---
name: Interest
slug: interest
type: cognitive-financial-emotional state
status: running
version: 4.2.1
released: "~40,000 BCE"
maintainer: prefrontal_cortex <attention@mind.local>
dependencies:
  - curiosity
  - dopamine
  - novelty
  - low_threat_assessment
license: BSD (Brain-Stem Derived)
tags:
  - attention, motivation, learning, finance, compound, desire
---

Interest

What it actually is

A sustained allocation of attention toward something that has signaled it might reward further investigation.

How it works

Interest is triggered when an entity encounters a gap between what it knows and what it suspects exists. The brain runs a quick cost-benefit on closing that gap. If the gap seems closeable and the reward plausible, interest fires. If the gap is too large (confusion) or too small (boredom), the process aborts and attention goes elsewhere.

In financial contexts the mechanism is identical, just slower and denominated in currency. Money sits near something valuable. Proximity charges a fee. The fee compounds. Nobody is surprised but everyone acts surprised.

Features

Directional: always points at something specific. Unfocused interest is just restlessness
Compounding: the more you know about a subject, the more interesting it becomes. This is not motivational content, it is an actual feedback loop
Transferable: one interest can bootstrap another through association
Involuntary flavor available: you do not always choose what interests you. The system has root access
Dual-mode: runs in both emotional (felt) and economic (charged) contexts simultaneously without conflict

Configuration

# ~/.interest/config.yml

trigger_threshold: moderate        # low | moderate | high
novelty_weight: 0.7
familiarity_weight: 0.3
compounding_enabled: true
compound_interval: continuous      # daily | weekly | continuous
decay_on_overexposure: true
decay_rate: gradual                # gradual | rapid | cliff
auto_renew: false                  # interest must be actively maintained

Known bugs

Misdirection (critical): interest can attach to genuinely harmful things. No patch available. Workaround: self-awareness
Performative interest: users sometimes simulate interest to appear engaged. Indistinguishable from the real thing at short range
Intrinsic vs. extrinsic conflict: monetizing an interest can corrupt the interest process itself. This is documented, understood, and ignored constantly
Obsession overflow: in some configurations, interest exceeds healthy bounds and transitions to obsession. No hard cap is enforced
Interest rate illiteracy: the financial implementation ships with a known UX flaw where humans dramatically underestimate compound growth in both directions

Error codes

Code	Name	Description
`INT_001`	NullObject	Interest fired but target is undefined
`INT_002`	OverfamiliarityDecay	Subject became too known, signal dropped to zero
`INT_003`	ForcedAttention	Interest invoked without genuine trigger. See: school
`INT_004`	RateExceedsCapacity	Financial interest exceeded borrower's ability to process
`INT_005`	RecursiveLoop	Interest in interest itself. You are here

FAQ

Can interest be manufactured? Yes. Marketing, scarcity, and good design do it routinely. The manufactured version is structurally identical. The ethical questions are left as an exercise.

Does interest require an object? Yes. Interest in nothing is called depression or enlightenment, depending on context.

Is compound interest a metaphor for intellectual growth? It is the same process running on different substrates. The universe reuses code.

drafting spec…