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logics inconsistency in Sherlock,


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Hi guys,

Merry Christmas . I am a fan of Sherlock series obviously, but I must say I have been puzzled by inconsistency in Sherlock deducing process . I would say they are

of two  types :

1)  very slow hypotheses switching . My example is the moment where S.H. get puzzled by the fact the lost luggage in " a study in pink" is in the neighbourhood. I get the fact that the taxi slow appearance in the game is somehow theatrical, but it bothered me in the sense that S.H looks quite not as smart and quick as expected at this moment.

2) inconsistent hypothesis . My example is the suggestion by S.H. in "The Hounds of Baskerville" that the poison could have been spilled into the cup of coffee. I do no see how Henri could have been drugged in this manner before .

Have you other examples ( I have other , but I probably need to rewatch to remind ) , or are you disagreeing with my recriminations ?

Caroline

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Hi, Caroline -- Merry Christmas and congratulations on such an interesting first post!  :xmas:

I think you have a very good point, and one that I'd never really noticed before:  Sherlock has a bad habit of getting stuck on a particular hypothesis, and will do his best to stick with it even if evidence starts pointing in a different direction.  His focus on the pearl and his patronizing view of Vivian as just a silly old lady are basically what got Mary killed in Six Thatchers.  And earlier, his patronizing view of Mary as just John's sweet little wife was what got him shot in His Last Vow.  He's quite capable of deriving a hypothesis from clues very quickly (as he shows in the fireside scene in Hounds), but only in the absence of other hypotheses.  Well, every genius has a flaw, I guess, and that's Sherlock's!

In all fairness, though, he had figured out that the killer was a cabbie much earlier in the 60-minute pilot episode (which was never aired).  It was when they expanded the same plot to 90 minutes that he suddenly went stupid -- and apparently stayed that way!

As for why Sherlock thought Henry could have been poisoned by his coffee, he was assuming that the poison was in the canister of sugar in Henry's kitchen -- and thus every time he stirred sugar into his coffee, he was poisoning himself.  That leaves open the question of how the poison got into the sugar, but that would have required the poisoner to have access to the kitchen only once, or every once in a while (depending on how fast Henry goes through a batch of sugar).

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Thanks for welcoming me :)

Yes I agree with the " Sherlock has a bad habit of getting stuck on a particular hypothesis, and will do his best to stick with it even if evidence starts pointing in a different direction."

I must say it sort of disappointed me , in the sense that it is the proper of highly intelligent people in every field  ( like science for example )to contemplate a priori all kinds of hypotheses , including the exotic ones , compared to more mundane minds which are proner to dwelve into one theory . And then maybe correct it when facing other elements . I guess that it is more related to a storytelling constraints than failing to grasp Sherlock personality , since the whole hypotheses disply is very well used when Sherlock locally uses his talents to uncover a person 's personality or intentions, because he can explains it very succintly to the world by the bias of interaction with Watson for example .

I did not know there was a shorter version of " A study in pink " , that makes sense now, but to me it looked it should have been introduced in a less obvious plot twist than " a taxi is here " and "the luggage is here " .  I agree also with your explanation of the poison plot, but that hypothesis raises a lot of questions about its realizability , and it is kind of weird that S.H. seems to be very quick to raise these kind of questions in psychology mining stuff and questioning police investigation techniques but less adamant to do it when faced with a real plot movement.
I have to rewatch to find other elements, and good, it is holidays :)

 

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Welcome, Caroline! A new member to play with, yay!

I think even highly intelligent people get stuck on a certain way of thinking; it's just human nature. And I suspect that the real problem here is that the writers are not as smart as the character they are writing! (They've said so themselves.) But I also think they are trying to show that Sherlock is not as superhuman as he would like to be, or believes himself to be. I think the story is more about Sherlock learning to accept his own limitations than it is about how smart he can be. Everyone makes mistakes, but it's how we deal with them that's important.

Or something like that.  It sounds a bit preachy! :D 

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4 hours ago, algebraist said:

... it is the proper of highly intelligent people in every field  ( like science for example )to contemplate a priori all kinds of hypotheses , including the exotic ones , compared to more mundane minds which are proner to dwelve into one theory.

 

2 hours ago, Arcadia said:

I think even highly intelligent people get stuck on a certain way of thinking; it's just human nature.

Oh, certainly!  I've heard it said that scientific advances don't generally take place till the old establishment dies off.  Scientists are, after all, just as human as the rest of us.  Like Sherlock, they may be open to all sorts of possibilities -- but only until they've settled on one, after which they're just as stubborn as Sherlock (who is also said to be human).

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I disagree.

If all of the evidence points to one conclusion...

If repeated experimentation produces the same results.

That's not being stubborn, that's a solution.

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  • 4 weeks later...
31 minutes ago, algebraist said:

How do you do repeated experimentation for murder-solving , or just figuring out real-life events ? Just wondering . 

Yeah, that's the problem as I see it.  Laboratory experiments can be repeated exactly, but with real-life stuff, you often get only the one chance.  Of course you can do population studies, and see whether Method A or Method B tends to give the best results, but that applies only to the mythical average person.  It doesn't necessarily prove which method would work best for you or me.

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I agree

And also to a certain extent, that sort of explains why he has some poor social skills . If you try to understand one single person by deduction and statistics , and most importantly try to explain to them why they are doing this or that ( even when they tell something else ), in general you are going to be not very welcomed .

