Tag: outlier

Significant and Normal

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Many people might wish to fit in and be “normal”. That is comply and not be the sore thumb of life. These may seek to blend with a peer group if they are not normal in the populace at large. Geeky McGeekface is more at home with others of similar persuasion and not comfortable being with the popular plastic fantastic.

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I will speculate that I am not within two standard deviations of the peak of the normal distribution of intellect. By this I am already slightly abnormal. It is not really significant because there are many way further out. They will have a higher IQ according to how these things are measured and be much better at conventional examinations than me. I am not normal but not significantly abnormal either.

On other metrics I may be more of an outlier or anomaly. It is not my ego or desire to be weird which is suggesting that, rather a detached observation. I don’t particularly want to be special or different, but I am or appear to be, a bit odd. Socially I am not a mixer and socio-politically I do not play the itchy back game so enamoured of by many. Because I am less easy to leverage by “what is in it for me” people may deem me less tractable to control and/or ready manipulation. I do not play “the” game. I am not one of “US”. I am not “good people”.

My bones have osteoporosis so they are among the 0.5% too thin for my age and sex. This is significant enough for the medics to want to medicate me in case I end up in A&E with another fracture.

What each of us finds significant depends upon our terms of reference and the world which we perceive and assimilate. Thousands watched “the Lionesses” on The Mall this afternoon. They are mostly normal in this respect. I watched a bit on TV. Does that make me normal?

Life circumstance has me/us where we are, living the way we do. Our impact on the outer world is minuscule because we do not interact overmuch. In the grand scheme of things human we are not significant. Though in the past we have both changed and facilitated many lives. Our life circumstance and health in particular, limits us. Because there is no fairy godmother our life circumstance is very unlikely to change and even it did, there is no dynamic reserve of time and energy to offer. To an extent we are spent.

Put me in a car on the M25 and I may not cope. I can no longer hack the outside world. A few glancing interactions perhaps and that is about it. Even if someone wanted it otherwise, it isn’t and cannot be. I have not been in a proper city for more than a week or so in the last six years and that for hospital / health reasons. I am a bumpkin these days…Life circumstance has me away from the crowd. It is better for me and probably for them too.

Here is an aphorism pertaining to the rule of the three pronged nagal from the Toltec Teachings by Théun Mares

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This is not a normal example or tract of text. The question might be, “is it significant?”.

As is so often the case, it depends upon context. It sounds grandiose and might fleetingly captivate the attention. To the vast majority of people it has no personal significance and at best might be a curiosity. People are concerned with Facebook, Insta and TikTok. This type of thing would be abnormal to them. It is not abnormal to me.

I think it fair and accurate to speculate that what is normal and significant for/to me is abnormal and insignificant for others.

Thus we are in the subjective. Normality and significance are not objective, people make {personal} judgments which may or may not be rational concerning these notions. At the moment its seems normal to bomb the fuck out of Gaza and starve the people. This is normal for some but abnormal, brutal and evil to my eyes. The Palestinian death toll is more significant on Al Jazeera, less so on the BBC.

So-called normality is not always a strong recommendation for being better. Significance can depend upon prejudices and alliance.

If I was a mosquito, I would be grossly insignificant, unless I were in your bedroom of a hot summer night, and a bit peckish. Then for a few hours I could be significant.

Significance has a temporal component. It was once normal to have slaves. Slavery was more significant for the slaves than for the masters. That normality is now shunned and people are asked to accept the significance of their past slave ownership. Nothing can undo the abuse and torture.  A few quid here and there, a public apology, does not change one single lash of the whip.

Being normal may not be all that it is cranked up to be!

Normality has a checkered past…

Who knows what is normal for you, right now, may in time be seen as a misguided travesty. But for the time being you have the comfort of your peer group to tell you, “We concur old chap” and that everything is just dandy.

I am not sure that anything normal has brought about progress, ever. In that sense being normal is largely insignificant.

When Professor Google Does Not Know…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Something weird is happening at Eurofins the lab which analyses the blood tests. On Saturday they sent me the results of my alpha-1 antitrypsin survey. This came back normal, so there is no genetics causing a suppression. Yesterday evening they resent me the results twice!! This kind of thing is not normal, so it caught my attention.

The really weird thing is the low parathyroid hormone level.

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“Hypoparathyroidism is the combination of symptoms due to inadequate parathyroid hormone production (PTH) (Hypo-parathyroid-ism).  This is a very rare condition, and almost always occurs because of damage or removal of parathyroid glands at the time of parathyroid or thyroid surgery. This bears repeating: When people have too little parathyroid hormone (PTH), it is almost always because they had thyroid or parathyroid surgery and all four parathyroid glands were removed or injured.”

Source parathyroid.com

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I have the low hormone level BUT not the reduced calcium levels. I used to get cramps and have had neuropathy in my fingers. This neuropathy being probably down to the cervical spine injury ~2008 and the hernias therein. Calcium levels are however normal.

