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I'm a beginner at deduction and I would really like to read books that could teach me, so i wonder what some of your recommendations might be. I would also like to ask about how I should practice deduction.

“Snoop” by Sam Gosling.

“What Every BODY is Saying” by Joe Navarro

Are two good books that cover body language and personality.

You should train deduction in almost the same way you train math skills.

You observe the “problem”. (person, place)

You think about what you need to “solve” in the problem. (a question you have about their about personality, home, relationship and so on)

You think about what method you should be using for that problem. (Big Five, conditioning marks, bleaching and so on)

You come to a conclusion via the method. (High on conscientiousness, works at a fast food place, been on holiday recently)

You check to confirm if your conclusion is right. (Ask the person, hint at what you might know, read their mind with the information you’ve gathered)

In math, this could be explained in this simple way with an extremely simple math problem.

You observe the “problem”. (2x + 1 = 5)

You think about what you need to “solve” in the problem. (You need to know what x is)

You think about what method you should be using for that problem. (You need to isolate the x)

You come to a conclusion via the method. (x = (5 - 1)/2 = 2)

You check to confirm if your conclusion is right. (You use a calculator, or replace the x with 2)

So think about it this way and you might have an easier time with it! Hope that helps.

And with that, I’ll see you my irregulars.

Hello, I just wanted to say that I love your blog! It's really interesting, I look forward to the rest of the mnemonics! =)

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it! They will be up in a couple of weeks!

Don't you think it would be nice if you had a photographic memory? But is it actually a thing? For 10% off Squarespace: http://squarespace.com/scishowpsych H...

Some of what I talked about in the “Myths about memory” post. If you want a video that explains it, from a trusted youtube channel with sources.

#link #photographic memory #myth #memory #photographic

The absolute basics.

Let’s talk about the absolute basics in deduction. Seems like there’s a lot of people that misunderstand them, even other deductionists. This post is made to correct some of these misunderstandings.

What do we deductionists do? We gather information and make conclusions about that information. The premise is simple. Is it simple to get to the same level as Sherlock? No. Do I know of someone that is on the same level as Sherlock? No, and I know quite a few deductionists. But here’s the big reason why I don’t know of anyone at the same level as Sherlock, it’s not that Sherlock is fictional, it’s because of perfect situations that Sherlock is in. These happen, but not as often as Sherlock finds himself in them.

The way with OCC:

First of all, you should try and remember OCC. This the order in which you as a deductionist should operate.

Observation – Here you observe the place or person you are deducing. There are things to look for if you have the knowledge, some says you should observe everything, and sure, you should do that in a perfect world but you won’t be able to use everything you observe so that will only waste your time when you get into higher ranks of deduction. And if you want to know what to observe than all you need to do is practice.

Conclusion – The second step is to come to a conclusion from what you have observed. This is the deduction, we will talk more about this later on in this text. This will require both logic and knowledge. If you lack in one of these then you’ll need to train that.

Confirmation – Now this is something most deductionist don’t do because they are scared of failing. If you don’t confirm if you are right you’ll hinder your own progress extremely. If you can confirm, always try to.

The parts

Now, most break down deduction into two parts, logic and knowledge. I think that the knowledge part needs to be split into two parts. Absolute knowledge and statistical knowledge. This is important, I’ll try and explain why but first you need to know about the three kinds of deduction.

Deduction –

This reasoning is used when you have one or more statements that you combine to reach a logical conclusion.

The reasoning is that if the statements are true and clear the conclusion must be true.

An example of deductive reasoning:

Statements:

Pink is not a natural hair colour.

Emily has pink hair.

Conclusion:

Someone/something has dyed Emily’s hair pink.

This is deduction in which you use absolute knowledge to make a deduction. And if you truly use absolute knowledge then the conclusion will be correct.

Induction –

In inductive reasoning, you come to a conclusion that’s probable. The statements are viewed as strong evidence for your conclusion.

An example of inductive reasoning:

Statements:

There are marbles in this bag.

All 8 out of 10 marbles I have seen from this bag are black.

Conclusion:

All marbles from this bag are black.

This doesn’t tell you if the conclusion is true or not but thanks to the strong evidence of the statements you’re presented with, it’s probable that the conclusion is true. This is statistical knowledge and will be true most of the time.

