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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I think “magicians never tell” because they are far more afraid of loss of faith in meaningfulness than in their tricks getting shared. I’ve never once not been disappointed at learning how a trick works.
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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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