23 ms·

Why Aren’t We Curious About the Things We Want to Be Curious About?

324 points by diaphanous 7y ago

KrystalSparks 7y ago
I get curious about stuffs than I plan but not for stuffs planned for me
StreakyCobra 7y ago
> Many websites that snare your time feature scores of stories on the front page, banking that one will strike each reader’s sweet spot of knowledge. So visit websites that use the same strategy but offer richer content, for example, JSTOR Daily, Arts & Letters Daily or ScienceDaily. or HackerNews :)
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
  The articles linked to in HN aren't always the most fruitful, whereas the comments are a universe of wonderful discussion. I've learned dozens of things from browsing the comments here, which makes sense as we have world experts in dozens of fields who are regular commenters.
  - ImaCake 7y ago
    This is why I keep coming back. It is not unusual to see world leading scientists, book authors, and startup CEOs in a quick browse of the comments. The kind of people you want to be at dinner party conversation with, if your goal is intense technical discussion.
  - dorchadas 7y ago
    I usually get my HackerNews updated through the feed in Telegram, which means I usually go straight to the comments before even reading the article. Reading them is really nice, as it lets me gauge if I think the article is worth a read, then engage in some great conversations about it.
  - fortran77 7y ago
    > whereas the comments are a universe of wonderful discussion [ * spits coffee all over keyboard * ]
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/aFv56 http://archive.is/aFv56
- glerk 7y ago
  Thank you!
mapcars 7y ago
Answer is simple - we think we know it. Once you think you know something it immediately all excitement and interest disappears. But can you really know anything absolutely, fully in this Universe? Someone involved into science should answer what grows more with study - knowledge or realization of one's own ignorance? Someone said "I know only one thing - I know nothing", to me this is the most profound understanding of the limitation our knowledge has.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I don’t really think this is true. Actually, personally I find it difficult to diversify my interests: I like a couple of specific topics and spend most of my time learning about those, and it’s somewhat difficult for me to look into things that would be useful to know but I haven’t done much work with.
  - mapcars 7y ago
    >things that would be useful to know Again, I'm not talking about usefulness - it's altogether another dimension. >I find it difficult to diversify my interests Try a simple thing - pick anything outside of your interests and ask all sorts of questions about it to yourself, to see how much you really don't know. Some examples could be - where does it come from? who invented it? under what circumstances? how come it has this color/size/shape/feeling? how come it's this material? how come it takes this time? I promise - you will discover all sorts of strange, funny and fascinating stories which you could not imagine. This is a way to spark interest.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      > I promise - you will discover all sorts of strange, funny and fascinating stories which you could not imagine. This is a way to spark interest. Oh, I don’t have a problem finding interesting topics outside of what I already know: I spend too much time on Wikipedia reading random articles already. The issue I have is that I can’t bring myself to be interested in things I should cultivate an interest in, like machine learning or databases.
holografix 7y ago
That’s an issue I kinda wish I had, I get curious about lots of random non-practical things. Atlas Obscura is a great source of enjoyment.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  That's exactly the problem that the article is talking about and it's so commonplace that there are quite a few running jokes about it, TVTropes being a common one.
known 7y ago
May be it's not contributing/promoting our https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai
kstenerud 7y ago
> When I’m surfing the web I want to be drawn in by articles on Europe’s political history or the nature of quasars That's the problem right there. Articles are the white sugar of information. They contain a tiny amount of actual info, but not enough to be useful in any meaningful way. If you truly want to learn about something, read a book or a paper. Articles will get you nowhere.
- minikites 7y ago
  I disagree, an article from a good subject/specialized encyclopedia (as opposed to a general encyclopedia) is an excellent introduction to a topic and will be written by scholars in that field.
  - kuu 7y ago
    I think by "article", the comment refers to article like in news or in some general audience site, not on specialized place.
    - minikites 7y ago
      There are news articles about the political history of Europe?
      - lonelappde 7y ago
        No, and that's the problem. We crave the dopamine thrill of "news", but history would be much more useful to our understanding of our world.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Did the parent gave the impression that he meant encyclopaedia articles?
- watwut 7y ago
  Real reason is that actual function of that browsing is relax, not bothering with difficult parts, getting thrill or other emotional reaction and forgetting next day. Following impulses and reading something easy to read. Meanwhile articles on Europe’s political history or the nature of quasars are education - fundamentally different mental task.
jileczech 7y ago
Because your attention is your future self. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16x8vd2L4cw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16x8vd2L4cw
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
theboywho 7y ago
if you’re not reading about some subject you think you’re curious about, can we still call it being curious about said subject ? Maybe you just find the idea of being curious about the subject cool. Makes me think of this quote ascribed to Picasso: When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine. So maybe the author is not curious as an artist, but curious as an art critique.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  There's a saying that having a typewriter on a desk is not the sign of a writer, it's a sign of someone who wants to present the image of a writer, to feel like a writer but without the hard bit of having to labour over writing something, to be seen as a writer.