this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2025
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it's abduction he uses, not deduction.
He doesn't start with a set of potential conclusions and knock them down one by one as he gathers evidence - no, he instead jumps from one extreme thread of intrigue to another, never quite abandoning an idea even if the evidence points otherwise. The universe then apparently conspires to prove him right on credence alone
So you're telling me that he's actually a reality warper instead of a genius doctor?
You could say, like the Wabbajack.
I actually think so, yeah
This is correct
Less so
No? the information he gathers is very sparse, so naturally his conclusions are very wild and based more on hunches than on anything actually empirical
That's what abductive logic is.
Clearly he's not being arbitrary. While it isn't purely deduction where the conclusion has to be true if the premises are true, in abductive reasoning it's only "likely" they're true. The better your premises, the better the likelyhood.
And how good are Sherlock and House portrayed as, in this way?
Very.
That's why he's allowed to do almost anything, since he usually ends up finding the right solution despite a little trial and error.
If he constantly turned out to be wrong, he wouldn't have an entire department and there'd be very little point in the whole story
Abduction is basically deduction when you account for reality.
I hear what you're saying, but you assume his reality is rational. I think he's a reality warping demon whose guesses are proven to be right only because the universe he lives in loves him.
In a saner world, he would be locked up as a delusional hateful man who got people killed with constant risky misdiagnosis