Not some people are interesting [and others not], not some people are sparkly [and others not], but rather I find these people interesting, I find these people sparkly. Not sparkly people and how to find them, but rather how I find people that seem sparkly to me and people like me.
-- OMG yes this is such a good point.
When we say people are "interesting" and "sparkly", this is some statement not really about who they are but about how other people percieve them. Someone is "interesting" only w.r.t another person. Someone is "interesting" as a general quality when they interest most people.
But you are not most people, you are you! Which means you should throw out commonly-stated notions of interesting-ness out a lot more than like commonly-stated notions of how hardworking someone is or how good at math someone is or something like that. And like discover what this word actually means to you or something.
Phrases like "worth talking to" or how "good" a University is are other examples of this. I'm concerned people treat these as global qualities, whereas they're like relative to the person and the global version is just some average over everyone.
Sep 3Liked by laura gao, Oliver Hayman, Andrew Wu, Espen Slettnes
yes yes yes — also pertaining to the use of “npc” and “normie”. feels deeply reductionist and means you only get to know the people you deem as cool vs. maybe a more crazy/diverse group of people :)
yeah i *really* don't like npc. that one super sucks. normie i have some more sympathy for if only because "npc" is clearly supposed to be the "bad" one of "npc" and "player character" (as it were) whereas "normie" and "weirdo" are not actually clearly good/bad designators. but even that one definitely feels bad to me all the time
also yeah! you should try and get to know people you don't deem as cool! that is a good learning experience! and it's just good in general!
ok but would you like it more if it was spelled sparcly instead of sparkly
(jk)
i agree people shining is heavily context-dependent
i also spent much of freshman year of college only talking to sparc people but i think it wasn't about interesting-ness, it was because i had poor social skills and sparc had created an environment where it was easy to communicate with all these people. i imagine a lot of kids have a similar experience / easier communication gives the appearance of people being more interesting
yeah, that is actually partially the point of footnote 3. /shrug
i think the real danger is people attributing "context bad" or "lots of variance in interactions between humans" or "own low skill" or "other people's low skill" to "other people aren't interesting" and this is the thing i really want to kill idk.
The way I think about this (which is very similar to Oliver's comment) is that words like interesting and sparkly (I haven't read the Anson post tho) are two-place words - they have a missing "with respect to a particular someone's idea of interesting" https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/eDpPnT7wdBwWPGvo5/2-place-and-1-place-words
So whenever I come across a word like interesting I have a mental autocorrect that replaces it with interesting-to-me
I think this lives in a world of make-believe. Yes, some people really are better and more interesting than others in every way. A lot of people are totally uninteresting to me. This isn’t necessarily their fault, but it is ridiculous to pretend it isn’t true. All the traits that I find positive are correlated: intelligence with patience, with kindness, with being reasonable, with being interested in ideas.
You accuse people of never having worked a low wage job. I have. Thus I accuse you — have *you* ever worked a low paying job? Have you ever worked a job with harsh physical labor? To me, having to interact with my coworkers forever would be a bleak and miserable existence. No belief in equal human ability or interestingness can long survive contact with the whole spectrum of humanity.
> You accuse people of never having worked a low wage job. I have. Thus I accuse you — have *you* ever worked a low paying job? Have you ever worked a job with harsh physical labor? To me, having to interact with my coworkers forever would be a bleak and miserable existence.
I didn't write this as an accusation of any sorts! There is no accusation, for an accusation would imply that someone did something *wrong*, that someone is in some way *bad*. That I must be singling out someone for some crime they have committed.
In fact, I write the following:
> The people pointed to as being sparkly here—how many of them have needed to secure respect from others not for their intellectual abilities, their ideas and thoughts, but rather for their physical abilities? How many of them have worked low-wage service jobs, taken rudeness and worse from customers day in and day out? If they have, how many other real, common situations have they not experienced, because they haven’t even lived one lifetime?
I have not worked a low-wage service job before. I'm happy to admit that because I don't think that's a fault of mine (!), and I don't think that's a fault of anyone who might fall under the category "the people pointed to as being sparkly here."
I'm not making a value judgment on this. I'm saying that *it is true* that (some people who would be either 1) described by the post author as "sparkly" or 2) categorized as "sparkly" based on the discrete pieces of information in the blog post) have not worked a low wage service job. Therefore, it must follow that there exists some very real, common environment or context that they have never found themselves in. So how can we know if they would reliably shine in every context?
That's the argument here. I'm using a situation that I believe is 1) common in the world and 2) uncommon to "sparkly" people.
