This week my Ted Talk was "Two Nerdy Obsessions meet- and it's magic" by David Kwong. David Kwong is a New York Times crossword puzzle constructor and magician. He said that when he was younger he really liked to play the game Scrabble, the game where you have to try and make words from other letters to get points.
He talks about how he thinks that puzzles and magic go hand in hand because they give us all the urge to solve and how we make order out of chaos. Which I found personally kind of odd because at first I didn't understand how the same thinking that goes into figuring out and solving a crossword, goes into thinking about magic. But then I thought, "Have you ever watched a magic trick and thought to yourself, how did he do it? And try to figure out a million ways you could get away with sawing somebody in half?" Because at magic shows, you're always constantly trying to solve, that's the whole point.
He later brings a woman onstage to prove his point that even though we might not notice it, we are always trying to solve. When the woman is on stage he has a picture of some animals that are not colored in and a couple of markers next to it. He asks her to take a color and color in the animal with whichever color she pleases. He names of each animal one by one as the lady colors them in accordingly. After she's done, David opens an envelope showing animals colored the exact same way. He goes through and tells the audience that throughout his talk, he has sent subliminal mind messages to their brain that made them choose the colors that they did through little stories and examples he created. He even used his own crossword puzzle he made the day of of the talk for a message!
This Ted Talk really fascinated me, because it showed that throughout the day our brain is always picking up on information and using it to solve when we don't even know it ourselves. And how cool the human brain is for doing stuff like this when we aren't even aware of it. I'm starting to find Physiology very interesting, just the reason why do things and how the human brain works is very appealing and it is something that I would like to look further into. I very strongly recommend this Ted Talk to anyone who also finds Physiology interesting like I do, or is just looking for a fun video.
He talks about how he thinks that puzzles and magic go hand in hand because they give us all the urge to solve and how we make order out of chaos. Which I found personally kind of odd because at first I didn't understand how the same thinking that goes into figuring out and solving a crossword, goes into thinking about magic. But then I thought, "Have you ever watched a magic trick and thought to yourself, how did he do it? And try to figure out a million ways you could get away with sawing somebody in half?" Because at magic shows, you're always constantly trying to solve, that's the whole point.
He later brings a woman onstage to prove his point that even though we might not notice it, we are always trying to solve. When the woman is on stage he has a picture of some animals that are not colored in and a couple of markers next to it. He asks her to take a color and color in the animal with whichever color she pleases. He names of each animal one by one as the lady colors them in accordingly. After she's done, David opens an envelope showing animals colored the exact same way. He goes through and tells the audience that throughout his talk, he has sent subliminal mind messages to their brain that made them choose the colors that they did through little stories and examples he created. He even used his own crossword puzzle he made the day of of the talk for a message!
This Ted Talk really fascinated me, because it showed that throughout the day our brain is always picking up on information and using it to solve when we don't even know it ourselves. And how cool the human brain is for doing stuff like this when we aren't even aware of it. I'm starting to find Physiology very interesting, just the reason why do things and how the human brain works is very appealing and it is something that I would like to look further into. I very strongly recommend this Ted Talk to anyone who also finds Physiology interesting like I do, or is just looking for a fun video.