[1] LessWrong talks about "Science as attire"[2] thus: "The X-Men comics use terms like “evolution,” “mutation,” and “genetic code,” purely to place themselves in what they conceive to be the literary genre of science.", and TheLastPsychiatrist wrote endlessly about narcissism in modern society - caring about our image and how others perceive us and how we control how we seem, over and above taking action and doing things (for others). When the article said "I want to be drawn in by the nature of quasars", these things are what came to mind; maybe the author finds the idea of being curious about the subject cool; maybe the author wants to feel and appear smart and Quasars fit that image a lot more than popular macaroon flavours do. Yet Quasars have the difficult part of needing to read papers about radio astronomy and study masters degree level math, probably. This has been a bitter, hard to learn, and not very thoroughly learned lesson in my life, and I feel a pang of identification with the author on that note. How much cooler and cleverer does their article look for their claim "I want to be curious about Quasars" instead of had they written "I want to be curious about cardboard glue" - and yet does the substance of the article change at all for any value of X in "I want to be curious about X"? I think it doesn't, I think only the image changes. It's name-dropping Quasars. It's the Richard Feynman vignette[3] about learning the names of a bird in different languages from his father, and then being shown that afterwards he knows nothing - but nothing - about the bird, and that being important in his focus on detail and how things behave, rather than studying names and descriptions. At least the author can dodge to macaroon articles and still feel like they are learning and feel superior to another version of themselves where they just stared at the wall - reading is cleverer than doing nothing. Even when the thing they read is irrelevant, forgettable, flashy but insubstantial, disconnected from their knowledge. Why can't they simply say "I read about macaroon flavours because it was there and caught my eye"? Because that sounds weak and stupid. > This function of curiosity — to heighten memory — is the key to understanding why we’re curious about some things and not others. We feel most curious when exploration will yield the most learning. [..] We’re maximally curious when we sense that the environment offers new information in the right proportion to complement what we already know. Do we? How did the Alcatraz Menu fit into this claim? My much less cheerful answer is that the author doesn't want to be curious about Quasars (radio telescope measurements and calculations made from them and mathematical models built from those), the author wants to be seen as someone interested in science (but not the nerdy topics which would bore a polite dinner party, only something popular and safely irrelevant), and is feeling shameful and inadequate about clicking on an Alcatraz menu. NB. I say ashamed at reading trivia because it's not smart enough for the image the author wants to portray, deliberately not guilty at the waste of time which could have been spent helping others instead. The Alcatraz menu was interesting, so the time was 'well spent' by some metric, so the author isn't unhappy with low productivity or bad use of time, the author is specifically unhappy at the use of time not being up to the image they want to portray to the world. "People would think I'm stupid if they knew what I was reading about, so I'd better dress it up in a NYT opinion piece then I can feel and look smart again". (I accuse). [1] The sign of a writer is some writing - output from the act of writing - be it on typewriter or pen and paper or computer, etc. [2] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4Bwr6s9dofvqPWakn/science-as-attire https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4Bwr6s9dofvqPWakn/science-as... [3] Richard Feynman anecdote in an interview https://youtu.be/GNhlNSLQAFE?t=240 https://youtu.be/GNhlNSLQAFE?t=240 [4]
hos234 7y ago
The answer lies in understanding the Utility of the Novelty Seeker to a Group. If groups don't need it, expect novelty seeking to be snuffed out and fast. Don't complain about it just go look for a group that needs you. Not everyone is a novelty seeker - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_seeking Small populations don't need too many novelty seekers. If everyone in a village is curious about Tigers, sooner or later everyone in the village would be dead. As populations grow the number of Novelty seekers increase and sooner or later the village has knowledge of how to tame the Tiger. In terms of groups or teams that work on problems that have known solutions, having Novelty seekers around can be a big distraction/waste of time and energy as they goof off and wander. But for teams working on problems unknown, Novelty seekers are a must have. Nothing is guaranteed when working on unknowns, but the team will learn more/make progress with a Novelty Seeker around than without. While sites like HN attract Novelty Seekers from all over and there is some spillover into startups (many working on problems with unknowns) this process of matching Novelty seekers to groups that need them has WAYS to go. We do it in very inefficient ways and lacking awareness. Sometimes we misidentify them (lot of people pretend to be novelty seekers cause it gets them on teams) OR Novelty seekers are put in charge OR they want to be in charge Or we think we need a Novelty seeker on staff 24x7 when actually we just need them to come in and take a look at a specific problem once a week or once a month. These mistakes can be avoided if you know the role the Novelty Seeker plays in society and what problems they are needed for.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Small populations don't need too many novelty seekers. If everyone in a village is curious about Tigers, sooner or later everyone in the village would be dead. As populations grow the number of Novelty seekers increase and sooner or later the village has knowledge of how to tame the Tiger. That's an anthropology way to looking at it -- which could be OK if one is speaking for some remote villages or tribes. The modern world though is so complex and cross-cutting that I don't think this applies, at least not in the same way. For one, novelty seeking is hardly associated with survival for most people and groups (like in the village/tiger example). Second, each of us has tons of different outlets for that novelty seeking, not just a single group.
wruza 7y ago
IME, reading quick articles or googling for a word doesn’t work too. But there is a way to get an interesting information. I built my curiosity stream by checking channels on youtube (it has non-crap channels, despite my beliefs). It wasn’t a quick process. One video by another I filtered content and made a subscription set which feeds me a couple or more videos per week that are good content and build my curiosity, as tfa explained. When there is more free time, I just check archives and find even more. Now I have a non-distracting queue of knowledge that requires nothing to sustain. Funnily, before that I never hit “subscribe”, because it was perceived as a time-spending pit. And it is, for many “funny cats” or “fail compilation” channels which produce videos twice daily. All this works because every piece there has easy connections. Articles do not connect – I have to lookup the author, register to subscribe, then manage updates from many sites, etc. Streams from mass-media like yt are more comfortable to follow and there are many suggestions from other channels on the topic.
- iscrewyou 7y ago
