Dull Men’s Club

This isn't how math works.

When you get to the point in a proof of the irrationality of root two where you've demonstrated that if it is expressible as a fraction p/q, then both p and q have to be even, you don't then need to proceed to prove that if they're both even, then they both have to be divisible by four, and then if they're both divisible by four, that means they're both divisible by eight...

I mean, you can, but you don't have to.

You can just say 'if it's a rational number then it has a reduced form where p and q have gcf of 1, so if p and q would both have to be even, that is a contradiction'.

Same with the 'set of uninteresting numbers'. If 'being uninteresting' is a property numbers can have, then the 'set of uninteresting numbers' exists, and it has a least member. Being the least member of the set of uninteresting numbers is interesting.

You don't have to infinitely regress from here and get tied up in knots saying that surely there is some 'first truly uninteresting number' to prove that the set is actually empty - you can just see that you must have gone wrong somewhere. Either:

1) Being the least member of the set of uninteresting numbers isn't as interesting as we assume.

or

2) 'Being uninteresting' is not a property numbers can have

I think actually of the two, 1) is more likely the case.

But that doesn't defy mathematical logic. It is a consequence of mathematical logic.

overers see the world as it is and live to solve problems.

underers are frantically trying to fix their broken lives.

nihilists lacking opinions are empty shells.

It depends on the cat, and how your home is set up. In my lifetime, I've only had one cat that played with the toilet paper. In my current place, the toilet is in a separate room by itself, and the door is kept closed, so the cat can't even get in there.

I don't know why this perspective bothers me so much, but it does. This idea that people are alternatively dull or interesting feels wrong to me, on a kind of visceral level. So far so that I'm having trouble marshaling my thoughts enough that I can tell you why. It's like there's an intuition gap so large I'm getting vertigo. Nothing here is intended to say that the way you feel about it is invalid, but I need to write out my own feelings in order to put my brain's feet back on solid ground.

It feels entirely backwards to me that there is some kind of dull/exciting switch that flips and a person becomes dull or exciting, depending on whether the observer finds the topic the person is speaking about interesting. The one at fault (such that there is any) for the lack of interest isn't usually the speaker, surely?

I have a friend who works in a field that most people absolutely find completely uninteresting (and, to be frank, I am also uninterested in the field in general), but when we sit and have a pint after work and have a chat, I can't help but be engaged because there is more to learn about everything, and while the technical minutiae of his trade is unexciting, the conversation is not. I know more about turbidity now than I ever expected or needed to, but I don't feel like it was time wasted.

Swap me out for an analog of your wife, and the guy flips from interesting to dull? That seems unfair, for some reason, not that fairness should really ever into it. Just because an interest isn't shared doesn't mean it should be derided as dull, right?

And, y'know, conversely, I know a dull guy. Like, I like to think I'm a good conversationalist. I can hold my own in a chat with basically anyone. But this guy. He sink-holes literally anything you try to say. One word answers. You can drag out the most maniacal story of the past few years of your life, a story that every single person you've ever talked to about it has been engaged and you get a good back and forth and a bit of patter, but this guy: "Oh, cool". And he's like that with everyone. Play word association, you say salt, I say pepper, you say this guy's name, I say dull. All of this seems really mean, but I'm pretty sure he's happy being that guy. I mean who knows what his actual inner thoughts about the matter might be, because you'll never get him to say anything worth listening to about it.

And this, I think, is probably the crux of why I'm so not on board with the way you see it. My friend and my boring friend are not the same, vis-a-vis in a dullness competition. They're not even in the same weight class.

Anyway. Perspectives. Weird, huh?