Unlock the secrets of a detective's mind. Dive into the world of critical thinking, keen observation, and logical deduction. Embrace the thrill of solving mysteries and the satisfaction of connecting the dots. Welcome to the journey of thinking like a detective.
The best detectives have supernatural insight, but their cognitive toolkit is one that anybody can use
Detectives are often portrayed as misanthropic masterminds.
- Not all detectives are masterminds, and you actually don’t need to be a detective to think like one. A few tools and methods can improve your inner detective, help you find facts, and learn to better understand the relationship between them.
Rising complexity
Complex systems interact in unexpected ways
- New patterns form, and the outlier is often more significant than the average
- Collectively, we know a good deal about how to navigate complexity but this knowledge hasn’t been transformed into effective tools
- Whenever you’re confronted by a real-life dilemma that involves abductive reasoning, it’s more important than ever that you learn how to think more systematically
- Thinking like a detective is a skill that takes practice
- The more you practice, the better you’ll get
Links & Books
To develop your thinking skills, you need regular training and feedback
- When it comes to examining your existing beliefs, perspective is everything
- Julia Galef examines the motivations behind these two different mindsets and how they shape our interpretations of information
- The causal revolution has cut through a century of confusion and placed cause and effect on a firm scientific basis
- ‘Correlation does not imply causation’: for decades, this mantra was invoked by scientists to avoid taking positions as to whether one thing caused another, such as smoking and cancer, or carbon dioxide and climate change
Step 1: Assume nothing and find out what you really know
The safest way to test any hypothesis is to try to disprove it
- Step 2: Identify all the possible explanations
- Abductive reasoning is the cognitive process of identifying the best possible explanation for a given set of observations
- Based on your alternatives, make a plan to test your different explanations and narrow your investigation
How to think like a detective
Resist jumping to conclusions and seek out more information
- Use what you already know as the starting point for a systematic investigation
- Look for patterns and identify possible explanations
- Ensure your investigation has sufficient breadth and depth
- Appoint a competent devil’s advocate
- Be curious, patient, and a good listener
