the last one.

606
00:53:47,490 --> 00:53:50,230
And then we'll cut it after this so we can feel them in the Discord.

607
00:53:51,050 --> 00:53:53,150
But this is a good one to end with.

608
00:53:53,150 --> 00:53:54,730
Who inspires you the most?

609
00:53:55,390 --> 00:53:56,210
Jeez.

610
00:53:57,730 --> 00:54:00,930
This is a really, really good question.

611
00:54:01,450 --> 00:54:10,910
I have a couple of answers for this but just to keep this short I would have to say the late Ricky Jay and the late Johnny Thompson.

612
00:54:11,290 --> 00:54:44,090
Both different worlds, different styles of performing but reading Ricky's depth of knowledge and how much he is passionate about his craft and elevating it to the level of art is beautiful to me and Johnny Thompson being this encyclopedia of magic where he knows just about everything and he's very good and cares about things deeply but they approach it differently.

613
00:54:44,090 --> 00:54:57,970
Johnny Thompson is about making sure people are entertained and doing it well and Ricky Jay is about the total experience of theater and he sees this theater that he alone sees in his head.

614
00:54:57,970 --> 00:54:59,110
It's just him.

615
00:54:59,110 --> 00:55:04,810
And he has this idea of what makes it perfect and he's very aggressive about it and I love it.

616
00:55:07,050 --> 00:55:08,310
Sorry, I lied to you.

617
00:55:08,310 --> 00:55:09,290
Last one.

618
00:55:10,410 --> 00:55:20,730
But AOD wants you to speak to the idea that a magician can sneak out of a failure because the audience doesn't know exactly what's supposed to happen.

619
00:55:21,690 --> 00:55:23,090
Yeah, exactly.

620
00:55:24,630 --> 00:55:27,750
Don't run when no one's chasing you.

621
00:55:27,750 --> 00:55:35,470
If I pull out a card and it's like the reveal and I know it's not it.

622
00:55:35,470 --> 00:55:36,910
I figured it out.

623
00:55:36,910 --> 00:55:38,330
That is not it.

624
00:55:38,890 --> 00:55:41,670
You can attempt to backtrack.

625
00:55:43,670 --> 00:55:45,530
There are effects.

626
00:55:45,530 --> 00:55:47,590
There's a thing called an invisible deck.

627
00:55:47,590 --> 00:55:49,270
It's wonderful and it allows you

628
00:55:52,730 --> 00:56:05,270
to summon any card For example, if you ever screw up so badly that it's irredeemable, you can keep something like that on your person and just be like, well, actually I did this.

629
00:56:05,270 --> 00:56:07,590
And then you did this whole other effect.

630
00:56:07,590 --> 00:56:10,310
You can always move on to something else.

631
00:56:10,310 --> 00:56:15,390
No one knows that you're about to have the card come to the top of the deck 47 times in a row.

632
00:56:15,390 --> 00:56:22,190
Maybe on the 22nd one you screw it up and you can just move into something else.

633
00:56:22,190 --> 00:56:26,470
You can just make a joke about it and be like, I guess it died after 21 and move on.

634
00:56:26,470 --> 00:56:28,590
And it depends on your personality.

635
00:56:28,850 --> 00:56:39,650
And honestly, the calmer you are the more ready you are to accept something getting screwed up and just moving on with it people will never remember it.

636
00:56:39,650 --> 00:57:06,110
People seldom I have come off of so many performances where I screwed one thing up and I had to recover like that and it affects me to the point where I become so upset like I need hours by myself to think about how I'm such an idiot and I screwed something up and I've never had a single person ever point it out and even professional magicians I'm like,

637
00:57:06,110 --> 00:57:11,170
yeah, but I did this and I screwed this thing up and they're like, oh, I thought you were just going into this effect that way.

638
00:57:11,190 --> 00:57:12,510
I had no clue.

639
00:57:12,890 --> 00:57:13,830
No one cares.

640
00:57:13,830 --> 00:57:15,250
No one's chasing you.

641
00:57:16,490 --> 00:57:17,650
Awesome.

642
00:57:17,770 --> 00:57:21,910
That will conclude our Q&A portion for this talk.

643
00:57:21,910 --> 00:57:24,230
Thank you, RX980, for everything.

644
00:57:24,410 --> 00:57:25,770
Yeah, thank you.