Deduction Exercise 6: "Training Wheels"
OBJECTIVE: USE YOUR PERSONAL ENVIRONMENT TO TRAIN YOUR COGNITIVE ABILITIES AND CONSCIOUSLY UNDERSTAND HOW YOU MUST NAVIGATE INFORMATION
Details: Take an object you own, this can be done with a single object like a pen or a whole area like a room, or even a house or apartment. The goal is to observe whatever subject you've chosen, and use your inside knowledge about who you are, and what your life is like, to trace back the observations you make to their root, and make connections.
The point is not to be able to state things like "oh, these scratch patterns on my shoes come from the way i come up the stairs into my apartment", connecting the observation to its source isn't the instructive part. This exercise puts you in a unique position where you know both sides of the deduction, the observation and the root of it, so what you must focus on is what are the cognitive tools you use (or would use) to connect the two.
Example: As i'm typing this i'm looking at my laptop and noticing there's a slight mark of the bottom of a cup on the right side of the computer, next to where the mousepad is. I know this comes from using that area to place my cups, specifically when watching movies with friends over video call during the night. The connection of observation to source isn't the point, the point is to be able to analize all the cognitive patterns surrounding how i can connect these two if i didn't know where this observation comes from
Since i know how this observation came to be, i also know that it does make a lot of sense for this mark to be on the right hand side of the computer and not on the left, because of my handedness. I also know that i only ever put cups there when i'm watching movies, which makes a lot of sense because it's the only time i'm using my computer without interacting with the keyboard or the mousepad, there's no way that a cup could be put there without severely hindering the use of my computer, so that mark can only appear in that very specific situation. As i'm thinking this i ask myself "well i watch other things throughout the day, things like youtube videos and such, i know i don't engage in the same behavior there, but why?" the point of the question is to teach myself to ask these questions when deducing other people, but also to get an idea of what the correct answer could look like, since i can very easily answer my own question: Because when i watch movies i sit back in my couch, away from my computer, not expecting to interact with it in a long time, while with videos or something of the sort in any other part of my day, i don't expect the stationary period to last long, and i remain close to my computer, sitting at my desk.
Knowing the answer to this question and being able to reach it is not the point, the point is to realize what the characteristics of this answer are: It's simple, it accounts for everything i can see, it's also the path of least resistance between question and answer, since it's simply boiled down to "I don't do this in any other scenario because it's a deeply inconvenient behavior unless i specifically don't engage with my computer for a long time", it follows Occam's Razor, where the simplest answer is indeed the correct one (or at least one of the simplest answers). The point of the exercise is to make light of the characteristics of the observation and how i can logically navigate them to reach its root, to then replicate those same cognitive processes in a real deduction
Through this exercise, i can see that things like convenience, angles of accessibility when interacting with objects are all concepts that are directly connected with this situation. I can notice that it's sometimes important to keep in mind that anything that has a screen has a certain maximum and minimum distance at which it can be used, and each one has its own implications. I can stumble into, and forced to acknowledge concepts like physical and spatial limitations and how they might connect to handedness (the side of the hand a person uses the most can get cluttered and sometimes they're forced to use that are for one thing or another, like use a keyboard or set down a cup), and this concept can lead to the understanding that two things can be true at once and they can at the same time be mutually exclusive (like me being right handed and placing my cup on the right side of the computer and also using both my hands to type and write on the computer on a consistent basis, but only one of these things can be true at any given moment), which starts introducing me to the idea of thinking of what i'm observing as a factor of time, and how the observations can all be visible at once, but may have originated at different points in time
This breakdown that i have done about what i'm observing means, and what i can potentially learn from it, and how different concepts arise simply through the things that i'm observing, is the point of the exercise, doing this to yourself teaches you that this is exactly the type of thing you should be doing when deducing.
It's essentially making a deduction with training wheels, you know you're not gonna fall, cause you know the conclussion to the deduction, so you can focus on the process of making it and the cognitive processes that arise with it
This may be the most important and useful exercise i can give you if used correctly, it's been the single most important training tool in my development as a deductionist, and it's also probably the most complicated one.
Now go give it a shot!
Happy Observing!
-DV
