Deductionist In Training

If you disagree with me, unfollow my blog, block me and never look at my blog again.

Out of 19000+ followers I have, only one of you actually reblogged about this issue, yet a lot of you have reblogged and liked a picture by playboy about catcalling and that how men should never do it.

Additionally, I have received abuse in my ask box (which I will be answering when I can) and threats. In particular death threats and rape threats.

When thinking about Operatives, secret agents or Espionage officers the unusual mostly comes to mind. Whether it is fancy cars, unaccounted for tricks, gadgets and suits, however the real beauty resides beneath the hood. Operatives can be quite lethal in dangerous situations, they are trained and primed to function in the most unpleasant scenarios. Always accounting for the worst, and prepared to engage in the face of danger. After all, the slightest mistakes could result in death, political complications or more often leakage of information (should the operative be not so fortunate). The trick here does not revolve around technique as much as it has to do with the mindset these operatives adhere to, in order to be fully engaged when the occasion favors. Of course these habits/mindset could be devised through some articulated models, but these models are quite useless if not equipped with the right method of thought.

Observation is key

One of the most essential elements/skills an Operative must master during their training, is their ability to be engage and observant when necessary. Out there in the field (And I assure you, I am not experienced as much as I am educated and informed) It is vital that Operatives should keep an eye out for the unhidden and the unseen. This requires full utilization of the five sense, and a little cooperation from the memory. A good operative would want to be selective in the information he/she gathers out there in the field, and they should also account for all the least obvious objects/notes that should be observed. It is very common to miss out on information which is not presented/obvious. The Omission neglect cognitive bias is very common, especially when once if faced with complicated and tempting data to subdue to in a short time. This sort of mental pressure could blind the observer from the missing facts/information. Marketers are experts at using such technique when trying to sell products to consumers, of course the least of skeptics and critical thinkers fall prey to such devious mental tricks. However, Omission neglect is not the only fiend facing observation, there is another psychological bias which most people are not immune to, even operatives.

The bias is common for Attentional Blindness. According to (Irvin Rock (1922–1995) was an American experimential psychologist who studied visual perception at the University of California at Berkeley) Attentional Blindness is defined as “Inattentional blindness, also known as perceptual blindness, is a psychological lack of attention that is not associated with any vision defects or deficits. It may be further defined as the event in which an individual fails to recognize an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight.

Operatives are thus trained to keep calm while collecting information, and remain un-judgmental with pieces of data they acquire. This sense of objectivity provides them with a competitive edge which aides them later on during the hypothesis phase. Now, I would like to return the former basics of observation, the five sense. The first would be sight, Operatives are trained to be actives observers. They are always on the lookout for any deviations that breach their pre-established baseline. These deviations force operatives to raise red flags and take notes of any elements which alerts as out of the ordinary. But it is very inconvenient to rely on the sight by itself, Observers need to remember and note the smell, and feel of their objects, this combination of senses makes Operatives out the in the field less prone to fall victim for their fallible memory. As many of us believe, the memory is not recorded but constructed on the spot every time a memory is recalled. These constant and repetitive constructions leave out small details as they gather impulses from many neurons in the brain, leaving the memory deformed and defragmented. Although the memory is not inconsistent with the Observation phase, the fact should still be noted in order to reduce the amount of error in the near future. Operatives are thus advised to keep their observations either documented or noted continuously, to leave out the element of human error.

G.

Finding proper psychology sources is difficult, especially for students who have limited access to academic online databases and libraries. Although it is winter break, it is always a good time to find references and work on your thesis or to educate yourself if you are a psychology enthusiast.

I did a bit of googling for using mind palace for relaxation; nothing came up! That’s such an interesting way of using a mind palace– how do you do it?

As Hanley puts it, what you’re actually putting around your mind palace rooms are retrieval cues, not the memories themselves. The mind palace technique usually has you walking through the room in a specific pathway, and as you go, you pick specific locations where you would attach the thing you want to remember with a memory cue.

For example, if I had a list of cranial nerves to remember:

CN 0 – Terminal

CN I – Olfactory

CN II – Optic

CN III – Oculomotor

CN IV – Trochlear

My path around the room will start with placing the retrieval cue for list item #1, TERMINAL. My retrieval cue could be the train terminal in Harry Potter, 9 ¾. I walk a couple paces forwards (perhaps through the platform 9 ¾ wall), where I see Hedwig waiting for me patiently in her cage (OwLFACTORY). I grab her and get on to the train, to find myself being scanned by Mad-Eye Moody (OPTIC). I walked to the next train compartment, where Neville lies on the floor, jinxed by the locomotor mortis/ leglocking spell (OCULOMOTOR). Walking forward to yet another compartment, it gets even weirder– there’s a TROchL-EAR on the seat!

I used pretty simple memory cues here, where there are visual cues (how mad-eye moody visually reminded me of “optics”) and auditory cues (the locomotor mortis spells sounds a lot like oculomotor). 

The trick is to work with the material you need to remember to make cues that will automatically trigger your memory. A few tips on doing this:

Make value judgements– is the connection you made a pleasant one? (Yesavage & Rose, 2007)

Make visual cues weird. The more atypical the image is, the more likely you’ll remember it. I recently created a cue where a vacuum cleaner goes camping but trips and hurts himself so he had to use rubbing alcohol to disinfect himself. 

Make the cues arousing/ disgusting. Negative emotions seem to help people encode things in greater detail. The TROLL EAR mnemonic is still standing out in my mind pretty well. 

/ T H E  D E D U C T I O N  N E T W O R K

Hello, you’ve probably by now seen some of the commotion regarding this topic, like the code we posted a few days ago, or even the Morse code we were posting for a while beforehand. If you have, you might, just from the name, realise what this is: a network for deductionists who want to work together and develop their skills.

Now, it should be obvious that we can’t just accept everybody into this group, much as we would like to, it simply wouldn’t work. Because of this, we’re making it so that only deduction-orientated blogs can join. There are few requirements, but they’re pretty big ones:

Post deduction. You can post other things, to an extent, but as explained prior, we want it to be about deduction, so it’s very important.

Be active. You need to post semi-regularly, or at least intend to in the near future.

Those are the rules, and it’s best if you follow them when requesting to join. Because of how new this network is, the second rule has been tweaked, so for the first few weeks we are accepting people who have no deduction posts on their blog, but do plan to, and can prove they will do so in the future.

So, how do you join?

You must be following us

Reblog this post

Send an ask to either this blog and express interest, as well as why you should join.

Pretty simple stuff. The group will communicate through an app/website called GroupMe. Inactive members will be kicked out. Membership will last six months, to make sure inactive blogs don’t stay at all, because it just ruins the whole idea of this.

There is also a secondary blog ( @thedeductionnetwork ) that members can join if they want. The blog will reblog all posts made by the members of the network, and also post updates on the group.

Finally, the group will do the following:

Help other members writing posts or finding information for posts

Help other members gain publicity

Hopefully collaborate on some posts

Give deductionists a place to talk and generally have more like-minded people around them

So that’s it. Any questions or thoughts let us know, and if you want to join, please do. We already have a few members, and many people have been sent invitations. The group also isn’t limited to Tumblr, so if you have a WordPress blog or a YouTube channel, or anything else, you can still join, because we’re talking on GroupMe.

Thank you all for reading and we hope you join,