anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planet is either mad or an economist we don't want to focus Politics on a notion that involves the rejection of principles around which a large majority of our fellow citizens were organize their lives we are not as endlessly manipulable and as predictable as you would [Music] [Applause] think now it might not seem like Sherlock Holmes is quite the best place to start with the scientific method when you're talking about psychology Sigman Freud might be a better starting point because he was really the first at the beginning of the 20th century and the end of the 19th century to start applying these types of principles to psychological thought trying to figure out what can he do to really quantify our thinking what makes us who we are of course today we know that Sigman Freud's methods were severely flawed but back then they were really state-of-the-art or perhaps a better starting point would be William James the father of modern psychology William James is known for really establishing some of the tenants of cognitive psychology as we know them today or perhaps BF Skinner you can't really get more psychological than Skinner when it comes to the scientific method I mean he really decided that everything had to be Quantified that we had to look at experiments and really just look at Behavior here things that we could measure he went in the opposite direction from Freud and said you know we don't know what's going on inside our minds so let's do something that we can measure that we can see that we can observe unfortunately as I was trying to delve into this topic all of these seemed lacking and I ended up deciding that my best Mentor was probably found elsewhere Sherlock Holmes in my mind has come to Define what it means to apply the scientific method to thinking what it means to really take these principles of experimentation and apply them logically to your thoughts so that you can become the most the best decision maker the most rational decision maker that you could possibly be I'd like to begin with holes' metaphor for the human mind the brain attic it's Holmes's analogy for the brain for how we store information how we process information and ultimately how we are able to retrieve that information and Holmes likes to tell Watson that it's a foolish man who puts all sorts of lumber up in his attic instead we should take care that we know exactly what is going into our mind attic so we should be mindful about just what Memories We encoding and how we're encoding them so if something is important enough to remember if we want it in our brain because we should remember that everything that will be in our mind addict will actually influence how we think and how we act the one difference obviously between a physical attic and our brain is that our brain attic is much more flexible it's less finite it can grow bigger so with practice we can become much more efficient at storing information and there's really no limit to how much we can store the other place that the attic analogy is not entirely accurate is that our memories aren't accurate our memories change our memories are often very uh fallible and interestingly the more we access them the more likely they are to become incorrect because every single time we access a memory we become we encode new information into that memory from the moment that we were accessing it so there's really the watsonian attic there's Dr Watson on the left hand side and there's the sherlockian attic so we can think in the Sherlock Holmes system which is what Daniel Conan would call system to but really it predates even Conan it was originally in the 1990s from the work of Walter Michelle and Janet metcafe called the hot system and the cool system Sherlock Holmes would be the cool system Watson would be the hot system when you encode things into your attic in the hot system that's when you get the jumble this is reflexive it's not very mindful but when you're encoding in the system homes in the cool system you're being more reflective you're being more Mindful and you're really creating the atct to the best of your ability and you need to always understand that how you create these memories will affect how you're thinking and so that mindfulness or that mindlessness at the beginning that's really the start to thinking scientifically observation the difference between seeing and both seeing and observing so Watson only sees the world around him he goes just mindlessly once again through the motions and he doesn't really engage he's not present he doesn't understand the importance of focusing on whatever is in front of him and Holmes on the other hand exemplifies the observ ational approach mindfulness a presence of mind which allows you to resist distractions and to really understand what is going on at any given point in time so when Sherlock Holmes comes across a scene like this just a plain coffee cup he would think okay is this important enough for me to remember and one of the things that Sherlock Holmes teaches us about mindfulness is that every single sense matters and if you wanted to really remember this cup of coffee you need to remember its smell you need to remember its taste you need to remember how the cup feels in your hand you need to be able to tie it to as many memories as you possibly can only then will you really be able to understand what it means and to be mindful and observant about this particular cup unfortunately we really don't do that we tend instead to multitask so this gentleman on his bicycle is talking on the phone and riding his bike he thinks he's multitasking he's not what he's doing instead is switching very rap rapidly between tasks because our brains