> A common idea seems to be that the weirder one’s way of thinking, the more likely one is to get things right, for the truth could not possibly be publicly ava

> A common idea seems to be that the weirder one’s way of thinking, the more likely one is to get things right, for the truth could not possibly be publicly available. [...] This is to get things exactly the wrong way around. So, this common idea, about common ideas being probably wrong, is wrong? I mean, sometimes there's crowd wisdom, and then again sometimes there's popular misconceptions. Outliers are sometimes merely errors, but experts who think they know things others mostly don't know are often right. It's not exactly the wrong way around. "Surprisingly popular" is a neat technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surprisingly_popular https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surprisingly_popular Though I'm afraid this will select for conspiracy theorists and cranks along with experts.