Oh so sleepy.
Oh, I feel a list coming on. A “What’s Interesting to Amy” sort of list. Because really, isn’t that the best kind?
1. Psychology, or Why Individual Humans Behave the Way They Do: This never fails to fascinate me. For instance, today in my blog feed, I found out about 13 types of worriers; last week I learned about 7 common defense mechanisms (well, it might have been 8, but I can’t find it now, so I have no idea). This also feeds into my interest in cognitive science.
2. Sociology, or What Humans Do When They Get Together in Groups: Yeah, I’m interested in people, what can I say? For instance, I read this article (I can’t find it, but here’s another one about a similar topic) about a study in which it was shown that a group of people who think they are in competition with another group for the same resources is likely to give that other group negative qualities and characteristics, even if they know absolutely nothing about that other group. How interesting is that?
3. History, or What Humans Did in the Past: People say that history is important so that we won’t repeat the mistakes of the past. I don’t know about this because it seems to me that we do, in fact, repeat the same mistakes sometimes. I think history is interesting because it tells us the story of where we come from (and there are many versions of the same story, some of which have been lost over time) and show us what is possible in terms of human existence and human behavior. We see both the best and the worst of humanity through study of our history, and every shade of gray in between.
4. Science Fiction, or What Humans Might Do in the Future: I guess technically this is called futurism, but science fiction comes close enough for me. I love wondering what the world will be like in fifty years, or a hundred years, or two hundred years. I love guessing what societies might develop, and what aspects of them might be unthinkably bizarre to us now. I’m grateful I’m an optimist because otherwise I’d probably find this more depressing than interesting, but as it is, I can’t wait to find out if we figure out how to cause humans to regrow their teeth in my lifetime.
5. Chocolate: Yes, chocolate is very interesting indeed, only to be trumped by chocolate ice cream. Excuse me for a minute, won’t you?
Your turn! What’s interesting to you? What subjects do you find endlessly fascinating? Where do you turn when you want brain candy?
The Practical Free Spirit 
Another possible interesting topic you might add is why a flock of free-ranging chickens are so similar to human beings in their behavior.
Okay, yeah, I’ll bite. Now I really want to know. Google to the rescue later today, perhaps. 🙂
i am completely fasctinated by the home computing revolution, and the events leading up to it. from the MIT model railroad club all the way to the present. and all the little sub-genres that occur in that timeline. i can, and do, read about that subject fairly often. i’m also enthralled by the pronunciation of foreign languanges. those are just a couple. 🙂
Ooh, yeah, I think the home computing revolution is fascinating, particularly since I lived through it myself so I have personal experience to reference as well. I am going to try to remember this so that next time I see you, we can talk about it!
History is a fascinating subject for me, but I understand why it’s not fascinating for most people: it’s complicated. And I don’t mean because there’s lots of names and dates to memorize.
For example, I’ve been doing lots of reading lately about the pre-American Civil War period (I’m giving a presentation in Febuary at my local library). People love to debate whether the war was about slavery or states rights; my conclusion is that the Civil War’s causes can’t be simplified down to “It was caused by [one thing]”. Slavery, states rights, economics, secularism, immigration – it’s so intertwined that there isn’t a simple answer. I don’t think most people want to hear that.
Also, history has some amazing characters who legitimately lead fascinating lives.
I love how history is complicated and there are no easy answers. We had to write a few opinion papers in American History: one was on who fired the first shot in the Revolutionary War, and even after reading through various first sources, there was no clear-cut “for sure” answer. And the movement of cause and effect in history generally has so many ripples and complications and maybes and also’s. But yes, for people that want things to be simple and black and white, history is probably very frustrating.
Science. Neuroscience, genetics, nanotech, quantum physics, cosmology, artificial intelligence, chaos / complexity theory and similar things. Particularly to the extent that we can make some connections between these and philosophy / metaphysics.
Also, everything on your list. Particularly chocolate.
With an interest list like that, I’m a little bit surprised you don’t write more science fiction as well as fantasy. 🙂
But what a great list of interesting subjects. I do wish I was better at holding what I know about quantum physics in my head. But I guess I did the next best thing in marrying a physicist who can shove those facts back into my head whenever I ask.
We have some overlap! I read a lot on neuroscience, psychology (specifically cognitive bias), sociology, morbid anatomy, criminal justice (mostly injustice and wrongful convictions), street art, sustainable design, conservation, feminism, and food. Some of those are controversial by their nature, though, so I don’t know if they all belong in the list here.
I never feel like I know enough about anything. My RSS aggregator has hundreds of feeds in it, and I try to clear it every couple of days. It’s like playing whack-a-mole with knowledge. 🙂
Oh sure, go on ahead with the controversy. I’m very interested in feminism as well, for example, and it doesn’t make it any less interesting that people who discuss it online get regular rape and death threats. More disturbing for sure, but not less interesting.
Whack-a-mole with knowledge, I love it! Yeah, I feel the same way. There was a vampire character on The Vampire Diaries who was spending his eternal life going to university and getting multiple degrees. I would totally do the same thing.
1. The Philosophy of Science: especially as applied to economics, sociology and questions like “can predictive macroeconomics really be scientific?”. 2. Neurology: everyone should read something by Oliver Sacks. How can you not read a book with the title, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”? 3. Humanity: we’re strange critters. We do things like assert our rationalism and then trumpet our belonging to a particular ideology in order to signal our group belonging or that we are morally upstanding. 4. Emergent systems: we are bizarrely overconfident in our ability to predict and engineer complex systems. You’d think a little exposure to computability problems would lessen this, but for some reason we seem to think every system is newtonian. 5. George Orwell: doublethink, we’re soaking in it.
@joshism, I couldn’t agree more about history. I think that for most folks understanding history isn’t important. What they want is to satisfy their conformation bias or to use an event as a rhetorical weapon.
And yes, chocolate. Dark chocolate.
*Can* predicitive macroeconmics really be scientific? I want to know. There are probably multiple books written on the subject, aren’t there?
Oliver Sacks on the reading list, check.
Humanity never ceases to be fascinating to me. Sometimes also frustrating, but wow, there’s a lot to learn about us!
Ooh, doublethink. Whenever I notice a real-life example of this, it gives me a weird shivery feeling. And think of all the examples I must miss.