A lot of these principles are great for investigating complex bugs/incidents. e.g:

  - Assume nothing

  - Believe nothing

  - Challenge and check everything

  - use a mindmap

  - seek alternative explanations

  - recruit a devils advocate

The first three have solved just about every problem that I've ever encountered in software, even in systems that I had absolutely no clue about (which made the first two quite natural ;) ).

Debugging and troubleshooting isn't art or magic, it's just being very boringly methodical and building from the ground up. A single assumption and you're off to a dead end, a single thing taken on hearsay and you will repeat what other people already did, failure to challenge and check will no doubt make you miss something that it crucial to solving the problem.

Theres a quote I read somewhere (paraphrased) that the scientific method is the slowest method of debugging but it always eventually succeeds. Most bugs are fixable most quickly by intuition, or making a ton of assumptions about where the problem is likely to be. Its usually at my lowest point I decide to resort to “science” and hours later I finally find the problem.

Agreed. At the bottom of any long-to-debug issue I've encountered is some assumption I absolutely knew to be beyond suspicion that turned out to be wrong.

(That said, it's easy to say in retrospect. In the moment there is always judgement about what to verify first, and of course its always the last thing you check that turns out to be the problem)

Well it would be silly to keep checking once you’ve already found the problem, surely? /s

I don’t understand the “/s” sarcasm tags, but there can be cases where you do want to keep checking.

Some problems have a single root cause, some have multiple independent root causes, and some issues present when root causes have an interaction type effect.

You have to both find AND recognize that you've found.

This is the harsh thing about computers: they mercilessly point out your character flaws.

I have noticed that when a Stack Overflow question says "the problem can't possibly be X, because <something>", that is very often exactly where the problem is (and <something> is a misunderstanding).

Hehe, the 'stackoverflow blindspot'.

Probably you could extend your theory to 'first google result for question 'x''.

After 10 years of programming I found that I can more and more relate to (good) detective movies, investigative journalism pieces and reading courts decisions and submissions (I have weird hobbies).

I learned that what works best is a systematic approach and what works badly is overlooking certain parts to save time based on intuitive assumptions.

I can't count the number of bugs that took me days because I've just jumped to the "heart" of the problem assuming the rest that got me there was fine. Only to have someone else looking at the problem with less knowledge, going through tings that seemed mundane but who finally gave valuable hints even if they were not problematic themselves.

So basically be a modern day right winger? Because your first 3 things there get you labeled as such - on HN and elsewhere. The last 3 get you banned.

If we are going to play a game of what you’re allowed to assume and what you aren’t allowed to assume, then you aren’t a detective, you’re a pawn for someone else’s bidding and their strategic movements. Ditto for believing and challenging whatever “facts” you are allowed to believe and challenge.

If you knew the kind of statistics that Pew collects, and how they can be interpreted, you would believe very little indeed.

I can't believe you introduced partisan politics into a post about how to solve problems. Well I guess not believe in anything is a first step anyway.

I understand that that is kind of a taboo thing to do. It's like an unwritten rule and it makes sense.

But if we just keep that aside for a millisecond, doesn't he have a valid point in a way? Isn't it reputational suicide these days to question the popular narrative in many regards? (And yes, let the downvotes roll in, thereby proving my point :))

Every society has its reputational killing taboos. That doesn't make a methodology based on doubting everything invalid. I mean, what if incest was a good thing?

You do not get banned using a mind map.

Is there a “best fundamentals” book about detective work akin to how “Freedom of the Hills” is the best fundamentals book on mountaineering?

Not specific to detective books, but nearly identical concepts:

The Thinkers Toolkit - this has some good techniques for breaking down problems and how to structure your questions.

Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis - This is I guess more of a textbook for teaching people how to structure analysis and provide some insights in how to approach and analyze different problems.

I'd love to see a list of these books when they exist:

Rex Feral - Hit Man

Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying ...

By the way, there is a section of the article where they mention books:

The book Blackstone’s Senior Investigating Officers’ Handbook (5th ed, 2019) by Tony Cook is a unique one-stop guide to all the processes and actions involved in conducting major investigations, presented in a clear and understandable fashion.

For my PhD thesis The Making of an Expert Detective: Thinking and Deciding in Criminal Investigations (2016), I drew on theoretical frameworks developed in social and cognitive psychology to examine the degree to which individual and systemic factors can compensate for inherent biases in criminal detectives’ judgments and decision-making.

The book The Routledge International Handbook of Legal and Investigative Psychology (2019), edited by the psychologists Ray Bull and Iris Blandón-Gitlin, explores contemporary topics in psychological science, applying them to investigative and legal procedures. Featuring contributions from recognised scholars from around the globe (including myself), it brings together current research, emerging trends, and cutting-edge debates in a single comprehensive and authoritative volume.

The book Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (2015) by the political scientist Philip E Tetlock and the author Dan Gardner offers a deeper insight into prediction, drawing on decades of research and the results of a massive, US government-funded forecasting tournament. The Good Judgment Project involves tens of thousands of ordinary people – including a Brooklyn filmmaker, a retired pipe-installer, and a former ballroom dancer – who set out to forecast global events. Some of the volunteers have turned out to be astonishingly good. These ‘superforecasters’ have beaten other benchmarks, competitors and prediction markets. They’ve even beaten the collective judgment of intelligence analysts with access to classified information.

‘Correlation does not imply causation’: for decades, this mantra was invoked by scientists in order to avoid taking positions as to whether one thing caused another, such as smoking and cancer, or carbon dioxide and climate change. But today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution has (seemingly) cut through a century of confusion, and placed cause and effect on a firm scientific basis. The Book of Why (2018) by the computer scientist Judea Pearl and the science writer Dana Mackenzie explains causal thinking to general readers, showing how it allows us to explore both the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It is the essence of human and artificial intelligence. And just as these scientific discoveries have enabled machines to think better, The Book of Why explains how we too can think better. ```

I love this genre of books.

A previous request clued me into “Freedom of the Hills” and “The Mariner’s Weather Handbook”

“ The most complete guide to marine weather analysis, tactics, and storm avoidance. Teaches traditional forecasting based on current observed conditions, as well as the latest tools including facsimile charts and the Internet. An easy-to-use tool for sailors, power boaters, professional seamen, and anyone interested in the weather.”

I feel like the notion of "Awesome Lists" (https://github.com/topics/awesome-list) were built for such a topic!

I'd love to read your thesis and I know a few more people who would like to, is it available?

edit nm. found it:

https://phs.brage.unit.no/phs-xmlui/handle/11250/2428006

I'm not the original author, I just was quoting the last section of the article where it mentioned books. I'm not sure how to do block quotes in HN. Sorry for the confusion.

Block quote in HN: four space indents will do the job.

    like
    so

That's really intended for code blocks, not quotes, and the formatting is atrocious for freeform text (but good for code), and especially bad for text on mobile.

also not related to criminal investigations, but I've found How to Solve It by George Pólya to be very useful

The "three switches"[1] problem he links to feels like a software engineering interview problem. As such, I'm relieved I figured it out :P

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bktvc8sl4M8

Watching fake detectives work in crime shows on TV, or in novels, I often keep track of what’s uncovered by brilliance and what just arrives at their door by happenstance or basic police work by others.

It’s surprising usually how little they actually figure out. It takes 2 more murders to help them along. It’s just fiction but it’s probably not far from the truth