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I have a question about my Psychology & Neuroscience Stack Exchange post: Is mentalism real?

So above post is closed. I asked why my post was closed here Close the question with reason, Also I requested a feature in this post but that's not an issue anymore. The issue is why is my post Is mentalism real? closed? I mean this is not an assumption based question.

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Your question is not about psychology or neuroscience, so it was closed.

Your question is really no different than asking "is magic real?" which would also be off-topic here. Yes of course it's real in the sense that people buy tickets to magic shows all the time. No of course it's not real in the sense that people wave wands or recite spells that break laws of physics.

It might be possible to ask about some specific case at https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/ but they have some pretty strict rules, as well, that you should be sure to follow:

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1875/are-magic-tricks-in-scope

https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3200/is-it-okay-to-expose-magic-tricks-on-skeptics

https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2506/what-is-a-notable-claim

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  • But in the description, it was written that the question is closed because it's on an assumption based. That was my concern. Anyways, I just found something interesting read the first para of this Wiki en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentalism_(psychology). It says that it's part of psychology.
    – Luffy
    Commented Aug 26, 2023 at 4:25
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    @LeviAckerman I don't think you read the whole close reason, then. The new Wikipedia you link is not about the same thing as the other content in your original question; the word is the same but the meaning is entirely different - that's why Wikipedia has them as two entirely separate articles.
    – Bryan Krause Mod
    Commented Aug 26, 2023 at 4:55
  • I read the whole close reason. Well, as a non expert in psychology, it's confusing. It's confusing because mentalist states that we do this performance seeing the body movements and behaviour. She also states that she can't do the same with a less than 14 years child because they have not developed the same behaviour as adults. As @StevenJeuris mentioned that it might be cold reading. But I highly doubt someone can really know what's the person is shouting inside their brain. Two things are mixing here. Magic and cold reading.
    – Luffy
    Commented Aug 26, 2023 at 9:48
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I can agree the "assumption" in this case may be less clear than when this close reason is usually applied. But, you still seem to assume (though question, so that's good!) there is anything more going on than a magic trick, or "art" as the mentalist pointed out.

So although I agree the assumption you make in your question is very limited and made explicit (thank you), as Bryan points out, magic is still off topic here.

That said, it could be that some techniques used by mentalists could be considered on topic here. Focusing on this and linking to relevant terminology/literature may work. This is what it means to "frame question in psychology or neuroscience". That will require some more initial research on your part. One thing which comes to mind is "cold reading", which could potentially be explored/asked about from a psychology perspective, if any such questions pop up when reading about this.

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