I always felt that Holmesian reasoning was characterized by reliance on obscure technical knowledge, like the different kinds of ash produced by various cigars, or else by noticing seemingly irrelevant details.
For example, a screenshot of my desktop would reveal (among other things) a button labeled ‘us’ in the panel. From this you might infer that I use a nonstandard keyboard layout. Browsing through my comment history would probably give you enough text to guess that I’m a native English speaker, so from this a reasonable guess (and the correct one) would be that I use Dvorak.
This, on the other hand, is just silly. Holmesian reasoning should, above all else, sound plausible to someone who doesn’t understand how evidence works.
I always felt that Holmesian reasoning was characterized by reliance on obscure technical knowledge, like the different kinds of ash produced by various cigars, or else by noticing seemingly irrelevant details.
For example, a screenshot of my desktop would reveal (among other things) a button labeled ‘us’ in the panel. From this you might infer that I use a nonstandard keyboard layout. Browsing through my comment history would probably give you enough text to guess that I’m a native English speaker, so from this a reasonable guess (and the correct one) would be that I use Dvorak.
This, on the other hand, is just silly. Holmesian reasoning should, above all else, sound plausible to someone who doesn’t understand how evidence works.