Safe Elimination Practices

To use eliminative reasoning without falling into its traps:

• Always ask: "What am I not thinking of?" before treating your list as complete
• Add an "unknown cause" category to every elimination list — it keeps the world open
• Use elimination to narrow down, not to reach a final answer
• Combine elimination with positive evidence — do not just rule things out; look for evidence that supports what remains
• Treat the surviving explanation as a hypothesis, not a verdict — test it further.