Abduction –

In abductive reasoning, you have the statements and from that, you make an educated guess about what the conclusion might be. This reasoning is looking for the best explanation.

An example of abductive reasoning:

Statements:

The grass is wet.

The grass is usually dry.

Conclusion:

It has rained.

This is something we deductionists often do. We always look for the best explanation based on the evidence we are provided. This, if done correctly, will also most often be true. This will often be your own conducted statistical knowledge.

The reason why “knowledge” should be split into “absolute knowledge” and “statistical knowledge” is that if you have the logic you’ll never be wrong with absolute knowledge, but with statistical knowledge, you can still be wrong. Some tell you that logic is more important than knowledge and vice versa. This couldn’t be more wrong. Logic and knowledge are equally important. Those who don’t agree probably don’t know that much about the category they are dismissing. Logic and knowledge should work together alongside each other.

But if you want the “WOW effect” one of these triumphs over the other. If you do a deduction via logic people can see your train of thought quite easily, especially if you explain it. If you do deduction via knowledge then people won't be able to follow your train of thought without that specific knowledge. And more people have a good logical mind than specific knowledge about everything. Something magicians have as a catchphrase nowadays are “People aren’t stupid” and that is true. If you, the reader of this thinks that most people are stupid then you need to come out of that bubble of yours.

Some other things.

So can you yourself measure how good you are at deduction? No, not really. You’ll always be biased towards yourself. So if you like yourself, you’ll probably think that you are better at deduction than you really are. If you think the worst of yourself then you’ll probably think you are worse than you really are. Then we have the “Dunning–Kruger effect”, most of you will probably, in the beginning, think that you are better at deduction than you really are, because of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It predicts that beginners rate themselves to be better than they really are while experts rate themselves to be worse than they really are. So no you can’t measure your skill level yourself.

This point I’ll make now is kind of connected to the previous one. Don’t assume you are right. That would be really stupid. If you assume you are right, you’ll fall for confirmation bias. This is when you look for things that would prove what you believe to be true, and miss things that disprove your theory. One more reason this is bad, I know of deductionists that don’t want to accept that they’re wrong, even if it’s confirmed. They think the one that tells them they’re wrong are lying. Extremely bad.

The pattern.

Your knowledge about deduction will improve. In the beginning, before you start deduction you’ll probably not know about it at all, you’ll have an unconscious ignorance towards it. When you start reading about it, you’ll probably understand that you don’t know much about it. So you’ll have a conscious ignorance towards it. After trying it out and really learning you’ll start noticing that you can deduce some things, you’ll have and conscious knowledge towards deduction. When you’ve become an expert to master you’ll make deductions without thinking that much, you’ll have an unconscious knowledge about deduction.

Pattern:

Unconscious ignorance

Conscious ignorance

Conscious knowledge

Unconscious knowledge

So, how do you get better in deduction? Practice, it might sound cliché but it’s true. But however, you can shorten the time quite much, if you confirm your deductions. The second C in OCC is extremely important. If you don’t know what you are doing wrong then you can’t improve. You won’t get better just from reading this. So go out there and make deductions and most importantly confirm your deductions.

If you want me to write a post about confirming your deductions about people without the fear to fail (because if you fail they won’t know that you’ve failed) then write to me about that. A lot of people seem to be afraid of saying their deductions out loud.

And with that, I’ll see you my irregulars.

DTP Foundations Week #24

Week 24 of the deductionist training program.

Mnemonics #2.

Level: Intermediate.

Mnemonics #2 - Organisation:

"So what can you deduce about me detective?" JM asks. You try to remember some of the signs for the "Big Five" personality traits.

You remember it like this:

To be efficient in mnemonics you need to organise what you memorise. This is something I think most have a problem with in mnemonics (I’ve never seen anyone do this in a good way). They tend to organise via rooms in their memory palace, and that’s okay but you can't really do that efficiently with small lists you need to memorise, or even big lists. You would waste space in your palace. So this technique is what you always should utilise when using mnemonics. Sortation with the palace should only be done when you have a room for a specific topic.

I associate organising of mnemonics with an article in a newspaper. You have the headline, the subheads and the content. Remember this for later.