can't actually multitask multitasking is a misnomer what they're doing is rapidly switching attention from one task to the other and unfortunately we now multitask at younger and younger ages and it's become really a way of life and we don't realize just how much it impedes our ability to concentrate to be mindful to stock our mind out a mindfully to think scientifically to think rationally to be our best selves multitasking really impedes our brain's ability to function we don't sit quietly we're not used to being alone with our own thoughts anymore because we never have to be there's always something else we can be doing but research shows that as little as 5 minutes a day of that exact exercise can have really tremendous consequences on the brain it can make you more creative strengthen connectivity in the default mode Network which is that network of connections that was first identified by the um psychologist Marcus reel which is our brain's connections that are active when we're in our resting state so this is what the brain is constantly doing when we're not doing anything else and it has been tied to increased creativity it has also been tied to increased happiness and fulfillment so people who practice that as few as five minutes every single day their brain activities change to patterns that have been associated with increased positivity and more approach oriented States they begin to resemble those of people who've been meditating for years one study that I find absolutely fascinating was shown that people who are in happier moods literally see more than people who are sad or depressed their visual field gets bigger and because of the connection between mindfulness and happiness and well-being when you're mindful when you do these sorts of exercises you not only become happier you start to see more of the world you become able to be more observant like holes so that you have a more stocked and organized mind adct instead of kind of this who knows what junkyard where you don't really know where anything is hypothesize this is the part of the scientific method that we sometimes forget we forget just how important creativity is to science and just how important imagination is to science so the reason I take a pipe here is not only because this is kind of an iconic illustration but also because Sherlock Holmes called this the three pipe problem that's taken from the adventure of the redheaded league so what happens is a man with flaming red hair comes into Sherlock Holmes's apartment at 221B and says you know something really strange has happened I've just been hired because of the color of my hair I'm not doing anything I'm just sitting in the room with my red hair and I'm getting paid and Watson is standing there and he's all excited he says okay let's go what are we going to do and Holmes says well this is quite the three- pipe problem he sits down in his armchair and he proceeds to smoke three pipes and at the end of that third pipe he has the solution letting yourself realize that you can't always jump straight into solving a problem instead you have to learn to take a step back and you have to realize that those steps back will make you more productive they're not a waste of time we need to embrace kind of that that downtime where our brain has the time to work because everything that's referred to as you know that Eureka moment that aha moment when we finally come to a big conclusion that doesn't mean we've been doing nothing our subconscious mind has been working incredibly hard to try to make connections that our conscious mind can't make yet but we need to give it time so nature for instance has been shown to really affect our creativity people who couldn't solve a problem after a 20-minute walk were able to solve it people who took a 20-minute walk could solve problems much faster than those who didn't we don't really know why this connection exists but we know it exists and people are trying to figure out right now what exactly is going on in the brain that will allow for nature to really have this positive effect on imagination and problem solving ability and if you don't have time to take a walk fear not in a recent study it was shown that looking at screen savers of nature on your computer was enough to give you a cognitive boost it wasn't quite as big as going outside and walking but it existed it was significant and it was better than if you hadn't looked at that so switch your screen saver that's the least you can do just a change of activity taking walks Holmes plays the violin he smokes pipes he goes to the Opera he goes to museums whatever it is that doesn't take so many of your mental resources that your unconscious brain can't work on them because it's too busy focusing on your activity but it has to be engaging enough that you're able to do it Watson for instance hasn't found his activity he says that he can't disengage his mind he hasn't found something that will strike that right balance one recent study if you just wore a white coat you became a better Problem Solver it's crazy somehow this white coat activated Associated concepts of doctors of Medicine of people who were good at solving problems and you yourself became better the mind is much more powerful than we give it credit for and there really is a lot to the to the thought that if you believe you can do it you are more able to do it and so take advantage of these minor cues and realize that you you can be more creative if you just think you will be and finally let's go back to those senses this is a dog and it doesn't bark it comes from the story of Silver Blaze and in the story a horse goes missing and the trainer is found dead and no one knows what's going on and Sherlock