4 ms·

Can you make yourself intentionally interested in a topic?

DanBC 7y ago
I think to me this is the key question raised by the essay. A lot of people with fixed and repetitive interests in something will be autistic. I'd be interested to know what the ratios are for autistic vs not for people who have this kind of obsessive interest.
zozbot234 7y ago
Often, you can get close enough to make it a useful approach. Start from the easiest parts, and then gradually drill deeper while making sure that you're building up a solid understanding, without taking unclear, obscure shortcuts. This is not always easy, but the payoff can be quite real.
smitty1e 7y ago
You can if you fancy a peaceful domestic arrangement.
loopz 7y ago
I was thinking the same thing. Being obsessively interested sounds neat when you watch others spend their entire lives, eg. collecting stamps and coins. According to this wisdom, when they find the rare gem that makes them a fortune they're geniuses. However, who can will themselves into becoming obsessive with something. Wouldn't it be kind of self-defeating if it is to take something out of it (ie. opposite of karma-yoga)? What you can do: - stop drinking, using drugs and passively consuming shit - swim/exercise the body - study what you're passionate about - cultivate interest further, by iterating on building stuff, meeting peers who share similar interests, followup on your ideas and dreams - long walks in nature to think about it deeper, periods where you remove yourself away from people - balance your interests with sustainable living, because you're not doing it just to score big! Not so sure people can will themselves to change that much. You can enjoy life, cultivate what works and hedge your bets, in that order. By following your core life-theme and ideas, you should become more of what you already are.
- westoncb 7y ago
  I agree with this. One thing I’d add from personal observation: things get more interesting the more time you spend with them. I’ve done ‘total immersion’ kinds of things with both math and the boardgame Go, with pretty good results in both cases. I pretty much just kept the topic around all the time for a sustained period. Sometimes that meant reading about history or philosophy of the subject, consuming related media, etc. Didn’t take long before I could look at a Go board and get sucked in, or at least have a fairly profound aesthetic experience if it was a nice configuration. Took a lot longer with math, and there what I get is generally like reading about a nice idea from a sci-for short story. I don’t think this would work without some genuine interest/curiosity in the subject to begin with though. And there were times with both where I was intimidated or there were tasks I needed to do in order to improve that I didn’t want to do, which seems fine as long as there’s a larger portion of gratifying experience.
  - loopz 7y ago
    Indeed. There are studies about grit and determination over time being strong indicators for possible later success. In any endeavour having some unknown value, overlooked by others, there will be periods where you feel all alone, experience some disinterest or need to grit through some necessary activities/work in order to push forward. There will not always be happy feelings about what you do or even why you do it, though such feelings will be more on the level of superficial aversion and procrastination. In activities and studies with heavy competition, that competition will be extremely hard to beat. Both may be overcome by grit and determination, while those with natural abilities or superior training, often give up earlier due to various unrelated reasons.
- 1996 7y ago
  uh, most of your list is about what is popular now and wouldn't have been popular in say the 70s or 80s Only 2 points seem timeless: - study what you're passionate about - cultivate interest further, by iterating on building stuff, meeting peers who share similar interests, followup on your ideas and dreams
- wehrkeoruw 7y ago
kache_ 7y ago
Yes. There is beauty in everything, if you look hard enough you can find it. This is something I've routinely done in my life, and I attribute it to most of my success. At some point in university I learned to enjoy doing my assignments and school work, which paid off dramatically. However, I think that a prerequisite to this is to be a naturally curious person.
Agebor 7y ago
Yes, by visualisation of the future. There are many ways to do this, like meditation, or some substances. You basically imagine yourself in the future, having achieved some goal, or being in a situation that you like. This image has to be rich and invoke many emotions, so it becomes engraved in your neural paths. You then work backwards from there, imagining different roads and specific steps on how to achieve that. It literally and physically changes your brain over time, as you repeat it.
ssivark 7y ago
