Mark Mitton

Magician

Mark Mitton is a magician who is fascinated by using magic to better understand how we see the world. He performs magic and produces unique entertainment around the world, and explores the limits and potential of perception. Mark’s specialty is physical misdirection, or what some call “embodied cognition”. He regularly presents on ‘Perception & Deception’ at universities and conferences. He studied economics at Haverford College, and then became the apprentice to legendary sleight-of-hand master Slydini. For many years, he discussed and presented with the late Dr. Gerald Edelman on the essence of emergence in natural selective processes such as immune response and communication.

Participant In These Roundtable Discussions

Sat
Oct 14th
2017
  Watch

“Fake” Knowledge: Knowing and the Illusion of Knowing

This roundtable examines the nature of knowledge as a distributed and socially mediated phenomenon, from historical practices of shared memory to the contemporary influence of digital information systems. It explores how access to vast, externalized sources of knowledge—such as the internet—affects individual cognition, our sense of self, and our ability to distinguish between fact, speculation, and belief. The discussion also considers the relationship between collective intelligence and individual reasoning, and reflects on whether increased information necessarily leads to greater wisdom, as well as the broader implications of emerging human–machine knowledge systems.