I am not as smart but I tend to overanalyse , and some of my friends just hated that I was trying to explain details to them about things that happened .  Also making deductions in person like Sherlock ( even to a lesser extent ) can make you like a psycho sometimes lol 

 

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I love to analyze movies after I've seen them. I've discovered most people either hate that, or don't understand what I'm saying, so I've largely given it up. But it puzzles me that "they" are bothered by it; how can people have a two-hour experience and then immediately act as if it never happened? I don't get it.

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I dunno, people seem to manage with a certain TV show all of the time.

Or they at least make up their own version of it.

I sometimes feel like we've been watching two different shows.

Ha!

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15 hours ago, Arcadia said:

I love to analyze movies after I've seen them. I've discovered most people either hate that, or don't understand what I'm saying, so I've largely given it up. But it puzzles me that "they" are bothered by it; how can people have a two-hour experience and then immediately act as if it never happened? I don't get it.

Sometimes I prefer to "experience" the movie (from the inside, as it were) rather than "watch" it (from the outside), which means that I won't necessarily remember things in the same way that you might, and I probably won't remember a good bit of it at all.  Alex is more analytical in his viewing, and can't understand why I'm not.  I suspect that I'm watching as though it were a dream, rather than laying down memories to any great extent.  Maybe your friends are something like that?

Also, if you're mostly analyzing the cinematography, I'd be puzzled too.  :P

Nevertheless, I do tend to have "refrigerator moments" later on, and then pick specific details all to bits.

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On ‎1‎/‎24‎/‎2019 at 8:28 PM, Carol the Dabbler said:

I suspect that I'm watching as though it were a dream, rather than laying down memories to any great extent.  Maybe your friends are something like that?

Maybe. I think one reason I like to analyze a film is so I will remember it better after I've seen it, so I can enjoy the experience longer. I suppose I just assume everyone would feel that way? 

Not to be snobbish, but I also suspect I have more education than most of the people I go to movies with; my dad used to teach film appreciation, and I used to help him grade papers. He was a lot tougher on his students than I was; if you didn't give the exact answer he was looking for, it was marked wrong. So maybe I just take the whole thing more seriously than the average filmgoer?

We saw some amazing films during that time, he would bring them home and screen them for us before showing them to his classes. My favorite was "Them", where I learned the importance of foreshadowing. :smile: 

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13 hours ago, Arcadia said:

Not to be snobbish, but I also suspect I have more education than most of the people I go to movies with; my dad used to teach film appreciation, and I used to help him grade papers. He was a lot tougher on his students than I was; if you didn't give the exact answer he was looking for, it was marked wrong. So maybe I just take the whole thing more seriously than the average filmgoer?

That explains a LOT!!!  :D  (And I'd rather have you as my film appreciation instructor than your father.  After all, making a good film requires imagination, right?  And appreciating a good film requires imagination, right?  So seems like some answers might be more imaginative that others, and still be right.  Or even righter.

We saw some amazing films during that time, he would bring them home and screen them for us before showing them to his classes. My favorite was "Them", where I learned the importance of foreshadowing. :smile:

... and first saw Leonard Nimoy?  :llap:

 

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7 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:
21 hours ago, Arcadia said:

Not to be snobbish, but I also suspect I have more education than most of the people I go to movies with; my dad used to teach film appreciation, and I used to help him grade papers. He was a lot tougher on his students than I was; if you didn't give the exact answer he was looking for, it was marked wrong. So maybe I just take the whole thing more seriously than the average filmgoer?

That explains a LOT!!!  :D  (And I'd rather have you as my film appreciation instructor than your father.  After all, making a good film requires imagination, right?  And appreciating a good film requires imagination, right?  So seems like some answers might be more imaginative that others, and still be right.  Or even righter.

Well, as I recall, the questions were more about how well you listened in class rather than your opinion of the movie. So things like … oh, I don't know ... which camera angles were used to convey a certain mood in such and such a scene? If you only listed two out of three angles, Dad marked it wrong whilst I argued for partial credit. :smile: However, if you listed all three angles but argued that one of them shouldn't be on the list, he'd probably give you bonus points. But yes, he was known to be a, um, "challenging" teacher.

7 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:
Quote

We saw some amazing films during that time, he would bring them home and screen them for us before showing them to his classes. My favorite was "Them", where I learned the importance of foreshadowing. :smile:

... and first saw Leonard Nimoy?  :llap:

Dang, that's who it was! I knew there was someone with a bit part that was "important", but I couldn't remember who it was.

However, no, I first saw the movie well after Star Trek was long gone. But I did see him first in any number of westerns that were on TV in the mid-60's … not that I knew it at the time!

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13 hours ago, Arcadia said:

Well, as I recall, the questions were more about how well you listened in class rather than your opinion of the movie. So things like … oh, I don't know ... which camera angles were used to convey a certain mood in such and such a scene? If you only listed two out of three angles, Dad marked it wrong whilst I argued for partial credit. :smile:  [....] he was known to be a, um, "challenging" teacher.

He was like my freshman algebra teacher, and you're more like the teacher across the hall.  If I'd been in the other class, I'd have gotten a whole grade higher.  But my teacher was very good (other than not giving partial credit and not grading on the curve).  I actually liked her better than I liked the other teacher (who did).

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