If you find yourself seriously considering hypotheses like micromuscle reading or subliminal suggestion, then that's probably because the magician has managed to slip a false assumption past your defences!

The subliminal suggestion part isn't that implausible a priori, though. Suppose I first tell you to think of some tool, after which I tell you to think of some color.

Znal crbcyr jvyy svefg nafjre "unzzre", orpnhfr gung'f n cebgbglcvpny gbby, naq gura nafjre "erq", orpnhfr obgu jbeqf ner nffbpvngrq jvgu pbzzhavfz naq gur zragvba bs n unzzre cevzrf nffbpvngrq pbaprcgf.

While I'm not sure of how well that will work here, once back in junior high school I had happened to read that and a list of other priming questions from somewhere, and tried them out on my classmates. I didn't always get the expected answer, but I did get it more often than not.

My favorite was one that only works in Finnish - asking people to say "kuusi" for several times in a row, which is a word that means either the number six, or a spruce tree. Then I would ask them to name a vegetable, and often they would say "carrot" - which happens to have a similar shape as the popular way of drawing cartoon spruce trees.

I watched #3 again and I'm pretty convinced you're right. It is strange, seeing it totally differently once I have a theory to match.

I think it's worth taking a step back from the details of any one of Derren Brown's effects, and looking at the nature of stage magic. A stage magician employs a set of techniques called misdirection to mislead the audience as to how a trick is performed, to direct their attention to irrelevant aspects of the performance, or to encourage them to misinterpret relevant aspects.

An important technique in misdirection is to provide the audience with a false explanation for how the trick is done. A magician who says that a trick is done by magic encourages you watch carefully at the point where he waves his magic wand (knowing that this does the audience no good, because the rabbit was already loaded into the hat). A magician who says that a trick is done by science encourages you to look at the fancy gears of his machine (when actually there's an assistant hidden inside). A magician who says that a trick is done by psychic powers encourages you to watch carefully at the point where he concentrates on reading the subject's mind (when actually the card was marked or forced).

Knowing all this, as I imagine you do, what are we to make of a magician who explains that a trick is done by psychology? I guess this time he might be telling the truth, right?

Now, let's look at your examples with the above in mind, and ask some questions.

In the first example, why does David Frost later agree that he was thinking of a place, after first denying it?

In the second example (guessing the pet name), 1. Is Derren taller or shorter than the woman? 2. Did Derren pick the other volunteer (the man with the shoulder bag) before or after explaining how to read minds? 3. Where was Derren standing while he explained to the woman how to read minds? 4. What was the man with the shoulder bag doing while this was going on? 5. Who exactly was tricked here?

In the third example (the creepy clown), 1. Why is he dressed as a clown? 2. Why a creepy clown in particular? 3. Why does he wave his arms about? 4. What does it look like if you watch it without the sound?

I think it's worth taking a step back from the details of any one of Derren Brown's effects, and looking at the nature of stage magic. A stage magician employs a set of techniques called misdirection to mislead the audience as to how a trick is performed, to direct their attention to irrelevant aspects of the performance, or to encourage them to misinterpret relevant aspects.

An important technique in misdirection is to provide the audience with a false explanation for how the trick is done. A magician who says that a trick is done by magic encourages you watch carefully at the point where he waves his magic wand (knowing that this does the audience no good, because the rabbit was already loaded into the hat). A magician who says that a trick is done by science encourages you to look at the fancy gears of his machine (when actually there's an assistant hidden inside). A magician who says that a trick is done by psychic powers encourages you to watch carefully at the point where he concentrates on reading the subject's mind (when actually the card was marked or forced).

Knowing all this, as I imagine you do, what are we to make of a magician who explains that a trick is done by psychology? I guess this time he might be telling the truth, right?

Now, let's look at your examples with the above in mind, and ask some questions.

In the first example, why does David Frost later agree that he was thinking of a place, after first denying it?

In the second example (guessing the pet name), 1. Is Derren taller or shorter than the woman? 2. Did Derren pick the other volunteer (the man with the shoulder bag) before or after explaining how to read minds? 3. Where was Derren standing while he explained to the woman how to read minds? 4. What was the man with the shoulder bag doing while this was going on? 5. Who exactly was tricked here?

In the third example (the creepy clown), 1. Why is he dressed as a clown? 2. Why a creepy clown in particular? 3. Why does he wave his arms about? 4. What does it look like if you watch it without the sound?

I have never liked music. Why do people like it?

I'll tell you: it was the villains of our story (okay not really, that's actually for-profit media)... the glaciologists! Yes! You see, Cesare Emiliani was famous because he helped discover that ice ages are cyclic phenomena, a huge advance in paleoclimatology, before that was even a thing. And it turns out, we're just about due for our next ice age!

