That's a Strange Idea

What does that have to do with what we were talking about?  We all have presented or thought about presenting that question to someone.  The implicit “accusation” is that we believe our interlocutor has found relevance where none exists, or that they are ascribing more relevance to their idea than is warranted.  In psychology jargon, the former would be called “aberrant salience” and the latter, “anomalous salience.”   We might then dismiss the speaker as being emotionally or cognitively deficient. So, one more question: Is such thinking crazy? 

Aberrant salience, by definition, is deficient.  In fact, it is often regarded as a common feature of thought on the schizophrenia spectrum.  But anomalous salience is not necessarily deficient; in fact, it literally could lead to a so-called quantum leap in human knowledge.  For instance, in 1935, Erwin Schrödinger combined the ideas of subatomic particles (quanta) with influence distance, to describe "quantum entanglement" — an anomalous salience still not clearly understood by even the most accomplished physicists.

Why do I care about all this?  Well, I and most of us regard openness to experience as a personal and inter-personal strength.  However, openness to experience can incline us toward the negativity of insanity (aberrant salience) or the positivity of creativity (anomalous salience).   So, when perceiving uncommon thoughts, whether self-manufactured or other-manufactured, we do well to pause and consider rather than to impulsively dismiss them.  Instead ask, “Is there something here to learn now or to pursue later?”  You may have come up with an idea similar to those that rattled through the mind of Charles Manson or Erwin Schrödinger, but you can’t be sure unless you first consciously, rationally evaluate them.  Your cognitive and emotional condition, and the cognitive and emotional condition of our sadly dysfunctional country depend on you being open to anomalous salience and closed to aberrant salience. The challenge is deciding which is which and acting on the correct but not the incorrect conclusion.

Because humanity never has been assailed by such a surfeit of information and determined, relentless influencers, I feel compelled to end with a cautionary note advising you to consider preliminary research (e.g., So, et al. 2018) that suggests negative emotion, such as anxiety, combined with aberrant salience might drive you or your influencer toward at least a temporary paranoid-like mentality regarding the topic of your attention. 

REFERENCE:  So, S. H. W., Chau, A. K. C., Peters, E. R., Swendsen, J., Garety, P. A., & Kapur, S. (2018). Moment-to-moment associations between negative affect, aberrant salience, and paranoia. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 23(5), 299–306. https://doi.org/10.1080/13546805.2018.1503080