To quote Feynman: “Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.” It is relatively easy to get interested in various topics. But being obsessively interested in one/few of them is a completely different matter -- a lot of other "normal" aspects of life tend to suffer as a side-effect. Our society does not do a good job of nurturing and encouraging such lopsided profiles, and trying to keep that spark alive while leading a "normal" life extracts an incredibly heavy cost. Understandably, most "normal" people (instinctively) find that to be a cost not worth paying. Embedded in contemporary society, few such people manage to pursue their interest to their satisfaction, and fewer do well enough to be considered "successful" by society (a vanishing fraction become outstandingly successful, and are then called "geniuses").
dunkelheit 7y ago
One way is to enter a competition with others. Using the example from the essay, a big part of obsession with bus tickets is probably explained by being able to show off rare bus tickets to fellow collectors. Incidentally, many cool things seem to spring out of some kind of a "scene" (which is defined by this friendly competition among its members).
- DanBC 7y ago
  > Using the example from the essay, a big part of obsession with bus tickets is probably explained by being able to show off rare bus tickets to fellow collectors. Eh, I had a large collection. I still have a collection of a few hundred tickets (not worth much, a few hundred pounds). I started the collection in about 1997. I stopped in about 2003. I've never shown other collectors my tickets, and I've only put about 5 tickets online and that was only this year. I think for this obsessional collecting it's really not about other people. It's about systematizing and categorising the world. Outside is chaos and confusion. In here, with this collection, there is order and control.
  - dunkelheit 7y ago
    I love it that on HN my point can be disproved by an actual bus ticket collector! Still I think my larger point stands - Girardian mimetic desire (http://www.imitatio.org/brief-intro http://www.imitatio.org/brief-intro) is a powerful force that certainly can get you interested in something.
    - DanBC 7y ago
      Oh! I don't want to say I'm disproving your point. I'm only providing a small counter example. Maybe most other people are driven by sharing their collection? Museums have been a big deal for a while and some of that is around collecting the obscure items in order to display them
pakitan 7y ago
For me, no, I don't think I can do that. For years I've been doing the "Electronics is cool, I should learn more about it but not today" routine. Now, I started doing some heavy research into solar energy, for purely practical reasons, and I'm finally actually interested in electronics and learning. I can't seem to summon interest in something unless I see at least a little bit of practical use for myself. I think one of the reasons is that learning is too abstract, unless connected to a particular problem I'm trying to solve. With electronics, the issue is that yes it sounds very cool but I just didn't see what I could do with the knowledge. Sure, I'll buy an arduino and have it water my pot flower but that's utterly boring and useless. But with solar energy systems, there are a lot of intricacies and compromises and learning electronics is very rewarding. The downside is that I seem to lose interest very quickly, once I solve my particular problem. But I still learn a lot and have fun in the meantime.
lazyjones 7y ago
Why would you?
csa 7y ago
Do you mean interested in something or interested in a specific topic? If you’re not curious about the world in general, then I’m not sure anything can change that trajectory, although I could be wrong. For a specific topic, I recommend learning about that topic from someone who is passionate about it and who is a good teacher. Sometimes this can be as easy as reading books by a good author. When I was in high school, I despised history. It turns out that I despised it because I had never been exposed to compelling history. I ended up becoming friends with someone who was a passionate historian, and he pointed me to compelling resources that totally changed my mind about history. In college, I had no interest in art or art classes. A friend of mine took a drawing class that she said “blew her mind”. I couldn’t believe it, but she just told me to trust her and take the class. I asked a few other people, and they all said the same thing. I took the class, and they were all correct. While the topic was technically drawing, the professor pushed us to explore what our drawing told us about ourselves, how we could expand our minds through drawing, and how our drawing related to our interactions with the world. Just re-reading that, it sounds like hippy-dippy bullshit, but to experience it was something else, and it is something most participants in that class took away in a positive way. I ended up minoring in art, and I worked with another professor who really stretched my mind. While these are my personal experiences (and there are many more that I didn’t mention), I think I have seen this pattern amongst my friends and acquaintances as well. As such, I recommend finding a good, highly recommended, talented teacher if you want to get interested in a new topic. Note that they are not always easy to find.