  Any way for you to share a few of your YouTube channels? I love watching channels such as 3blue1brown, numberphile, sixtysymbols, deepskyvideos, etc. it’s true what you say about sitting down and actually watching more than just a sound bite. Having context of things helps a lot with learning. However, I am lacking in some development channels.
  - wruza 7y ago
    Hi, of course! 3b1b and numberphile are two of my favorites too. Especially featuring Neil Sloane and prof. Tadashi Tokieda (no intent to undervalue other stars and/or Parker squares). PBS network is also great. I watch PBS Eons and PBS Spacetime the same time I see a notification dot. Recently added Astrum because of nice pics. melodysheep caught me with their timelapse videos. These two are in wait-and-see category atm. Also Jay Foreman for british humour, London history and mapmen. Primer posts rarely, but was definitely worth a sub. That’s all. I visit few more topics/channels by hand, but they are of entertainment nature (starcraft tournaments, local evening letsplays, etc), thus no sub as it would create an unwanted distraction. As of games, MkIceAndFire plays them with decent skill in no commentary, no overlay style. Btw, when you’re on a channel, you can check “channels” to see if an author likes or links to something on their own account. Hope you like some of these! >development channels Sadly, it never clicked with me, despite (or because) me being full-time dev since when youtube still wasn’t a thing. It just feels either too slow or too shallow/instructional rather than deep and full of decades of wisdom. Idk, can’t force myself to watch any of these anymore.
vfinn 7y ago
One idea is that population competes for positions, and that restricts your choices early on. You could imagine that you're either pushed away or drawn into some position. Another point of view is to see your actions through constraints, which is an inter-related point of view to competition. You're bound by money, time, energy (you can do just so much), and other resources. You can see your situation also trough psychology. You have fears, traumas, addictions, etc. Then there's intelligence that translates into how good you're at creating goals, how good you're at seeing yourself, how good you're at listening yourself, how good you're at solving problems, and how aware you're of your current condition, etc. in addition to having the ability to become better at such matters. It's clear that all these things define how well you're in control what you're doing. There are a lot of outside sources of influences that you need to be aware of. All kind of distractions, commercials, games, noise, propaganda (manufacturing consent?). Your society wants you to do this, your employer wants you to do that, and often times you feel you have to give in, which means that you're fighting for control on a psychological level. Creating your life so that you're 100% in control all time is very difficult, if not possible, but you can become aware of what's happening in yourself as you click mindlessly trough the internet, or when you do things/tasks you don't really want to do. You can change yourself to overcome procrastination in order to become a person that knows what he's doing, not just because you have to, but because you want to. You want to take part in society, you want to work for good causes, etc. You want to study in university to get into a certain position. And all this will that you're aware of diminishes the amount of random choices you make, I claim.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jiofih 7y ago
- “You’ve been clickbaited by your own brain” - full-screen paywall whooshes in :(
- sheepstrat 7y ago
  Disable Javascript ;)
atemerev 7y ago
One of the very few (somewhat) positive traits of having adult ADHD: this particular problem does not exist. If you want to be curious about something — even if it is a slightest spark of interest — it immediately activates to full-blown involvement, sometimes bordering on obsession. I have spent a year studying quantum mechanics full time on my own, reading textbooks and practicing exercises, because I was mildly curious about quantum physics at some point. Got me fired from my job back then, as it had nothing to do with QM. This is not always a good thing. :)
Craighead 7y ago
Busy paying bills to survive.
mrfusion 7y ago
It reminds me of that sienfeld episode where George says he always wanted to be a civil war buff.
transitionnel 7y ago
The article is interesting and raises a good point, but I don't think it really solves anything. With the right perspective on (understanding of) your mental processes, deep, useful, questions like this cease to exist. They are solved. I've had success recently with subtle self-control over curiosity and motivation, and the way to do it is just as simple as it intuitively feels. Reconfiguring your brain to follow through on your stated goals is a simple process over time that relies on simple goal-setting and reward. You set up a system of trivial goals, always at whatever pace you enjoy, and expand their novelty and risk factor. Being very simple and increasingly binary, this process can easily crystallize in your physical brain. Yet it is ever expanding in complexity as you become excited at your progress in broadening intelligence. This is the kind of thing that some will want evidence for. Those are the ones that won't be able to make use of it. Follow intuition; only you can convince your inner self of truth in progress. Science is only a semi-precise tool for helping this process, as the controls of any experiment are infinite in reality. BTW, the comment on Novelty Seeking was great hos234!
criddell 7y ago
This is why I have 20 unread books on my Kindle and at night when I'm looking for something to read I can't find anything.
- tw1010 7y ago
  That's like saying there doesn't exist riveting brain-changing books out there, which just isn't true. (Keep searching until you've found your bliss.)
ErikAugust 7y ago
No paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/opinion/sunday/curiosity-brain.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/opinion/sunday/curiosity-...
- loolatrix 7y ago
  Still paywalled for me. Alternative is curl https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/opinion/sunday/curiosity-brain.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/opinion/sunday/curiosity-... > nyt.html
shantly 7y ago
Worth noting that the ability to indulge practically any idle curiosity ("who was that guy in that one movie again?") with almost no effort is very new. Unless you happened to have the relevant book of trivia, or maybe a good encyclopedia for some things, and you were at home or otherwise somewhere those were physically located, you couldn't find out without quite a bit of effort. That kind of stuff just dropped out of one's mind almost as quickly as it came up. You might ask the people around you, and if they couldn't remember, oh well, off it goes. If you wanted to know something, you had to work at it or premeditate and spend time and/or money to be ready to find out information in a certain category (having the right books, mostly). Your brain didn't nag and insist that you go find it out right now, generally, for every little question of near-zero importance that happened to cross your mind. That's a curse of the Internet age.
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