Holmes has called in and I won't give you the punchline in case it's been a while since you've read the story but the inspector asks Holmes when it's become clear that Holmes has solved the problem is there is there anything to which you wish to draw my attention and Hol says yes I wish to draw your attention to the Curious incident of the dog in the nighttime the inspector says but the dog did nothing in the nighttime and Holmes says that was the Curious incident we tend to not look at information that isn't in front of our eyes but one thing that we need to learn is that absent information is just as powerful as present information and that is part of creative thinking of being able to see not just what is there but what isn't there so I'm going to give you two options of cell phones why don't you take a look at phone one and phone two and let me know in a second which one you'd prefer who wants phone a who wants phone B okay the majority of people have decided that they wanted phone B so now I'm not going to change any information I'm just going to add one line now once again I'm changing any information I'm just adding one more line so this is called Omission neglect we neglect what is omitted we don't ask those questions we only look at what is there we forget to look at the negative space we forget to ask the questions that are not right in front of our eyes marketers love this they take advantage of it all the time because they know that we're going to look at the information they give them and that we're hardly ever going to ask those tough questions something that holes is incredibly aware of and you need to test one of homes's Mantra when you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains however improbable must be the truth so once you've gathered all of this up information once you've observed once you've played around with all of the creative possibilities you have to test and figure out which one is right and you have to realize that even the improbable might be accurate but it's really hard to do our brain resists doing this instead it wants to tell its own story so once again I'm going to give you one little exercise bill is 34 years old he's intelligent but unimaginative compulsive and generally lifeless in school he was strong in mathematics but weak in social studies and Humanities Bill plays Jazz for a hobby does that sound like Bill what about Bill as an accountant who plays Jazz for a hobby all right so this is taken btim from a study done by Daniel conman or a series of studies actually in the 60s and 70s and what conman found was that over and over again people would choose the second option even though if you go by logically testing the options it can't be the case the second option cannot possibly be more likely yet it's incredibly difficult to avoid that tendency because these stereotypes become activated in our minds and our minds start telling stories so that's the thing about deduction we have to constantly be resisting our mind's story telling ability we really become almost like split brain patients who can create explanations for anything right away whether or not they're accurate our minds are natural storytellers they right away see an objective fact and create subjective realities they activate all sorts of stereotypes all sorts of memories all sorts of emotions and we create something that isn't there and homes is always very careful to try to separate his emotion from what he's trying to deduce but it's not something that whatson does easily it's not something any of us do easily so finally when we've eliminated the impossible and we have whatever remains however improbable we need to remember to go back to the beginning and to keep learning we need to update this is a cycle we're never really done if we're thinking scientifically otherwise we become prone to overconfidence which is something that is a problem for homes as well the better we become at thinking the more confident we are the less likely we are to learn and to take feedback from the environment but something that really sets homes apart from everyone else is his ability to take that negative feedback yes he's wrong sometimes and sometimes when he's wrong people die so the stakes are pretty high but he acknowledges his errors and he tells Watson you know wants the next time I'm overconfident let me know and the way that he's able to fight this is to really cultivate his inner curiosity he realizes that this should be learning should be fun and engaging if you think about a child a child really is does embody a lot of these characteristics of thought a child is more mindful children really pay attention to the world a child always asks questions the child is always asking why why this why that and we lose that Natural Curiosity as we age we start to get annoyed I know I start to get annoyed with kids who are asking why all the time I want to say I don't know why please stop asking me but it's really showing something very fundamental this desire to always keep learning and to always keep bettering yourself s and this is the final thing that homes can teach us that in order to stay productive and creative and mindful you do have to keep being curious there's a reason that one of the most famous refrains in Sherlock Holmes is the game is a foot to him this is a game it's fun and that's how thinking should be for you the more fun it is the more engaged you are the better you'll be able to to put all of these principles into practice so whichever version of homes you decide to espouse I hope I've convinced you that even though he may be functional he has a lot to tell us about how to think and what we can do to really optimize our thought process thank you [Applause]