title: Unexpected python paths in conda environment
body: <p>In a conda environment (<code>base</code> here) I'm surprised by the order of directories in the python path:</p>
  <pre><code>python -c &quot;import sys; print(sys.path)&quot;
  ['', 
  '/export/projects/III-data/wcmp_bioinformatics/db291g/miniconda3/lib/python37.zip',
  '/export/projects/III-data/wcmp_bioinformatics/db291g/miniconda3/lib/python3.7',
  '/export/projects/III-data/wcmp_bioinformatics/db291g/miniconda3/lib/python3.7/lib-dynload',
  '/export/home/db291g/.local/lib/python3.7/site-packages',
  '/export/projects/III-data/wcmp_bioinformatics/db291g/miniconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages']
  </code></pre>
  <p>As you can see, my local non-conda path:</p>
  <pre><code>/export/home/db291g/.local/lib/python3.7/site-packages
  </code></pre>
  <p>comes before the conda counterpart:</p>
  <pre><code>/export/projects/III-data/wcmp_bioinformatics/db291g/miniconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages
  </code></pre>
  <p>this means that packages installed in <code>miniconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages</code> will be ignored if they are found in <code>.local/lib/python3.7/site-packages</code>. In fact, in <code>.local/lib/python3.7/site-packages</code> I have numpy 1.20 but in the conda environment I need 1.19, which is correctly installed but superseded by 1.20. This seems to defeat the point of using conda.</p>
  <p>Is there something wrong with my configuration or am I missing something here?</p>
  <p>Some info:</p>
  <pre><code>which python
  /export/projects/III-data/wcmp_bioinformatics/db291g/miniconda3/bin/python
  
  python -V
  Python 3.7.12
  
  which conda
  /export/projects/III-data/wcmp_bioinformatics/db291g/miniconda3/bin/conda
  
  conda --version
  conda 4.11.0
  </code></pre>