  A few people I know immediately go to their phones to check facts during hangouts and conversations. I find it pretty off-putting, that those close to me value a trivial fact over staying fully connected with the conversation. There is some dopaminergic itch that must be scratched here, and I find like most itching, it doesn't end up paying off for more than a second.
  - RobertRoberts 7y ago
    I have some relationships where we value trivia as a part of our discussions. And looking stuff up is fun for all of us. Maybe the type of people and the relationships you have determine the experience in this case?
    - WhompingWindows 7y ago
      Maybe your group is different, but I want someone to engage fully with me as a person, not check their phones for a fact that doesn't matter. Something like, what was Robert de Niro's second major film? This matters zero, can we have screen-free time together?
40acres 7y ago
I can only speak for America society, but in my experience after a certain age general novelty seeking is discouraged. We've all experienced the feeling of being bombarded by questions from a toddler, but after a certain age we restrict the "universe of relevant questions" to be context specific. As someone with ADHD, novelty seeking has never been an issue for me. Generally I think it benefits society as a whole to have a robust number of novelty seekers in the population -- but in a society where specialization is rewarded so greatly it can be a frustrating trait.
- randcraw 7y ago
  I think it's the more disruptive forms of curiosity that are actively discouraged -- where you publicly question whether a fundamental fact is wrong and suggest that it be corrected before we proceed with sopme standard operating procedure that others depend on. Pretty much everyone hates that. But I think when curiosity is kept private, or you state that your explorations are personal, peripheral, and nowhere near anyone's critical path, curiosity shouldn't pose a threat. But it is curious that after you leave school, curiosity is more often discouraged than encouraged in our society. It seems like 95% of people just want all their beliefs forever to be correct, certain, unchanging, and unthreatening.
Buldak 7y ago
This is like asking, "Why can't I decide to enjoy broccoli if I believe it's healthy to eat?" The evolutionary story behind curiosity notwithstanding, it seems to me that this is just a case of the more general observation you can't alter your desires simply by reflecting on whether they are good or bad.
- _se 7y ago
  Except that you can, by just doing the things you want to do until they become habits. It's not really much different than going to the gym or deciding not to drink too often. Even though you might want/not want to do the thing, you still do it because you know it's better for you. The better way to say it is that it's difficult to alter one's desires via reflection, not that it cannot be done.
adamnemecek 7y ago
Yeah that, or school real beats curiosity out of you. By the time you are done, you are a husk of the once curious human being you used to be?
incubus0h 7y ago
Can someone suggest good career options for person with novelty traits ? (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_seeking). Once you are settle down in a certain career (for example, IT/software development), not having to satisfy the itch for novelty seeking can make things really boring for you. So, my next question - how do satisfy that itch in a given career, say IT?
- WaxProlix 7y ago
  Consulting can be good; a new tech stack, a new org with new weird dysfunctions every few months. A new project, new teammates, new shareholders, etc. It never feels like the same job, though of course some things can remain static- you're still a programmer, architect, PM, etc.
- arbitrary_name 7y ago
  So - I am a strong 'novelty person'. Much of my life revolves around change and newness, and constant, ongoing learning (I've moved from travel wholesaling to banking to startups to energy to mining to bio-pharma to...who knows?). At the beginning of my career, I spent about 6 months working in a bank before I realised that working with the same people, the same task, the same desk day in and day out was not for me. I was not learning all that much after the first 2 months. I realised I needed to stay in 'those first two months' - where everything is new, where you are constantly learning the ropes - but before anything gets repetitive. So I became a management consultant; and it's awesome; my job changes every 10-12 weeks, with a new office, new team, new clients and new challenges. I can travel for projects if I want a new city, new bed, new bars etc, or I can stay at home and explore. I work with a lot of technical folks in the field; devs, architects, project managers, business analysts, analytics specialists - all with (broadly) the same passion for learning and change that I have. If you're interested, check it out - there's lots of benefits, lots of great opportunities and a ton of learning to be had, as long as you can balance the expectations and demands.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Bespoke research, technical or business analysis.
abruzzi 7y ago
The premise of the article seems odd to me. Am I just unusual in the fact that my interests and curiosity are very closely aligned?
rdiddly 7y ago
Is the problem that we're not curious about the right things? Or is it more that passively wandering through a crap-garden has an astronomically small chance of offering you anything but crap? (Not to put too fine a point on the "crap" thing, because that's not really my point.) The piece talks about those who read, but elides the free agency of those who offer. Clicking on an article someone offers is not just moving through an unbiased and natural "world" and interacting with it like picking berries off a bush. This world was built by other humans, framed by other humans, who decided what to offer. Behind every article is a human with an agenda and perhaps traffic & revenue targets. If you let them determine what you read, yeah there will tend to be a mismatch. This is not an "opportunistic" approach, it's a "passive" approach. Let's say we were talking about pizza instead. You want pizza. Do you go wandering around hoping someone offers you pizza? Pretty sure if you don't already know where to get pizza, you go look up pizza. But then are you like "Oh but there are 'thousands of hits' for pizza, boo hoo?!" No, that is what success at finding pizza looks like. Sorting out which one is your favorite pizza, the one that's just right for you from all those many options is like, the least amount of work you can frigging do. It's fortunate-people problems. If you're curious about something, this author was right the first time: Just look it up. First hit is almost always Wikipedia, which is fine. Start reading, and you're off to the races. They even have hyperlinks to all related terms/concepts that might need explication or that you might be, ahem, curious about. Yep it takes some minimal amount of will and discipline to read and click links and direct your own learning. If you can't muster that, you're kind of in trouble. But do it anyway; practicing will make you stronger.

