Don't Be Right, Be Interesting

Karl Marx was influential - but was he right or just interesting?

"Dear Lord, please make all the bad people good, and all the good people interesting." - Dave Bartram, lead singer of Showaddywaddy

In a recent article in the Guardian Oliver Burkeman points out that it is more important to be interesting than to be right.  It is an intriguing thought.  It is one that certainly makes sense to me.  In fact I am a perfect example in that I find a lot of what Steve Pavlina writes to be not just wrong, but completely contradictory to my world view.  But because he writes in an interesting way I still read him rather than people who are more accurate.
I don't have to feel too bad about this now, because it turns out to be a pervasive feature of human cultural life.  It even affects science, where you would think that the premium on being right would predominate over everything else.  But even in the world of science it is interesting and controversial ideas that attract attention.

At first this looks like a challenge for someone like me, and I hope you. who values things being actually true.  I don't care if the concepts of God or subjective reality are useful or not.  I want them to be true or I will reject them.  I don't care how elegant neoliberalism or socialism are as abstract ideas - I want to see how they work in practise.

So how do I cope with the fact that more interesting stuff trumps accurate stuff?

I think the answer is to simply take it into account.  I don't think you need to be intellectually dishonest to be interesting.  But you might need to give what you are doing a bit more thought.  An unusual perspective or an off the wall opinion can be used without actually misleading anyone.

I need to give it a try.

http://www.oliverburkeman.com/blog/posts/how-to-be-interesting-and-why-the-best-bits-of-life-are-more-than-interesting


Photo credit: Sebastian Niedlich (Grabthar) via photopin cc