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The Conjuring Trick Conjurers use a technique called slight of hand. For example, the conjurer may cover a coin in the palm of his left hand while doing something with the right hand that attracts the attention of the audience. Magicians such as David Copperfield use this slight of hand on a grand scale, distracting the audience with showgirls and tigers whilst the real magic is performed under their noses. In his book Sorcerer's apprentice Tahir Shah recounts the exploits of many Indian ‘gurus’ who use slight of hand to portray themselves as mystics with advanced powers. A similar sleight of hand is performed by people who should know better. Often without really being aware of what they are doing. An example of this when people recount statistics without bearing in mind how the statistics were obtained. A question such as ‘Do you think it was correct to invade Iraq’ would produce a different result from ‘Do you think it was right to overthrow Saddam Hussein’, though in both cases the result may be interpreted as such-and-such a percent agree with troops being in Iraq. People who have passed exams are usually portrayed as having some kind of authority. What is rarely mentioned is that in most cases these exams are set by people who have similar ideas to them – that's why they are able to pass the exams. Most exams simply reflect the prevailing orthodoxy so when sceptics and others of similar ilk say that something must be so because established authorities say so, it’s worth asking who gave them this authority. The most significant example of this slight of hand, however, is in what we might call ‘diagrammatic representations’. In order to understand something it often helps to draw a picture. This picture is a representation of what we want to portray. So for example, if I buy something that needs to be assembled, there may be a picture of how the pieces fit together. The picture need not be accurate in all respects, in fact it is often helpful if the picture is not accurate – there may be broken lines to indicate parts that are not actually visible to the observer and the pieces may not be to scale. The diagram is designed to serve a purpose. A similar idea is the usual drawing that is used to illustrate the planets in the solar system. The planets are shown in colour in their order from the sun. They are not to scale and the distances are grossly exaggerated, or rather diminished. It would be impossible to go anywhere in the galaxy and actually see the planets in this way. Were you able to move out far enough to see the solar system as a whole, the planets would be indistinguishable from the surrounding stars. However, such diagrams serve a purpose. Another example is the conventional diagram of an atom with a nucleus consisting of neutrons and protons, and an orbiting electron. In fact, such a model would be impossible to see and in any case quantum effects would make such a model impossible. The picture beguiles people into believing that that is reality, that the atom really does work like that. Nowadays, diagrams are not only put on paper but are represented as mathematical models inside computers. These models can be used to for such purposes as simulating aircraft characteristics and are much less costly than building the real thing or building models and testing in wind tunnels. The models, however, depend on how accurate the mathematical calculations reflect the reality. Again, people get beguiled and believe that because the computer makes predictions about behavior that is really how it is. It is a sort of sleight of hand. The trick was performed when the real world was interpreted into a mathematical model. Mathematicians and cosmologists claim to know the mind of God because they have performed a few calculations. This is simply arrogance in assuming that there mathematical representations of how the universe in constructed actually has any validity. One example of this is when cosmologists talk about the first few seconds of the universe. A ‘Universe’ with no matter as we conceive it and with gravitational and other forces beyond our comprehension, does not have time as we know it. This is the conjurer at work.