You Will Find This Interesting
Some stuff is interesting. Other stuff is boring.
This post, for example, is interesting—otherwise you wouldn’t be reading it. But why are you reading it? Why do you read anything?
It’s actually really weird. Here you are, reading these words, hoping to get something out of these words. But it’s not at all obvious what you’re hoping to get.
So what is it? What makes stuff interesting?
Maybe the answer is usefulness. Stuff is interesting when it’s relevant to your life—when it helps you get what you want and make practical decisions.
Or maybe the answer is truthfulness. Stuff is interesting when it’s accurate or insightful—when it reveals the full nature of reality, in all its subtlety and depth.
Or maybe the answer is both! Stuff is interesting when it’s useful and truthful. You’re trying to gain knowledge about how the world truly works, so you can use that knowledge to get what you want out of life. It’s like an equation: Usefulness + Truthfulness = Interestingness. Right?
Wrong. Useful truth is boring. Practicality is ponderous, subtlety is soporific, and depth is dull. The quest for knowledge, the search for wisdom—it’s just a story we tell ourselves. We’re mainly interested in bullshit. The more useless and outlandish the bullshit, the more we’re fascinated by it.
Here’s a list of problems with the idea that humans are primarily interested in useful truth:
Most of the stuff that interests us is false and useless. And we know it. We freely admit it. We call this stuff “fiction.”
We’re not only interested in fiction; we’re more interested in fiction than reality. Novels sell better than textbooks. Movies sell better than documentaries. Tabloids are about a thousand times more interesting than scholarly journals.
We’re interested in celebrities, even though we we’ll never meet them. Useless.
We’re interested in sports, even though we can’t control the athletes. Useless.
We’re interested in sweeping generalizations, even though reality is complicated.
We’re interested in eloquence—enthralling speakers and stylish prose. But eloquence has nothing to do with truth or usefulness. Ditto for charisma, humor, whimsy, wit, passion, irony, and quirkiness.
We’re interested in new information (i.e. the “news”), even though the vast majority of useful truths are old.
We’re interested in spiritual flimflam about the “meaning of life,” even though it’s too vague to be useful.
We’re interested in self-help gurus who confidently tell us all that we can be the best, even though that is logically impossible.
We’re interested in contrarian hot takes, even though the conventional wisdom is usually truer and more useful.
We’re interested in simplistic partisan rants, and we’re bored by nuanced policy analysis. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
We’re interested in stuff that confirms our preconceptions. But that is the least useful information to focus on, because it just results in us doing what we were going to do anyways.
You know what’s actually useful? The tax code. Home repair. How cars work. Retirement planning. Noncollateralized loans. The actual policies going through Congress. The actual words in the contracts we DocuSign. Booooooooring!
Here’s a weird fact: modern humans have been around for roughly two hundred thousand years. Yet we only discovered how to find useful truths (i.e. science and free inquiry) a few hundred years ago—about 1% of our history. And plenty of countries still haven’t gotten the memo: heretics and dissidents are getting killed all the time. Humans really suck at seeking useful truth.
“But David,” you say, “it doesn’t make any sense. Why our brains so interested in bullshit? If our brains evolved by natural selection, then why do they function so poorly?”
They don’t. They work just fine. They just don’t work in the way you think they do.
People like to think that humans are the smart ones in the animal kingdom. We alone evolved to learn stuff, figure things out, and use tools. But that’s only a small part of the story of human brain evolution. The bigger part of the story is social. Our brains weren’t designed for solitary contemplation; they were designed for arguing, rationalizing, politicking, rule-following, covert rule-breaking, and excuse-making. We are homo hypocritus.
It’s actually pretty obvious when you think about it. How much of your brainpower is devoted to office politics and social life, as compared to, say, auto parts? How much of your conversations are devoted to gossip and people-stuff, as compared to, say, home repair? If we naturally use 90% of our brainpower for dealing with people, it’s hard to argue that our brains evolved primarily for tools.
Once we realize that the human brain is a fundamentally social brain, we can see the logic behind the subtle urges that goad us to click on this or skim through that. These urges are not designed for practical truth-seeking—or at least, that’s not their primary function. They’re designed to fulfill our social goals.
So what makes stuff interesting? Any information that helps us get what we want from the people around us, including the ugly things we can’t admit we want.
