Early in my journey with card magic, I learned a particular technique — I will not say what it is, obviously — that required me to do something with a deck of cards that, from my perspective, looked completely obvious. Every time I practiced in my hotel room mirror, I could see it. The discrepancy was right there, visible, undeniable. I could not unsee it. I was convinced that any attentive person would spot it instantly.
I practiced the technique for weeks. Smoother, faster, more natural. But no matter how refined the execution became, I could still see the moment. In the mirror. In my phone’s camera. In my own hands. It was always there.
When I finally performed it for a real person — a colleague at a conference dinner in Graz — he did not notice. Not a flicker of suspicion. Not a single question. He was looking directly at my hands, and he did not see what I saw every single time.
I thought he was being polite. So I performed it for someone else. Same result. And someone else. Same result. And someone else. Over the next month, I performed this technique dozens of times, and not once did anyone react to the moment I was certain was transparent.
It was not until I read Darwin Ortiz’s formulation in Strong Magic — “People tend to see what they expect to see” — that I understood what was happening. And the companion principle that made it all click: “People tend to experience what they want to experience.”
The Curse of Knowing
The reason I could see the discrepancy was not that it was visible. It was that I knew it was there. I knew what to look for, when to look for it, and what it meant. My perception was shaped by my knowledge, and my knowledge made the invisible visible — but only to me.
The audience had none of this knowledge. They did not know what the technique was. They did not know when it happened. They did not know what to look for. So their perceptual system did what every human perceptual system does in the absence of specific expectations: it filled in the gaps with the most likely interpretation.
And the most likely interpretation, for a spectator watching someone handle a deck of cards, is that everything is normal. That the deck is what it appears to be. That the handling is what it appears to be. That nothing unusual is happening because why would it be?
Researchers at Goldsmiths University, led by Gustav Kuhn, documented this phenomenon rigorously. When they surveyed nearly a hundred magicians about how “free” different selection methods would feel to spectators, the magicians’ predictions were driven by their own expertise — by how easy the technique was to execute, by how transparent it felt from the inside. The spectators’ actual experience was completely different. Simple methods that magicians assumed would be caught sailed past spectators without a trace of suspicion.
This is the curse of knowledge applied to performance. The deeper your understanding of what you are doing, the harder it becomes to imagine what it is like to not understand it. You project your own awareness onto the audience. You assume they see what you see. They do not. They see what they expect to see. And what they expect to see, almost always, is normalcy.
Expectation as a Filter
Expectation is not just a passive state. It is an active filter that shapes what the brain processes and what it discards. The human visual system does not work like a camera, impartially recording everything in the field of view. It works like an editor, selecting what to process based on what the brain considers likely to be relevant.
When a spectator watches a card routine, their brain builds a model of what is happening. Cards are being shown, counted, spread, collected. Each of these actions has a “normal” version in the spectator’s mental model. As long as the performer’s actions fit within that model — as long as nothing contradicts what the brain expects to see — the brain accepts the input and moves on. It does not scrutinize. It does not analyze. It takes the shortcut of assumption.
This is not laziness. This is efficiency. The brain processes millions of sensory inputs per second and can only attend consciously to a tiny fraction. The rest is handled by expectation-based shortcuts. Is this card face-down? It looks face-down, and face-down is what I expected, so yes, face-down. Next input.
The performer who understands this does not try to make secret actions invisible. They try to make secret actions expected. If the audience expects you to turn the deck over, then turning the deck over is invisible — even if the turning conceals something crucial. If the audience expects you to spread the cards, then spreading the cards is invisible — even if the spread shows them something subtly different from what they assume they are seeing.
The question is not “Can they see it?” The question is “Does it match what they expect to see?” If the answer is yes, they will not see the discrepancy even if they are looking directly at it.
Desire as an Amplifier
Ortiz pairs the expectation principle with its emotional companion: “People tend to experience what they want to experience.” This adds a second layer to the psychology.
Audiences come to a magic performance wanting to be amazed. They want the impossible to happen. They want to believe, at least for a moment, that something extraordinary has occurred. This desire is not a weakness to be exploited. It is a collaborative force that works in the performer’s favor — provided the performer does not undermine it.
