A new paradigm of magic and lying to Magicians

[Mark]

Those are some very deep questions in only those couple of sentences. Let me answer them one by one..

How would total exposure of magic affect the art? Not only to amateur magicians but to laymen, what if the spectators knew what we were all up to?

As magic is an art fully relying on secrecy, total exposure would affect it to the extreme. With total exposure, it would merely be trick entertainment, often even less so than juggling and other arts as in a lot of magic there are no physical skills involved (think of self-working and gimmicked tricks).

Magicians would be forced to create new and abstract techniques of a totally different kind to achieve the impossible. Those numbers of people who could perform magic would drop way down to a spare few, would this benefit the art? An example of this can be seen in ourselves, we see someone do a trick, and most of the time if we don't know exactly how its done, we can at least recognise the style of the technique used. what if laymen had that knowledge, we would only be left with those rare magic effects that completely and totally fool us. Would this be a good thing?

Yes and no. Basically this would only keep a very small part of the art alive while the rest will be destroyed.

First off, it will not just be about different kinds of techniques because if the effect still looks slightly similar, laymen will think you used a method similar to what they are aware of. Same counts for any new and creative effect that could be reproduced with the methods they know. This means most effects, even new ones, cannot be presented as magic anymore.

Secondly, there are a whole lot of great magicians who fully rely on other people's tricks, who work their asses off unlike many of the creative-minded magicians and magic inventors, and who fully deserve a spot in the art (like plenty of singers and comedians who don't write and perform their own material yet have made it their own and get famous with it).

In the end, it would only leave extremely creative magicians, or magic inventors who have others perform their creations. But even for those it will be difficult if laymen are fully aware of all the classic methods as they will be able to reconstruct each and every trick and illusion with their knowledge.

Should the method used really ethically matter when the ultimate goal is to make them believe?

I suppose Criss Angel would be a better example for this, using camera tricks and lying to other magicians the whole time.

Thing is that magicians don't see themselves or their colleagues as liars, but as manipulators. The only lies are when we merely confirm what the spectators think they already see, or if our spectators are slightly confused and want to get their minds around the situation, that we help them out. But if you start talking about things that are of nobody's worries (for instance saying "no camera tricks or stooges" while it clearly involved both), it is getting extremely unethical, not just lying for absolutely no reason but also ruining magic in general for throwing around methods no layman would ever have thought about on their own.

Of course people are getting more aware with technology anyways, but still a lot of them aren't and to actually provide those with actual methods is just not done. So in case you would want to fool whoever, just don't say you use video editing and what not. It's part of the magician's job to work around questions like that without lying in unethical manners. A good example would be Derren Brown's lottery prediction, even though Derren did flat-out lie for no reason here and there, also because the whole act was extremely flawed.