Hello! I think i've mentioned the subject before, but i've never talked about it in depth, mostly because i'm not particularly well versed in body language. I used to know people who also had blogs who were very knowledgeable in it, so if they become active again i'll make a post about it. That being said, as i've been writing this response i've had to be very careful to not get into any details i'm not sure about or give any advice that may be wrong. So i've decided to keep my response fairly vague while still giving as much advice as i can.

So body language falls into the non verbal communication side of deduction, along with microexpressions, and both should be treated similarly. Body language and facial expressions (and their corresponding microexpressions) are ways that our body has of relaying what we feel or think in any given moment, a lot of the time involuntarily, this means that like with every other language, we need to learn to not just read it, write it, and speak it, we also have to learn to interpret it. There's a plethora of books and resources out there that teach you how to read body language, what certain movements, poses, and reactions indicate about a person's state of mind, so i'm not gonna go into that here, actually it's probably the easiest part of deduction to find information on. What i am gonna touch on is what to then do with that raw information

Similar to all the other parts of deduction, once you interpret body language, get all the information you can about someone's reactions, state of mind, emotions, ideas, feelings, etc. you have to start asking yourself what this information means. Knowing that someone's uncomfortable is only useful if you know why, and that's where deduction comes in, sometimes it's as easy as noticing that the body language shifts once a certain person comes into the room, or a certain topic is mentioned, other times you have to do a bit more digging, after all that person who triggers body language that indicates discomfort may do so because they're someone's boss, or because they're their partner and they had a big fight recently, or because they've harassed the person in some way, or a plethora of other reasons.

Now how to do that is the hard part, i can't give any advice that's specific to body language, but i have talked about how to go deeper than the raw information you can observe about someone before, so i'll link those posts here. While i'm not well versed in body language it's not a big leap to assume that due to the nature of the advice i give in these posts, they could be applied to information gained through reading body language:

I also recommend the book What EveryBODY is Saying by Joe Navarro, it's a very good resource to learn body language.

Hopefully this was useful! I encourage you to look more into body language and study it in tandem with deduction, maybe you can make your own posts explaining these topics!

Waiting

This one's been sitting in my drafts for a while, it's a post aimed a bit more at people who actively use the information they gather while deducing and interact with the subjects they deduce. I've been trying to find the right way of conveying the information, but i'm having a bit of a ranting moment so let's give it a shot. Let's talk about strategy

Most of the time in media, or in online communities, when you see deduction being displayed you usually see a big chunk of text, or a big monologue of information about how much the deductionist knows about the subject being deduced. The problem is a lot of times this can lead to our brains separating the process into two big chunks, first you gather all the information and deduce from it, then you relay it or act on it (if you decide to do so). And sure, in a broad way of looking at it that's what you do, but we mustn't forget an important factor: Time

Time doesn't just stop while you deduce, things keep happening. And while you may feel like the amount of time that passes while you deduce is trivial, you gotta remember you're doing this in your head, and sometimes when you do things in your head it feels like they're processed immediately, but that's not the case

As you deduce you notice things in an order, and you observe things in an order, and you process things in an order. Even if it takes you seconds, those seconds matter, if you decided to stop paying attention one second earlier you wouldn't have noticed the next detail, which would change your deduction, sometimes in a significant way. So this is all very obvious, details appear and are noticed in an order, but what happens when we extend the time scale a bit, what happens when we talk about minutes rather than seconds? Say you stopped paying attention after 5 minutes cause you already got all the information, or say you're the type to show off, and you relay your deductions 2 minutes into talking to the person, what would you be missing? what could've happened in the next 5 minutes that would've made your deductions more accurate?

As deductionists we need to learn to optimize the time we spend deducing vs the time we spend acting on these deductions. We're constantly gathering information, and this information is gonna affect how we interact with people, regardless of how much or how little we do so, it will have some effect. If we act too quickly, if we decide we're done deducing prematurely and it's now time to act on it, or file it away, or relay it, we might miss massively important pieces of information.

So my advice to you is this: When you're deducing someone, don't feel compelled to stop, or move on to something new, before you have to. And be very aware that if you do, you will be missing information. This not always a bad thing, but make sure you know you're losing information and that you're making a choice to do so. Keep looking at that classmate you've been deducing until you have to shift your attention to something else. Sure maybe you ran out of things to deduce 2 minutes ago, but he might do or say something that sparks up the process again, and you'll only know if you learn to just wait

Make your observation active, because as much as we do train to notice things passively, to be in an "observing state" constantly, your active choice to sit down and observe will always pick out more, and will allow you to have control over when you choose to step in and interact with the information you've gathered, or to just move your attention to something new.

