Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge

The New York Times ran an article last week about “Magic of Consciousness,” a symposium organized by a pair of researchers at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix and featuring Teller, James Randi, and other prestidigitators specially selected not merely because of their knack for wowing and fooling people, but owing to their interest in — and knowledge of –how their tricks work at the level of cognition.
Important in trickery is the fact that the brain processes only a fraction of the sensory input it receives; from an evolutionary perspective, it’s certainly understandable why a sensory system would feature something akin to redundancy or mammoth overspill. Better to “see” ten hungry bears, including nine that aren’t there, and register the one gunning for your hide than to mistake the only one around for a rock.
One is left with the impression that Teller et al. would be extremely interesting people to talk to even if they didn’t divulge any trade secrets. There’s no mystery as to why these guys are the most ardent skeptics around; their bullshit detectors are tripped at the parts-per-million level.