Being interesting, qualities which help, and the social/intellectual capital of youth
What is the most common compliment you’ve been given? (Preferably from many people who don’t know each other.)
Being interesting, and qualities which help that
The most common compliment I have received from independent people (who don’t know each other - recall the Condorcet Jury Theorem) is that I’m interesting. A closely related compliment is that I ask interesting questions. Introspecting, I find three likely qualities which cause these compliments. First, a sense of curiosity. Second, an interest in what people have to say. Third, some out-of-the-way learning which I can bring to conversations, and which people find interesting.
When I reflect further on these qualities, I find that none of them can be attributed to my merit. I’m quite like others in my demographic; any changes for the better can be attributed to my upbringing (which was out of my control). My curiosity and out-of-the-way learning came from a childhood without many distractions (from computers or people) and with many books. Reading these books instilled in me a lifelong habit of reading and a curiosity about many fields of knowledge.
[Recall Takuan’s way of reforming Musashi in Yoshikawa’s Musashi: keeping him with many books and few distractions for three years. Recall Flaubert, who said something along the lines of what a scholar someone would be if they knew five or six books well. Recall Aquinas: beware the man of one book. Cal Newport on deep work.]
The second important part of my upbringing came from the first: I happened to read Dale Carnegie’s How to Make Friends and Influence People during a very impressionable time in my life. The wonderful thing about Carnegie’s book is that its advice can be summarised in one phrase: Take an honest interest in people. If you do, you will naturally find people interesting, and people will (most of the time) naturally want to be friends with you.
It’s an approach which isn’t about finding tricks and shortcuts to making friends, but one which is based on honestly changing yourself. It’s a sincere approach which I find appealing - compared to the shortcuts people sometimes give of changing your outward appearance and actions without changing the inner self.
On a similar situation: I try not to give unsolicited advice - however, when people have asked me on for advice on finding significant others, my only advice has been to improve themselves and make friends - and wait for things to come about naturally. Give love to others and don’t expect it back in return; make yourself a better person.
This is because I think that making yourself a better person is paramount. “Don’t try to find the right person, but try to be the right person; make yourself attractive.” As Mark Manson puts it in his article on “Hell Yes or No,” all dating advice boils down to improving yourself.
Having said that, there are four caveats. First, I have known people in happy relations who have found significant others without being friends first - the friendship came later. My advice is thus (at the very least) incomplete; this is because for me friendship and romance are continuous.
Second, I am no expert in this area, so my advice is likely inaccurate - I only given it when explicitly asked, and note it down here so that I don’t forget.
Third, that is the only Mark Manson article I’ve read (linked to me by a friend), and I have no idea about any other recommendations of his and cannot endorse him or his ideas.
And finally, there’s a danger in being a perfectionist.
Addendum to this: Parfit or Sidgwick once wrote of Sidgwick that his Methods of Ethics was dull and ponderous, due to Sidgwick’s habit of bringing up all possible objections and answering them, and of coming up with all possible qualifications to his arguments. I’ve come to realise that my writing has the same quality of constantly qualifying, of constantly trying not to be misunderstood. “Do not merely write so that you can be understood, but write so that you cannot possibly be misunderstood.”
Being interesting, once again
I think that these two parts of my childhood, more than anything, are what causes people to find me interesting. I have enough odd knowledge that I can contribute something unexpected to discussions. With computer science students I can discuss philosophy; with philosophy students I can discuss economics; with economics students I can discuss computer science.
And when I come to people with the expectation that there’s something interesting about them, I am invariably never disappointed. People always have something interesting to say, and honestly wanting to hear them out is something ingrained in me. In fact, I find myself a fairly mundane person in conversation. I don’t know everything, but I already know what I know - so why would I want to hear myself speak? I find it far more interesting to hear what others know. It’s easy to be good when there are other good people around, and I’m lucky so far to have had many good people around me.
Social and intellectual capital
All these musings lead to two thoughts. The first: any interest people find in me cannot be credited to myself, but to my upbringing - and as such I am not praiseworthy for it. Recall Dirac, Darwin, and Cézanne: they could not have achieved what they did so easily without the support that they were given. Dirac had the ideal conditions for his study in Cambridge, which supported his idiosyncrasies; Darwin could not have been a gentleman scientist without the support of his family; Cézanne only bloomed later in life. While I am obviously no Dirac, Darwin, or Cézanne, the principle stands. I built off the scaffolding which others gave me.
The second: in some ways, I worry that I am living off the social and intellectual capital of my childhood. Much of my knowledge came from when I was a child and read books uninterrupted; now that I have the internet, I am invariably more distracted. (This is more evidence of the role of nurture more than nature - if I had a faster internet connection in my childhood, I would have played more computer games and not read as much.)
In his autobiography, Bryan Magee points out that part of Popper’s tragedy was that he lived off the social and intellectual capital of his youth. When Popper was younger, he taught in a high school, he discussed with others, was a volunteer in some societies, and all-in-all involved himself in many activities that made him a richer soul (in the non-supernatural sense of the word). But as he became older he became more withdrawn, less interested in others - and Magee (if I remember correctly) thinks that Popper’s creativity and work suffered correspondingly; he lived off the social and intellectual capital of his younger days.
This analysis can be read two ways. Perhaps it’s a tragedy that Popper did not carry on his habits into adulthood, but it’s also a triumph that the younger Popper lived such a rich life.
Reading that passage caused me to realise that I can’t live off my childhood forever; I’ve tried to strengthen my cognitive reserve and go outside my comfort zone (as suggested by Oakley’s Mindshift and Paterson’s How to be Miserable). This has largely taken the form of doing things I wouldn’t normally do, and has (hopefully) so far helped.
de Bono, Hagy, and nutshell thoughts
Edward de Bono has a book called How to Have a Beautiful Mind; Hagy has a book called How to be Interesting; both of these undoubtedly would have better ideas than this post. This is more a reflection on myself than a list of tips. But enough people have asked me this for writing a sustained response to be worth it.
People have asked me for advice on this before (even though I’m not expert on this). So if I had to boil this down to one sentence: Make yourself a better person and build up your social and intellectual capital, and then you’ll be interesting.
More concretely: read, take an interest in people, and have new experiences. (These can be relatively cheap: free community dance classes, meetups, smiling at strangers, taking up a new hobby.)
This piece had its origins in a get-to-know-you prompt from @transientpetersen and @hardlocke (given separately). As such, it’s a bit more self-centred than usual. I originally planned to write my answers to the prompt in full and post it all at once, but the pieces of the prompt became long in their own right - “the tale grew in the telling” - and I decided to post these separately, and later compile them together. As the Git heuristic would put it, commit early and often.
This post is more preachy than I’d like, but it’s inevitable for a post based on a get-to-know-you prompt. Recall Hume: it’s difficult to speak of oneself long without falling into vanity. Another quote which appears in Other People’s Thoughts, collected by Leys: of course I speak of myself most, as that’s the subject on which I am most expert. Hillmon makes a similar joke.
I would be interested to know in how @transientpetersen, @semantictheory, @hardlocke, @theparsologist, @notthedarklord42, @eka-mark, @n-bunz, @high-priestess-of-elua, @adventures-in-math-ed, @recursiverecursion, @theunitofcaring, @edwordsmyth, @eatsleepmath, @alexyar, @skiesburnblue, @beliqht, @iwilare, @somnilogical, @kenotype, @hamliet, @ciphergoth, @neurodiversitysci, @adhd-in-stem, and @adhd-community would answer the same question (along with any related thoughts):
What is the most common compliment you’ve been given? (Preferably from many people who don’t know each other.)
