once you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains however improbable must
be the truth
this famous quote of the great literary detective Sherlock Holmes
has always resonated with me amongst all of his numerous poignant statements as
being remarkably profound in relation perhaps this is because of all the
things that encompass and are involved in deduction that I have studied and
trained in for the last three years and am continuing to learn and develop and
hone everyday this one thing that is touched upon in this quote is something
that I'm familiar with in the way that I have thought and processed information
for most of my life growing up I wasn't exactly what you would call observant in
fact it was very common for me to hear my mother tell me that I needed to pay
more attention I was always largely oblivious to all
was around me I was the kind of kid who would stare off into the distance and daydream
for hours on end I did it so often it was so focused when I did it that my
family ended up going at Jordan ville I always preferred being in my head alone
with my thoughts and being engaged with people around me indeed observation is
the thing that I've had to work on the most since the beginning however the
process of elimination is something that I am very familiar with I'm used to
assessing a situation forming connections determining based on those connections
what is possible and what is not so applying the process of elimination to
the process of deduction has been a rather smooth transition for me now what
I refer to as deduction is not purely deductive reasoning in fact is in this
process we use multiple forms of reasoning cooperatively to gather and
process information now I will be explaining this in depth in the near
future but for now I only have time for some brief explanations to aid my
explanation of the process of elimination
so trust that there will be a more complete dissection and comparison of
the process that we talked about on the and the definitions of deductive
inductive and advocate reasoning to come in the near future today however we are
focusing on the process of elimination "Jeannette aah process of elimination" now
in general we start the process that we call deduction with an inference based
off of observations a process known as abduction or Retroduction either term is
acceptable and is of course the product of abductive reasoning however there
can be and usually are multiple explanations for an observation or
series of observations and when accounting for these various
explanations we are left with multiple theories that are all viable in this
case it can be difficult to determine which is correct and figure out what
something actually is however it can be more efficient to determine what
something is not in essence eliminate the impossible and see what remains to a
certain extent we can continue to rely on abductive reasoning by theorizing
based off of a set of observations as opposed to a single observation this is
where the process of elimination begins a certain theory might be viable in the
face of one observation but when looked at in comparison to the connection that
observation has to another observation it can turn out that that theory cannot
work in light of this connection think of it a bit like a Venn diagram where
you have two circles representing two observations each circle containing the
factors specific to that piece of data in the section where they overlap
containing the factors they have a connection on or have in common a theory
that conforms to the facts pertaining to one observation but not another or not
to the factors they share in common is an impossible theory if we are accepting
the observations and their connection to be true this is where we start to use
deductive reasoning where we begin with a premise or general principle that is
accepted as true and applied to the problem in question in this case we
begin by accepting the premise of these two observations share a connection and
thus any viable theory must account for them both so if a theory fails to account
for both it is incorrect we can also apply deductive reasoning and actually
interpreting the observations that we've seen
into something we can understand and form a theory based off of if you see a
stain you can reasonably theorize that something marked the clothing that stain
stain but there are many different kinds of stains and they are caused by
different substances and materials which can be found in various activities so
determining what the same is caused by can be very important in determining how
it was caused and thus what this person has been doing if you see a man in a
mechanic's workshop with dark stains on his hands and boots you can infer
abductively that he is a mechanic and those stains are oil however if you see
a man in the store wearing normal clothes but with work boots that have
dark stains on them you can no longer determine what the stain is from the
observable evidence alone only that it exists and you have to introduce new
information into this problem this is why I stress the importance of having a
vast and reliable knowledge base if you know how different substances and
materials stained clothing you can use the verified information that you have
stored previously as your premise and apply to the observation in deductive
fashion if the unknown stain does not match what you know to be a grass stain
that it is not a grass stain if it matches what you know to be an oil stain
than it is an oil stain comparing the observation of various confirmed
premises and determining what fits if you associate the premise incorrectly
however this deduction is false this is why even when using deductive reasoning
we can still be wrong in the process of elimination we use deductive reasoning
to eliminate abductively drawn theories and interpret observations we
do this by eliminating the impossible for something to be possible it has to
account for and agree with all the data not just one piece or one set
probability does play a factor in abductive reasoning we favor the most
likely explanation of observations however are quote states whatever
remains however improbable must be true if you are left with only one conclusion
that accounts for all the evidence and have interpreted the observations
correctly then whatever remains however improbable is more likely than any other
explanation as we have ruled them all out as being impossible
unfortunately sometimes things are not so neat we can lack sufficient data to
come to only one conclusion that accounts for everything but rather
multiple conclusions that account for everything that we have observed and all
prior confirmed data we've connected to those observations in this case
determining what is the most likely it's a bit tricky as we have narrowed things
down as far as we can possibly go at this point and determined their
likelihood as equivalent based off the available evidence in such a scenario
one must search for more information pertaining to the problem in order to go
further if however there's no opportunity to do this then you must be
content with settling with multiple possible conclusions as Sherlock Holmes
also said it is a capital mistake that theorize before one has data inevitably
one twist facts to suit theories rather than theories to suit facts Holmes has been known many
times to come to an either-or solution and this is true for real-life Mentalists
as well just take a look at my video on five real-life Sherlock Holmes's I've
seen at least three of those men and one I've read about on that list come to
exactly the same situation what I've described however rest assured I have
never come down to anything more than three reasonable conclusions when I put
my mind to a problem and more often than not when I am in this situation I come
to only two with practice you'll get to the stage where you can do something
really cool you'll be able to anticipate various pieces of evidence that would be
accounted for in one theory and not the others and then look to see if such
evidence is there and sometimes is the well-placed question or Barnum statement
you can find that evidence or find that evidence is not there both of which
would eliminate a certain theory as I stated earlier in this video I will be
making a video explaining in depth how we employ the different forms of
reasoning in this process as I know there have been people commenting
concerning that topic and that is something that I want to clear up and in
fact that video is going to be the sort of a new series which is going to be
geared more towards the practical applications as a skill as I said I
would be doing so look forward to that on a closing note I want to thank you
all for 10,000 subscribers we hit that milestone earlier this week so thank you
all for your support and welcome to all you new aspiring detectives who of
joining the channel recently while this isn't my 10k subscriber special
obviously I do have one of the works now instead of doing a Q&A or something
tacky like that in the spirit of this channel rather than tell you all the
things about me I want to leave it up to you to deduce things some of you have
already submitted their deductions about me back when I announced this challenge
at 2,000 subscribers so if you are new in keen on making deductions about me
leave them in the comments below and that video should be coming next week
once again thank you all for 10,000 subscribers and as always all you
aspiring detectives Arrivederci