If the example I gave triggers you, I apologize. Feel free to substitute the examples I gave for "attended a celebrity socialite gala" or "tried teaching English to young recent immigrants" or "been treated dismissively due to their class or race or gender" or anything else you'd like. So-called "sparkly" people will invariably not have been in a metric crapton of common situations.
> A lot of people are totally uninteresting to me. This isn’t necessarily their fault, but it is ridiculous to pretend it isn’t true. All the traits that I find positive are correlated: intelligence with patience, with kindness, with being reasonable, with being interested in ideas.
> To me, having to interact with my coworkers forever would be a bleak and miserable existence.
I genuinely have no problem with any of what you're writing here. To be clear, part of the point of the post is that if you write "to me ... that I find ... to me", then you are *making statements about yourself*, and *that is okay.*
If you find a bunch of people uninteresting, that's totally your prerogative. I am not asking that you don't find them uninteresting: I am asking you to speak for yourself in that case, and not apply some global designation of "uninteresting" onto them.
> No belief in equal human ability or interestingness can long survive contact with the whole spectrum of humanity.
(for what it's worth, I was not even thinking about jobs with harsh physical labor. I was actually thinking about high school sports, where I reliably *did not* shine. but thanks for bringing that up too!)
My tone was harsh and polemical. I appreciate you clarifying your views.
I think your attitude would simply destroy words. Yes, we only have our own experienced to rely on. Are we able to make conclusions whatsoever? If I say that it is cold out, would you say that that is only my subjective experience, and you should not apply the global designation of cold upon it? Call a spade a spade! Some people are in fact just worse than others in the ways we care about, and you can just say that. They will, in fact, “shine” more, in any situation. See 1, for example. Innumerable examples are available from the psychological and economic literature, showing the positive correlation between intelligence and literally everything we consider good. Smart people are even better athletes, on average. (2) It sounds ugly, and we would no doubt prefer to retreat to a squishy egalitarianism. I think that this is self-deceiving, and that we should be honest.
Not some people are interesting [and others not], not some people are sparkly [and others not], but rather I find these people interesting, I find these people sparkly. Not sparkly people and how to find them, but rather how I find people that seem sparkly to me and people like me.
-- OMG yes this is such a good point.
When we say people are "interesting" and "sparkly", this is some statement not really about who they are but about how other people percieve them. Someone is "interesting" only w.r.t another person. Someone is "interesting" as a general quality when they interest most people.
But you are not most people, you are you! Which means you should throw out commonly-stated notions of interesting-ness out a lot more than like commonly-stated notions of how hardworking someone is or how good at math someone is or something like that. And like discover what this word actually means to you or something.
Phrases like "worth talking to" or how "good" a University is are other examples of this. I'm concerned people treat these as global qualities, whereas they're like relative to the person and the global version is just some average over everyone.
yes definitely!!
i love this post because it links to my blog post (but i also love this post on its own, it articulates a thought ive had before)
I do be rug-pulling
great post!!!
thanks!!
yes yes yes — also pertaining to the use of “npc” and “normie”. feels deeply reductionist and means you only get to know the people you deem as cool vs. maybe a more crazy/diverse group of people :)
yeah i *really* don't like npc. that one super sucks. normie i have some more sympathy for if only because "npc" is clearly supposed to be the "bad" one of "npc" and "player character" (as it were) whereas "normie" and "weirdo" are not actually clearly good/bad designators. but even that one definitely feels bad to me all the time
also yeah! you should try and get to know people you don't deem as cool! that is a good learning experience! and it's just good in general!
ok but would you like it more if it was spelled sparcly instead of sparkly
(jk)
i agree people shining is heavily context-dependent
i also spent much of freshman year of college only talking to sparc people but i think it wasn't about interesting-ness, it was because i had poor social skills and sparc had created an environment where it was easy to communicate with all these people. i imagine a lot of kids have a similar experience / easier communication gives the appearance of people being more interesting
the easier communication is kinda real, this reminds me when i described some interactions as being on "easy mode" or "hard mode"
yeah, that is actually partially the point of footnote 3. /shrug
i think the real danger is people attributing "context bad" or "lots of variance in interactions between humans" or "own low skill" or "other people's low skill" to "other people aren't interesting" and this is the thing i really want to kill idk.