I have asked Professor Google about the PTH low Calcium normal using different sets of key words. He/she/it does not have much to say on the subject. There was one case of a Māori woman with similar numbers. It was weird enough to ask the laboratory to check the parathyroid hormone data. It was not wrong. They made a “special” report.

The endocrinologist may yet comment.

Using the above logic it perhaps makes sense to re-test the hormone level.

Because I am asymptomatic, this does not seem like a big deal. It could be a harbinger of problems yet to come. The hormone level is low; it has not dropped the calcium yet…

Like me it is a bit of an anomaly an outlier. The question is, is it safe to ignore and chalk up as just one of those things or does it need further investigation?

Anomaly or Outlier?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I’ll speculate that if you look at the expectations and outcomes in life and career of someone with my educational and experiential background, I am not within the statistically normal distribution. Not by a long shot.

This means I could be treated as an outlier or an anomaly to the normal socio-political world. In school people can be taught to ignore or discard outliers if they differ wildly from model or if there is some explanation for the data point such as data acquisition or human error for their occurrence.

It is safe globally to ignore me as my impact on the whole is tiny. I could skew the data if included. If I am included the quality of fit drops.

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There would be temptation to exclude for a better rational explanation of fit. If, however, I fitted the model, yet was on the same gradient, so to speak, I could be included without loss of quality of fit. I am not on such a “trajectory”.

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The question remains as to whether I am real or an artefact. In a population of seven billion there may be others like me, a number which would be hard to quantify, but probably statistically insignificant and very low.

An anomaly is similar to an outlier but tends towards the questioning of model. More than one anomalous data point may lead to a need to refine approach. Something may be anomalous but not a real outlier. The repeat occurrence of anomalies require a re-think perhaps a change of model.

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Any global analysis of humanity and human trends need not include me in order to explain and model the set of behaviours well. It is unlikely that I am significant on a wider scale. Here in the boundaries of the domestic compound I have significance. In the village, the department or the country, not. Once you start to meaningfully sample population I am lost as an outlier at the edges, the margins.

Based upon my dreaming I suspect that I am an outlier, a kind of obscure “esoteric” phenomenon. There is little wider relevance. There is no need to include me into any wider understanding of humanity.

Logically I can be discounted and discarded.

Believing Without Concluding

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Luckily, I can believe something without coming to a conclusion about its veracity or accuracy or degree of right. I don’t have to win an argument or be right. I can even hold multiple views about the same situation without needing to pick a favourite and I don’t need to soap box, to be dogmatic or adamant. The dream this morning highlighted a fundamental difference in mentality between me and where I once worked. I was not ambitious nor obsessed with winning and league table position. My life did not hang on success or kudos. In many ways I did not belong there amongst. So, it worked out as it did. Dandy.

I think a safe “conclusion” is that the dreams in this blog are not normal or average. This makes me something of an outlier, an anomaly even.  This “conclusion” is uncoloured and non-emotive. It is not significant.

I can see how some of the “data” in these dreams can be interpreted using various narratives, for example Toltec. In which case I belong to a certain predilection as a dreamer and not a stalker.  I am a slightly different class of being. I think it fair to see a mild philosophical bent in my approach to life.

I can try on a working hypothesis, see if there is a partial fit. If there is I note it but have no need to conclude. Such and such is consistent with so and so. No Biggy. Next.

My own experience is, that at least in my case, the law of cause & effect or karma is applicable. I have a mind set of trying to address karma rather than going “phew got away with it, at least for now”. I’ll speculate that this again is not normal or average. To take responsibility for the actions AND consequences in life is not something most share. They fail to see the link of causality because that can be mightily inconvenient. People suffer from entitlement issues and believe, for example, that they are entitled to bomb the living daylights out of a people. They deserve to enact bloody revenge. It is justice no matter how disproportionate. They may be unable to calmly and cooly think it through. They make concentrated poverty adjacent to their opulent wealth and do not foresee consequences. Blinded by rage they do not solve, lashing out is not the most evolved thing to do.

In terms of liberation. One cannot achieve liberation whilst one has unresolved karma, it remains like a weight holding you back. The karma of stubbornness is rich and like most karma can have an ironic flavour. If you don’t believe in karma, it is currently your karma so to be. Karma is patient and one day it will make you understand. You may get knelt.

I know, I believe, that I understand the implications of much of the material in the blog. But I will never conclude that I am right about this and exclusively so. There could be many other explanations or none at all. I am just constructing a temporary view for my own amusement. Like a sand castle I can knock it down. I won’t be explicit and detailed. People like to argue the toss especially with others on the internet.

Not concluding is the antithesis of modern education methods. We are trained to give the {only} “right” answer, to justify it and make a conclusion or two. That way we can gain marks and pass exams; we can earn qualifications.

Students want to know, “tell me what the answer is”. Sometimes there are no answers within the common mundane context. We can ask Siri or Alexa. I suspect that humanity is getting ever lazier and may one day lose the ability to think for itself.

People might only believe if the norm decrees something right and correct. If consensus deems. But there can be different groups of consensuses who will fight for the dominance of being right.

I don’t think that conclusions and answers are evolutionary. They fixate, anchor and coral.