On Fog, Fools, and Following the Clues: A Modest Guide to Thinking Like a Detective
Perhaps it was my revisiting the first season of True Detective. Or perhaps it was something else—a slow, creeping sense that clarity has become an endangered species. Either way, I found myself returning to an article I first read four or five years ago. At the time, it struck me as clever. Now, it feels… vital. A small lantern in a world that’s grown comfortable in the dark.
There’s a peculiar fog that’s settled over the world lately. Not the kind that rolls in over moors and lingers in valleys, but the sort that creeps in through glowing screens, settles in group chats, and makes its home in comment sections. It smells faintly of outrage, moves at the speed of a Wi-Fi signal, and has one singular mission: to confuse.
In this fog, people don’t speak—they declare. Every conversation feels like a showdown. And the quieter voices, the thoughtful ones, the “hmm-let-me-think-about-that” types? They get drowned out by the noise, often mistaken for weakness when, in fact, they’re the ones doing the hardest thing of all: trying to understand.
Which brings us to the detective. Not the trenchcoat kind (although we’re not opposed to a dramatic collar), but the mindset. The posture of curiosity. A way of seeing the world not through panic or performance, but through patterns, probabilities, and patience. Because if the world insists on being mysterious, then we might as well learn how to investigate.
The Detective Mindset
Detectives don’t guess. They infer. They don’t pounce on the loudest answer or the one with the most likes. They gather clues, weigh explanations, and—crucially—they’re willing to be wrong. Not because they enjoy it (who does?), but because being wrong is a step on the path to being right for the right reasons.
There’s a particular kind of reasoning detectives use—less famous than deduction, and far more useful in the real world. It’s called abductive reasoning. (Yes, it sounds like aliens were involved, but stay with us.) Abductive reasoning asks:
“What’s the most likely explanation, given what I know so far?”
It’s the art of making your best guess when you don’t have all the facts.
It’s what you use when your toast goes missing and you notice crumbs on your dog’s nose.
It’s what helps you realise that your partner isn’t actually mad at you—they’re just hungry and you forgot the groceries. Again.
This form of thinking thrives in uncertainty. It doesn’t demand perfect knowledge—it asks for plausibility. It doesn’t cry “conspiracy!” when a lightbulb flickers. It wonders, “Did I actually screw that in properly?” And here’s the thing: this skill isn’t just for analysing headlines or spotting plot holes on social media. It applies to the real stuff—conversations, disagreements, misunderstandings. The detective mindset invites us to slow down, to question our assumptions, to listen between the lines. It helps us recognise our own blind spots, and the places where bias likes to sneak in and make a mess of things.
In a way, it’s not just a tool for thinking. It’s a quiet act of respect—for truth, and for one another. But that kind of thinking takes effort. It’s far easier to leap to conclusions. A vague statement becomes a scandal. A single article is suddenly irrefutable proof. A strange coincidence? Clearly the Soros cabal at work again.
The fog we live in isn’t caused by a lack of information—it’s the smog of misinterpretation. That’s where the detective shines—not as someone with magic insight, but as someone who resists the very human urge to explain everything too quickly. A detective is the last person to say “Case closed” before checking under the floorboards.
And in a time when certainty is cheap and confusion is profitable, that’s the sort of mind worth emulating.
The Case for Slower Thinking
None of this is to say that life is a crime scene or that every trip to the supermarket demands a deerstalker hat and a notebook. (Although, if you've seen the way shoppers eye the last bag of frozen peas, you’d think it was contraband.) But here’s the thing: in a world where haste is fashionable and loudness is mistaken for leadership, adopting a slower, more curious, more detective-like approach isn’t just charming—it’s vital. It means asking:
What else could be going on here?
What evidence would change my mind?
Am I jumping to conclusions because I want to, or because I need to?
It means accepting that not every mystery will be solved in a single sitting, and that some puzzles are best left for morning light. It means noticing when the story is too neat, when the villain is too obvious, when the answer feels just convenient enough to be wrong. In other words, it’s about thinking well, not just fast. And thinking well, these days, might just be the rarest form of courage.
So if you’ve made it this far—and you’re curious to explore this way of thinking a little deeper—I’d suggest starting here:
* How to solve problems by thinking like a detective
It won’t make the fog disappear, but it might give you a lantern—and the patience to walk a little slower, eyes open, clues in hand.