[MD] Crystallising Chaos.

[Case]

[Ian]
> Not sure "ignored" is the right idea. That's a matter of choice and
> purpose, culturally condtioned by "what's good".

[Case]
Perhaps "marginalized" is a better if implicitly redundant term...

[Ian]
> Clearly stats play a big part in the chaotic / emergent view of
> things, but what that does ... finding the significant patterns /
> attractors / clusters etc ... also allows one to identify the few /
> individual "outliers" and investigate their difference / significance.
>
> Recognizing the non-conformists is the flip side to recognizing the
> static patterns. Which you choose to focus on next is a matter of
> conscious will. The "anomalies" are often more interesting than the
> norms as I'm sure we'd agree.

[Case]
Certainly! Explaining anomalies is what drives science forward.

[Ian]
> It's the problem of lies, damn lies and statistics of rational logic
> so beloved by the public face of communications (the media, politics
> .... and capitalism) that tends to re-inforce the qualitive
> distinction between norms (good) and anomalies (bad). The average (!)
> scientist grows up in this culture too, just like the rest of us.

[Case]
>From a public policy standpoint wouldn't it be nice to be able to say the
the "norm" actually is good? Or even that public policy is aimed at
achieving something good? Or anyone could agree on what good is even
statistically. Democraphic statistics can tell what populations are doing
but not whether they are happy about it...