Make the active choice to wait for more information to come along, be strategic with your time with the subject, rather than just deciding you're done deducing and it's now time to say or do something with that

As always if you have any questions send them over and you'll have an answer on a monday

Happy Observing!

-DV

Masterpost!

Masterpost for (almost) everything in this blog, if you're on browser you can find all of these things on the right side of the blog page!

Educational posts

These posts are meant to talk extensively about some specific aspect of deduction. They aren’t fully edited and polished articles (like what you would find in Amateur Deductions) as much as they are my thoughs and explanations about a specific topic, which stem from my overactive mind thinking about said topic for way too long. Enjoy!

Deduction Exercises

This is an ongoing series of posts detailing different deduction exercises created and tested by me. Enjoy!

Deduction Tips

Deductions

These are all my posts dedicated specifically to showcase a deduction or deductions i have made, this includes my ongoing series of Deductions meant as active training for myself (Deduction #1, Deduction #2, etc), as well as any more casual and quick deductions i’ve posted. Enjoy!

Questions

These are all the asks i’ve been sent, feel free to look through them for answers to any questions you may have, or send your own! I answer every question i’m sent, they’re all posted in bulk every Monday. Enjoy!

Useful Reblogs

This is a compilation of any reblogs i've made where either the original post have some useful content for deduction purposes or where i add comments and observations that could be useful for learning deduction. This does not include any reblogs from my other blog (Amateur Deductions), since there are already many links that take you there and the content is also written by me. Enjoy!

Heyy, thanks for the question!

So first of all i would like to clarify i don't have that much experience with this problem, while i am an introvert, i don't have any semblance of social anxiety or even shyness, if you want to ask a deductionist that has much more experience in this field than i do i encourage you to ask @sleuth2k7

Now, i noticed you liked my "Deduction: passive or active?" post at around the same time you asked me this, which is great because that means i can reference that post in this answer!

So my first advice (funnily enough) is to not follow the advice on that specific post, not at first at least. As an experienced deductionist sometimes i write posts that are better suited for other experienced deductionists, that post specifically explains how interaction with the subject and the environment you're deducing can greatly improve your skills, but it's worth noting that beginners will probably have a harder time adopting that approach when starting out. Don't be afraid to just not demand these skills of yourself just yet, it's hard enough to deal with social anxiety as it is without the added worry of having to deduce as you deal with social anxiety. It's okay to adopt a more "bird watching" approach to deduction at first, an approach that involves sitting in a public space (or wherever the subject you're deducing is) without actually interacting with the people or the environment and limiting yourself to just observe and train your deduction skills from afar. Once your deduction skills are cemented enough and you don't have to dedicate a good chunk of your brain power to deducing, you can start integrating more interactive approaches to your method.

My second piece of advice (and again, this comes from my own experience, don't feel bad if this doesn't work with your situation, it just means you have to apply a different approach) don't try to make deductions as you interact with people, rather treat it as a very long "information gathering" stage. As you're talking to someone don't worry about deductions just yet, just observe, take mental notes of what you can (it doesn't have to be a lot, even a small amount of information can lead to an interesting deduction), and focus on noticing things. Anything from what words they often use when speaking, to how they're dressed, to how dirty their shoes are, and take note of that information. Once you're out of that social situation make deductions about the person retroactively using the information you took note of. This takes away some of the stress of having to interact with the person, observe them carefully and deeply, and make complex connections and deductions about those observations all at the same time, and it breaks the process down so you only have to worry about 1) observing as much as you can (and let me emphasise on as much as you can, remember that while we're aiming for a certain level of observation skills, we all have our limits with which we're comfortable) and 2) interacting with the person. The other complex stuff can come later

And finally a quick thing to keep in mind is that you should make being comfortable and calm (as much as possible) your priority, it's better to keep your cool and only push yourself to observe 2 or 3 things about a person that you can then use to deduce stuff about them, than to aim to observe 10 or 20 things while you deduce stuff about them, and getting overwhelmed because it's too much and your social anxiety is making things worse, and ending up not observing anything at all. you can get valuable practice with 2 or 3 observations, you can get no practice in with no observations, work within your limits to be able to expand them

I do hope some of this helped, and if you have any other questions just send them over!

Happy Observing!

-DV

Deduction: Passive or Active?

