Comment by michael1999

I think you could just use lean, and progressively elaborate the inference graph.

But you might find a historical/journalistic/investigative angle more profitable.

I heard a software product pitch from a small law practice who were outside investigators for abuse/policy-violation claims in a unionized workforce. They had a solid procedure: start with the main event. Interview all witnesses, and identify other interesting events. Then cross-reference all witnesses against all alleged/interesting events. That gives you a full matrix to identify who is a reliable witness, what sort of motivations are in play, and what stories are being told, patterns of behaviour, etc. Their final report might actually focus on another event entirely that had better evidence around it.

In that sort of historical investigation, a single obviously false claim undermines all claims from that witness. Pure logic doesn't have that bi-directionality of inference. Sometimes your sources just flat out lie! That's half the work.

The key difference is between a full matrix of claims vs sources/evidence, while good math is all about carefully plotting a sparse inference graph that traverses the space. What is called "penetrating minimalism" in math is called "cherry picking" in history or journalism.

We passed on the pitch. Didn't see how it scaled to a product worth building, but their process was appealing. Much better than the an internal popularity-contest or witch-hunt. Probably better than the average police investigation too.