by I love the outlier. Most scientific people discourage the outlier as an anomaly, an outsider, a “something that must be identified and then discredited.”
I, on the other hand, think the real truth speaks outside the mainstream meme, and in the outlier we find the nuggets of perspective and understanding the median mind — or result, or analysis, or argument — cannot hope to provide.
In the outlier, we find a view of the bigger picture and with that perspective we gain insight and an annulment of the middling mindset.
You do not discount the outlier.
You must become the outlier.
You are required to find out the why of the outlier — and then apply the outlier thinking to the mainstream and not the other way around — even if the presence of an outlier makes no sense at all.
I like outliers too. They do have value. They frame the bigger picture. Becoming them? Maybe not.
I think becoming an outlier provides greater depth of experience, Anne, because it is beyond normal expectation.
Hi David,
I agree with you – 100%. It’s tough to swim through the opposite direction though!
Yes, Katha! It is difficult being an outlier because the mainstream want to protect their own from outside, wild, ideas that are “out there.” It’s too bad the scientific method doesn’t place more value on the when and the why of the outlier. Too often outliers are rejected out-of-hand as inconsequential. In fact, you can have outliers automatically wiped from the results as if they were never there and you’ll never see them. There might be dangers and secrets there that are being discounted for no other reason except that they’re out of the main blob.