Bill James was asked about the
Holmes saying “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth”. He
responded:
That Sherlock Holmes line is very, very interesting. It’s false, and
extremely arrogant, and very dangerous. That’s not a real way to think about
the world. This concept of eliminating the impossible—we could never do
that. The whole idea of Sherlock Holmes is dangerous because it encourages
people to think that—if they’re intelligent enough—they could put all
the pieces together in absolute terms. But the human mind is not
sophisticated enough to do that. People are not that smart. It’s not that
Sherlock Holmes would need to be twice as smart as the average person; he’d
have to be a billion times as smart as the average person.
Surely that also depends on the domain you are reasoning about? For example, when debugging computer programs it seems that I am eliminating the impossible all the time. “Hm, this function is not returning the answer I expect. Am I calling it with the wrong argument? (Printf—no.) Are the calculations right up to this point? (Printf—yes). Aha, this must be the line that’s wrong!”
True! However, I know I’ve had times in program debugging (though I can’t
remember a specific one) when I eliminated something “impossible” and it turned
out not to be. I think there was usually a flaw in my reasoning though, rather
than a flaw in my knowledge of what’s possible. (In other words, I overlooked
some simple possibility.) Anyway, when I feel like I’m at the end of my
debugging rope, I just start from the beginning with an eye towards stuff I
could have missed the first time around, including stuff that I disregarded as
“impossible”.
I once wrote code that crashed my C++ compiler. For the life of me I Was sadly never able to reproduce it, but it’s definitely in my book as an impossible error. (this is not “the programmed crashed when run”, this was “the compiler crashed when trying to compile this program”)
When debugging, I now label things as “extremely unlikely” instead...
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
—Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
But the wonderful thing about unanswerable questions is that they are always solvable, at least in my experience. What went through Queen Elizabeth I’s mind, first thing in the morning, as she woke up on her fortieth birthday? As I can easily imagine answers to this question, I can readily see that I may never be able to actually answer it, the true information having been lost in time.
On the other hand, “Why does anything exist at all?” seems so absolutely impossible that I can infer that I am just confused, one way or another, and the truth probably isn’t all that complicated in an absolute sense, and once the confusion goes away I’ll be able to see it.
I think the previous appearance of a quote about this Sherlock Holmes quote bears out its falsity, except for Laplace’s Demon-type intelligences.
The statement is a literally true statement as a matter of logical deduction. When using the words ‘true’ and ‘false’ then logic is what you are doing. Applying the word ‘false’ to ‘true’ statements is simply an error, as would be holding this particular quote to a different standard to any other logical claim. It has the same problems as logical reasoning generally does, those of assuming certainty of premises and relying on incomplete or incorrect simplified models. Focus on the dangerous not incorrect because accuracy just is not the flaw.
Instead of false consider (something like) “f@#%ing stupid”. Or you are just wrong.
Bill James was asked about the Holmes saying “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. He responded:
Surely that also depends on the domain you are reasoning about? For example, when debugging computer programs it seems that I am eliminating the impossible all the time. “Hm, this function is not returning the answer I expect. Am I calling it with the wrong argument? (Printf—no.) Are the calculations right up to this point? (Printf—yes). Aha, this must be the line that’s wrong!”
True! However, I know I’ve had times in program debugging (though I can’t remember a specific one) when I eliminated something “impossible” and it turned out not to be. I think there was usually a flaw in my reasoning though, rather than a flaw in my knowledge of what’s possible. (In other words, I overlooked some simple possibility.) Anyway, when I feel like I’m at the end of my debugging rope, I just start from the beginning with an eye towards stuff I could have missed the first time around, including stuff that I disregarded as “impossible”.
Related: “select” Isn’t Broken”.
I once wrote code that crashed my C++ compiler. For the life of me I Was sadly never able to reproduce it, but it’s definitely in my book as an impossible error. (this is not “the programmed crashed when run”, this was “the compiler crashed when trying to compile this program”)
When debugging, I now label things as “extremely unlikely” instead...
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible. The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.” —Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
This reminds me of something Eliezer said.
False.
True. (So?)
True.
False (unless he meant realistic?)
I think the previous appearance of a quote about this Sherlock Holmes quote bears out its falsity, except for Laplace’s Demon-type intelligences.
The statement is a literally true statement as a matter of logical deduction. When using the words ‘true’ and ‘false’ then logic is what you are doing. Applying the word ‘false’ to ‘true’ statements is simply an error, as would be holding this particular quote to a different standard to any other logical claim. It has the same problems as logical reasoning generally does, those of assuming certainty of premises and relying on incomplete or incorrect simplified models. Focus on the dangerous not incorrect because accuracy just is not the flaw.
Instead of false consider (something like) “f@#%ing stupid”. Or you are just wrong.
It seems a bad heuristic to follow for ordinary folks, susceptible to overconfidence in their judgements of “impossibility”.