Martin Freeman on his first impression on SHERLOCK and his second reading with Ben.

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpnF1HCQ0Zo

— Antoine de Saint Exupéry

yes, sherlock. that’s what girlfriends/boyfriends do. and john clearly knows it.

Get Breakfast with Benedict Cumberbatch & the cast of Sherlock [X]

sherlock: i said i’m sorry, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?

mary: gosh, you don’t know anything about human nature, do you?

sherlock:

mary: *literally murders him*

mary: i’m sorry, sherlock. truly am.

sherlock: 

So this is what you do, you and John. You solve puzzles for a living.

inspired by (x)

Deduction lesson 5 part 2/3

“The Note”

To demonstrate the building theory we’ll use what i think is one of the most impressive and most elaborate deduction  in the whole Sherlock series. The note deduction from The Lying Detective (this also includes the deduction about Faith’s suicidal tendencies, as they are relevant to the note’s deduction)

i will now paste the whole explanation of the deduction as made by Sherlock in the show and then we’ll break it down

SHERLOCK (pointing down towards her feet): Your skirt. Look at the hem of it! That’s what I noticed. Those markings. Do you see them? You only get marks like that by trapping the hem of your skirt in a car door but they’re on the left-hand side, so you weren’t driving; you were in the passenger seat. FAITH: I came in a taxi. SHERLOCK: There is no taxi waiting in the street outside. That’s what I checked when I went to the window. And you’ve got all the way to the door and not made any move to phone for one, and look at you. You didn’t even bring a coat – in this rain? Now, well, that might mean nothing, except for the angle of the scars on your left forearm; you know, under that sleeve that you keep pulling down. (Looking down, Faith reaches across and pulls her left sleeve down.) FAITH (looking up again): Y-you never saw them. SHERLOCK: No, I didn’t, so thank you for confirming my hypothesis. Don’t really need to check that the angle’s consistent with self-harm, do I? FAITH: No. SHERLOCK: Then you can keep your scars. I want to see your handbag. FAITH: Why? SHERLOCK: It’s too heavy. You said I was your last hope and now you’re going out into the night with no plan on how you’re getting home … and a gun.

SHERLOCK: You see the fold in the middle? For the first few months you kept this hidden, folded inside a book. Must have been a tightly packed shelf, going by the severity of the crease. So obviously you were keeping it hidden from someone living in the same house at a level of intimacy where privacy could not be assumed conclusion: relationship. Not any more, though there’s a pinprick at the top of the paper. for the past few months it’s been on open display on a wall. Conclusion: relationship is over. The paper’s been exposed to steam and a variety of cooking smells … So it must have been on display in the kitchen. Lots of different spices. You’re suicidal, alone and strapped for cash, yet you’re still cooking to impress. You’re keen, then. The kitchen is the most public room in any house, but since any visitor could be expected to ask about a note like this, I have to assume you don’t have any. You’ve isolated yourself.

FAITH: How did you know my kitchen was tiny? SHERLOCK (showing her the paper): Look at the fading pattern on the paper. It’s not much but it’s enough to know your kitchen window faces east. Now, kitchen noticeboards … (He walks a few paces into the road and draws a rectangle in the air.) By instinct we place them at eye level where there’s natural light. Now look: the sun’s only struck the bottom two thirds … But the line is straight, so that means we know the paper is facing the window. (He turns and walks a few paces away from the floating imaginary board. He draws another rectangle. He turns and walks back to the noticeboard, which now has sunlight streaming onto it.) But because the top section is unaffected we know the sunlight can only be entering the room at a steep angle. If the sunlight was able to penetrate the room when the sun was lower in the sky then the paper would be equally faded top to bottom. But no. It only makes it when the sun is at its zenith, so I’m betting that you live in a narrow street on the ground floor. Now, if steeply angled sunlight manages to hit eye level on the wall opposite the window, then what do we know about the room? The room’s small.

FAITH: Sex. How did you know I wasn’t … getting any? SHERLOCK: It’s all about the blood. (Close-up of the bloodstain on the paper, which Sherlock now gestures to.) This one comes from the very first night. You can see the pen marks over it. I think you discovered that pain stimulated your memory, so you tried it again later. I’m no expert, but I assume that since your lover failed to notice an increasing number of scars over a period of months, that the relationship was no longer intimate. FAITH: How do you know he didn’t notice? SHERLOCK : Oh, well, because he would have done something about it.

Great, so we have the deduction, let’s break it down.

