Mediocrity never goes away - but neither, I hope, do those who are willing to challenge it.

Mediocrity never goes away - but neither, I hope, do those who are willing to challenge it.....Milos Forman

  Milos Forman was a Czech and American film director, screenwriter, actor, and professor. He rose to fame in his native Czechoslovakia before emigrating to the United States in year 1968. Over a career spanning six decades, Forman won two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Golden Bear, a César Award, and the Czech Lion. Milos Forman was an important figure in the Czechoslovak New Wave. Film scholars and Czechoslovak authorities saw his 1967 film The Firemen's Ball as a biting satire on Eastern European Communism. The film was initially shown in theatres in his home country in the more reformist atmosphere of the Prague Spring. However, it was later banned by the Communist government after the invasion by the Warsaw Pact countries in 1968. Milos Forman was subsequently forced to leave Czechoslovakia for the United States, where he continued making films. He received two Academy Awards for Best Director, one for the psychological drama One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and one for the biographical drama Amadeus (1984). During this time, he also directed notable and acclaimed films such as Black Peter (1964), Loves of a Blonde (1965), Hair (1979), Ragtime (1981), Valmont (1989), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) and Man on the Moon (1999). One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus have been inducted into the National Film Registry.

  I am going to explain a principle named mediocrity. It is  the philosophical notion that "if an item is drawn at random from one of several sets or categories, it's more likely to come from the most numerous category than from any one of the less numerous categories". The principle has been taken to suggest that there is nothing very unusual about the evolution of the Solar System, Earth's history, the evolution of biological complexity, human evolution, or any one nation. It is a heuristic in the vein of the Copernican principle, and is sometimes used as a philosophical statement about the place of humanity. The idea is to assume mediocrity, rather than starting with the assumption that a phenomenon is special, privileged, exceptional, or even superior.