Sublime

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.

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.

That, in essence, is why the same telegram may mean something different for Watson and for Holmes. For Holmes, it triggers the expected pattern associated with a mindset that is habitually set to solve crimes. For Watson, it hardly matters and is soon trumped by the pretty sky and the chirping birds. And is that really such a surprise? In general,

Watson serves as a constant reminder of what errors are possible. As Holmes puts it, “In noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth.” And that is no small thing. Even in asking the smallest questions, ones that seem entirely obvious to Holmes, Watson nevertheless forces Holmes to look twice at the very obviousness of the thin

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

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.

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.

What Homes is really telling Watson when he contrasts seeing and observing is to never mistake mindlessness for mindfulness, a passive approach with an active involvement.