Can we or can we not influence things, events, or decisions?
After participating in this demonstration, your spectators will no doubt have their answer…
A red-backed card is placed face down in the middle of the table. A spectator will be invited to turn over the card at the end of your demonstration. You will not touch the card again.
Now take out a blue-backed deck, show it back and front. It’s a regular deck in which all the cards are different.
Give it to the spectators to shuffle, cut and examine freely.
At this stage, point out that it is absolutely impossible to know the order of the cards since the deck has been passed from spectator to spectator, each of whom gave the deck a shuffle.
Explain that you are not going to manipulate the cards and that the order of the cards will stay as dictated by chance. To avoid any and all manipulation, the entire deck is immediately replaced in its case.
As things now stand, no one, not even you, knows the order of the cards.
Hold the deck and its case at the tips of the fingers and take out the cards one by one in order. Whenever he likes, a spectator tells you, “STOP!”