Materials: Observations

Faith

Note

now to start building

Base: Simple deductions/Observations

Faith

Note

now to the next level

Level 1: elaborate deductions/escalation from base

Faith

Note

level 2: escalation from level 1/complexity increases

Faith

Note

level 3: close to ending, escalation from level 2/complexity increases

Faith

Note

Resources for the consulting detective

 11 Must haves for any aspiring consulting detective:

Everyone’s been doing “what to expect” posts so I’ll make a short one.

What to expect: NOTHING AHAHA SEE YA cause I don’t know what you guys want to see (jk) but really though, try to suggest and ask me so I can post. I’ll be trying to post though, I just don’t know what.

INTJ

29 tricks to Profile People Around You

For the behavioral “deductionist” in all of us:

What pocket is the wallet carried in? (handedness)

What direction to the soles of the shoes tend to wear?

Overall condition of clothing vs. posture and personal carriage

Thumbs hanging out of pockets indicates confidence

Thumbs only in pockets indicates confidence and sometimes physical attraction

When was the last haircut (estimate)

Condition of fingernails, decor, cleanliness, length since trim

Willingness to make non-confrontational eye contact with strangers (Rate 1-8 from Ellipsis chart)

Which direction do the feet point in standing conversation?

Willingness to move out of the way of others (speed at which this takes place) (Using Ellipsis Social Weakness Chart)

Natural blink rate in conversation (increase or decrease when speaking)

Condition of shoe laces (have they been walked on)

Back of leg wrinkles (Length of seated time)

Are fidgeting gestures increased in public spaces or limited? (From Social Weakness Chart)

Legs crossed away from open part of room or toward nearest wall

Purse or shopping bags placed in contact with feet while seated or otherwise touching the body at all times

Notice permanence of facial wrinkles that have developed over their lifetime

Is the cell phone placed face down when seated in public?

If a watch is worn, is it set exactly to time, behind or deliberately set ahead?

Eyesight: Does the person adjust the distance of cell phone from face when using it?

Does the person break eye contact in order to swallow during conversation (Social Weakness Chart)

Care and handling of objects: How does the person treat their own things? Things of others?

If a tie is worn, how tight has it been made and is it adjusted to the right or left of center?

Are fingernails bitten, trimmed or left alone?

Does the person appear to regularly pick their cuticles? Is there evidence that they have JUST begun to do so?

Are notches on the belt indicative of weight loss or gain?

Are both shoes laced right/left, left/right (Do they match)?

What kind of wear/dirt appears on the rear cuffs of the pants?

Are scars or calluses more prevalent on one hand than the other?

Inductional Deduction or,

“How we learn deduction”

Everyone in our community is deducing in a different manner then the other one. This post should guide a bit the beginners and the people who aren’t sure how they should learn to expand their knowledge base. This post gets more general and more theoretical, so please be aware of that before you read it. So I am not quite sure how I should call it but a friend came up with the idea of “Inductional Deduction” and I think it describes it pretty well. I mean language can’t describe things that well as if you just do it. I don’t care how you call it if you just use it the right way. You will understand it after this post. The basic logic behind this principle is that you use induction to build your knowledge base and then deduction to deduce in specific cases that I will explain. So how do you build your knowledge base in this case. Firstly I wanna show you a little “picture” on how the technique basically works

Observation of the same event many times ↓ Induction Expand your Knowledge Base

Observation ↓ Deduction with the Knowledge Base Conclusion

So the first step is to observe events many times with which you can conclude a correlation or a causation. For example a correlation I wanna give you is that people who dry bread feed some kind of animal with it. It is in some form logical but nevertheless it is inductive. I have observed many people and if they had a pet there was a possibility that they dry bread. So I could conclude that the two things correlate and expand my knowledge base. So how does this help my in deduction. For now not that much, but it can in the future. A theoretical example: I walk into a crime scene search the house and there is no pet but I noticed that the person is drying bread. This directly causes my brain to ring the bells that I should ask the question “Why?”. Why does he have dried bread but there is no pet. Is he going to the park feeding ducks? This could led me to the place where the person could be. The Park. I think you can get what I mean.

What can we learn from this? People should go out in the world and observe. Observe clearly and see the patterns to decode the world.

Thank you for reading. This post was really long in planning but I never got the hands on it to write. I am really glad that I can give you that knowledge now and I really hope that you liked it. If you have any question about deduction, you wanna tell me your deduction, or I should deduce you, just write me here at Tumblr or at science.of.logical@gmail.com.

-SoL

This speaks to me on a spiritual level…

Nothing to do with deductions, but I am learning about personality types right now and the pic is funny.