324 points by diaphanous 7y ago

I get curious about stuffs than I plan but not for stuffs planned for me

> Many websites that snare your time feature scores of stories on the front page, banking that one will strike each reader’s sweet spot of knowledge. So visit websites that use the same strategy but offer richer content, for example, JSTOR Daily, Arts & Letters Daily or ScienceDaily. or HackerNews :)

WhompingWindows 7y ago
The articles linked to in HN aren't always the most fruitful, whereas the comments are a universe of wonderful discussion. I've learned dozens of things from browsing the comments here, which makes sense as we have world experts in dozens of fields who are regular commenters.
- ImaCake 7y ago
  This is why I keep coming back. It is not unusual to see world leading scientists, book authors, and startup CEOs in a quick browse of the comments. The kind of people you want to be at dinner party conversation with, if your goal is intense technical discussion.
- dorchadas 7y ago
  I usually get my HackerNews updated through the feed in Telegram, which means I usually go straight to the comments before even reading the article. Reading them is really nice, as it lets me gauge if I think the article is worth a read, then engage in some great conversations about it.
- fortran77 7y ago
  > whereas the comments are a universe of wonderful discussion [ * spits coffee all over keyboard * ]

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/aFv56 http://archive.is/aFv56

glerk 7y ago
Thank you!

mapcars 7y ago

Answer is simple - we think we know it. Once you think you know something it immediately all excitement and interest disappears. But can you really know anything absolutely, fully in this Universe? Someone involved into science should answer what grows more with study - knowledge or realization of one's own ignorance? Someone said "I know only one thing - I know nothing", to me this is the most profound understanding of the limitation our knowledge has.

saagarjha 7y ago
I don’t really think this is true. Actually, personally I find it difficult to diversify my interests: I like a couple of specific topics and spend most of my time learning about those, and it’s somewhat difficult for me to look into things that would be useful to know but I haven’t done much work with.
- mapcars 7y ago
  >things that would be useful to know Again, I'm not talking about usefulness - it's altogether another dimension. >I find it difficult to diversify my interests Try a simple thing - pick anything outside of your interests and ask all sorts of questions about it to yourself, to see how much you really don't know. Some examples could be - where does it come from? who invented it? under what circumstances? how come it has this color/size/shape/feeling? how come it's this material? how come it takes this time? I promise - you will discover all sorts of strange, funny and fascinating stories which you could not imagine. This is a way to spark interest.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > I promise - you will discover all sorts of strange, funny and fascinating stories which you could not imagine. This is a way to spark interest. Oh, I don’t have a problem finding interesting topics outside of what I already know: I spend too much time on Wikipedia reading random articles already. The issue I have is that I can’t bring myself to be interested in things I should cultivate an interest in, like machine learning or databases.

holografix 7y ago

That’s an issue I kinda wish I had, I get curious about lots of random non-practical things. Atlas Obscura is a great source of enjoyment.

scarejunba 7y ago
That's exactly the problem that the article is talking about and it's so commonplace that there are quite a few running jokes about it, TVTropes being a common one.

known 7y ago

May be it's not contributing/promoting our https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai

kstenerud 7y ago

> When I’m surfing the web I want to be drawn in by articles on Europe’s political history or the nature of quasars That's the problem right there. Articles are the white sugar of information. They contain a tiny amount of actual info, but not enough to be useful in any meaningful way. If you truly want to learn about something, read a book or a paper. Articles will get you nowhere.

minikites 7y ago
I disagree, an article from a good subject/specialized encyclopedia (as opposed to a general encyclopedia) is an excellent introduction to a topic and will be written by scholars in that field.
- kuu 7y ago
  I think by "article", the comment refers to article like in news or in some general audience site, not on specialized place.
  - minikites 7y ago
    There are news articles about the political history of Europe?
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      No, and that's the problem. We crave the dopamine thrill of "news", but history would be much more useful to our understanding of our world.
- coldtea 7y ago
  Did the parent gave the impression that he meant encyclopaedia articles?
watwut 7y ago
Real reason is that actual function of that browsing is relax, not bothering with difficult parts, getting thrill or other emotional reaction and forgetting next day. Following impulses and reading something easy to read. Meanwhile articles on Europe’s political history or the nature of quasars are education - fundamentally different mental task.

jileczech 7y ago

Because your attention is your future self. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16x8vd2L4cw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16x8vd2L4cw

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

theboywho 7y ago

if you’re not reading about some subject you think you’re curious about, can we still call it being curious about said subject ? Maybe you just find the idea of being curious about the subject cool. Makes me think of this quote ascribed to Picasso: When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine. So maybe the author is not curious as an artist, but curious as an art critique.