I think to me this is the key question raised by the essay. A lot of people with fixed and repetitive interests in something will be autistic. I'd be interested to know what the ratios are for autistic vs not for people who have this kind of obsessive interest.

zozbot234 7y ago

Often, you can get close enough to make it a useful approach. Start from the easiest parts, and then gradually drill deeper while making sure that you're building up a solid understanding, without taking unclear, obscure shortcuts. This is not always easy, but the payoff can be quite real.

smitty1e 7y ago

You can if you fancy a peaceful domestic arrangement.

loopz 7y ago

I was thinking the same thing. Being obsessively interested sounds neat when you watch others spend their entire lives, eg. collecting stamps and coins. According to this wisdom, when they find the rare gem that makes them a fortune they're geniuses. However, who can will themselves into becoming obsessive with something. Wouldn't it be kind of self-defeating if it is to take something out of it (ie. opposite of karma-yoga)? What you can do: - stop drinking, using drugs and passively consuming shit - swim/exercise the body - study what you're passionate about - cultivate interest further, by iterating on building stuff, meeting peers who share similar interests, followup on your ideas and dreams - long walks in nature to think about it deeper, periods where you remove yourself away from people - balance your interests with sustainable living, because you're not doing it just to score big! Not so sure people can will themselves to change that much. You can enjoy life, cultivate what works and hedge your bets, in that order. By following your core life-theme and ideas, you should become more of what you already are.

westoncb 7y ago
I agree with this. One thing I’d add from personal observation: things get more interesting the more time you spend with them. I’ve done ‘total immersion’ kinds of things with both math and the boardgame Go, with pretty good results in both cases. I pretty much just kept the topic around all the time for a sustained period. Sometimes that meant reading about history or philosophy of the subject, consuming related media, etc. Didn’t take long before I could look at a Go board and get sucked in, or at least have a fairly profound aesthetic experience if it was a nice configuration. Took a lot longer with math, and there what I get is generally like reading about a nice idea from a sci-for short story. I don’t think this would work without some genuine interest/curiosity in the subject to begin with though. And there were times with both where I was intimidated or there were tasks I needed to do in order to improve that I didn’t want to do, which seems fine as long as there’s a larger portion of gratifying experience.
- loopz 7y ago
  Indeed. There are studies about grit and determination over time being strong indicators for possible later success. In any endeavour having some unknown value, overlooked by others, there will be periods where you feel all alone, experience some disinterest or need to grit through some necessary activities/work in order to push forward. There will not always be happy feelings about what you do or even why you do it, though such feelings will be more on the level of superficial aversion and procrastination. In activities and studies with heavy competition, that competition will be extremely hard to beat. Both may be overcome by grit and determination, while those with natural abilities or superior training, often give up earlier due to various unrelated reasons.
1996 7y ago
uh, most of your list is about what is popular now and wouldn't have been popular in say the 70s or 80s Only 2 points seem timeless: - study what you're passionate about - cultivate interest further, by iterating on building stuff, meeting peers who share similar interests, followup on your ideas and dreams
wehrkeoruw 7y ago

kache_ 7y ago

Yes. There is beauty in everything, if you look hard enough you can find it. This is something I've routinely done in my life, and I attribute it to most of my success. At some point in university I learned to enjoy doing my assignments and school work, which paid off dramatically. However, I think that a prerequisite to this is to be a naturally curious person.

