This is fun (although endless, especially if we include things related to deliberate/semi-deliberate signalling), here are a few:
(1) Hobby-related examples. Callouses on the palm in the spot where fingers connect to hand (e.g. like weightlifting callouses) , and on the thumb (on the side facing towards the other fingers), is quite commonly due to rowing. E.g., the friction of the oar rotating around the fingers and thumb holding it. Crooked nose sometimes indicates repeated breaking—high contact sports or plain fighting most common. From experience, boxing is quite common due to the artificially frequent number of blows to the face. Can combine this with scars on the knuckles, or slightly puffy knuckles & poor motor control from repeated mini-fractures to indicate a serious fighter. But how useful is knowing someone’s hobby? Often they’ll just tell you right away…
(2) How about health conditions? This one is pretty useful and seems reasonably study-able (ofc not to become some unofficial doctor, just to make informed guesses). E.g., a CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring) in the arm for type-1 & II diabetics, ridges in the nails indicating possible zinc or iron deficiency, eye-bags for sleep deprivation; serious sun ageing on one side of the face for a possible long-haul driver; yellowing of skin for liver failure etc. And then all the obvious prosthetics, glasses, hearing aids, support dogs, dark glasses &c.
Notably, health conditions (if correctly diagnosed) often indicate lifestyle and occupation, and this is likely behind many of the observations of the real-life inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, surgeon Joseph Bell.
(3) Similarly what about nationality? Again, often informative and extremely useful in countries with...er… history. Paying attention to different accents would be a simple method, as would accumulating basic knowledge of geography and typical travel patterns. Knowing, for instance, that Russians travel to Turkey in large numbers, or Kurds to Nashville, means you could probably make pretty good guesses as to a person’s nationality even if you were not confident on different slavic/middle eastern languages.
(4) You mention clothing (red-bottomed shoes?) but this seems like a bottomless pit of data. You can gather lots of information from attire about: nationality (how easy is it to spot a tourist?) and religion (knowing the difference between the burkha, hijab, niqab, chador; happening to know most protestants rarely carry crosses on a chain; rastafarians; orthodox jews in various stages of training); occupation (looking at you, painter decorators); health (orthopedic shoes); class (in the UK traditionally, the flatcap, now, the shellsuit; quite a subtle exercise, and often region-dependent); age.
I suspect since the 19th century clothing is now less useful due to the slow breakdown of class and gender markers (and general trend towards bland causalwear internationally). The stratification and diversity of clothing was notably far more noticeable in Holmes’s time (as was, perhaps, national differences). Note how many of his deductions use general patterns from a ‘social role.’
Side-note: I am also not sure if I believe that learning more facts ‘pushes out’ others (the ‘cluttered mind’ idea), the main issue is opportunity cost. Watching lots of sitcoms hasn’t made it hard to learn new things because I can’t stop thinking of ‘the one where Ross murders a child’, but watcing tv was certainly time not-studying...
Thanks for all the suggestions—it will take some time to research and integrate them!
The task is effectively endless, there’s a tradeoff curve between time and insight → agency increases. I think that (particularly if a well-curated list of reliable rules is available) the average person should spend a few hours studying these matters a couple of times a decade to increase their agency. That means the list could still usefully be a little longer. The task of constructing and curating the list in the first place is more time consuming, which means I should be expected to spend more time than is strictly useful on it.
In terms of clothing, I included some well-established status symbols that seem to have staying power and linked to further resources for people who are interested—but I don’t recommend obsessively following the fashion cycle.
You’re probably right about the side-note, though it seems hard to disentangle.
I haven’t been able to verify that protestants don’t wear a cross on a chain—it seems like they prefer an empty cross to the more catholic-coded crucifix, but this doesn’t seem to be what you meant?
This is fun (although endless, especially if we include things related to deliberate/semi-deliberate signalling), here are a few:
(1) Hobby-related examples. Callouses on the palm in the spot where fingers connect to hand (e.g. like weightlifting callouses) , and on the thumb (on the side facing towards the other fingers), is quite commonly due to rowing. E.g., the friction of the oar rotating around the fingers and thumb holding it. Crooked nose sometimes indicates repeated breaking—high contact sports or plain fighting most common. From experience, boxing is quite common due to the artificially frequent number of blows to the face. Can combine this with scars on the knuckles, or slightly puffy knuckles & poor motor control from repeated mini-fractures to indicate a serious fighter. But how useful is knowing someone’s hobby? Often they’ll just tell you right away…
(2) How about health conditions? This one is pretty useful and seems reasonably study-able (ofc not to become some unofficial doctor, just to make informed guesses). E.g., a CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring) in the arm for type-1 & II diabetics, ridges in the nails indicating possible zinc or iron deficiency, eye-bags for sleep deprivation; serious sun ageing on one side of the face for a possible long-haul driver; yellowing of skin for liver failure etc. And then all the obvious prosthetics, glasses, hearing aids, support dogs, dark glasses &c.
Notably, health conditions (if correctly diagnosed) often indicate lifestyle and occupation, and this is likely behind many of the observations of the real-life inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, surgeon Joseph Bell.
(3) Similarly what about nationality? Again, often informative and extremely useful in countries with...er… history. Paying attention to different accents would be a simple method, as would accumulating basic knowledge of geography and typical travel patterns. Knowing, for instance, that Russians travel to Turkey in large numbers, or Kurds to Nashville, means you could probably make pretty good guesses as to a person’s nationality even if you were not confident on different slavic/middle eastern languages.
(4) You mention clothing (red-bottomed shoes?) but this seems like a bottomless pit of data. You can gather lots of information from attire about: nationality (how easy is it to spot a tourist?) and religion (knowing the difference between the burkha, hijab, niqab, chador; happening to know most protestants rarely carry crosses on a chain; rastafarians; orthodox jews in various stages of training); occupation (looking at you, painter decorators); health (orthopedic shoes); class (in the UK traditionally, the flatcap, now, the shellsuit; quite a subtle exercise, and often region-dependent); age.
I suspect since the 19th century clothing is now less useful due to the slow breakdown of class and gender markers (and general trend towards bland causalwear internationally). The stratification and diversity of clothing was notably far more noticeable in Holmes’s time (as was, perhaps, national differences). Note how many of his deductions use general patterns from a ‘social role.’
Side-note: I am also not sure if I believe that learning more facts ‘pushes out’ others (the ‘cluttered mind’ idea), the main issue is opportunity cost. Watching lots of sitcoms hasn’t made it hard to learn new things because I can’t stop thinking of ‘the one where Ross murders a child’, but watcing tv was certainly time not-studying...
Thanks for all the suggestions—it will take some time to research and integrate them!
The task is effectively endless, there’s a tradeoff curve between time and insight → agency increases. I think that (particularly if a well-curated list of reliable rules is available) the average person should spend a few hours studying these matters a couple of times a decade to increase their agency. That means the list could still usefully be a little longer. The task of constructing and curating the list in the first place is more time consuming, which means I should be expected to spend more time than is strictly useful on it.
In terms of clothing, I included some well-established status symbols that seem to have staying power and linked to further resources for people who are interested—but I don’t recommend obsessively following the fashion cycle.
You’re probably right about the side-note, though it seems hard to disentangle.
I haven’t been able to verify that protestants don’t wear a cross on a chain—it seems like they prefer an empty cross to the more catholic-coded crucifix, but this doesn’t seem to be what you meant?