6 ms·

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'

by 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.
- hos234 7y ago
  My point is, its because it isn't associated (in the minds of most) with survival/success/growth of the novelty seeker or a group requiring a novelty seeker, do we end up with the question - Why aren't we curious about we want to be? Lots of "villages"/groups/teams/orgs have misunderstandings of the role of the novelty seeker. And lots of novelty seekers have misunderstandings of how they can fit in.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  I think anthropology has a lot to say about how we tailless monkeys intuitively behave in modern complex civilization.
jasode 7y ago
>The answer lies in understanding the Utility of the Novelty Seeker to a Group. You've made an interesting comment about "novelty seeking" but I just want to try and clarify what the author's article is talking about. Some representative sentences from the article: >When I’m surfing the web I want to be drawn in by articles on Europe’s political history or the nature of quasars, but I end up reading trivia like a menu from Alcatraz prison. Why am I not curious about the things I want to be curious about? [...] You just need to frequent better foraging grounds. [...] The challenge is changing its focus from the momentary to something more enduring. As a meta comment about Daniel T. Willingham's categories of curiosity which he really isn't making explicit... to him, there's "worthy" curiosity and "worthless" curiosity. To be inclusive and charitable about humanity, we can acknowledge that just about everyone is curious about something. However, if a person is mainly curious about Jennifer Aniston's new boyfriend or other celebrity gossip (low brow non-academic) instead of being curious about quasars or capital-forming effects of military mobilization (high brow academic), that person is labeled "not curious". (I.e. We think of the prototypical scientist/mathematician as "curious" but the teen who reads People Magazine or Vogue to see the latest fashions as "not curious".) The author is writing specifically for the audience who's already in his mental category of "worthy curiosity". However, that person who's actually interested in quasars is currently surfing CNN website reading click-bait stories and Mr. Willingham is offering his ideas why they were led astray. He's targeting people already like him who are predisposed to seeking new information on worthy academic subjects but got temporarily sidetracked with news trivia (e.g. the Alcatraz menu). For the others that get their dopamine fix of celebrity gossip to satisfy their particular form of curiosity seeking, Mr. Willingham isn't talking to them or even trying to explain them to the high-brow curiosity seekers.
- paulsutter 7y ago
  How worthy is it /really/ for a psychologist to read up on quasars?
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Sure that case is a stretch, but I am curious about a lot of things that would really help my career or my social goals, but I still get stuck on a garlic or arguing about Apple and Google and China on HN. I think the simple thing is that I've picked the low hanging fruit and what I need to learn and work on is hard for me to learn and work on, and I have no pressure to excel from parents and schools and potential mates, so I don't do it.
afpx 7y ago
Is anything that you’re saying based in a published theory that I can read about? Or, are you just making this up?
- knolax 7y ago
  Sounds like he's just appealing to HN's "I'm a super special boy" mentality.
- mc3 7y ago
  That's the perennial HN question.
celticmusic 7y ago
interesting, I've never heard of novelty seeking, but both your description and wikipedia's describes me very well. What I've found from a lifetime of experience is that I absolutely need to be able to scratch that itch, and I need to be given the autonomy to do it or I quickly learn to hate life until I move on. Wikipedia states that it's highly heritable, and I remember my mother telling me the reason she would go through and completely rearrange rooms in the house is because it gave her the feeling of having moved to a new place. I'm wondering if that's the result of her having that temperament as well.
danans 7y ago
Novelty seekers sample the space of ideas and solutions that are unknown to the group, essentially generating hypotheses that the group then tests against its own objective functions, whether those are functional or aesthetic. The group must necessarily generate surpluses in order for the novelty seekers to have the time and energy to generate new hypotheses. On the other hand, novelty seeking itself must be grounded in some minimal way with the experience of the group, else it will lose its meaning to the group. There is always a tension between the two. The cutting edge of such novelty seeking is probably in controversial forms of modern art. Of course nobody knows the conditions that give rise to novelty seekers. The old adage "necessity is the mother of invention" is probably a fallacy. Necessity is more likely the force that chooses the most optimal inventions that were themselves generated using surplus time and energy. Another way to think about this is as Novelty Seeking rather than Novelty Seekers. Novelty Seeking means we don't discretely divide groups into one type of person or the other, but rather, we allow a portion of anyone's time and energy to be dedicated to Novelty seeking, depending upon their propensity and desire for such pursuits. Arguably, this would get a large enough group the broadest and most diverse set of hypotheses.