Agebor 7y ago

Yes, by visualisation of the future. There are many ways to do this, like meditation, or some substances. You basically imagine yourself in the future, having achieved some goal, or being in a situation that you like. This image has to be rich and invoke many emotions, so it becomes engraved in your neural paths. You then work backwards from there, imagining different roads and specific steps on how to achieve that. It literally and physically changes your brain over time, as you repeat it.

ssivark 7y ago

To quote Feynman: “Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.” It is relatively easy to get interested in various topics. But being obsessively interested in one/few of them is a completely different matter -- a lot of other "normal" aspects of life tend to suffer as a side-effect. Our society does not do a good job of nurturing and encouraging such lopsided profiles, and trying to keep that spark alive while leading a "normal" life extracts an incredibly heavy cost. Understandably, most "normal" people (instinctively) find that to be a cost not worth paying. Embedded in contemporary society, few such people manage to pursue their interest to their satisfaction, and fewer do well enough to be considered "successful" by society (a vanishing fraction become outstandingly successful, and are then called "geniuses").

dunkelheit 7y ago

One way is to enter a competition with others. Using the example from the essay, a big part of obsession with bus tickets is probably explained by being able to show off rare bus tickets to fellow collectors. Incidentally, many cool things seem to spring out of some kind of a "scene" (which is defined by this friendly competition among its members).

DanBC 7y ago
> Using the example from the essay, a big part of obsession with bus tickets is probably explained by being able to show off rare bus tickets to fellow collectors. Eh, I had a large collection. I still have a collection of a few hundred tickets (not worth much, a few hundred pounds). I started the collection in about 1997. I stopped in about 2003. I've never shown other collectors my tickets, and I've only put about 5 tickets online and that was only this year. I think for this obsessional collecting it's really not about other people. It's about systematizing and categorising the world. Outside is chaos and confusion. In here, with this collection, there is order and control.
- dunkelheit 7y ago
  I love it that on HN my point can be disproved by an actual bus ticket collector! Still I think my larger point stands - Girardian mimetic desire (http://www.imitatio.org/brief-intro http://www.imitatio.org/brief-intro) is a powerful force that certainly can get you interested in something.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    Oh! I don't want to say I'm disproving your point. I'm only providing a small counter example. Maybe most other people are driven by sharing their collection? Museums have been a big deal for a while and some of that is around collecting the obscure items in order to display them

pakitan 7y ago

For me, no, I don't think I can do that. For years I've been doing the "Electronics is cool, I should learn more about it but not today" routine. Now, I started doing some heavy research into solar energy, for purely practical reasons, and I'm finally actually interested in electronics and learning. I can't seem to summon interest in something unless I see at least a little bit of practical use for myself. I think one of the reasons is that learning is too abstract, unless connected to a particular problem I'm trying to solve. With electronics, the issue is that yes it sounds very cool but I just didn't see what I could do with the knowledge. Sure, I'll buy an arduino and have it water my pot flower but that's utterly boring and useless. But with solar energy systems, there are a lot of intricacies and compromises and learning electronics is very rewarding. The downside is that I seem to lose interest very quickly, once I solve my particular problem. But I still learn a lot and have fun in the meantime.

lazyjones 7y ago

Why would you?

csa 7y ago

Do you mean interested in something or interested in a specific topic? If you’re not curious about the world in general, then I’m not sure anything can change that trajectory, although I could be wrong. For a specific topic, I recommend learning about that topic from someone who is passionate about it and who is a good teacher. Sometimes this can be as easy as reading books by a good author. When I was in high school, I despised history. It turns out that I despised it because I had never been exposed to compelling history. I ended up becoming friends with someone who was a passionate historian, and he pointed me to compelling resources that totally changed my mind about history. In college, I had no interest in art or art classes. A friend of mine took a drawing class that she said “blew her mind”. I couldn’t believe it, but she just told me to trust her and take the class. I asked a few other people, and they all said the same thing. I took the class, and they were all correct. While the topic was technically drawing, the professor pushed us to explore what our drawing told us about ourselves, how we could expand our minds through drawing, and how our drawing related to our interactions with the world. Just re-reading that, it sounds like hippy-dippy bullshit, but to experience it was something else, and it is something most participants in that class took away in a positive way. I ended up minoring in art, and I worked with another professor who really stretched my mind. While these are my personal experiences (and there are many more that I didn’t mention), I think I have seen this pattern amongst my friends and acquaintances as well. As such, I recommend finding a good, highly recommended, talented teacher if you want to get interested in a new topic. Note that they are not always easy to find.