First, visualise this:

An aquarium which is like an OCEAN (An acronym for the big five, if you haven't read about the big five look for my post called “Big Five”). But we need a picture for every trait because we want to organise this the best we can.

So remember these with the linking method (which we talked about last week):

1. Openness to experience - Visualise a roller coaster.

2. Conscientiousness - Visualise a filing-cabinet falling down and crushes the rollercoaster.

3. Extraversion - Visualise a party hat that forces itself to be on the filing-cabinet.

4. Agreeableness - Visualise two hands doing a handshake exactly over the party hat.

5. Neuroticism - A shaking skeleton that shakes on the shaking hands.

Remember the newspaper article? Now we want to organise the OCEAN picture to be the headline and the traits to be the subheads and then the signs to be the content (more on that later).

So do this:

Link the aquarium (OCEAN) with the roller coaster (Openness to experience).

This you do a particular way:

Every time you make a connection between a headline and a subhead or a headline and content or subhead and content you should make the code for the headline big, the code for the subhead medium/small and the code for the content small. This will be zoomed in later.

So visualise the aquarium(OCEAN) quite big and the roller coaster(Openness to experience) as a small ornament inside the aquarium. When you have seen the aquarium as a big picture and the roller coaster as a small picture you should zoom in on the roller coaster and see every subhead as the same size. So all in the same category should be the same size.

Now we shall memorise the signs so that we can deduce what personality traits someone has.

The signs of openness to experience - Rollercoaster:

Colourful clothes - Clown clothes.

The shoes have strong colours - Neon shoes.

Now you are going to make a connection with the roller coaster (openness to experience) and the clown clothes (colourful clothes). The roller coaster is a subhead and the clown clothes are the content, so the roller coaster is going to be a big picture and the clown clothes are going to be a small picture.

Visualise the roller coaster and visualise the clown clothes to be small as doll clothes in one of the seats of the roller coaster. Now you zoom in on the clown clothes and see neon shoes as big as the clothes but inside them. The clothes later fall apart and reveal the shoes.

Now you should know how to connect these different pictures, so I'll give you the coding and the size of the picture but you'll need to connect them yourself.

The signs for conscientiousness - File cabinet (Medium):

Formal clothes - A suit (Small but the filing-cabinet is big compared to the suit)

Clean shoes that are in good condition - Cinderella's glass shoes (Small but is the same size as the suit)

The signs for extraversion - Party hat (Medium but is the same size as the filing-cabinet):

Stylish external - A king's crown (Small)

Friendly facial expressions - Smiley face (Small)

Confident facial expressions - Sunglasses (Small)

Smiles a lot - Smiley with botox in the cheeks so that it stays smiling (Small)

Relaxed gait - Ragdoll (Small)

Swinging arms when walking - Robots arms that are spinning (Small)

Loud and powerful voice - Megaphone (Small)

Good eye contact - Creepy old portrait (Small)

Lift their feet when walking - Boot with a spring under it (Small)

Shoes have lots of colours and the colours are strong - Clown shoes (Small)

The signs for agreeableness - Handshake (Medium)

Soft facial features - Faceless round face (Small)

Friendly facial expressions - Mona Lisa (Small)

The shoes are practical, non- pointy, affordable and no visible brands - Shoes made of clouds (Small)

The signs for neuroticism - Shaking skeleton (Medium)

Dark clothes - Dracula (Small)

Pointy shoes and high heels - High heels (Small)

Like with everything, you'll need to recall this now and then to remember it.

So just to be overly clear. The category of what you are memorising is the headline (in other words OCEAN or the Big Five is the headline) and has the size “BIG” relative to “MEDIUM” and “SMALL”.

The subcategories in the category are the subheads (in other words the five traits, like “openness to experience”, “conscientiousness“, “extraversion” and so on. These are the subheads) and have the size “MEDIUM” relative to “BIG” and “SMALL”.

The signs, in this case, are the content and have the size “SMALL” relative to “BIG” and “MEDIUM”.

