curiosity overcomes boredom
In Re: I'm just so bored of AI, Don wrote:
In his post, "I'm just so bored of AI," Terence Eden says words that speak directly to my soul:
I can't fucking wait for this bubble to burst so we can go back to chatting shit about literally anything else.
We don't have to settle for the dismal outlook of the featured article and its comments. Bubble or not, we can already curate desirable discussion topics and partners alike. However, could there be other ways to triumph over boredom wherever we go? I'm reminded of Visa's tweet:
interesting people are never bored
Could boredom be seen as a failure of attention over a shortage of stimulation? Moreover, could interestingness be seen as a behavior over a set of subjects? Take one of Visa's patterns for "demonstrating interestingness" from his Substack article, interestingness on demand:
So what? Why is that interesting?
Looking for more? Have another from this tweet of his:
protip: whenever you feel compelled to say “that sounds boring”, swap it for “what do you like about it?” and watch your social life flourish as people begin to enjoy your company
Allow me to invoke the rule of three with what Dave's tweet suggests in the same thread:
And if you can't even ask that, ask "what surprised you about it?"
Incredible shortcut to the best anecdote
Back to Terence's article, he presents a short example of boredom and his attempt to resolve it:
Wow! You got your little computer friend to automate calling your mum? Great job, mate! Can we talk about something interesting now?
Yes, we can through friendly, curious, and optimistic reframes like above. Life has so much entropy as it stands. We can choose to revel with others in their joy without having to take it so hard on ourselves. If we truly don't want to do that, or find no joy in trying to, how can we shift our attention to who and what we desire instead? Then again, those people might just be pulling off similar strategies to those that didn't work for us...