Caledonian2 comments on Lawrence Watt-Evans's Fiction - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 July 2008 03:00AM

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Comment author: Caledonian2 15 July 2008 03:02:11PM 7 points [-]

What about Sherlock Holmes? Once you get past his obvious shortcomings, he's a pretty decent rationalist.

Not really. His 'logic' appears to be solid reasoning the same way a theatrical backdrop appears to be real scenery or a magician's slight of hand appears to be the performance of a mystical action: it has the semblance and nothing more.

Conan Doyle wrote in such a way as to convince people that Holmes was exercising reasoning powers, not to showcase examples of such reasoning. By the power of plot, Holmes was correct, but it doesn't follow that his stated reasoning was.