Sleight of Mind
Detectives and Causality
One of the fundamental concepts of artificial intelligence is the “Ladder of Causality”. Simply put, it distills logic into three pivotal questions: What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen?
The initial rung of this ladder encompasses the aspect of “what”. For instance, what other items would individuals purchasing floss typically acquire? At this level, statistics and machine learning prove to be highly effective. It entails the gathering of data and utilizing predictions to facilitate decision-making. For example, if customers frequently purchase floss and toothpaste together, should I recommend one when they purchase the other?
The subsequent rung of the ladder poses the question of “how.” For instance, how would I double my profits by selling floss, should I double my prices? Answering this query necessitates conducting controlled experiments, engaging in A/B tests, and the like. As an example, when I doubled my prices for a mere 1% of my customers, my sales plummeted, signaling it as an ill-advised move.
The third step of this ladder asks the “why” question. Why are things the way they are, is there another way? It involves questioning the fundamental assumptions underlying a system, collecting counterfactual data, and exploring alternative realities. For instance, would people find greater happiness in a dictatorship? Perhaps designing a game and inviting people to test their happiness levels could provide insight.
If these concepts appear weighty, consider that you have traversed the ladder of causation countless times within murder mysteries. There, you can discern three types of detectives employing tools akin to each rung of this ladder. Notably, none of them explicitly pose the question, “Who did it?” The revelation of the culprit generally serves as the outcome of the investigation rather than the primary approach.
Firstly, let us turn our attention to Sherlock Holmes, the original genius detective who has been imitated across nations and languages more than any other. Countless popular counterparts such as House MD, Inspector Lewis, Patrick Jane, Adrian Monk (and a hundred others) have emulated his character. The power of this detective lies in his relentless pursuit of “what happened,” to the extent of pushing himself to the brink of madness. Consequently, they possess unique traits such as keen observation of details that elude others (for instance, detecting the relative dryness of someone’s shoes on a rainy day, suggesting that they lied about taking a walk). They make innumerable deductions about the crime scene, the suspects, their attire, and their demeanor. Sherlock could glance at the ash on the ground and discern the kind of the cigar smoked. “What” is a question that craves data, hence their penchant for the shadows. The cigar smoking recluse mining all the data in their minds and their quirky hobbies serve as a means to map out data to events.
Next, comes the, “how-done-it” tales. In many of these stories, the identity of the culprit is known or narrowed down to a couple of suspects, but the baffling aspect lies in comprehending how the crime could possibly be executed. This genre is also referred to as the locked room mystery, where the central question revolves around how the inexplicable became possible. An outstanding recent example that comes to mind is the Japanese book “The Devotion of Suspect X” (Similar scripts in “Drishyam” (Malayalam) and “Sheep without a Shepherd”(Chinese)), where the “how” behind the crime forces the detective to question the boundaries of time, space, and causality. While the “what” detective ponders, “What if I see smoke near the window?” the “how” detective must contemplate, “How could I construct a house without smoke detectors?” While the former invests time in contemplation and smoking cigars, the latter dedicates more time to conducting experiments. My personal favorite “how” detective is Galileo (from Keigo Higashino), and I highly recommend exploring “The Salvation of a Saint” to witness the modus operandi of a “how” genius.
Lastly, we encounter the “why detective.” The prime example here is Hercule Poirot, created by Agatha Christie. Interestingly, Poirot refers to himself as a psychologist rather than a detective. In the prefaces of some of Agatha’s books, she openly asserts that other methods of deduction do not captivate her as much as delving into the mind of the criminal. Poirot primarily concerns himself with why the crime was committed, often disregarding trivial details like the time of day or the color of the carpet. Just as the “what” detective thinks and smokes, and the “how” detective conducts experiments, the “why” detective poses the question, “What if our assumptions were incorrect?” Does the tale of love morph into one of betrayal when we consider that the husband went to prison not out of love for his wife, but because he loved her sister? These “why” books feature “sleight of hand” moments, subtly hinting at the possibility that the foundational belief guiding your interpretation may be false. Now, does this become an entirely different story? Two cherished examples in this category are “The Silent Patient” and “Rebecca.”
In conclusion, science and art mirror each other more than we realize, more than we care to acknowledge.
