I think of interestingness as a (negative) measure of “mental effort per unit information transferred” – in most cases, reducing that effort is a good thing.
FWIW this feels like an extremely surprising definition to me. I appreciate its clarity, but would not have gotten this definition from either Kat’s post or if you just asked me for examples of interesting writing.
Consider fiction. In fantasy for example, I think of eg China Mieville’s writing as very interesting, but the amount of cognitive effort needed to understand his writing is somewhat higher than for writers with simpler styles (eg Brandon Sanderson).
I do think it’s harder for me to define what I mean for fiction, but this doesn’t intuitively feel like a counterexample to me. I think part of what make’s Mieville’s fiction interesting is its unusually high level of idea density, which outweighs its somewhat higher effort level.
I was originally going to write something like “mental effort per number of words read” or something, but went with “information” instead, and I think this is a good example of why. (“novel information” or something might be even better.)
If China Mieville had the prose of Hemingway, would you consider his writing more or less interesting?
To me, my intuitive conception of interestingness is that controlling for idea density, overwrought writing/poetry/complex metaphors (if done well) is usually more interesting writing than spartan, choppy sentences.
I don’t know anything about the prose of Hemingway, so I can’t answer your first paragraph.
How do you define the state of being interested in something? I think I would go with something like “it’s easier and more pleasant to engage deeply with this”. Which seems very closely linked to ease of information transfer to me.
How do you define the state of being interested in something?
Something like a high degree of surprise and greater willingness to engage/share/remember. For writing this might be things like turns of phrase or template that I’d like to steal. For content I’m not sure, one simple model is “value of information” but it doesn’t actually fully capture my internal senses of excitement.
FWIW this feels like an extremely surprising definition to me. I appreciate its clarity, but would not have gotten this definition from either Kat’s post or if you just asked me for examples of interesting writing.
Consider fiction. In fantasy for example, I think of eg China Mieville’s writing as very interesting, but the amount of cognitive effort needed to understand his writing is somewhat higher than for writers with simpler styles (eg Brandon Sanderson).
I do think it’s harder for me to define what I mean for fiction, but this doesn’t intuitively feel like a counterexample to me. I think part of what make’s Mieville’s fiction interesting is its unusually high level of idea density, which outweighs its somewhat higher effort level.
I was originally going to write something like “mental effort per number of words read” or something, but went with “information” instead, and I think this is a good example of why. (“novel information” or something might be even better.)
If China Mieville had the prose of Hemingway, would you consider his writing more or less interesting?
To me, my intuitive conception of interestingness is that controlling for idea density, overwrought writing/poetry/complex metaphors (if done well) is usually more interesting writing than spartan, choppy sentences.
I don’t know anything about the prose of Hemingway, so I can’t answer your first paragraph.
How do you define the state of being interested in something? I think I would go with something like “it’s easier and more pleasant to engage deeply with this”. Which seems very closely linked to ease of information transfer to me.
Something like a high degree of surprise and greater willingness to engage/share/remember. For writing this might be things like turns of phrase or template that I’d like to steal. For content I’m not sure, one simple model is “value of information” but it doesn’t actually fully capture my internal senses of excitement.