INTJs I’ve Met (by an INFJ)

What I noticed and observed about them: (TWO FEMALES & TWO MALES)

Well, fellow INTJs, what can you say? :) Do you relate? Or do these statements fit the INTJs you know? :)

Again, these are about the INTJs I’ve met. So if it doesn’t apply to you–then it goes to show that despite sharing the same type, people still have their differences.

Examples of deductive reasoning #8

Wallets, what can we deduce from those…?

Wallets are filled with all kinds of stuff, photos, credit cards, money of course but also other things, all of those can help us deduce a person

The money:

The banknotes orgin: Can tell us if he was abroad recently if the banknotes don´t fit the current country

(Since it would be too much to add the different banknotes, ill give you an informative website: https://allbanknotes.com/, look for Phillipe Simon, he has listed over 1000 different ones)

The banknotes are folded or were recently: Creative, nervous, does origami

There are much more coins than banknotes: Often buys stuff, if there are mostly “smaller” coins its likely that he buys cigarettes or sweets

There is a bigger and different coin in another shelf than the “normal” ones: rolls coins, nervous or its lucky charm

Everything else inside:

Photos:

They are of unknowns: Likely to be close to the owner, probably the family

They are of the owner: Probably uses them to get a new passport or similar, if those are present he has an HUGE ego 

They are of animals alike dogs, cats or mices: Very likely that its the owners pet

They are of landscapes, woods and “bigger” animals: He is a photograph, if only pictures of “bigger” animals are present he could also be a hunter

Cards:

There are credit cards, a passport and/or similar: Will give us clues about the name and similar stuff

Calling cards are present: They show us name, telephone number and work(place)

Paperwork:

There are all kinds of paper works; Bills, statements of account, post its: Unorganized, clumsy

There are only bills: if from shopping and including alcohol/cigarettes they can indicate an addiction, organized (low chance of an OCD)

The wallets material:

Leather: Extroverted, often indicates an expensive wallet, but also cheap ones (ill come to that later)

Cloth: Simple person, cheap, practical

Plastic: cheap, often female owner

Now about gender and prize:

This is what an expensive wallet looks like:

They are made of leather and have in most cases two different colours

Cheap ones are in most cases also made of leather, but only have one colour, less shelves and they are pretty simple

Men´s wallets look alike that:

Woman´s wallets more like that:

The absolute basics.

Let’s talk about the absolute basics in deduction. Seems like there’s a lot of people that misunderstand them, even other deductionists. This post is made to correct some of these misunderstandings.

What do we deductionists do? We gather information and make conclusions about that information. The premise is simple. Is it simple to get to the same level as Sherlock? No. Do I know of someone that is on the same level as Sherlock? No, and I know quite a few deductionists. But here’s the big reason why I don’t know of anyone at the same level as Sherlock, it’s not that Sherlock is fictional, it’s because of perfect situations that Sherlock is in. These happen, but not as often as Sherlock finds himself in them.

The way with OCC:

First of all, you should try and remember OCC. This the order in which you as a deductionist should operate.

Observation – Here you observe the place or person you are deducing. There are things to look for if you have the knowledge, some says you should observe everything, and sure, you should do that in a perfect world but you won’t be able to use everything you observe so that will only waste your time when you get into higher ranks of deduction. And if you want to know what to observe than all you need to do is practice.

Conclusion – The second step is to come to a conclusion from what you have observed. This is the deduction, we will talk more about this later on in this text. This will require both logic and knowledge. If you lack in one of these then you’ll need to train that.

Confirmation – Now this is something most deductionist don’t do because they are scared of failing. If you don’t confirm if you are right you’ll hinder your own progress extremely. If you can confirm, always try to.

The parts

Now, most break down deduction into two parts, logic and knowledge. I think that the knowledge part needs to be split into two parts. Absolute knowledge and statistical knowledge. This is important, I’ll try and explain why but first you need to know about the three kinds of deduction.

Deduction –

This reasoning is used when you have one or more statements that you combine to reach a logical conclusion.

The reasoning is that if the statements are true and clear the conclusion must be true.

An example of deductive reasoning:

Statements:

Conclusion:

This is deduction in which you use absolute knowledge to make a deduction. And if you truly use absolute knowledge then the conclusion will be correct.

Induction –

In inductive reasoning, you come to a conclusion that’s probable. The statements are viewed as strong evidence for your conclusion.

An example of inductive reasoning:

Statements:

Conclusion:

This doesn’t tell you if the conclusion is true or not but thanks to the strong evidence of the statements you’re presented with, it’s probable that the conclusion is true. This is statistical knowledge and will be true most of the time.

Abduction –

In abductive reasoning, you have the statements and from that, you make an educated guess about what the conclusion might be. This reasoning is looking for the best explanation.