In my posts, I tend to focus a lot on teaching Deduction concepts and guiding people through its usage and branches, especially when it comes to my Amateur Deductions content, but this time I thought I'd talk about a topic that falls more in the misconception category rather than a lesson or guide to Deduction. This is one of the more interesting deduction topics I've tackled so I'm excited to delve into it!

Due to the way we see Deduction portrayed and used most of the time, there tends to be this intense focus on developing this skill the same way we'd practice bird watching or media analysis. We tend to see Deduction as a skill that entails sitting down in a corner of the room and analyzing people, maybe with a notebook to take down our observations, like undercover scientists, never getting involved. We see deduction very much as a passive activity, and I include myself in this behavior, and who can blame us? every time we talk about Deduction we talk about observation, about people watching, about situational awareness, and all of these are skills and activities that require little to no interaction with the environment we're in, we think of mindfulness, not of involvement.

Now, in light of this, my thesis question becomes: Should Deduction be a mostly, or even an entirely passive skill or uninvolved? and to bluntly answer that question, no, it should not be a passive skill, and making it a passive skill limits your deductions tremendously.

When we learn to deduce, something we should be understanding and learning alongside it is that the world is an inherently interconnected place, what allows us to connect someone's car keys to their handedness, to their address, to their morning routine, to their recent fight with their significant other, is the understanding that all of these things have some interconnecting threat (this is very much a hypothetical scenario but the example is not unreasonable at all). And with this understanding, a good deductionist should sooner or later conclude that these threats can be manipulated. A good deductionist, therefore, understands that Deduction doesn't have to be an uninvolved process

Observation, as understood in deduction, is the act of taking in the world around you through the use of your senses, all your senses, but what do you do about the things that are not currently on display? how do we deduce anything about someone's cleaning habits if we're not close to them to observe the necessary details? how do we deduce someone's behavior in groups of friends if we're only looking at them sitting alone having coffee? We're only human, and we cannot notice absolutely everything, couple that with the fact that not everything is always on display and you start to realize that there's a lot that we can't see, and therefore a lot that is much harder to deduce

Well a skilled deductionist might be able to find a clever connection between what they're seeing and a totally unrelated subject, which don't get me wrong, it's a valid, impressive, and sometimes necessary approach. But a good deductionist can understand that they are in the same system as the subject they're deducing, and therefore they can manipulate it. They can ask for some change to take a look at the subject's wallet, they can pass next to the subject in a crowd to smell what perfume they're wearing, they can ask for the time to look at the subject's phone, or toss them a pencil to see what hand they catch it with. You are a scientist, and you control the environment around you to have the conditions you need for your experiments

Deduction doesn't only give you the tools to know things, it gives you the tools to carve your way to information you couldn't have possibly gotten by passively observing. The world is a dynamic, interconnected, ever-changing place, and deductionists use their skills to understand it and navigate it, but the understanding deduction brings comes with the possibility (and sometimes the responsibility) to influence the world and the people we try to understand

This is very theoretical, and often when I see posts like these trying to teach something as theoretical I find myself asking "yeah sure, but how do I actually do that?", so apart from the examples I gave earlier, here are a few general things you can do

Deduction should definitely be an active process, you're the one that's studying how everything connects together, learn to tug on those connections and your deductions will be faster and more efficient

Happy Observing!

-DV

That's actually a fascinating question that I've never had anyone ask before!

So something that I always tell people when talking about deduction is what a surprisingly good job the show "Sherlock" (the BBC show, for anyone who doesn't know which version I'm talking about) did when it comes to showing the process of deduction inside the mind of a deductionist!

Of course, I can only talk about my own experiences, I'm not entirely sure if this happens because Sherlock was my main inspiration when getting into deduction and it informed the way I see the world as a deductionist or if it's just a surprisingly well made representation of every deductionist out there

The best way I have of describing my experiences is by pointing to that show, especially the first episode. For those who haven't seen "Sherlock", the show constantly depicts Sherlock looking at people or things as words float around the area he's deducing, the words outline his thought process or conclusions, and let the audience know the basics of his deductions without having the character go through immediate exposition, it looks kinda like this (but better quality because this is a screenshot)

Now, saying that it looks like that is very much a quick and simple way of explaining the way I see the world, but obviously, it's not exactly in that manner. Let me go a bit deeper than just giving you a screenshot

