Sublime

Journal,

David Ferrucci, the computer scientist who led the effort to build Watson, left IBM for a new gig at a Wall Street hedge fund, where he’ll be applying the latest advances in artificial intelligence to modeling the economy—and, presumably, trying to gain a competitive advantage for his firm’s trading algorithms.46

What separates Holmes from Watson, the passive observer from the active one, engaged passivity from disengaged activity, is precisely the descriptor I’ve used in both cases: engagement. Flow. Motivation. Interest.

He took System Watson and taught it to operate by the rules of System Holmes, imposing reflective thought where there should rightly be reflexive reaction.

Watson is gradually progressing toward offering more insight into why something is true.

W.J. is but a more extreme example of the exact thing that Watson does with the wineglasses. In both instances there is the spontaneous construction of story, and then a firm belief in its veracity, even when it hinges on nothing more than its seeming cohesiveness. That is deductive problem number one.

From the very start, Watson is predisposed to think well of their guest. After all, he is already in a relaxed, happy mood, bantering in typical fashion with his detective flatmate. And rightly or wrongly, that mood will spill over into his judgment. It’s called the affect heuristic: how we feel is how we think. A happy and relaxed state makes for

Who has touched what, what has come from where, what is there that shouldn’t be, and what isn’t there that should be. He remains capable of extreme objectivity even in the face of extreme circumstances. He remembers his goal, but he uses it to filter and not to inform. Watson, on the other hand, is not so careful.