So:

OCEAN - headline - BIG

Openness to experience - subhead - MEDIUM

Sign - content - SMALL

Conscientiousness - subhead - MEDIUM

Sign - content - SMALL

Extraversion - subhead - MEDIUM

Sign - content - SMALL

Agreeableness - subhead - MEDIUM

Sign - content - SMALL

Neuroticism - subhead - MEDIUM

Sign - content - SMALL

You notice that JM have formal clothes and clean shoes that are in good condition, so you tell him that he scores high on the personality trait conscientiousness, he confirms your suspicion.

And with that, I'll see you my irregulars.

DTP Foundations Week #23

Week 23 of the deductionist training program.

Mnemonics #1.

Level: Basic.

Mnemonics #1 - Linking method:

One of the professors come up to meet you and asks you what this visit is about. You answer that you’re looking for a JM and he tells you that he is JM and is wondering what you want with him. You ask him if you can talk in private. You and JM go to a classroom and he asks you "So detective, what traits could you deduce about someone?". You have memorised a checklist just for that so that it would be easier making deductions.

NOTE: You should read this before going into this.

You memorised it so that:

When using mnemonics you'll visualise the information you want to remember and use a kind of filing system so that you can always find it. To do this you'll need to know how to visualise and you have to know how to code the information to something you can visualise. There are three important rules when using mnemonics.

Always visualise like this:

Bright and vivid colours.

Visualise in 3D.

Visualise in a lot of detail.

Some seem to think that it's necessary to visualise weird and abstract pictures but it really isn't. It sure helps but it isn't necessary, especially if you need to memorise it quickly. (More in-depth about the rules here)

There are three ways of coding efficiently:

Symbol coding - Death would become a skull. Death is an abstract word and a skull symbolises that word.

Phonetic coding - To code the sound of something to a picture. Let’s say we want to code “Conjunctivitis” (Pinkeye) Con/junc/tivi/tis so a CONman(con) throwing out a JUNk(junc) TV(tivi) while TEaSing(tis) you with their amazingness.

Experience coding - If you've always associated your grandpa with cars because he loved cars then his memory experience code would be a car he loved.

Only visualise two objects at a time and in this method (the linking method) they should be the same size. Coding and memorisation should never take more than 30 seconds each. You don't have to use my coding for these create your own if you want to! (More in-depth about coding here)

Follow these rules and do this:

Checklist. (This is only to find the checklist easy) - Visualise a checklist with a lot of detail. Maybe it's stained so that it looks old, maybe someone has spilt coffee over it.

Physical attributes. - Visualise parts of Mr Potato Head from “Toy Story” on top of the checklist, maybe weighing the checklist down or perhaps piercing the checklist.

Dominant hand. - A chopped off hand which is bleeding al over the potato heads parts.(Don’t visualise the checklist now)

Personality. - A skull from Hamlet "To be or not to be" which is held by a chopped off the hand.

Physical and mental health. - An ambulance that drives around on the skull from Hamlet.

Economical status. - On the ambulance, there are a safe packed full with money.

Relationships. - An engagement ring is around the safe packed with money.

Family. - A family portrait is the stone of the engagement ring.

Animals. - A dog is peeing on the portrait.

Education. - A student cap is covering the dog like a blanket.

Occupation. - A safety helmet comes crashing down on the student cap.

Background. - Two mountains start growing on the helmet.

Hobbies. - A hobbit that climbs the mountains.

Political views. - A tie wrestles with the hobbit.

Past activities. - An hourglass which stomps the tie down.

Dreams. - A genie lamp pours sand on the hourglass.

Musical taste. - A speaker comes out of the top of the genie lamp.

Religion and ideologies. - A cross comes flying down and pierces the speaker.

Food and diets. - Plate with food that spins on the cross.

Musical instruments. - A guitar that's trying to get out of the food where it got stuck.

Sports. - Soccerball that comes out of the guitars hole.

Home. - House that grows on the soccer ball.

Transportation. - A train that crushes the house.

Abroad. - A passport that cuts the train in half.

Now, this needs to be recalled once in a while, so do check on this. But you should use this when deducing so that makes you check it. (More in-depth about fixation in mnemonics here)

This was the linking method, become confident in using this.

Now I have a question for all of those who are reading this. What downside does this method have?

You tell JM this list.

And with that, I'll see you my irregulars.

