Robin Hanson offers up praise for people with obsessive dedication to odd pursuits at the expense of having a diversified, standard, and thus acceptable set of interests:

On the radio recently some guy said he didn’t want his new kid to have electronic toys, so he looked up his old favorite, Legos, on the web. He was horrified to see websites for obsessive adult male hobbyists, who devoted decades and huge sums to develop lego masterpieces. He worried his kid might grow up like that.

Me, I worry my kids will grow up to be the opposite: sophisticated. While such folks can be very smart and capable, they are uninteresting.I blame their having too many hobbies. Their conversations swirl around the same standard topics: food, music, movies, novels, travel, sports, clothes, houses, politics, etc., all of which they each feel the need to be ready to quip. Sophisticated folks are horrified to seem to not care or know the standard amount about any standard hobby. The sort of folks one wants to know, e.g., to invite to a dinner party, simply must be ready to converse lightly and intelligently (if not insightfully) on the latest fashions in all such areas. The problem is that maintaining a basic proficiency in all these topics, in addition to keeping up a job and family, etc., takes a up pretty much all their time and energy.

Interesting folks, in contrast, get so far into a particular topic that they become at risk of violating conversation etiquette, by talking too enthusiastically for too long on topics of minor interest to sophisticates. Yes, interesting folk are at risk of being distracted from dress or hygiene, or from carefully climbing their local status ladder. But they are also at risk of making a unique contribution to the world. They are also the sort of person from which you might actually hear something new, something you couldn’t hear from a million different sophisticates.

One can view this as praise for those farther along the autism spectrum, similar to Tyler Cowen in his book The Age of the Infovore. Like Robin I find these types of people usually more interesting. The downside of obsessive types is when they have an inability to discern what parts of their obsessions are interesting to outsiders, and what parts aren’t.  I find obsessive types are also more likely to not care what someone else has to say, or care whether other people are interested in what they are saying. Or maybe they’re not more likely, but more memorable when they are.

People’s obsessions are frequently interesting, but can be torture when combined with a self-obsession and an ego.

In general I think we are better off in a world with more of what people think of as weirdos and freaks. They create amazing things normal people wouldn’t dream of, and amass astounding collections.

I am reminded of Penn Jillette’s explanation for why he is friends with Glenn Beck and David Allan Coe:

He’s a nut. I mean, he’s a deep, deep nut. On a one-on-one level I like him. My tolerance for crazy people is I think high a tolerance as you’re ever going to find. I love being around David Allen Coe. I would have loved to hang out with Tiny Tim. I can listen to Sun Ra on a tape-recording rant. I have… it’s not patience, it’s love for people who are… live outside the law. And Glenn Beck is that.

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