As someone who's used the word "sparkly" and "interesting" a lot as a dominant part of their vocabulary, I really liked this post.
glad to hear : )
This is really cool
The way I think about this (which is very similar to Oliver's comment) is that words like interesting and sparkly (I haven't read the Anson post tho) are two-place words - they have a missing "with respect to a particular someone's idea of interesting" https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/eDpPnT7wdBwWPGvo5/2-place-and-1-place-words
So whenever I come across a word like interesting I have a mental autocorrect that replaces it with interesting-to-me
https://x.com/visakanv/status/1838185560487424403
I think this lives in a world of make-believe. Yes, some people really are better and more interesting than others in every way. A lot of people are totally uninteresting to me. This isn’t necessarily their fault, but it is ridiculous to pretend it isn’t true. All the traits that I find positive are correlated: intelligence with patience, with kindness, with being reasonable, with being interested in ideas.
You accuse people of never having worked a low wage job. I have. Thus I accuse you — have *you* ever worked a low paying job? Have you ever worked a job with harsh physical labor? To me, having to interact with my coworkers forever would be a bleak and miserable existence. No belief in equal human ability or interestingness can long survive contact with the whole spectrum of humanity.
Hi! A few notes:
> You accuse people of never having worked a low wage job. I have. Thus I accuse you — have *you* ever worked a low paying job? Have you ever worked a job with harsh physical labor? To me, having to interact with my coworkers forever would be a bleak and miserable existence.
I didn't write this as an accusation of any sorts! There is no accusation, for an accusation would imply that someone did something *wrong*, that someone is in some way *bad*. That I must be singling out someone for some crime they have committed.
In fact, I write the following:
> The people pointed to as being sparkly here—how many of them have needed to secure respect from others not for their intellectual abilities, their ideas and thoughts, but rather for their physical abilities? How many of them have worked low-wage service jobs, taken rudeness and worse from customers day in and day out? If they have, how many other real, common situations have they not experienced, because they haven’t even lived one lifetime?
I have not worked a low-wage service job before. I'm happy to admit that because I don't think that's a fault of mine (!), and I don't think that's a fault of anyone who might fall under the category "the people pointed to as being sparkly here."
I'm not making a value judgment on this. I'm saying that *it is true* that (some people who would be either 1) described by the post author as "sparkly" or 2) categorized as "sparkly" based on the discrete pieces of information in the blog post) have not worked a low wage service job. Therefore, it must follow that there exists some very real, common environment or context that they have never found themselves in. So how can we know if they would reliably shine in every context?
That's the argument here. I'm using a situation that I believe is 1) common in the world and 2) uncommon to "sparkly" people.
If the example I gave triggers you, I apologize. Feel free to substitute the examples I gave for "attended a celebrity socialite gala" or "tried teaching English to young recent immigrants" or "been treated dismissively due to their class or race or gender" or anything else you'd like. So-called "sparkly" people will invariably not have been in a metric crapton of common situations.
> A lot of people are totally uninteresting to me. This isn’t necessarily their fault, but it is ridiculous to pretend it isn’t true. All the traits that I find positive are correlated: intelligence with patience, with kindness, with being reasonable, with being interested in ideas.
> To me, having to interact with my coworkers forever would be a bleak and miserable existence.
I genuinely have no problem with any of what you're writing here. To be clear, part of the point of the post is that if you write "to me ... that I find ... to me", then you are *making statements about yourself*, and *that is okay.*
If you find a bunch of people uninteresting, that's totally your prerogative. I am not asking that you don't find them uninteresting: I am asking you to speak for yourself in that case, and not apply some global designation of "uninteresting" onto them.
> No belief in equal human ability or interestingness can long survive contact with the whole spectrum of humanity.
That's also a belief you're allowed to have!
(for what it's worth, I was not even thinking about jobs with harsh physical labor. I was actually thinking about high school sports, where I reliably *did not* shine. but thanks for bringing that up too!)
My tone was harsh and polemical. I appreciate you clarifying your views.
I think your attitude would simply destroy words. Yes, we only have our own experienced to rely on. Are we able to make conclusions whatsoever? If I say that it is cold out, would you say that that is only my subjective experience, and you should not apply the global designation of cold upon it? Call a spade a spade! Some people are in fact just worse than others in the ways we care about, and you can just say that. They will, in fact, “shine” more, in any situation. See 1, for example. Innumerable examples are available from the psychological and economic literature, showing the positive correlation between intelligence and literally everything we consider good. Smart people are even better athletes, on average. (2) It sounds ugly, and we would no doubt prefer to retreat to a squishy egalitarianism. I think that this is self-deceiving, and that we should be honest.
1) https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2010-15425-003
2) https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01154