jodrellblank 7y ago
There's a saying that having a typewriter on a desk is not the sign of a writer, it's a sign of someone who wants to present the image of a writer, to feel like a writer but without the hard bit of having to labour over writing something, to be seen as a writer.[1] LessWrong talks about "Science as attire"[2] thus: "The X-Men comics use terms like “evolution,” “mutation,” and “genetic code,” purely to place themselves in what they conceive to be the literary genre of science.", and TheLastPsychiatrist wrote endlessly about narcissism in modern society - caring about our image and how others perceive us and how we control how we seem, over and above taking action and doing things (for others). When the article said "I want to be drawn in by the nature of quasars", these things are what came to mind; maybe the author finds the idea of being curious about the subject cool; maybe the author wants to feel and appear smart and Quasars fit that image a lot more than popular macaroon flavours do. Yet Quasars have the difficult part of needing to read papers about radio astronomy and study masters degree level math, probably. This has been a bitter, hard to learn, and not very thoroughly learned lesson in my life, and I feel a pang of identification with the author on that note. How much cooler and cleverer does their article look for their claim "I want to be curious about Quasars" instead of had they written "I want to be curious about cardboard glue" - and yet does the substance of the article change at all for any value of X in "I want to be curious about X"? I think it doesn't, I think only the image changes. It's name-dropping Quasars. It's the Richard Feynman vignette[3] about learning the names of a bird in different languages from his father, and then being shown that afterwards he knows nothing - but nothing - about the bird, and that being important in his focus on detail and how things behave, rather than studying names and descriptions. At least the author can dodge to macaroon articles and still feel like they are learning and feel superior to another version of themselves where they just stared at the wall - reading is cleverer than doing nothing. Even when the thing they read is irrelevant, forgettable, flashy but insubstantial, disconnected from their knowledge. Why can't they simply say "I read about macaroon flavours because it was there and caught my eye"? Because that sounds weak and stupid. > This function of curiosity — to heighten memory — is the key to understanding why we’re curious about some things and not others. We feel most curious when exploration will yield the most learning. [..] We’re maximally curious when we sense that the environment offers new information in the right proportion to complement what we already know. Do we? How did the Alcatraz Menu fit into this claim? My much less cheerful answer is that the author doesn't want to be curious about Quasars (radio telescope measurements and calculations made from them and mathematical models built from those), the author wants to be seen as someone interested in science (but not the nerdy topics which would bore a polite dinner party, only something popular and safely irrelevant), and is feeling shameful and inadequate about clicking on an Alcatraz menu. NB. I say ashamed at reading trivia because it's not smart enough for the image the author wants to portray, deliberately not guilty at the waste of time which could have been spent helping others instead. The Alcatraz menu was interesting, so the time was 'well spent' by some metric, so the author isn't unhappy with low productivity or bad use of time, the author is specifically unhappy at the use of time not being up to the image they want to portray to the world. "People would think I'm stupid if they knew what I was reading about, so I'd better dress it up in a NYT opinion piece then I can feel and look smart again". (I accuse). [1] The sign of a writer is some writing - output from the act of writing - be it on typewriter or pen and paper or computer, etc. [2] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4Bwr6s9dofvqPWakn/science-as-attire https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4Bwr6s9dofvqPWakn/science-as... [3] Richard Feynman anecdote in an interview https://youtu.be/GNhlNSLQAFE?t=240 https://youtu.be/GNhlNSLQAFE?t=240 [4]

hos234 7y ago

The answer lies in understanding the Utility of the Novelty Seeker to a Group. If groups don't need it, expect novelty seeking to be snuffed out and fast. Don't complain about it just go look for a group that needs you. Not everyone is a novelty seeker - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_seeking Small populations don't need too many novelty seekers. If everyone in a village is curious about Tigers, sooner or later everyone in the village would be dead. As populations grow the number of Novelty seekers increase and sooner or later the village has knowledge of how to tame the Tiger. In terms of groups or teams that work on problems that have known solutions, having Novelty seekers around can be a big distraction/waste of time and energy as they goof off and wander. But for teams working on problems unknown, Novelty seekers are a must have. Nothing is guaranteed when working on unknowns, but the team will learn more/make progress with a Novelty Seeker around than without. While sites like HN attract Novelty Seekers from all over and there is some spillover into startups (many working on problems with unknowns) this process of matching Novelty seekers to groups that need them has WAYS to go. We do it in very inefficient ways and lacking awareness. Sometimes we misidentify them (lot of people pretend to be novelty seekers cause it gets them on teams) OR Novelty seekers are put in charge OR they want to be in charge Or we think we need a Novelty seeker on staff 24x7 when actually we just need them to come in and take a look at a specific problem once a week or once a month. These mistakes can be avoided if you know the role the Novelty Seeker plays in society and what problems they are needed for.

coldtea 7y ago
>Small populations don't need too many novelty seekers. If everyone in a village is curious about Tigers, sooner or later everyone in the village would be dead. As populations grow the number of Novelty seekers increase and sooner or later the village has knowledge of how to tame the Tiger. That's an anthropology way to looking at it -- which could be OK if one is speaking for some remote villages or tribes. The modern world though is so complex and cross-cutting that I don't think this applies, at least not in the same way. For one, novelty seeking is hardly associated with survival for most people and groups (like in the village/tiger example). Second, each of us has tons of different outlets for that novelty seeking, not just a single group.

wruza 7y ago

IME, reading quick articles or googling for a word doesn’t work too. But there is a way to get an interesting information. I built my curiosity stream by checking channels on youtube (it has non-crap channels, despite my beliefs). It wasn’t a quick process. One video by another I filtered content and made a subscription set which feeds me a couple or more videos per week that are good content and build my curiosity, as tfa explained. When there is more free time, I just check archives and find even more. Now I have a non-distracting queue of knowledge that requires nothing to sustain. Funnily, before that I never hit “subscribe”, because it was perceived as a time-spending pit. And it is, for many “funny cats” or “fail compilation” channels which produce videos twice daily. All this works because every piece there has easy connections. Articles do not connect – I have to lookup the author, register to subscribe, then manage updates from many sites, etc. Streams from mass-media like yt are more comfortable to follow and there are many suggestions from other channels on the topic.

