Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…
Let’s start off today by doing a quick review of a fallacy we covered earlier this season: the Spotlight Fallacy. I’d encourage you to hit pause real quick and see if you can remember what The Spotlight Fallacy is! The Spotlight Fallacy happens when someone assumes that the media coverage a certain event or group receives is representative of everyone in that group or that a certain event is way more common than it actually is. The Spotlight Fallacy also applies to the entertainment industry, where certain events or groups of people are portrayed a certain way in videos & movies and b/c of that attention, everyone thinks that’s what everyone in that group is like.
Question to ask yourself if you think you’re facing a Spotlight Fallacy is this: “Is this really as common of a problem as they’re making it seem?”
If you want to review or hear more about this fallacy, go back & check out Episode 86.
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Alright, let’s dive into today’s new fallacy, the Sherlock Holmes Fallacy. The Sherlock Holmes Fallacy happens when someone concludes that a certain explanation must be true because all other explanations are simply impossible…However, they don’t realize that not ALL alternate explanations have been ruled out. Let me explain where this fallacy comes from and this will help it make a little more sense. In the book, The Sign of Four, Sherlock Holmes asks John Watson this question: "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" Ok, now there’s technically nothing wrong with this statement, and it’s totally valid. Sherlock Holmes solved mysteries, and this is one of his methods. So he'd say something like, we know the person didn't leave through the door. We know they didn't leave through the window. We know they didn't leave through the chimney. There are no other ways to leave. So, even though it seems strange, we can say that they must still be in this room.
However, it carries the risk of a thinking error: Let’s say you’re trying to solve a mystery, like Sherlock Holmes did, and you’re looking at 5 different explanations. Right away, you can conclude that numbers 1-4 are impossible - they just flat-out couldn’t have happened. So that must mean that #5 is the truth, right? Not necessarily! It might be the truth of all the explanations you’ve considered, but what if there are other explanations you HAVEN'T considered yet? What if number 7 or 8 is the truth and you ignore it just because you haven’t discovered it yet? Or, what is number 1 is really the truth, you just thought it was impossible because you’ve never heard of it before? The Holmes Fallacy leaves space for the possibility that you missed something.
This fallacy is often called the Appeal to Omniscience Fallacy, the Process of Elimination Fallacy, and it’s often called the “Holmesian Fallacy”, which is hard to pronounce, so I’m just going to go with the Sherlock Holmes fallacy.
Ok, here’s a simple example: Let’s say my husband and daughter are not at home so it’s just me. I’m eating a bowl of popcorn and I get up to get something from the other room. When I come back, all the popcorn in the bowl is gone. Since my husband and my daughter aren’t home, it’s impossible that they could have taken my popcorn, so I conclude that a ghost had to have eaten my popcorn. Ok, is that really true? I did eliminate some impossibilities, my husband and daughter, and I was left with an option: ghosts, which seems highly improbable, but what else could it be? The question I have to ask is, are there any other possibilities that I’ve left off my list of options? And in this case, yes! I left off the possibility that my dog, Ted, could have eaten the popcorn! And in this case, most likely did, b/c he’s a notorious popcorn thief. Ok, so that’s a silly example, but it does show the problem that can happen when you think you’ve eliminated all the impossible options and so are forced to look at the remaining options as the truth. You might be missing something.
There are 2 problems that can create thinking errors in the Holmes Fallacy: First: Holmes' advice is correct if and only if you know for sure a complete search was done to list all possibilities before starting the elimination process. Nobody is perfect, and can we really know in every situation that we have thought of EVERY possibility?
The Second problem that can happen is this: Sometimes, an option can be eliminated as ‘impossible’ when it’s not really impossible. Can we be sure that the options eliminated are indeed impossible? Impossible according to whom? ‘Impossible’ can be a bit subjective sometimes. Before we can do this process of elimination method, we have to be sure we take the time & the effort to find & list ALL the possibilities, so we’re sure we haven’t missed one. And, we have to have an open mind to be sure we aren’t dismissing something as impossible that might indeed be possible. A better way for Sherlock Holmes to have worded it may have been: “Once you eliminate everything that is not the truth, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
Another example of this fallacy can happen when someone is trying to explain a strange phenomena. For instance, let’s take the phenomena of crop circles. Crop circles are interesting designs that pop up out of nowhere in the middle of corn or wheat fields where intricate designs are made by flattening the crop. The phrase ‘Crop Circle’ was coined in the 1980s to describe these things that were being seen in different parts of the world. Of course, the big question was, “How is this being done?” The theories were widely varied and astounding in the creativity - people thought of all kinds of explanations: God, natural causes, birds, kids pulling a prank, and UFOs. There were no footprints, tire marks, etc, so some people assumed it couldn’t have been done by humans, and they didn’t believe in God, so it must have been done by aliens. Now, I’m no expert on crop circles, I’m just talking about the things I have heard about them. But that’s a good example of the Holmes Fallacy…people eliminated some things from their list of possible explanations, and found themselves left with Aliens, so they really believed aliens created the crop circles.
Question to ask yourself when you find yourself or someone else doing this process of elimination is this: “Are we sure we’ve included EVERY possibility?” *repeat*
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
