{"id":449,"date":"2018-09-24T16:15:16","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T14:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/?p=449"},"modified":"2018-09-24T16:15:16","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T14:15:16","slug":"mental-model-monday-reasoning-backwards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/mental-model-monday-reasoning-backwards\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental Model Monday: Reasoning Backwards"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is another good one from that legendary pipe-smoking detective.\u00a0 Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes often employed this technique and lamented that more people don’t employ it.\u00a0 The basic idea is that you start with the result you want, and move back in steps to where you are now.\u00a0 Like most things that sound simple, this one isn’t so as simple as it appears on the surface.\u00a0 Here are five quotes on the matter, again from that great Peter Bevelin book, A Few Lessons From Sherlock Holmes.<\/a><\/p>\n

“The essential factor in this method consists in working back from observations of conditions to the causes which brought them about.\u00a0 It is often a question of deciding the doings of yesterday by the records found today.\u00a0 (Thomas McCrae; The Method of Zadig)<\/p>\n

“The ideal reasoner…would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but all the results which would follow it.\u00a0 (Holmes; The Five Orange Pips)<\/p>\n

“In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards.\u00a0 That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practice it much.\u00a0 In the everyday affairs of life it is more useful to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected.” (Holmes; A study in Scarlet.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Every day we reason forwards.\u00a0 “What’s the result of this going to be?” “Can I fit these different events into my day?” And generally, we’re pretty good at this.\u00a0 I think that’s a positive sign we can be equally good at reasoning backwards.\u00a0 Every day look at a situation and trace back the steps that you think resulted in it getting to its current form.\u00a0 Just pick a couple things, whether its the stain on a person’s\u00a0shirt or a crisis at a company.\u00a0 This won’t make you like Sherlock Holmes, but\u00a0it’s going to make you a better thinker!<\/p>\n

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This is another good one from that legendary pipe-smoking detective.\u00a0 Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes often employed this technique and lamented that more people don’t employ it.\u00a0 The basic idea is that you start with the result you want, and move back in steps to where you are now.\u00a0 Like most things that sound simple, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":451,"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions\/451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}