#DTP #foundation #foundations #week #23 #Mnemonic #mnemonics #basic #deductionist #training #program #link #linking #method #detective #deduction #checklist #Sherlock

Like most quizzes on the internet, personality tests aren't what you would call "reliable." Hosted by: Brit Garner ---------- Support SciShow by becoming a p...

What I talked about in my youtube video “Does MBTI really work?”, and in my post “Big Five” but from a well know youtube channel, if you want an easy video that explains this!

And with that, I’ll see you my irregulars.

#mbti #ocean #big five #personality #test #deduction #a study in #asi

DTP Foundations Week #22

Week 22 of the deductionist training program.

Observation exercise #3.

Level: Addition to the other observations.

Observation exercise #3 - Auditory observation:

The only exercise you feel the need of doing now is an auditory exercise. You do it when you walk to the staff room in the university.

This is how you do it:

Sit comfortable.

Close your eyes.

Try imagining people talking like a blue smoke where the sound would be.

Do the above and try imaging every striking sound as a blue smoke.

After this try imagine every sound as a blue smoke around you where it would have come from.

Now when you're comfortable with that try this:

Make your sight slightly unfocused.

Try focusing on what people are saying around you, and where it is.

After this, try focusing on the people and on striking sounds.

After this, try focus on every sound around you.

When you’re comfortable with that try doing it exactly the same way except for the eyes. Keep your eyes focused.

You should try doing this all hours of the day, it's not possible to do that much because it makes you quite tired, but you will be able to do this most hours of the day when you are getting used to the exercise.

You feel refreshed and ready for meeting the professors in the staff room.

And with that, I'll see you my irregulars.

#DTP #deductionist #training #program #foundations #foundation #week #22 #Observation #exercise #auditory #irregular

Do you think it would be of any use to learn how to code and decode ciphers? thanks

Depends on what you want to do. For deduction, the creation part of a cipher is probably not going to help you that much, but the decryption can help you think backwards and see things from different perspectives! So that may help your logic.

Omg i love your Blog 😍😍 it's so informative and useful and interesting😍☺ so glad I discovered it :D

Thank you so much! I really appreciate this! If there’s any topic you want me to cover do not hesitate to ask!

I'm wondering what are some good exercises to increase my efficiency to store information into my memory palace, I don't simply want to remember a random string of words, numbers, or characters I desire exercises that would help me for example memorize a text book or an article as I read it or a lecture as its given to me.

Sorry for the extremely late answer!

Well if your goal is to memorise something as it is being told to you, then you probably need to dedicate a lot of time to exercise your brain.

The exercises/information you’ll need are:

Visualisation exercise:

In mnemonics we often use visualisation as a tool so this ability needs to be extremely trained. (You can find a good exercise here)

Rules of mnemonics:

You’ll need to know the most efficient way of memorising via visualisation. (You can find the information here)

Types of memory in mnemonics:

You’ll need this information to know what kind of mnemonics you should use for different kinds of information. (You can find the information here)

Coding in mnemonics:

This is extremely important when you want to be fast with this skill. You’ll need to know where to use what coding and be efficient with it. You can train this ability via a “random word generator” and code the words. Most have difficulty with the “Phonetic coding” so do that as much as you can. (Read more about it here)

The mnemonics:

This might seem obvious, but you need to know mnemonic strategies in-depth. Many believe that the only mnemonic they need is the “Memory palace” or “The Method of Loci” as it is also known as. This is not true, at least not if you want to be efficient in this. There are more techniques that are useful. There will be more information about this in DTP #23 - #27.

Hope this helps! If not contact me again!And with that, I’ll see you my irregulars.

DTP Foundations Week #21

Week 21 of the deductionist training program.

Observation exercise #2.

Level: Intermediate/Advanced.

Observation exercise #2 - Forehead on the table:

You go around looking for JM and the body and it's time for you to eat something so you go to a nearby cafeteria. You remember that you should do the observation exercise "Forehead on the table" to be more alert.

This is what you do:

You put your forehead on a table and close your eyes so that it's guaranteed that you can't see anything.

Your friend/coworker/partner asks you a question about the environment you're in.

You try and answer with the best accuracy you can.

Someone new to this exercise should start by doing just the basic questions then when you're comfortable with those, advance to the basic and intermediate questions. When you're comfortable with the intermediate questions go to the basic, intermediate and advanced questions.