Below are some of the ugly things I’m talking about. These are the things that generally determine what humans find interesting:
We want to fit in. We often find stuff interesting because others find it interesting. Just as people can become famous for being famous, things can become interesting for being interesting. That’s why we’re interested in sports, celebrities, and the news, even though they’re mostly useless. Everyone talks about these things, and we don’t want to be left out of the conversation.
We want attention. When people listen to us, that’s a sign that we’re high status. We like that. So we’re interested in whatever grabs people’s attention, from the titillating to the gory to the gossipy to the paradoxical to whatever this is:
We want to form cliques. We’re constantly on the lookout for shareable tidbits we can use to signal membership in our special subculture, like historical esoterica or highfalutin theories. For example, if we casually mention the book “Capital in the 21st Century,” some people will look confused, but cool smart likeminded people will nod their heads. This allows us to covertly figure out who’s smart and cool like us and who’s not, so we can connect with fellow members of the cognoscente, while subtly excluding dumb-dumbs who aren’t as cool as us. To pull off this strategy, though, we need to find nerd chic interesting in the first place. Not because it’s especially useful or accurate, but because it helps us hobnob with other smart, high-status people.
We want to display our superiority. The hotter the take, the fewer people believe it. So if we can convince people that the hot take is correct, then we get to look smarter than everyone else. The same thing goes for moral claims. If we can convince people that some widespread behavior is morally wrong—or some weird behavior is morally right—then we get to look holier than thou.
We want to display our group’s superiority. The more a piece of information disparages an enemy group (e.g., Republicans, “woke” people), the more we’re captivated by it. Spreading the disparaging information rallies our tribe and boosts solidarity. That’s why we’re more interested in simplistic partisan rants than nuanced policy analysis.
We want to persuade people. We want to justify our behavior, tell self-flattering stories, win debates, and rally people to our side. That’s why we’re interested in stuff that supports what we already believe or want to believe. The goal isn’t to learn anything new or better understand reality; it’s to gather ammunition for arguments.
We want to signal. Talking about scary stuff makes us look competent. Talking about complicated stuff makes us look smart. Talking about feel-good stuff makes us seem warm and cuddly. But in order to signal these traits, we have to be interested in scary, complicated, or feel-good stuff in the first place. So we’re interested in whatever helps us signal the kind of person we are—or want to be.
We want to be flattered. That’s why self-help is such a popular genre: it always involves praising the reader and telling them what wonderful people they are. The same thing applies to the groups we belong to. Any information that flatters our group, that “inspires” us and tells us how brave and virtuous we are—that’s interesting.
We want to oneup everyone else. That’s why we like cynical bullshit, including this very substack: it gives us all an opportunity to dunk on other people. If everyone else is a hypocrite, and everything else is bullshit, then guess who comes out looking good? You and me!
We want to show we’re on the same page. Working together requires coordinating our movements, which is why dancing and chanting feel good: it makes us feel like we’re a single unit (plus it strikes fear into the hearts of our enemies). But working together also requires coordinating our thinking. That’s why we like sweeping generalizations: it’s easier to mentally coordinate on false simplicity than real complexity. The ultimate mental dance is to converge on the same banal interpretation of a deepity, paradox, or jargon-laden word salad.
We want to be associated with high status people. That’s why “eloquence” is so interesting. It signals all sorts of cool characteristics in the speaker (wit, creativity, social skills), which means that the person must have lots of status or be well on their way to getting it. We want to listen to high status people, and we want to parrot whatever eloquent bullshit they’re saying, because that raises our status by association.
“But David,” you say, “I’m willing to admit that most people out there aren’t really interested in useful truth, and they’re mostly pursuing these kinds of unflattering social goals. I’ll give you that. But what about all the rationalists, scientists, and philosophers? Don’t those people care about useful truth?”
Nah, I doubt it. They mostly just want to make everyone else look stupid and gullible, so they can look smart and cool by comparison. That’s why they’re so interested in bold new ideas, “provocative” theses, cognitive biases (that don’t apply to them), prejudices (that they don’t possess), and dry 600-page tomes about economic inequality that confirm their political preconceptions. They’re trying to show off their big brains, look civic-minded, and toss off obscure nostrums to signal membership in their nerdy clique. Rationalists aren’t as interested in being rational as they are in being seen as rational. Philosophers aren’t as interested in being wise as they are in being seen as wise.
