I remember taking AP statistics in high school, and learning about the notion of the “outlier”. That when you had a certain date of that, and there was a certain data point which was not according to the chart or the graft, you could just low-key erase it or ignore it.

Yet, society, the world, everything can only grow and thrive on the outliers.

For example, you cannot change society in the world by having a bunch of the same same South Korean students, all doing the same thing. You need the radical Elon Musk, the radical Kanye West, the radical Steve Jobs.

The reason why America is the center of innovation is our culture of cultivating, breeding, and also glorifying the outlier. For example, even in South Korea, not how all of the famous K-pop groups are all groups. There is not one really really spectacular individual K-pop star. If you think about BTS, it is a conglomerate of random pretty looking boys, Even black pink is about the group.

However in America, let’s consider the success of an individual Jay Z, an individual Eminem, a Snoop Dogg, etc.

You are not basic

The easiest way I think about this is this:

Don’t be basic.

What does it mean to be basic? It means to be like everybody else. To be medium, mediocre, etc.

For example, what does it mean to be mediocre? To drive a Honda accord or Toyota Camry, to seek to buy a house, to seek a nice job, to seek “stability“, etc.

What does it mean to be an outlier? To distain the norm, and also to distain what is popular.

For example, extreme and true differentiation is thinking of yourself and knowing yourself as vastly different, a new species of human. Certainly genetically we are about 99.9% similar to everybody else, but we have the audacity and the chutzpah to breed ourselves into something new.

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Optimize yourself to be an outlier

I do you seek to be understood, or, do you seek to become more of an enigma?