When a spectator wants the card to be in a surprising location, their brain is primed to experience surprise. When a spectator wants the prediction to match, their brain is primed to experience the match. The ancient orator Demosthenes said it two thousand years ago: “What we wish, that we readily believe.”
This does not mean you can do sloppy work and the audience will not notice. The desire to be amazed is a tailwind, not a magic carpet. It helps carry an effect that is well-constructed. It does not rescue one that is poorly executed. But it does mean that the margin for error is larger than most performers realize, because the audience is not adversarial. They are collaborative. They want the magic to work.
I think about this every time I perform for a group that has specifically requested magic or mentalism. These are people who chose to be here. They chose this experience. Their desire to be entertained, to be amazed, to have a memorable evening, is already present before I do anything. That desire is an invisible partner, and respecting it — by performing with confidence and conviction — allows it to do its work.
Where This Goes Wrong
The danger of understanding these principles is the temptation to become lazy. “They see what they expect, they experience what they want — so I don’t need to worry about execution.”
This is a trap. Expectation and desire work in the performer’s favor only when the performance is competent. They are multipliers, not replacements. A well-executed technique, delivered with confidence, in a context where the audience’s expectations and desires are aligned with the effect — that combination is nearly unbeatable. A poorly executed technique, delivered nervously, hoping that expectation and desire will cover for the gaps — that combination fails spectacularly.
The reason it fails is that nervous, uncertain performance sends signals that contradict the audience’s expectations. If the performer looks worried, the audience expects something to go wrong. If the performer hesitates, the audience expects a problem. The expectation filter flips from “everything is normal” to “something is off,” and suddenly the brain is scrutinizing instead of accepting.
This is why Ortiz’s principles are inseparable from his emphasis on conviction. The performer must believe — must act as though what is happening is genuinely impossible, even miraculous. That belief, communicated through posture, pacing, eye contact, and voice, reinforces the audience’s expectation that everything is normal and their desire to experience the extraordinary. Conviction keeps the tailwind blowing.
Practical Application: The Pre-Show Mindset
Knowing that expectation and desire work in my favor changed my pre-show routine. I used to spend the moments before a performance reviewing the technical vulnerabilities of each effect. Where could they catch me? What might go wrong? What backup plans did I need?
This is a useful exercise for rehearsal. It is a terrible exercise for the moments before a performance, because it puts me in a defensive mindset. It makes me see the show through the eyes of a hostile examiner rather than through the eyes of a willing, curious, hopeful audience.
Now, my pre-show mental routine is different. I remind myself of three things:
The audience is not looking for secrets. They are looking for an experience. Their expectation is not “I bet this is going to be exposed” but “I wonder what is going to happen.” That expectation is my ally.
The audience wants this to work. They want to be amazed. They did not come here to catch me. They came here to feel something. That desire is my ally.
My job is not to be invulnerable. My job is to be convincing. To act as though what is happening is real, fascinating, and extraordinary. To match the audience’s expectation and desire with my own conviction.
This mental shift — from defensive to collaborative — changes the quality of the performance. It makes me calmer. More present. More connected. And ironically, it makes the technical execution better, because calm hands are more precise than anxious hands.
The Mirror Problem
I still practice in mirrors. I still see the moments that I think are transparent. I still have the curse-of-knowledge reaction where I think, “Everyone is going to see that.”
The difference is that now I can override that reaction with evidence. Years of performing have shown me, over and over, that the audience does not see what I see. Their expectations filter it out. Their desires smooth it over. Their brains take the shortcut of normalcy and move on.
The mirror lies to me. Not about the physical reality of what my hands are doing, but about how that physical reality will be perceived by someone who does not know what I know. The mirror shows me the inner reality. The audience experiences the outer reality. And the gap between those two is where the magic lives.
This is perhaps the most liberating principle I have encountered in my study of performance. Not because it lets me get away with sloppiness, but because it frees me from the paralysis of perfectionism. The technique does not need to be invisible to me. It needs to be invisible to someone who does not know what I know, who expects to see normalcy, and who wants to experience wonder.
Those are very different standards. And understanding the difference between them is the difference between a performer who is constantly afraid and a performer who is confidently in control.
People see what they expect to see. People experience what they want to experience. These are not loopholes. They are the fundamental architecture of human perception. And the performer who builds on that architecture, rather than fighting against it, finds that the magic is already halfway there before the first technique is even executed.