Embrace Weird - Feature Not a Bug
"Weirdness" is often something we want to avoid.
It's socially isolating. Being called weird is not pleasant. It likely hurts.
But these deviations, if aligned with something that gives value (and this is hard) isn't just a personality quirk.
It isn't just something to tolerate.
It can be a feature, not a bug.
In those instances, it's worth embracing.
Is all weirdness a feature and not a bug? No, unfroutnaely.
But why does it matter?
First, weirdness may be the super power. Or it may at least be the trait that can lead to the usperpower.
These differences might be a core source of alpha left; after all, things thare a commonly known, common levels of repeatable performance, will be eaten by AI and Robotics.
Somehow, the potential for randomness inside of our life story or genetics might be the very thing that lets us survive.
Childhood is, in fact, one of those ways to identify a weirdness, a necessary deviation from the norm to succeed in a normalized world:
"The very fact that childhood is so long and helpless in human beings may be one of the keys to our uniqueness and success as a species. Childhood is evolution's way of performing experiments. "The Philosophical Baby" (2009), Alison Gopnik
This is a period where there is "weird" behavior -- sometimes cute, sometimes genuinely weird -- and it is what makes us adaptive and create successes.
Is it possible for AI to start to create its own unexpected patterns, connections, randomness and weirdness?
Sure. But right now, AI's value is in streamlining tasks at hand for humans; and so it is the golden age to explore the weird and the strange.
So how does one transmute weirdness into value.
After all, value is in the eye of the beholder.
One source of weirdness is neurodiversity -- the two cmost commonly discussed are ADHD and Autism spectrum.
It turns out that being on the psectrum has become a huge boon for many people. It gives them the ability to be focused on. a singular topic in depth, incredible memory, and often additional spatial or connecting skills.
Being ADHD, on the other hand, is one about connecting unsuspecting or surprising ideas.
Are there other attributes of weirdness where someone can eplore?
I'm not sure, but both of these need an engine of something -- curiosity.
It means not looking at the ways people are thinking or operating now, but fiding an individual path that is wholly unique.
personal branding, in some ways, is the opposite: it creates a narcissism trait, which is about being popular based on what other people think.
This, too, has generated high value but social destruction.
While I think narcissists and sociopathic deviations are successful, I don't want to encourage that form of weirdness.
so what are a set of skills and capabilities or exercises that can unleash the right kind, and do nothing or have little beneficial effect for the negative?
Some of this is outside the scope of the individual; this is largely a problem of social and corporate games, where the narcissist has leverage and control. The most important thing to do is learn to identify that in a person within a company and protect oneself, but this takes skills that most autistic people don't have.