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That Sherlock Holmes line is interesting. It's false, arrogant, and dangerous.
- felipemnoa 15y agoHere is the relevant piece: There's a section in Popular Crime where you create a mathematical system that could be used by juries in order to deduce an accused person's guilt, built around a list of criteria. It's basically a weighted point system. The example you use is Lizzie Borden,6 who you feel was not guilty (as least according to this point system). However, two murders were committed that day, and there does not appear to be any potential suspect except Lizzie Borden. She seems to be the only real option. So what do you make of Sherlock Holmes' fictional axiom that states, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"? If there is no other explanation for the Borden murders, what else are we supposed to conclude? 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.