Which Is The Odd-One-Out (Don't Say "Niles"!)

[NilesCalder]

I smell caca del toro.
I was right. You were pissed or stoned when you posted your original message. Come on Niles you're an intelligent man - Seven days and that's the best you can come up with?

Spook, I'm practically tea-total and my body chemistry is messed up enough as it is for me to indulge in that other stuff. Cat has always been the answer.

Look at it like this: when you approach reasearch into a subject the questions you ask yourself about it shape the answers you get. I asked "Which is the odd one out" and so predisposed you to look at how each of the four things related to one another in the hope's a disassocation. By asking the question I did I predisposed you to look at the evidence it a certain way, thus hiding the answer from you. If I had asked "Which one isn't the odd one out" you might have hit on Cat sooner, since it associates with each of the other three in some way, but not consistantly:

It is an animal (Cat, Dog, Elephant)
It has three letters (Hat, Cat, Dog)
It ends in a "t" (Hat, Cat, Elephant)

Since none of the others matches more than two, Cat is the odd one out. QED.

When approaching a Fortean topic (or any topic for that matter) there is a tendecy for us to ask ourselves these leading questions which subconciously limit ourselves to only a small number of options. As Fort Himself said (and let me paraphrase) "To form an opinion is to deny some of the evidence". Instead of trying to find a definitive answer we should instead seek to find what possible answers can be gathered from the current evidence.

Truth be told there was no wrong answer, all the answers you gave were correct within their own paradigm, much like the numerous answers given to varied topics within this forum.

Niles "must dash" Calder

 

[mikelegs]

Very interesting answer.... I like it.