# Rather than asking ‘how did I come to this belief’ (which may be irrelevant
— we can accidentally…

* * *

Rather than asking ‘how did I come to this belief’ (which may be irrelevant —
we can accidentally stumble upon truths without valid justification, and we
can easily have reasonable-sounding justifications for false or unreliable
ideas), you might be better of asking ‘under what circumstances does this not
hold?’ This is called abductive reasoning, & is the basis of the scientific
method.

By [John Ohno](https://medium.com/@enkiv2) on [February 27,
2019](https://medium.com/p/e59456a1ff38).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@enkiv2/rather-than-asking-how-did-i-come-
to-this-belief-which-may-be-irrelevant-we-can-accidentally-e59456a1ff38)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com) on September 18, 2020.