iscrewyou 7y ago
Any way for you to share a few of your YouTube channels? I love watching channels such as 3blue1brown, numberphile, sixtysymbols, deepskyvideos, etc. it’s true what you say about sitting down and actually watching more than just a sound bite. Having context of things helps a lot with learning. However, I am lacking in some development channels.
- wruza 7y ago
  Hi, of course! 3b1b and numberphile are two of my favorites too. Especially featuring Neil Sloane and prof. Tadashi Tokieda (no intent to undervalue other stars and/or Parker squares). PBS network is also great. I watch PBS Eons and PBS Spacetime the same time I see a notification dot. Recently added Astrum because of nice pics. melodysheep caught me with their timelapse videos. These two are in wait-and-see category atm. Also Jay Foreman for british humour, London history and mapmen. Primer posts rarely, but was definitely worth a sub. That’s all. I visit few more topics/channels by hand, but they are of entertainment nature (starcraft tournaments, local evening letsplays, etc), thus no sub as it would create an unwanted distraction. As of games, MkIceAndFire plays them with decent skill in no commentary, no overlay style. Btw, when you’re on a channel, you can check “channels” to see if an author likes or links to something on their own account. Hope you like some of these! >development channels Sadly, it never clicked with me, despite (or because) me being full-time dev since when youtube still wasn’t a thing. It just feels either too slow or too shallow/instructional rather than deep and full of decades of wisdom. Idk, can’t force myself to watch any of these anymore.

vfinn 7y ago

One idea is that population competes for positions, and that restricts your choices early on. You could imagine that you're either pushed away or drawn into some position. Another point of view is to see your actions through constraints, which is an inter-related point of view to competition. You're bound by money, time, energy (you can do just so much), and other resources. You can see your situation also trough psychology. You have fears, traumas, addictions, etc. Then there's intelligence that translates into how good you're at creating goals, how good you're at seeing yourself, how good you're at listening yourself, how good you're at solving problems, and how aware you're of your current condition, etc. in addition to having the ability to become better at such matters. It's clear that all these things define how well you're in control what you're doing. There are a lot of outside sources of influences that you need to be aware of. All kind of distractions, commercials, games, noise, propaganda (manufacturing consent?). Your society wants you to do this, your employer wants you to do that, and often times you feel you have to give in, which means that you're fighting for control on a psychological level. Creating your life so that you're 100% in control all time is very difficult, if not possible, but you can become aware of what's happening in yourself as you click mindlessly trough the internet, or when you do things/tasks you don't really want to do. You can change yourself to overcome procrastination in order to become a person that knows what he's doing, not just because you have to, but because you want to. You want to take part in society, you want to work for good causes, etc. You want to study in university to get into a certain position. And all this will that you're aware of diminishes the amount of random choices you make, I claim.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jiofih 7y ago

- “You’ve been clickbaited by your own brain” - full-screen paywall whooshes in :(

sheepstrat 7y ago
Disable Javascript ;)

atemerev 7y ago

One of the very few (somewhat) positive traits of having adult ADHD: this particular problem does not exist. If you want to be curious about something — even if it is a slightest spark of interest — it immediately activates to full-blown involvement, sometimes bordering on obsession. I have spent a year studying quantum mechanics full time on my own, reading textbooks and practicing exercises, because I was mildly curious about quantum physics at some point. Got me fired from my job back then, as it had nothing to do with QM. This is not always a good thing. :)

Craighead 7y ago

Busy paying bills to survive.

mrfusion 7y ago

It reminds me of that sienfeld episode where George says he always wanted to be a civil war buff.

transitionnel 7y ago

The article is interesting and raises a good point, but I don't think it really solves anything. With the right perspective on (understanding of) your mental processes, deep, useful, questions like this cease to exist. They are solved. I've had success recently with subtle self-control over curiosity and motivation, and the way to do it is just as simple as it intuitively feels. Reconfiguring your brain to follow through on your stated goals is a simple process over time that relies on simple goal-setting and reward. You set up a system of trivial goals, always at whatever pace you enjoy, and expand their novelty and risk factor. Being very simple and increasingly binary, this process can easily crystallize in your physical brain. Yet it is ever expanding in complexity as you become excited at your progress in broadening intelligence. This is the kind of thing that some will want evidence for. Those are the ones that won't be able to make use of it. Follow intuition; only you can convince your inner self of truth in progress. Science is only a semi-precise tool for helping this process, as the controls of any experiment are infinite in reality. BTW, the comment on Novelty Seeking was great hos234!

criddell 7y ago

This is why I have 20 unread books on my Kindle and at night when I'm looking for something to read I can't find anything.

tw1010 7y ago
That's like saying there doesn't exist riveting brain-changing books out there, which just isn't true. (Keep searching until you've found your bliss.)

ErikAugust 7y ago

No paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/opinion/sunday/curiosity-brain.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/opinion/sunday/curiosity-...

loolatrix 7y ago
Still paywalled for me. Alternative is curl https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/opinion/sunday/curiosity-brain.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/opinion/sunday/curiosity-... > nyt.html

shantly 7y ago

Worth noting that the ability to indulge practically any idle curiosity ("who was that guy in that one movie again?") with almost no effort is very new. Unless you happened to have the relevant book of trivia, or maybe a good encyclopedia for some things, and you were at home or otherwise somewhere those were physically located, you couldn't find out without quite a bit of effort. That kind of stuff just dropped out of one's mind almost as quickly as it came up. You might ask the people around you, and if they couldn't remember, oh well, off it goes. If you wanted to know something, you had to work at it or premeditate and spend time and/or money to be ready to find out information in a certain category (having the right books, mostly). Your brain didn't nag and insist that you go find it out right now, generally, for every little question of near-zero importance that happened to cross your mind. That's a curse of the Internet age.

