There are a few things which I think are the opposite of how people usually thing of them. Here are two examples:
Charities
People, I suspect, think of charities in a similar way to how they think about companies – give money to whichever one you most wish to continue operating. This is the wrong way around really, since charities tend to exist to make themselves redundant. The smart thing is to give money to the charity you most wish didn’t need to exist.
Zoos and Arboretums
Zoos and arboretums are full of rare and endangered species. This is a good thing. Most visitors, however, seem to think that the animals/plants on display are the best of nature. I would argue that they’re the worst of nature. Organisms exist to preserve their genes via reproduction, so anything endangered is by definition doing a crappy job of being an organism.
This is probably why zoos and conservation gardens are so interesting – things which are common enough to be ordinary are by definition successful, so it shouldn’t be very surprising to find that things rare enough to be endangered are interestingly extraordinary.
