“I had,” said he, “come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data.”
Doyle, C. (1922). The Adventure of the Speckled Band. In The Complete Sherlock Holmes (p. 272). Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company.
Even the great Sherlock Holmes can be led astray by jumping to conclusions too quickly. While not all hasty assumptions hold the same consequences as the story, there are many- much more than expected -that do. Any conclusion we make is a gamble, but through logic and information, we can improve our odds. If we chose to act on only a small understanding of the topic, we have to consider just what exactly we are laying on the line. For some instances the thought of loss is insignificant, while for others our thought on what could actually be lost is just as small. More often than not we chose to play with fire not know what it’s like to be burnt.
My Common Place 