The essence of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock stories (and what makes them clever and recommended reading) is that the answer lies in plain sight.

Holmes does not succeed because he is superhuman (although the stories are not without their action bits), but because he applies himself more fully than others, and prepares and experiments more thoroughly.

Is the number of steps important?

Well, it would be if one were attempting to decide between two suspects, one on crutches and one a runner, and the time of path traversal was known.

But by then, others (notably the ever-mystified Scotland Yard) would have already dismissed stair count as unimportant.

Seemingly insignificant facts in aggregate, my dear albertgoeswoof, a case do build.

Yes, but Sherlock Holmes also always magically knows which trivia is important, because he's written that way. He doesn't bother with the count of stairs on every staircase he's ever walked on. And he lives in a world where the trivia he notices always reflects accurately on hidden truths, instead of being simply useless details that reveal nothing of consequence.

For example in one story Sherlock deduces that the person sending a ransom note is an educated man attempting to appear stupid, because although the note is grammatically incorrect the newspaper the letters are cut out from was The Times. And only educated men read The Times.

Except....what if that's just coincidence? I mean The Times costs the same amount at a news stand as any paper right? So what if the kidnapper, who is so barely literate he doesn't read any daily paper at all, went to a news stand to buy something to cut the letters from and happened to pick The Times?

George Macdonald Fraser did a funny sendup of this in Flashman and the Tiger, where Holmes creates a completely wrong narrative of Flashman using true facts he observed about him.

Also: he did not solve his cases by deduction; rather, it was (logical) abduction [1].

Hah. How's that for pedantry, eh?

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning

The fun of Sherlock Holmes was that he was written to be somewhat plausible, while having a result that is far fetched. What would happen if someone built a map of London in their head? And know where all the major shops were? And studied cigar ash, and the fonts of newspapers? Etc.

The implication is that Holmes perhaps had a brain that was particularly well suited to such trivia, and a habit of observations. With practice comes skill in making and retaining such observations.

Now, the stair example is indeed a bit much. I doubt holmes would have counted the steps in every staircase he saw (though then again, if one practiced making such observations....). But Holmes did enjoy throwing people off guard, so knowing the number of steps in ones’ own home might indeed be a useful tidbit, precisely since it would offer the opportunity to throw Watson off guard.

I think some of us just can’t help counting stairs, perhaps? There are two staircases in my house. 18 steps from the main floor to upstairs. 19 steps from the main floor to downstairs. It kind of bothers me they’re not equal. When I get to my office, there are 23 stairs to the second floor, then 13 stairs, a landing and another 12 steps to the 3rd floor to get to my office. My previous house was an old craftsman & Victorian type mix of weirdness with a staircase that was 6 steps, a landing, 9 steps, another landing, and a final 5 steps to the 2nd floor. I’m always counting stairs.

I learned how many steps on the stairs in my house because sometimes I navigate them at night, and don't bother turning the light on. I also count steps when carrying something big and heavy and can't look down.

Where I lived for several years, I would always stay up late and have to navigate the stairs in complete darkness every night, but I never counted the steps. I just intuitively knew when I had reached the end.

That was my thought too, but I think the point is subtler. The kind of person who notices those things is good at noticing a lot of things.

I like this relevant scene: https://youtu.be/IjrWOZby8s8?t=47s

Sort of like preppers who teach themselves to identify exits in any venue they enter and how to spot someone that looks out of place. With time you can teach yourself to identify details everyone else ignores, if you have good reason to.

Sure, and he even reaches across the fourth wall to make fun of himself for it. At one point, Holmes points out that it's impossible to put actual detective work in a novel, and thus all crime novels are merely inspiration, at best, not education.

I often need to know how many steps are in stairs in my house. For instance, just a couple of weeks ago I got a new mattress and to carry it up I count the steps as I take them. It helps me to not gouge the walls.

I think you may have missed the goal of the exercise friend. I think this is a larger metaphor about walking through the waking life without really observing what’s going on.

Disclaimer: I meant this constructively in case it comes of wrong.

I get the metaphor, I just think it’s stupid.

There are an infinite number of things you can observe about the world around you, and there are many many more things you will not see than things you will see. All the way from high society people relations down to individual quantum particle interactions, it’s mind boggling how much there is out there happening at all times in all spaces. It’s not possible to observe all of this and the tiny fraction that we do observe is minuscule.

Pretending that there is some profound way to observe the world comes across as obnoxious and cringe-worthy.

I tend to agree. Our brains have evolved to focus on what is important, and to ignore irrelevance. (For example, we are attuned to notice unexpected movement.) We sometimes get that wrong, but the strategy is advantageous.

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

A Study in Scarlet

profundity is relative to the mind that creates the experience of the profound; it's all with respect to some other ideal. what you may consider as trite and lacking substance or meaning, from another perspective may be perceived to be extremely in depth with several layers of indirection and connection to other ideals and with networks of influence going back and forth between said ideals. it's all in how you look at a thing. i certainly agree that some people can be quite cringe inducing with their perception of the profundity of things, but that being said, that cringe is an experience that I am creating within my own mind based on my reaction to their behaviors and expression, not an intrinsic feature of said behaviors and expression. i just think it's important to remember that whatever we say and think, it really truly does define how we actually perceive reality around us and frame the way we interact with the world.

wow i can't help but wonder what the deal with all the downvotes is, it's not like I said something with no substance or I wasted anyone's time; every time I put a lot of thought into something this is the shit that happens smh

This may be the most beautiful "middlebrow dismissal" in HN history.