WhompingWindows 7y ago
A few people I know immediately go to their phones to check facts during hangouts and conversations. I find it pretty off-putting, that those close to me value a trivial fact over staying fully connected with the conversation. There is some dopaminergic itch that must be scratched here, and I find like most itching, it doesn't end up paying off for more than a second.
- RobertRoberts 7y ago
  I have some relationships where we value trivia as a part of our discussions. And looking stuff up is fun for all of us. Maybe the type of people and the relationships you have determine the experience in this case?
  - WhompingWindows 7y ago
    Maybe your group is different, but I want someone to engage fully with me as a person, not check their phones for a fact that doesn't matter. Something like, what was Robert de Niro's second major film? This matters zero, can we have screen-free time together?

40acres 7y ago

I can only speak for America society, but in my experience after a certain age general novelty seeking is discouraged. We've all experienced the feeling of being bombarded by questions from a toddler, but after a certain age we restrict the "universe of relevant questions" to be context specific. As someone with ADHD, novelty seeking has never been an issue for me. Generally I think it benefits society as a whole to have a robust number of novelty seekers in the population -- but in a society where specialization is rewarded so greatly it can be a frustrating trait.

randcraw 7y ago
I think it's the more disruptive forms of curiosity that are actively discouraged -- where you publicly question whether a fundamental fact is wrong and suggest that it be corrected before we proceed with sopme standard operating procedure that others depend on. Pretty much everyone hates that. But I think when curiosity is kept private, or you state that your explorations are personal, peripheral, and nowhere near anyone's critical path, curiosity shouldn't pose a threat. But it is curious that after you leave school, curiosity is more often discouraged than encouraged in our society. It seems like 95% of people just want all their beliefs forever to be correct, certain, unchanging, and unthreatening.

Buldak 7y ago

This is like asking, "Why can't I decide to enjoy broccoli if I believe it's healthy to eat?" The evolutionary story behind curiosity notwithstanding, it seems to me that this is just a case of the more general observation you can't alter your desires simply by reflecting on whether they are good or bad.

_se 7y ago
Except that you can, by just doing the things you want to do until they become habits. It's not really much different than going to the gym or deciding not to drink too often. Even though you might want/not want to do the thing, you still do it because you know it's better for you. The better way to say it is that it's difficult to alter one's desires via reflection, not that it cannot be done.

adamnemecek 7y ago

Yeah that, or school real beats curiosity out of you. By the time you are done, you are a husk of the once curious human being you used to be?

incubus0h 7y ago

Can someone suggest good career options for person with novelty traits ? (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_seeking). Once you are settle down in a certain career (for example, IT/software development), not having to satisfy the itch for novelty seeking can make things really boring for you. So, my next question - how do satisfy that itch in a given career, say IT?

WaxProlix 7y ago
Consulting can be good; a new tech stack, a new org with new weird dysfunctions every few months. A new project, new teammates, new shareholders, etc. It never feels like the same job, though of course some things can remain static- you're still a programmer, architect, PM, etc.
arbitrary_name 7y ago
So - I am a strong 'novelty person'. Much of my life revolves around change and newness, and constant, ongoing learning (I've moved from travel wholesaling to banking to startups to energy to mining to bio-pharma to...who knows?). At the beginning of my career, I spent about 6 months working in a bank before I realised that working with the same people, the same task, the same desk day in and day out was not for me. I was not learning all that much after the first 2 months. I realised I needed to stay in 'those first two months' - where everything is new, where you are constantly learning the ropes - but before anything gets repetitive. So I became a management consultant; and it's awesome; my job changes every 10-12 weeks, with a new office, new team, new clients and new challenges. I can travel for projects if I want a new city, new bed, new bars etc, or I can stay at home and explore. I work with a lot of technical folks in the field; devs, architects, project managers, business analysts, analytics specialists - all with (broadly) the same passion for learning and change that I have. If you're interested, check it out - there's lots of benefits, lots of great opportunities and a ton of learning to be had, as long as you can balance the expectations and demands.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Bespoke research, technical or business analysis.

abruzzi 7y ago

The premise of the article seems odd to me. Am I just unusual in the fact that my interests and curiosity are very closely aligned?

rdiddly 7y ago

Is the problem that we're not curious about the right things? Or is it more that passively wandering through a crap-garden has an astronomically small chance of offering you anything but crap? (Not to put too fine a point on the "crap" thing, because that's not really my point.) The piece talks about those who read, but elides the free agency of those who offer. Clicking on an article someone offers is not just moving through an unbiased and natural "world" and interacting with it like picking berries off a bush. This world was built by other humans, framed by other humans, who decided what to offer. Behind every article is a human with an agenda and perhaps traffic & revenue targets. If you let them determine what you read, yeah there will tend to be a mismatch. This is not an "opportunistic" approach, it's a "passive" approach. Let's say we were talking about pizza instead. You want pizza. Do you go wandering around hoping someone offers you pizza? Pretty sure if you don't already know where to get pizza, you go look up pizza. But then are you like "Oh but there are 'thousands of hits' for pizza, boo hoo?!" No, that is what success at finding pizza looks like. Sorting out which one is your favorite pizza, the one that's just right for you from all those many options is like, the least amount of work you can frigging do. It's fortunate-people problems. If you're curious about something, this author was right the first time: Just look it up. First hit is almost always Wikipedia, which is fine. Start reading, and you're off to the races. They even have hyperlinks to all related terms/concepts that might need explication or that you might be, ahem, curious about. Yep it takes some minimal amount of will and discipline to read and click links and direct your own learning. If you can't muster that, you're kind of in trouble. But do it anyway; practicing will make you stronger.