I like to think of the way I observe as two different categories, passive observation, and active observation. While I've trained myself to have a frankly impressive amount of situational awareness and to take in the world around me and filter it through my deduction capabilities, I still do much better when I'm actively thinking about the things I observe and deduce, hence the distinction

Passive observation is the one that correlates the most with the way "Sherlock" portrays deduction, I don't actually see words floating around, but it very much feels like things just stand out to me. You know that feeling of just noticing something and it just so happened to be something no one else has noticed? like noticing someone's wearing an outfit they were wearing a couple of days prior, or noticing a watch they're wearing and thinking to yourself "huh, that's a cool watch". Well in a similar manner I go through my day noticing things that, while very mundane, still stand out to me, someone having marks on the bridge of their nose from wearing glasses, seeing a tan line on someone's wrist as they reach out for something, and so as depicted in the show, things just stand out to me, not in the form of written words, but since I'm one of the people that has an internal monologue (and not everyone does), often in the form of spoken words that I think.

Something that happens less often, but by no means an insignificant portion of the time, is these observations will lead to passive deductions, something as simple as noticing a bulge in someone's pocket and automatically deducing their handedness, or noticing callouses and hardened skin on the tips of their fingers and deducing they play a stringed instrument. They're small, very direct deductions that at this point just pop up and happen on autopilot

When it comes to active observation, the answer becomes a lot harder to explain. The idea of words popping up is still valid since I'm purposefully noticing things, but the best way I have to describe it is if instead of single words being portrayed, lists and flowcharts are formed. I don't just notice that someone's been wearing glasses recently, but a small list "opens up" where all the adjacent information is expanded upon, like the fact that the weather's not sunny, so they weren't sunglasses, so they need glasses to see in certain situations, which ones? well most likely to read, maybe to drive, and so they're probably stored in their purse, and that would lead to a new "point" being noticed, which is the size of their purse, and that would open its own small list of deductions that would probably connect is a "flowchart" way to the glasses list.

This particular part of my answer is both a very conceptual explanation and a very accurate one because I, unfortunately, don't have the ability to see these small lists, flowcharts, and words floating around, but my internal monologue and the way I link and retain information in my head very much makes it feel like navigating these elements on a computer screen

I do hope I answered your question, and i'd be fascinated to hear any other answers to this question that other deductionists out there might wanna add, so feel free to reblog this and explain your own experiences! and if anyone has anything else they'd want me to answer just send an ask!

Happy Observing!

-DV

Hello! I definitely have a lot of advice for that

When it comes to exercises, Amateur Deductions has a bunch of them in their training program that help mostly with observation, if you don't want to go through that whole program I recommend mostly Taking Notes (found in this post) and Reminders to Observe (found in this post)

Another way to get better at it constantly is to have an accountability partner (online or IRL), and build a dynamic with them that helps both of you get better. For me competitive dynamics work like a charm, making deduction into a sort of everyday game that I can win or lose pushes me to make the best deductions I can, and to go beyond what I'm sure will be correct to guarantee I win whatever game we have going on, or another dynamic that works well personally is the teacher-student one, hence why I sometimes teach people who are serious about learning over long periods of time. I understand not everyone responds well to these dynamics, so find the ones that work well for both of you and exploit them

Something else that a lot of people don't give enough credit to is just setting aside a certain amount of time daily to just deduce and practice. We try to internalize deduction to such a degree that we're always doing it, but we forget that to do that (and even after we've done that) we first have to actively work on it, and that means doing more than just passively work on it throughout the day or when we happen to remember. So setting aside 2 hours to go out, with no distractions (maybe make sure your phone is at 15-10% battery to avoid using it, or avoid bringing earbuds with you) and just spend that time deducing, sit at a coffee shop by yourself and make deductions of people around you, or sit at a park and make deductions about the people that pass by, but make sure to set that time aside to work specifically on deduction

On that note, make sure that not all of these deductions are made in a context where you can't confirm them, doing these in a coffee shop is great, but it's not often that you can approach the person you deduced and ask if you were right. This is where the internet comes in very handy, finding places online like these blogs, or Reddit communities that focus on deduction and similar skills, or even some that don't for example the subreddit r/firstimpressions is great to just get pictures of people you can deduce and get feedback on. Remember that practice is only useful if you're confirming your deductions and learning from those confirmations

I have a post on my drafts right now that's the first of a series of small posts I hope to start, where I just outline and describe exercises that you can do to work on your skills, be it throughout the day or during dedicated deduction time, or in other scenarios. I'm trying to have one or two more ready before I post the first one, but they're in the works

-DV