The Interesting Toy Paradox

There is a well-known interestingness paradox which runs basically as follows: the property "least interesting person in the world" is interesting enough that it couldn't apply to anyone. So if you divide the world into interesting and uninteresting people, you can prove that no one can be in the "uninteresting" category by working up from the most deserving of that appellation to the least*, excluding each as you go.

I've discovered that Sierra and Charlie reimplement this paradox as follows: when you go through the enormous set of toys you have available, and decide that some of them really haven't seen any play in some time and should be put away, you divide the set of toys similarly. But as soon as you put the uninteresting toys into a box to be brought to the attic, those toys become the most interesting toys in the room.

I suspect this result generalizes to all toddlers, but the proof of it for cases other than Sierra and Charlie is left as an exercise for the reader.


* This is confusingly worded, because "most deserving of the appellation 'uninteresting' would be the least interesting person. However, this fact has led me to notice that in the person case, but not the natural number case (linked), it works just as well to use the property "most interesting uninteresting person". This curious fact is likely to be of interest to no readers.