Ice ages are not cyclical, but glaciations are. We are currently in an ice age, but in an interglacial period within that ice age. We may be "overdue" for the next glaciation, but it is also possible that the last glaciation of this ice age has already occurred, and we are heading back into a warm earth era typical of the overwhelming majority of the planet's history.

If I can't get this study published in the traditional way, I'll "publish" it myself on the internet.

In this case, what I'm calling the null hypothesis is somewhat meatier than a null hypothesis you would typically find in a medical study. The voluntary supplemental financial reporting for these (insurance) companies (starting with 2011) is something called market consistent embedded value (MCEV). My null hypothesis is that the phrase 'market consistent' is accurate - this is roughly equivalent to assuming that, in valuing the long-term liabilities of these companies, market participants pretend that they are securities with the same cashflows. My alternate hypothesis is that market participants value these liabilities within a framework of the company as a going concern, focusing on the company's cost of meeting these liabilities.

I find it very plausible that [Blues] are better able to pretend to be [Greens] than vice versa. But what follows from that?

That Blues understand Green arguments but aren't persuaded by them (presumably because they have counterarguments), whereas Greens don't understand Blue arguments and this makes it unlikely they have counterarguments.

Now let's look at your three objections, near as I can tell your first objection amounts to "sometimes the people defending the incorrect position are heterogeneous, this gives them a large advantage in the test", and your third objection amounts to "sometimes the people defending the incorrect position are homogeneous, this gives them a large advantage in the test".

Now let's look at you second objection: much as it may seem that way your opponents are not evil mutants whose position has no logic to it whatsoever, most position actually held by humans, especially intelligent humans have a certain logic to them. (And if you're opponents' position really has no logic to it beyond saying anything plausible sounding that backs up their conclusion, that's very easy to imitate). Thus, the two positions have different logic to them and it will be hard for a person only familiar with one of those logics to imitate the other. On the other hand, if someone is familiar with the logic of both positions A and B, the fact that he nevertheless holds position A is evidence that A is in fact correct.

I find it very plausible that Christians are better able to pretend to be atheists than vice versa. But what follows from that?

Caplan claimed in his original piece:

the ability to pass ideological Turing tests—to state opposing views as clearly and persuasively as their proponents—is a genuine symptom of objectivity and wisdom.

Caplan gives little in the way of argument in support of this claim, and I'm not at all sure that it's true. "Genuine symptom of objectivity and wisdom", really? My objections follow.

First, there's only one way to be right but there are many ways to be wrong. So if you are right it is likely that you have only a broad survey-level view of the different varieties of wrongness. Take, for example, climate change. The scientific consensus view is narrow and everyone in the debate knows what it is. But as far as I know there are many different skeptical positions (there's no such thing as the greenhouse effect; there may be a greenhouse effect but CO₂ is not a greenhouse gas; CO₂ may be a greenhouse gas but concentrations are not increasing; CO₂ concentrations may be increasing, but they are not anthropogenic; global temperatures are not rising; temperatures may be rising but not because of CO₂; temperatures may be rising but there is no need to do anything because the net result will be beneficial; climate change may be harmful but it's too late to do anything about it; it may not be too late but there are still better things to spend money on). I think I know enough about each of these positions to be confident that it's wrong but in order to impersonate one of these positions well enough to fool people I would have to know it inside out. Exactly which wrong assumptions and wrong authorities does each of these positions depend on?

Second, the criterion of being able to state views "as clearly and persuasively as their proponents" is not as neutral as it seems. If you're right you may have been happy to rely on the facts to do your persuading for you. But if you're wrong then you have probably needed to employ a lot of rhetoric, salesmanship, fallacies and argumentation. These techniques take skill and practice and aren't easy to imitate. For example, there's no way that I would be able to imitate the dense texture of sneering and insinuation in the rhetoric of someone like Moldbug.

Third, in the specific case under discussion here, Christianity has a number of cultural properties that make it hard to imitate. If you are Christian, then you probably know the Bible in detail, you are probably familiar with a range of theological and apologetic texts, and you are probably embedded in a subculture with its own rules, rituals, and mores. These kinds of details take a lot of work to imitate. But the typical atheist has probably never read The God Delusion or attended any kind of atheist event, so there's nothing there that needs to be invented.

In particular, "post-utopian" is not a real term so far as I know, and I'm using it as a stand-in for literary terms that do in fact have no meaning. If you think there are none of those, Alan Sokal would like to have a word with you.