Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes (28 page)

This raises another interesting point: not only does our experience affect what we consider possible, but so, too, do our expectations. Holmes was
expecting
Silver Blaze to be found, and as a result he viewed his evidence in a different light, allowing certain possibilities to go unexamined.
Demand characteristics rear their ugly head yet again; only this time they take the guise of the confirmation bias, one of the most prevalent mistakes made by novice and experienced minds alike.

From early childhood, we seem to be susceptible to forming confirmatory biases, to deciding long before we actually decide and dismissing the improbable out of hand as impossible. In one early study of the phenomenon, children as young as third grade were asked to identify which features of sports balls were important to the quality of a person’s serve. Once they made up their minds (for instance, size matters but color does not), they either altogether failed to acknowledge evidence that was contrary to their preferred theory (such as the actual importance of color, or the lack thereof of size) or considered it in a highly selective and distorted fashion that explained away anything that didn’t correspond to their initial thought. Furthermore, they failed to generate alternative theories unless prompted to do so, and when they later recalled both the theory and the evidence, they misremembered the process so that the evidence became much more consistent with the theory than it had been in reality. In other words, they recast the past to better suit their own view of the world.

As we age, it only gets worse—or at the very least it doesn’t get any better. Adults are more likely to judge one-sided arguments as superior to those that present both sides of a case, and more likely to think that such arguments represent good thinking. We are also more likely to search for confirming, positive evidence for hypotheses and established beliefs even when we are not actually invested in those hypotheses. In a seminal study, researchers found that participants tested a concept by looking only at examples that would hold if that concept were correct—and failed to find things that would show it to be incorrect. Finally, we exhibit a remarkable asymmetry in how we weigh evidence of a hypothesis: we tend to overweight any positive confirming evidence and underweight any negative disconfirming evidence—a tendency that professional mind readers have exploited for ages. We see what we are looking for.

In these final stages of deduction, System Watson will still not let us go. Even if we
do
have all the evidence, as we surely will by this point in
the process, we might
still
theorize before the evidence, in letting our experience and our notion of what is and is not possible color how we see and apply that evidence. It’s Holmes disregarding the signs in “Silver Blaze” that would point him in the right direction because he doesn’t consider it possible that the horse could remain undetected. It’s Watson disregarding the roof as an option for entrance because he doesn’t consider it possible that someone could enter a room in that fashion. We might have all the evidence, but that doesn’t mean when we reason, we’ll take into account that all of the evidence is objective, intact, and in front of us.

But Holmes, as we know, does manage to catch and correct his error—or have it caught for him, with the failure of the horse to materialize. And as soon as he allows that improbable possibility to become possible, his entire evaluation of the case and the evidence changes and falls into place. And off he and Watson go to find the horse and save the day. Likewise, Watson is able to correct his incomprehension when prompted to do so. Once Holmes reminds him that however improbable something may be, it must still be considered, he right away comes up with the alternative that fits the evidence—an alternative that just a moment ago he had dismissed entirely.

The improbable is not yet impossible. As we deduce, we are too prone to that satisficing tendency, stopping when something is good enough. Until we have exhausted the possibilities and are sure that we have done so, we aren’t home clear. We must learn to stretch our experience, to go beyond our initial instinct. We must learn to look for evidence that both confirms and disconfirms and, most important, we must try to look beyond the perspective that is the all too natural one to take: our own.

We must, in short, go back to that CRT and its steps; reflect on what our minds
want
to do; inhibit what doesn’t make sense (here, asking whether something is truly impossible or merely unlikely); and edit our approach accordingly. We won’t always have a Holmes prompting us to do so, but that doesn’t mean we can’t prompt ourselves, through that very mindfulness that we’ve been cultivating. While we may still be tempted to act first and think later, to dismiss options before we’ve even considered them, we can at least recognize the general concept: think
first, act later, and try our utmost to approach every decision with a fresh mind.

The necessary elements are all there (at least if you’ve done your observational and imaginative work). The trick is in what you do with them. Are you using all available evidence, and not just what you happen to remember or think of or encounter? Are you giving it all the same weight, so that you are truly able to sift the crucial from the incidental instead of being swayed by some other, altogether irrelevant factors? Are you laying each piece out in a logical sequence, where each step implies the next and each factor is taken to its conclusion, so that you don’t fall victim to the mistake of thinking you’ve thought it through when you’ve done no such thing? Are you considering all logical paths—even those that may seem to you to be impossible? And finally: are you focused and motivated? Do you remember what the problem was that got you there in the first place—or have you been tempted off course, or off to some other problem, without really knowing how or why?

I first read Sherlock Holmes in Russian because that was the language of my childhood and of all of my childhood books. Think back to the clues I’ve left for you. I’ve told you that my family is Russian, and that both my sister and I were born in the Soviet Union. I’ve told you that the stories were read to me by my dad. I’ve told you that the book in question was old—so old that I wondered if his dad had, in turn, read it to him. In what other language could it have possibly been, once you see everything laid out together? But did you stop to consider that as you were seeing each piece of information separately? Or did it not even cross your mind because of its . . . improbability? Because Holmes is just so, well, English?

It doesn’t matter that Conan Doyle wrote in English and that Holmes himself is so deeply ingrained in the consciousness of the English language. It doesn’t matter that I now read and write in English just as well as I ever did in Russian. It doesn’t matter that you may have never encountered a Russian Sherlock Holmes or even considered the likelihood of his existence. All that matters is what the premises are and where they take you if you let them unwind to their logical conclusion, whether or not that is the place that your mind had been gearing to go.

SHERLOCK HOLMES FURTHER READING

“ ‘Elementary,’ said he.” “I smoked several pipes over them, trying to separate those which were crucial from others which were merely incidental.”
from
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
, “The Crooked Man,” p. 138.

