The curious incident of the dog in the night-time

Reading through the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes I stumbled upon some reasoning that I had been shown years ago but had since forgotten: the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. Sherlock Holmes and a Detective are investigating the night-time theft of a horse from a stable guarded by a dog.

Detective: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
Detective: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

Holmes later explains: 'the dog made no noise because no stranger was there [...] Obviously the midnight visitor was someone whom the dog knew well'.  I often wonder how many of us (non-fictional) people would be capable of such an inference.   

Returning to previous posts' themes: we must make decisions every day and each of those are not usually subject to detailed scrutiny.  Our decisions are based on incomplete information and very brief and/or superficial inferences in complicated domains.  We are certainly good at detecting when things are 'wrong' in the real world.  If one day you were placed into a Truman Show-esque fake world you may for many months be taken in by the illusion, however, it would take only one slip: a lighting fixture falling from the sky,  a badger with an antenna, a problem rendering the sunrise etc. to rip the illusion from your consciousness. 

I'm sure our ability to be accept a reality until we see something unusual is an evolutionary trait.  The asymmetry in our reactions to the usual versus the unusual exists to counter the asymmetry in the outcomes: mistaking a harmless event (an oddly-shaped shadow) and running in fear has little cost whereas missing the shadow of a hungry dinosaur results in a mauling. 

The problem is that many interactions in the modern virtual world don't evoke reactions even a fraction as strong as seeing a scary face in an  odd-shaped shadow might.  Granted, the cost of making a mistake isn't as high when compared trials of our animalistic ancestors (the internet can't kill you!) but there are still harsh consequences, as the many people who give their life savings to email scammers will attest.  It's not just on the internet: it occurs in all aspects of modern life - irrationally I find it easier to put the 3.50 for coffee and a croissant on my (debit) card than handing over the equivalent cash.

So with all blog posts I have to have a conclusion.  Sherlock had it easy, he was operating within a domain of which he had full understanding, I don't think he'd fare so well in the modern world.