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ChristianKl comments on Survey Article: How do I become a more interesting person? - Less Wrong Discussion
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I was writing about being an interesting person, not being an interesting conversationalist. See the comment I edited in: "I want this article to focus more on being an interesting person, rather than being an interesting conversationalist. Some ideas about conversations slipped in here, but I'll probably shift them over to the article on conversation when I get around to writing it"
Many people have told me that the think it is cool that I dance, in contrast no-one told me they thought it was cool that I played role playing games, back when I did it, except for people who engaged in that hobby as well. You can definitely get people to value you more by teaching people a few moves of Salsa and I've used it to get a few dates on Tinder.
Jim's advice about telling stories is pretty good, I'll include it if I write an article about it.
What does that phrase mean to you? To me it's interesting means that if you are at a party other people want to talk to you.
When it comes optimizing my own life for myself I don't focus on being interesting but rather attempt to do meaningful things that are good for me and the world around me.
It means the kind of person that people would want to meet. Being good at discussion is hugely important, but that's exactly why I want to put it into its own article.
Everybody who reads LW and integrates what they read into their lives is an interesting person provided they can tell stories about it.
If someone asks you what you do with your free time and you tell him that you read LW with is a community about getting rid of biases and fallacies that isn't interesting.
If you tell him you read LW and there you learned to fix your sleep that's interesting. If you tell him how you now take Melatonin and have now much more energy in your life that's a conversation they can remember a year later, provided you tell the story well.
Applied rationality provides for experiences that make good stories, provided you are good at story telling. On the other hand I don't think my Salsa dancing provides for experiences that make good stories that will likely to be remembered a year down the road.
I went to that extreme that my life was interesting enough to have two reporters with a camera man coming along to film a talk I was given at the Chaos Computer Congress for a Quantified Self documentary and at the same time seeing that I'm not socially interesting and feel like I can't tell interesting things at the end of 2011.
Having "interesting to journalists" but not "interesting for standard social interaction" covered might be a personal extreme that isn't true for everybody in LW, but I think most people here are basically interesting and there issues with other people not finding them as interesting as they would like lies in an inability to communicate interesting stories.
Second datapoint: I've been interviewed by journalists a few times, am terrible at people in general. (A whole half of these would have been dull and pointless interviews if not for my visual impairment. The others I could see happening regardless.)