“Every instinct that I possess cries out against it.”
from
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
, “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,” p. 1158.

“It is one of those cases where the art of the reasoner should be used rather for the sifting of details . . .” “I confess that any theories which I had formed from the newspaper reports were entirely erroneous.”
from
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
, “Silver Blaze,” p. 1.

“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains
, however improbable,
must be the truth?”
from
The Sign of Four
, chapter 6: Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration, p. 41.

CHAPTER SIX

Maintaining the Brain Attic: Education Never Stops

A
lodger’s behavior has been markedly unusual. His landlady, Mrs. Warren, hasn’t seen him a single time over a period often days. He remains always in his room—save for the first evening of his stay, when he went out and returned late at night—pacing back and forth, day in, day out. What’s more, when he needs something, he prints a single word on a scrap of paper and leaves it outside:
SOAP
.
MATCH
.
DAILY GAZZETTE
. Mrs. Warren is alarmed. She feels that something must be wrong. And so she sets off to consult Sherlock Holmes.

At first, Holmes has little interest in the case. A mysterious lodger hardly seems worth investigating. But little by little, the details begin to grow intriguing. First, there is the business of the printed words. Why not write them normally instead? Why choose such a cumbersome, unnatural all-caps means of communication? Then there is the cigarette, which Mrs. Warren has helpfully brought along: while the landlady has assured Holmes that the mystery man has a beard and mustache, Holmes asserts that only a clean-shaven man could have smoked the cigarette in question. Still, it is not much to go on, so the detective tells Mrs. Warren to report back “if anything fresh occurs.”

And something does occur. The following morning, Mrs. Warren returns to Baker Street with the following exclamation: “It’s a police matter, Mr. Holmes! I’ll have no more of it!” Mr. Warren, the landlady’s husband, has been attacked by two men, who put a coat over his head and threw him into a cab, only to release him, roughly an hour later. Mrs. Warren blames the lodger and resolves to have him out that very day.

Not so fast, says Holmes. “Do nothing rash. I begin to think that this affair may be very much more important than appeared at first sight. It is clear now that some danger is threatening your lodger. It is equally clear
that his enemies, lying in wait for him near your door, mistook your husband for him in the foggy morning light. On discovering their mistake they released him.”

That afternoon, Holmes and Watson travel to Great Orme Street, to glimpse the identity of the guest whose presence has caused such a stir. Soon enough, they see her—for it is, in fact, a she. Holmes’s conjecture had been correct: a substitution of lodger has been made. “A couple seek refuge in London from a very terrible and instant danger. The measure of that danger is the rigour of their precautions,” Holmes explains to Watson.

“The man, who has some work which he must do, desires to leave the woman in absolute safety while he does it. It is not an easy problem, but he solved it in an original fashion, and so effectively that her presence was not even known to the landlady who supplies her with food. The printed messages, as is now evident, were to prevent her sex being discovered by her writing. The man cannot come near the woman, or he will guide their enemies to her. Since he cannot communicate with her direct, he has recourse to the agony column of a paper. So far all is clear.”

But to what end? Watson wants to know. Why the secrecy and the danger? Holmes presumes that the matter is one of life and death. The attack on Mr. Warren, the lodger’s look of horror when she suspects someone might be looking at her, everything points to a sinister cast.

Why, then, asks Watson, should Holmes continue to investigate? He has solved Mrs. Warren’s case—and the landlady herself would like nothing more than to force the lodger out of the boardinghouse. Why involve himself further, especially if the case is as risky as it sounds? It would be easy enough to leave and let events take their course. “What have you to gain from it?” he asks the detective.

Holmes has a ready answer:

“What, indeed? It is art for art’s sake. Watson, I suppose when you doctored you found yourself studying cases without a thought of a fee?”

“For my education, Holmes.”

“Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last. This is an instructive case. There is neither money nor credit in it, and yet one would wish to tidy it up. When dusk comes we should find ourselves one stage advanced in our investigation.”

It doesn’t matter to Holmes that the initial goal has been attained. It doesn’t matter that the further pursuit of the matter is dangerous in the extreme. You don’t just abandon something when your original goal is complete, if that something has proven itself more complex than it may have seemed at first. The case is instructive. If nothing else, there is still more to learn. When Holmes says that education never ends, his message to us isn’t as one-dimensional as it may seem. Of course it’s good to keep learning: it keeps our minds sharp and alert and prevents us from settling in our ways. But for Holmes, education means something more. Education in the Holmesian sense is a way to keep challenging yourself and questioning your habits, of never allowing System Watson to take over altogether—even though he may have learned a great deal from System Holmes along the way. It’s a way of constantly shaking up our habitual behaviors, and of never forgetting that, no matter how expert we think we are at something, we must remain mindful and motivated in everything we do.

This whole book has stressed the necessity of practice. Holmes got to where he is because of constantly practicing those mindful habits of thought that form the core of his approach to the world. As we practice, however, as things become more and more simple and second nature, they move into the purview of System Watson. Even though the habits may now be Holmesian ones, they have all the same become habits, things we do as a matter of course—and therefore, if we’re not careful, mindlessly. It’s when we take our thinking for granted and stop paying attention to what is actually going on in our brain attic that we are prone to mess up, even if that attic is now the most streamlined and polished place you ever saw. Holmes must keep challenging himself lest he succumb to the very same thing. For even though his mindful habits are sharp indeed, even they can lead him astray if he doesn’t keep applying them. If
we don’t keep challenging our habits of thought, we risk letting the mindfulness we’ve so carefully cultivated slip back into its pre-Holmesian, mindless existence.