Even scientists aren’t interested in science per se. They’re interested in very specific kinds of science, namely the science that supports their pet theories and wins them academic prestige. That’s why the replication crisis was such a long time coming. These ugly goals are easier to achieve with unreplicable garbage than they are with valid findings.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s that interesting stuff is overrated. It doesn’t expand our horizons or ennoble the human spirit; it’s a tool we use to jockey for status, form cliques, get attention, rally our tribes, and oversimplify the world. Any field of science designed to produce interesting results is bound to be full of shit. Any media company designed to feed us interesting information is bound to divide us and delude us. We’d all be better off if our information diets were less interesting and more boring.
The same lesson applies to our social lives. We need to stop confusing interesting people with good people. The eloquent bullshitter might attract a crowd, but that doesn’t mean the crowd is gaining any important insights. The boring person might be all alone in the corner, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have useful things to say.
If there’s one thing that’s preventing us from connecting with our fellow human beings, it’s this perverse obsession we have with being interesting. We’ve convinced ourselves that if someone is boring, they’re not worth our time. The lust for interesting conversations has doomed us to a life of social alienation. We’d rather listen to a podcast than talk to our families.
How do we do it? How do we overthrow the tyranny of the interesting?
I don’t know. I don’t have the answers. In fact, I’m part of the problem. The whole reason I wrote this post was so that you would find it interesting. The whole reason I call this substack “Everything Is Bullshit”—a sweeping generalization—is to capture your limited attention. I cannot change the system. All I can do is play by its rules and try to undermine it from within.
So maybe that’s the answer. We need to say more interesting things about how interesting things are overrated. We need to grab people’s attention and tell them their attention shouldn’t be grabbed. “Interesting” is not the same thing as useful or accurate, but we can try harder to make them the same thing—or at the very least, learn to tell the difference. We can stop judging people by their ability to capture our attention. We can stop competing to be the most interesting person in the room.
We can live in the peaceful stillness of the boring.
I love this entire argument and you have me convinced and therefore in thrall to your provocative truths and subsequent status that I hope to tap into over time for my own purposes by reading your Substack.
However, one nagging and very fundamental question occurs to me:
You never said (or proved) *why* interesting stuff is "overrated" and why reality is actually preferable to bullshit.
And, I especially found this statement unfounded: "If there’s one thing that’s preventing us from connecting with our fellow human beings, it’s this perverse obsession we have with being interesting." Isn't that the very thing you spent the whole essay explaining that helps us connect with our fellow human beings? Our grandiloquent bullshitting ability?
Again, you spent an entire essay talking about how bullshit is more interesting than reality because, basically, we "guys literally only want one thing and it's f*cking disgusting!" WE WANT TO FIT IN. That's really the prime directive for a humanity that survives best in groups. It's the most adaptive thing we do!
If fitting in requires a total abrogation of reality, so be it! So, then, maybe it's reality that is overrated! Or maybe a *certain kind of reality* the (theoretical) kind that exists outside of our social world and human, subjective, brain-saddled cognitive models.
Because the reality that matters for humans is social reality. Human life, like other life, (seems, at least to our status-hungry evolutionary biologists) to be all about survival and reproduction. And the killer app humans found to survive and reproduce and become the dominant complex life form on the planet is to socially coordinate with other humans. The more we do this, the greater our individual chances of both. Status has clear evolutionary utility. And, therefore, so, too does bullshit.
Remember that famous quote attributed to a Bush Administration aide by Ron Suskind:
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'."
This is appalling, cynical, and hubristic, but I now think I appreciate it's deeper truth after having endured the Trump Era. Is not "Teflon Don" the best paragon for the practical usefulness of bullshit? He's got two impeachments, two divorces, six bankruptcies, thousands of civil suits, two active criminal indictments to his name, and (most damningly) two electoral defeats but he is STILL the theoretical front-runner for the Presidency of the United States. And even after all his bullshitty predations (and those of the country underneath him), the United States is STILL the most powerful country on the planet. Despite... or BECAUSE... of all its bullshit? You tell me! Because it's not just Donald Trump's MAGA bullshit that is so captivating at home and abroad. But all that considerable soft power that the US has always wielded is, by your definition, also bullshit. Even the much preferable Obama Era "Hope and Change" and his famous eloquence and ability to inspire us to "the better angels of our nature." I mean, what is that, if not bullshit? I liked it, too, but it's bullshit. It's just much nicer bullshit. And, like the MAGA bullshit, it was very good at motivating groups of people to coordinate.
