A funny thing about curiosity

Over the last six months, as I’ve been looking for things that will interest me, I’ve done it coldly. I’ve kept a list of things that makes me say, “Hm. That’s interesting.” That is, I’ve looked for things that match the pattern of how an Interesting Idea is supposed to look. But I’ve forgotten to ask myself what feels interesting, as in, “I can’t ... See more

I notice that I feel embarrassed by the ideas I get when I ask myself what would be funny to write about. The ideas feel odd (a review of underrated grammatical tense forms, an essay exploring the image of transparent ice) and I can’t explain why they excite me. They feel elliptical and, well, not like the kind of thing I should be writing.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong in making things that are interesting to other people. But, to borrow an insight from Brian Eno, the best way to do that is to follow your curiosity and then build a frame around the result so it makes sense to others afterward .

Being curious is important to me. Not only because it is how I get ideas for essays. It feels to me like everyone has something unrepeatable to bring into the world. And we can manifest it by going in our direction of maximal interestingness. The pattern we make as our curiosity pulls us hither and thither like a dog chasing a smell across a field—... See more

Here’s a funny thing: when I ask myself, “What is the most amusing thing I could do next?” the ideas that occur to me feel . . . interesting. A lot more interesting than the ideas I get when looking for the interesting.

The more general point, then, is: interestingness, the compulsion to know, is not a property of an idea; it is a cluster of emotions. You can’t go looking for interesting ideas, not directly. You have to look for that thing that surges up in you—surges like rage, like laughter, like sadness—when you encounter clues.

Thinking about it a bit more, I realize that looking for the fun is a special case of a more general insight. There are other emotional cues that point toward the interesting, besides fun. Laura Deming, for example, describes her curiosity as a kind of rage (“ but what in Newton’s name is heat actually????? What is temperature????” ).

the path of maximal interestingness is supposed to feel like fun . Not fun as in “I feel entertained” but fun as in, “this is engrossing and self-surprising, life-affirming and a little scary.”

Being curious is important to me. Not only because it is how I get ideas for essays. It feels to me like everyone has something unrepeatable to bring into the world. And we can manifest it by going in our direction of maximal interestingness.