Take a weird recurring god-shaped stain on a wall. Atheists hope it can be explained without requiring formation of a new belief in god. Literalist theists hope god won’t be possible to eliminate as a suspect (taking him a step closer to full unemployment, their greatest fear)
-
-
But there should be no *mysterious* loose ends. Lestrade and Japp always make the same mistake which Holmes and Poirot don’t: dismiss seemingly trivial loose ends. Holmes and Poirot have a lower threshold for mystification. They won’t accept implausible accounts even for trivia.
Show this thread -
They know that Holmes’ law and ISCN only apply in a closed set. Eliminating the impossible in an open set with explanandum “leaks” doesn’t get you certainty. Just makes you inclined to feed confirmation bias by ignoring “coincidences” or implausibly explaining away “trivialities“
Show this thread -
Mysteries don’t care about importance. Small mysteries have to be explained as plausibly as big mysteries. Reasonable doubt creeps in as surely through an unimportant implausibility as an important one. *Entire world views are only as plausible as their least plausible argument.*
Show this thread -
But occasionally, this approach will stall and you’ll be faced with a genuine rather than apparent mystery. You’ll need to follow Dirk Gently’s law: don’t eliminate the impossible. Ie entertain the possibility of needing to adding/eliminating primitives.
Show this thread -
Removing god from “mystery of wall stain” is trivial. Removing god from “creation of life” is not. Adding is never trivial. You can’t add just a local ghost to explain a case. You must add ‘ghost’ as a base class to universe (you have inescapable existence proof).
Show this thread -
Removing a dog — ontological primitive that has very few explanations it is needed in — is something like extinction. Beyond a point, it is doomed as a breeding, self-perpetuating, employed Thing, and any loss of an explanatory contest “job” might be the last.
Show this thread -
Anyhow, that’s it for my elucidation of the mystery of mysteries. Stay mentally healthy and computationally robust by constantly solving both Holmesian apparent, or epistemological, mysteries and Gentlyian ontological ones. Head Darwinism ftw.
Show this thread -
See Kathleen Belin’s essay “The Game’s Afoot: Predecessors and Pursuits of a Postmodern Detective Novel” (in Theory and Practice of Classic Detective Fiction) for some of the background that inspired this thread.https://amzn.to/2rbzRSL
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.