I-it vs I-you is the most basic dichotomy I’ve found in my years of dichotomy hunting to fuel 2x2s. HT for introducing me to it.
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Magic and illusion often seem to depend on hacking it/you processing dispositions
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Material reality has a lot of detail but very little meaning
Social reality has a lot of meaning but very little detail
Humans want significance: both detail and meaning at once, to feel present and alive. This can be hacked for profit or insight.
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Significance is meaningful detail. Example: “sell the sizzle, not the steak” creates significance out of a material detail (sizzle as I-it) and social meaning (sizzle as socially constructed meaningfulness of food culture eg barbecue)
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A tell of an inexperienced liar is putting in too much or too little material detail relative to the meaning of what is being said. A significance glitch.
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Magic tricks often work because we badly *want* to believe that objects have intentions minds and mysterious agency (meaningful I-you characteristics we want in humans to relate to) but the trick often exploits basic banal I-it physics/geometry that’s a letdown when revealed
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Experimental science is the opposite of magic. Bizarre I-it details with no social narrative attached. Like a mentos and soda experiment. Bizarre and fun but not like a magic trick because there are no significant expectations being subverted.
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Our null hypothesis for I-it things is ”nothing much”
Our null hypothesis for I-you things is “change caused by living striving”
Objects doing something rather than nothing is surprising in a science way
People doing nothing rather than something is surprising in a magic way
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Example of latter: a mark picking the card the conjurer wants, due to highly effective suggestion modes... that’s humans acting deterministically like objects
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Try this dumb “magic” trick. Spell out a number of words ending in o-p while a friend pronounces them:
c o p cop
t o p top
m o p mop
After 6-7 such prompts, suddenly ask them: “what do you do at a green traffic light?”
~100% of people will say “stop”
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Conditioning structure here is transparent but most tricks with more hidden mechanics seem to rely on similar object-like predictability of human attention trajectory. You work it like an I-it to get an I-thou payoff yourself (people being impressed at a cheap trick)
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Check out when you can
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Any day that I get to share this, the greatest profile ever written, with a new person who hasn't read it before, is a beautiful day newyorker.com/magazine/1993/
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I feel like David Lynch's entire film and television career makes great use of this concept




