> People are probably not gonna like it here but I think alternative perspective is important. Thanks, I hate it. :-) Anecdata is the worst*, as generally on

> People are probably not gonna like it here but I think alternative perspective is important. Thanks, I hate it. :-) Anecdata is the worst*, as generally only self-identified outliers feel compelled to share. So then there’s more outlying noise than there should be, and normals get confused. Still useful in the sense of serving to illustrate probability curves mean tails exist, so a bunch of people must be outliers, oh look here’s one. But where it goes wrong is when someone looks at 1000 viewpoints on whatever, identifies the 2 who think it’s aliens, and creates a “both sides” narrative. Or self-identifies: hey y’all, I’m a walking survivor bias! For policy, “alternative perspective” of an outlier is worth exactly 2 cents, but must be stacked up against the 80 cents of the bell curve. In other words, yes, the case must exist, but is not illustrative of what a normal distribution participant can expect or how they should behave. * Anecdata is also the best. Edge cases matter for bounding problem spaces, contingency or mitigation planning, or maybe even important for novel discovery. For instance, while it shouldn’t determine majority behavior, why one individual might seem immune to COVID could be very worth a quick check to see if worth looking into. If it’s not tail luck, if it’s immunity, that could reveal an undiscovered mechanism helpful to the normal distribution.