On Fri, 31 Jan 1997, Richard Lawson wrote:

Sebastian Weinberg wrote:

: Nouma grimaced; he was losing ground here. She was becoming angrier, now
: that all of her suspicions had been confirmed. Nevertheless, he tried to
: see it through. "To paraphrase the esteemed Mr. Holmes, when you eliminate
: the highly probable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the
: truth.

I *still* don't get this.  Why would you want to discard the
highly probable in favour of the improbable?  What is the
relevance of this paraphrase to Nouma's argument for considering
magic?

And I *still* don't see your problem with this.

"Aha!"  said the detective.  "The murderer was left-handed, had a limp,
and was wearing a Ranma 1/2 t-shirt.  You, sir, are left handed, have a
limp, and are wearing a Ranma 1/2 t-shirt.  Therefore, it is highly
probable that you are the murdered."

"But sir, I was in Mexico the night of the murder.  Look, here is a list
of 1,000 people who can verify this."

"Ah.  Well, then, I have to eliminate you as a suspect, don't I?"

Get it?

Er, no.  What you're saying here is that it's highly probable that someone
who was in Mexico when the murder was committed is actually the murderer.
It's not.  It's impossible.  What you're suggesting leads to this:

"Bob was stabbed repeatedly with a butcher knife five minutes ago in a
muddy flowerbed.  The trail of footprints leads to this house, and inside
we found you wearing shoes caked with mud and flowers, with blood
spattered over you, a bloody butcher knife hanging from your belt, a
giggling, manical look on your face, and a machine with which you're 
printing up 'I Killed Bob' t-shirts.  It's highly probable that you
actually did kill him.  Right, you're free to go.  Let's see - the only
other being with even a chance of being on the estate that night was Bob's
twenty-year-old, arthritic, declawed cat.  It's ludicrously improbable
that the cat did it.  So the cat must be guilty."

Holmes's actual quote ('Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever
is left, however improbable, must be the truth.') make sense.  And Dirk
Gently's addendum ('I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.')
makes sense in a covertly weird universe like his.  The only vaguely
reasonable situation I can see Nouma's version as making sense in is if
you know you're in a fictional universe, and that the author's going to
mislead you with red herrings.  But even then, you've got to eliminate any
hypothesis that starts looking likely - after all, something you're nearly
certain of is highly probable...

--
Scott Johnson |
zagyg@io.com  |            This space intentionally left blank.