An example of abductive reasoning:

Statements:

Conclusion:

This is something we deductionists often do. We always look for the best explanation based on the evidence we are provided. This, if done correctly, will also most often be true. This will often be your own conducted statistical knowledge.

The reason why “knowledge” should be split into “absolute knowledge” and “statistical knowledge” is that if you have the logic you’ll never be wrong with absolute knowledge, but with statistical knowledge, you can still be wrong. Some tell you that logic is more important than knowledge and vice versa. This couldn’t be more wrong. Logic and knowledge are equally important. Those who don’t agree probably don’t know that much about the category they are dismissing. Logic and knowledge should work together alongside each other.

But if you want the “WOW effect” one of these triumphs over the other. If you do a deduction via logic people can see your train of thought quite easily, especially if you explain it. If you do deduction via knowledge then people won’t be able to follow your train of thought without that specific knowledge. And more people have a good logical mind than specific knowledge about everything. Something magicians have as a catchphrase nowadays are “People aren’t stupid” and that is true. If you, the reader of this thinks that most people are stupid then you need to come out of that bubble of yours.

Some other things.

So can you yourself measure how good you are at deduction? No, not really. You’ll always be biased towards yourself. So if you like yourself, you’ll probably think that you are better at deduction than you really are. If you think the worst of yourself then you’ll probably think you are worse than you really are. Then we have the “Dunning–Kruger effect”, most of you will probably, in the beginning, think that you are better at deduction than you really are, because of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It predicts that beginners rate themselves to be better than they really are while experts rate themselves to be worse than they really are. So no you can’t measure your skill level yourself.

This point I’ll make now is kind of connected to the previous one. Don’t assume you are right. That would be really stupid. If you assume you are right, you’ll fall for confirmation bias. This is when you look for things that would prove what you believe to be true, and miss things that disprove your theory. One more reason this is bad, I know of deductionists that don’t want to accept that they’re wrong, even if it’s confirmed. They think the one that tells them they’re wrong are lying. Extremely bad.

The pattern.

Your knowledge about deduction will improve. In the beginning, before you start deduction you’ll probably not know about it at all, you’ll have an unconscious ignorance towards it. When you start reading about it, you’ll probably understand that you don’t know much about it. So you’ll have a conscious ignorance towards it. After trying it out and really learning you’ll start noticing that you can deduce some things, you’ll have and conscious knowledge towards deduction. When you’ve become an expert to master you’ll make deductions without thinking that much, you’ll have an unconscious knowledge about deduction.

Pattern:

So, how do you get better in deduction? Practice, it might sound cliché but it’s true. But however, you can shorten the time quite much, if you confirm your deductions. The second C in OCC is extremely important. If you don’t know what you are doing wrong then you can’t improve. You won’t get better just from reading this. So go out there and make deductions and most importantly confirm your deductions.

If you want me to write a post about confirming your deductions about people without the fear to fail (because if you fail they won’t know that you’ve failed) then write to me about that. A lot of people seem to be afraid of saying their deductions out loud.

And with that, I’ll see you my irregulars.

This is a great explanation

Important parts of deduction

Hello.. So I’m posting more tips because I don’t know what else to post.

IMPORTANT I just wanted to start off saying that you don’t need to force yourself into deduction, there are so much more areas like psychology, abduction, induction, etc. You should do what you want to do, because it’ll help a lot while you’re developing.

Observation

I don’t really have much tips on how to be more observant, because I naturally am already, BUT, you can control what you can identify. For example, you see a white stain, you should go further into it, and identify what it is. Is it toothpaste? Sunblock? You get my point.

Thought process

To be honest, I think that you should first try to understand yourself, and spend time in your mind. This way, you can get to know your mind, and you can identify your thought process. This is important because it is scientifically proven that no two minds are the same. So, if you try to fit someone else’s thought process into yours, it won’t be as effective.

During deduction, I like to try and disprove my deductions, just keep disproving and disproving until you can’t think of more defenses. Don’t be too confident with yourself, and DONT EVER be biased. Ever.

Conclusions

When you conclude, you have to make sure that it isn’t too out of the box. Make sure that it is realistic, and then review your deductions to make sure they all line up.

Try to make your own technique if you can. But, keep in mind that you have to respect the process of deduction, and stick to the process.

Again, you don’t have to force yourself into deduction, there are way more areas, but if you are serious about it, go ahead! :) i hope this helped and you can ask questions and suggestions if you’d like.

Turned out alright I think. Next time I’ll make the text larger and maybe condense it a little more, but for what it is it’s pretty good.

Any comments or suggestions let me know,

XW