In a research paper from 1971, Murray S. Davis gives a bold answer: interesting ideas are those that deny certain assumptions of their audiences, while non-interesting ideas are those that affirm them. An idea is not interesting because it's new or thought to be right, but because it challenges what we normally believe.

It is denial of some truth, not the creation of a new one, that makes an idea interesting.

I think about this paper frequently. Generating good ideas is not enough, ideas have to be interesting, especially when the knowledge we create become more abundant and we fight for attention.

Here's my summary and take of Davis' paper "That's Interesting!: Towards a Phenomenology of Sociology and a Sociology of Phenomenology"

The 4 steps to be interesting

1. Take a commonly-held belief

2. Deny it

3. Explain why

4. Provide further consequences

A recipe to generate interesting ideas is to look at common assumptions about your subject, say it's wrong and provide good reasons for it to be wrong.

Example

I'm personally interested in freelancing. So a claim I can make to be interesting is the following:

1. Freelancing is a great way to be more free (you choose your clients and times.)

2. But that's wrong. The dependence of managing clients is even more stressful than employment.

3. That's because your performance is more directly tied to you

4. Furthermore, being self-employed means a lot more admin work than if you worked at a company. You have to work more. It also means you work more on your own, and loneliness sucks. The lure that freelancing equals freedom is so deceptive, that most people end up going back to regular employment after a few years.

That is more interesting than if I affirmed the claim that freelancing = freedom.

12 ways to be interesting

According to Davis there are the 12 categories of interestingness, all formed around the same structure: “we thought that X, but actually Y”. Here's my visual representation of his categories:

Example from above, under Evaluation: "Large breakfasts are good for your health", prove the opposite to be interesting.

The 2 conditions to be interesting

1. You need to know who your audience is and what their assumptions are about your subject. The more clear your understanding of the commonly-held assumptions, the more striking your denial of it.

2. The subject at hand must be important for the audience. If a belief has no importance, no matter how interesting the denial of it, the argument will stay boring.

This means both an understanding of the topic, and the understanding of other's perception about the topic.

Time of writing: May 2023