The Elimination Process

Effective elimination follows a systematic protocol:

• List all plausible possibilities — be comprehensive. Missing one means you might eliminate everything else and still be wrong
• Identify testable criteria — for each possibility, decide what evidence would rule it out
• Test and eliminate — gather evidence and remove possibilities that are contradicted
• Evaluate what remains — the survivors deserve attention proportional to their probability

The method is powerful but has a critical vulnerability: it only works if your initial list of possibilities is complete.