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Comment by myaccountonhn | Hacker News Reader

Ordinary people can be interesting though.

If you meet someone who is completely and utterly uninteresting, that in itself is interesting.

There are no uninteresting natural numbers. One, as the smallest natural number, is certainly interesting. Assume all numbers up to n are interesting. If n+1 is uninteresting it is the smallest uninteresting number and therefore interesting.

And yet everybody cares precisely nothing about almost all natural numbers.

… where we came in. The premise is flawed. n + 3 can never become interesting because when n + 2 becomes the smallest uninteresting number, n + 1 cannot hold that distinction at the same time, so n + 1 loses its interesting status as the smallest interesting number, and becomes uninteresting again, which means n + 2 is no longer the smallest uninteresting number, n + 1 is and isn’t this…

Most people are completely and utterly uninteresting. I feel that interest in people is largely a physical reaction rather than a thought exercise. Even people who have done cool stuff are often uninteresting. Their story may be interesting, but their person is not.

that's subjective and not worth discussing much if you do not specify what makes a person interesting for you

I don't really know. Why do we get along with some people but not others? There's probably a definable reason but it's not usually a conciously-reasoned thing that can be easily specified or classified.

> Most people are completely and utterly uninteresting

How do we even define interesting ? Like interesting opinions/hobbies? Good storyteller ? Who cares about that. I do need to like you and you need to be an agreeable person imo, but no having a real unique life or opinions is really not that necessary imo. Having a sense of humor is a big plus to me though.

> Their story may be interesting, but their person is not.

What do you mean by that? What's the difference between a person and their story?

Because people expect another person to be a amusement park- a show. They are not. They are a information processing system- often not even fully self-aware of the information their subconcious weaves into complex ideas. Surveilance and reflection does not improve that performance or allows to reproduce it. It instead produces distraction.

This is why you can not "interview" innovative or creative people- and only get a flat "imposter" image of the creative person. The observation hinders the process and all you get is basically the "house keeping" routines- weaving together some plausible stories, on how a "idea" came to be.

The true process is a walk in the mountains. Some scribbled notes. Glued together during some conversation on a similar topic with friends. I always found it fascinating, how the "iterrators" can dismiss something/someone that clearly works- just because they can not dissect and reproduce it.

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