4 ms·

"partner, children, family, home, job" I found all of these "ordinary" things in life to be quite extraordinary when they happened to me!

jdietrich 7y ago
That's rather the point though, isn't it? Your baby is fascinating because it's yours, but babies in the abstract aren't actually very interesting. They pass through the same developmental milestones at roughly the same rate and have the same (very limited) capacity for novelty. I've never met a baby with a unique perspective on the Israel-Palestine problem or a fabulous collection of golden age comic books. It's a bit like following someone else's baseball team - unless you're emotionally invested, it's really rather dull. Maybe I'm just a cynical misanthrope, but I'm not very interested in the mundane minutiae of other people's lives, nor do I expect them to be very interested in the mundane minutiae of mine. It would be quite weird if all seven billion of us were innately fascinating. An interesting question is how interestingness is distributed. A normal distribution seems plausible, but while I can think of people who are three-sigma interesting, I'm not sure I could think of someone who is three-sigma dull. Mass media would seem to suggest that a power-law distribution is more likely - most of us are really rather boring, but there's a long tail of exceptionally interesting people.
- Fellshard 7y ago
  The fact that it's yours makes it interesting by necessity, but also puts you in a position to discover ways in which all babies are - at least to some extent - interesting. There are minds that are anything but mundane beyond the minutiae. On the contrary, you seem to have restricted the category of interesting things so tightly that you're not noticing a whole treasure trove of things.
- camjohnson26 7y ago
  Yeah I think any random baby is more interesting than a comic book collection but maybe that’s just me.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Yeah, it's just you. A random baby below 2 y.o. is slightly less interesting (and less mentally developed) than a kitten. Unless you have an interest in medicine/psychology, there's not much to see there. It's also perceived a bit weird/creepy to be overly interested in other people's babies. Seriously, were I to be given a chance to spent an hour with a random baby (!= my baby, that's a different thing) vs. an hour with a random comic book, I'd pick the comic book every time. Can we admit that just because we're socially expected to consider something the cutest and most best thing in the world, doesn't mean it's actually all that interesting?
- akvadrako 7y ago
  At the very least, any old baby is vastly more interesting than all the AI the world has ever produced. They aren’t simple - they are far beyond our understanding.

jdietrich 7y ago

That's rather the point though, isn't it? Your baby is fascinating because it's yours, but babies in the abstract aren't actually very interesting. They pass through the same developmental milestones at roughly the same rate and have the same (very limited) capacity for novelty. I've never met a baby with a unique perspective on the Israel-Palestine problem or a fabulous collection of golden age comic books. It's a bit like following someone else's baseball team - unless you're emotionally invested, it's really rather dull. Maybe I'm just a cynical misanthrope, but I'm not very interested in the mundane minutiae of other people's lives, nor do I expect them to be very interested in the mundane minutiae of mine. It would be quite weird if all seven billion of us were innately fascinating. An interesting question is how interestingness is distributed. A normal distribution seems plausible, but while I can think of people who are three-sigma interesting, I'm not sure I could think of someone who is three-sigma dull. Mass media would seem to suggest that a power-law distribution is more likely - most of us are really rather boring, but there's a long tail of exceptionally interesting people.

Fellshard 7y ago
The fact that it's yours makes it interesting by necessity, but also puts you in a position to discover ways in which all babies are - at least to some extent - interesting. There are minds that are anything but mundane beyond the minutiae. On the contrary, you seem to have restricted the category of interesting things so tightly that you're not noticing a whole treasure trove of things.
camjohnson26 7y ago
Yeah I think any random baby is more interesting than a comic book collection but maybe that’s just me.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Yeah, it's just you. A random baby below 2 y.o. is slightly less interesting (and less mentally developed) than a kitten. Unless you have an interest in medicine/psychology, there's not much to see there. It's also perceived a bit weird/creepy to be overly interested in other people's babies. Seriously, were I to be given a chance to spent an hour with a random baby (!= my baby, that's a different thing) vs. an hour with a random comic book, I'd pick the comic book every time. Can we admit that just because we're socially expected to consider something the cutest and most best thing in the world, doesn't mean it's actually all that interesting?
akvadrako 7y ago
At the very least, any old baby is vastly more interesting than all the AI the world has ever produced. They aren’t simple - they are far beyond our understanding.