Another way of putting it was the title of the recent book by Peter Pomerantsev about the "post-truth" world of Putin's Russia: "Nothing is True and Everything is Possible." Putin is, if anything, very full of bullshit. But it "works" for him, doesn't it? He's still in power after two decades. He's perhaps quietly the richest man on the planet. Russia seems to run on fumes, but it runs yet, despite the many many rumors of its collapse. Putin uses his bullshit to coordinate his countrymen to an unlikely degree so that they put up with outrageous untruths and unreasonable hardships toward... what? "Greatness!" "The Russian Mir!" Bullshit.
But hey now... the limiting factor to bullshit, I hear you saying, is that eventually Reality wins, right? You can't bullshit forever! Putin is certainly learning this in Ukraine right now. We did in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, et al. (Or did we learn...?) Sure, and we may well bullshit our way to oblivion as a species this century because of Climate Change, nuclear war, the AI apocalypse or whatever. But, from the perspective of a single organism in a social species, it is always better to maximize for short-term than long-term. Blag on now and leave the consequences to your future self. You'll be better prepared for the backlash when you consolidate your social position now, anyway. The jury is more kind to the rich and sexy! Anyway, even if you think you're so rational and non-bullshitty, the future is always uncertain and we have extremely limited control over it. What you can control right now, though, is how good of a bullshitter you are and therefore how socially successful you are. So do that!
But what about the immediate utility of understanding some basics about reality and not making stupid choices? You don't get the Manhattan Project and world-ending nuclear weapons with just bullshit, right? No. But you don't get the massive social coordination that made the Manhattan Project successful without thermonuclear levels of bullshit. J. Robert Oppenheimer isn't going to go against all his core principles without placating him with a lot of bullshit. Nor are you going to convince 130,000 workers (including some of the world's premier geniuses) to pack up and move to the desert and carry out some mysterious tasks in secret without bullshit narratives about The National Interest, etc. A lot of those scientists were now on their second or third round of jingoistic bullshit, riding around on different regimes with different flavors of bullshit to coordinate their efforts toward some other dubious bullshit like the racial imperative for eradicating the Jews or bathing Eastern Europe in blood in the name of Lebensraum. But the United States was better at bullshit than the Germans or anyone else at that time, so we got the A-Bomb and rockets to the Moon and epically cool stuff that... fundamentally doesn't matter, either, except to, yep... DISPLAY OUR GROUP'S SUPERIORITY.
This reduces all of human history to bullshit, I know. But I just went one step further than you in your provocative thesis. And I'm arguing that the reason nobody wants to get over their bullshit is that bullshit is really useful. Even if/when the future gets hella bad from all our bullshit, whom do you think will survive? The practical, reasonable people? No! Nobody likes them! The bullshitters will inherit the earth! Or what's left of it, anyway...
Nice writing, and it makes a good case. But ignores that some inflaming thoughts that rile people up are the truths of tomorrow, which today's(in historical concepts) inertia doesn't accept, such as:
Heliocentrism: The Earth revolves around the Sun, not vice versa.
Evolution: Species evolve over time through natural selection.
Germ Theory: Diseases are caused by microorganisms, not miasma or supernatural forces.
Democracy: The idea that people have the right to choose their leaders and have a say in governance, and not a god-given birthright
Secularism: Separation of religion and state affairs.
Relativity: Time and space are not absolute but relative and interconnected.
Quantum Mechanics: Particles can exist in multiple states simultaneously until observed.
I feel that the author and this piece is projecting their cynicism about the scientific method and advocating for inertia " We’re interested in contrarian hot takes, even though the conventional wisdom is usually truer and more useful. ". This presupposes humanity has reached its peak and has nowhere else to go.
It might be true that a vast amount of 'interesting' things might be reputation signaling and social cues, but it takes only a few people to show that the current consensus is outdated. For example, while tinkering, a couple of bicycle mechanics showed that flying is possible, aka the Wright Brothers. Before that, it was thought to be entirely impossible.
The replication crisis is a systemic headwind in academia with the 'publish or perish' mandate, and the scientists are actors in a system where the incentives are broken. But that doesn't mean the scientific method is broken; it is entirely the only way humanity has come to reach for objective truths. I would argue that it is wonderful that there is a replication crisis so that you can junk the articles which don't take humanity forward.
In summary, I would have argued for more critical thinking in those who find 'interesting' and for considering the boring interesting(life lessons from the classics), rather than quelling the interesting altogether.