Examples of basic questions:

What colour are the walls?

What colour is the floor?

What colour is the ceiling?

What kind of lamps are there?

Is there big windows here or is it small?

What is the theme of the place you're in?

Is the floor/ground flat?

What colour is your friend's shirt?

What colour are your friend's trousers?

What colour are your friend's shoes?

What material is the floor/ground beneath you?

Are there any plants where you are?

Examples of intermediate questions:

What colour are the tables?

What colour are the chairs?

What colour is the shirt of the person you don't know that's closest to you?

What colour are the trousers of the person you don't know that's closest to you?

What colour are the shoes of the person you don't know that's closest to you?

What colour is the hair of the person you don't know that's closest to you?

How many tables, roughly, are there?

How many chairs, roughly, are there?

How many people, roughly, are there?

How many posters, roughly, are there?

What type of posters are there?

How many windows are there?

Examples of advanced questions:

How many tables, exactly, are there?

How many chairs, exactly, are there?

How many people, exactly, are there?

How many posters, exactly, are there?

How many lamps, exactly, are there?

How many plants, exactly, are there?

How many people use wristwatches?

How many people have rings on their ring finger?

How many people have glasses?

How many people have tattoos?

What kind of tattoos are there?

How many people have necklaces?

Instead of a friend/coworker/partner asking you these questions you can record them and have the audio files on your phone. So then you can use your headphones and set it up so that it plays one random question, then pause the audio files and answer the question. Look how you did and then do it again.

But if you do this with a friend you can ask the friend questions in return. Then have the "loser" (the one who has the least amount of points at the end of the game) get a punishment. If the friend loses and wants to learn deduction the friend should then make a deduction about someone and confirm if it's true or not. The punishment should still be educational.

Your observation skills seem to be in good shape. You continue eating with your coworker.

And with that, I'll see you my irregulars.

Eye contact triangles. Body language the eye contact information you should store in your knowledge banks. This video belongs to the "how to read body langua...

“Eye Contact Triangles” is now in video format!

#deduction #body language #Sherlock #Sherlock Holmes

DTP Foundations Week #20

Week 20 of the deductionist training program.

Observation exercise #1.

Level: Basic.

Observation exercise #1 - The small things:

SM tells you that JM sometimes visits the university of mathematics. "Why and who is he?" You ask him. He tells you that your game is over and that you'll have to go to the university yourself and deduce where the body is and who JM is. You decide to go to the university. You feel like you need to warm up your observation skills. So you decide to play a little game you have always played. You go on to the university and on your way there you try to remember the exercise.

You do this:

Exercise 1:

Observe eye colour on every person you talk to. This doesn't mean you have to do it on everyone but you should try. When you're comfortable with exercise one you go on to doing both exercise one and two.

Exercise 2:

Observe name badges on people who work or have an event. When you're comfortable with exercise one and two go on to doing all three at the same time.

Exercise 3:

Observe rings on the ring fingers of the hands and their appearance. When comfortable with these three exercises continue doing them. They will eventually be a reflex.

Try to remember all the ones you have seen later that day.

You arrive at the university you notice all eye colours, all the name badges and all engagement rings and remember them.

And with that I'll, see you my irregulars.

#Observation #exercise #DTP #deductionist #training #program #foundations #week #foundation #deduction #Sherlock #Sherlock Holmes #detective #observe

aguidetodeduction

Heads up, the EAC model only really works if you know the person's handedness. The diagram is correct for a right handed person, but must be flipped to be correct for a left handed person.

astudyinpictures

You know it says that in the text? And one more thing, this model is really dynamic so the person might not follow the whole model but only a few parts of it. That's why you have control questions.

#correction to correction

Some body language that might be interesting for deduction! Learn about the NLP model that is EAC! This is a bit of a how to read body language via eye conta...

Eye Accessing Cues is now also in video format!

#eac #eye accessing cues #deduction

2 Likes, 1 Comments - A Study In (@astudyin) on Instagram: “Magic is one of three things. Visually pleasing or a childhood wonder. Sometimes both. #magic”

Magic is one of three things. Visually pleasing or a childhood kind of wonder. Sometimes both.

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