Drawing-room logic
Lately my bedtime playlist has included some episodes of Mr Keen Tracer Of Lost Persons. The show is just as quaint and clunky as the title would imply. Everyone is constantly calling one another by name...

Now, Mrs Edwards, we have something to settle.
But Mr Keen, I already told you...
No, no, Mrs Edwards, that won't do.

Despite that, it's mostly good drama and good acting. Oddly, Mr Keen never Traced any Lost Persons at all; he was just a typical fictional detective dealing with murders and thefts. In the earlier years of the series, Mr Keen was more like the tough Raymond Chandler type, dealing harshly with simple situations. Later on he turned into the standard Agatha Christie drawing-room type, coming up with 20-step deductive solutions to complex situations, always ending with the requisite gathering of suspects and the requisite "surprise" revelation.

= = = = =

We have a couple of recent news-y items involving drawing-room logic.

One is the logic question from a Singapore school test, which nobody outside Singapore manages to get right. Supposedly this explains why Singapore is so successful.

Another is the Hindoo high-frequency trader Sarao who was supposedly busted for trying to beat a complex system with super-complex thinking and equations. Even within the stated premises, it's not at all clear why his activities are worse than the system he was trying to beat. HFT is a criminal enterprise with the official goal of stealing all money from normal productive business. The goal has been accomplished. Sarao's "crime" is similar in form to the London bankers who were busted for manipulating LIBOR without permission of the other criminals. LIBOR is a criminal enterprise designed to starve non-bankers, so it really doesn't matter which criminal is manipulating it.

In both cases the deductive logic is interesting but not the main point.

Singapore succeeds because Orientals are extremely good at business after 5000 years of experience and selective mating; AND because Lee Kwan Yew ferociously disciplined his little country into maximum use of its special talents and geography.

Sarao was busted for being uppity. Hindoos are allowed into a Chosen profession, but they are not allowed to beat Chosens at the Chosen game. Ethnic cleansing.

These explanations are perfectly obvious to anyone who knows a little bit about history.

Real life doesn't require 20-step deductive solutions. Real life requires induction based on experience and pattern-matching, and a clear-eyed view of reality unblinkered by orthodox nonsense.

Unlike Mr Keen, real cops don't do deduction. They see a crime and they instantly know who they're looking for, by type and often by name. The latter wouldn't be possible if our alleged "court" system did a better job of holding onto professional criminals, but the former would still work well enough.

That's why Sharpton is so wildly destructive. Sharpton's media are destroying real cops, forbidding induction and pattern recognition, forcing police departments to rely solely on ACLU-designed deductions. ACLU logic is NOT 20-step deduction. It's just one simple if-then statement.

If you arrest a known criminal, you must let him go.
  ¶ 2:27 AM