by hos234 7y ago

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.

hos234 7y ago
My point is, its because it isn't associated (in the minds of most) with survival/success/growth of the novelty seeker or a group requiring a novelty seeker, do we end up with the question - Why aren't we curious about we want to be? Lots of "villages"/groups/teams/orgs have misunderstandings of the role of the novelty seeker. And lots of novelty seekers have misunderstandings of how they can fit in.
lonelappde 7y ago
I think anthropology has a lot to say about how we tailless monkeys intuitively behave in modern complex civilization.

jasode 7y ago

>The answer lies in understanding the Utility of the Novelty Seeker to a Group. You've made an interesting comment about "novelty seeking" but I just want to try and clarify what the author's article is talking about. Some representative sentences from the article: >When I’m surfing the web I want to be drawn in by articles on Europe’s political history or the nature of quasars, but I end up reading trivia like a menu from Alcatraz prison. Why am I not curious about the things I want to be curious about? [...] You just need to frequent better foraging grounds. [...] The challenge is changing its focus from the momentary to something more enduring. As a meta comment about Daniel T. Willingham's categories of curiosity which he really isn't making explicit... to him, there's "worthy" curiosity and "worthless" curiosity. To be inclusive and charitable about humanity, we can acknowledge that just about everyone is curious about something. However, if a person is mainly curious about Jennifer Aniston's new boyfriend or other celebrity gossip (low brow non-academic) instead of being curious about quasars or capital-forming effects of military mobilization (high brow academic), that person is labeled "not curious". (I.e. We think of the prototypical scientist/mathematician as "curious" but the teen who reads People Magazine or Vogue to see the latest fashions as "not curious".) The author is writing specifically for the audience who's already in his mental category of "worthy curiosity". However, that person who's actually interested in quasars is currently surfing CNN website reading click-bait stories and Mr. Willingham is offering his ideas why they were led astray. He's targeting people already like him who are predisposed to seeking new information on worthy academic subjects but got temporarily sidetracked with news trivia (e.g. the Alcatraz menu). For the others that get their dopamine fix of celebrity gossip to satisfy their particular form of curiosity seeking, Mr. Willingham isn't talking to them or even trying to explain them to the high-brow curiosity seekers.

paulsutter 7y ago
How worthy is it /really/ for a psychologist to read up on quasars?
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Sure that case is a stretch, but I am curious about a lot of things that would really help my career or my social goals, but I still get stuck on a garlic or arguing about Apple and Google and China on HN. I think the simple thing is that I've picked the low hanging fruit and what I need to learn and work on is hard for me to learn and work on, and I have no pressure to excel from parents and schools and potential mates, so I don't do it.

afpx 7y ago

Is anything that you’re saying based in a published theory that I can read about? Or, are you just making this up?

knolax 7y ago
Sounds like he's just appealing to HN's "I'm a super special boy" mentality.
mc3 7y ago
That's the perennial HN question.

celticmusic 7y ago

interesting, I've never heard of novelty seeking, but both your description and wikipedia's describes me very well. What I've found from a lifetime of experience is that I absolutely need to be able to scratch that itch, and I need to be given the autonomy to do it or I quickly learn to hate life until I move on. Wikipedia states that it's highly heritable, and I remember my mother telling me the reason she would go through and completely rearrange rooms in the house is because it gave her the feeling of having moved to a new place. I'm wondering if that's the result of her having that temperament as well.

danans 7y ago

Novelty seekers sample the space of ideas and solutions that are unknown to the group, essentially generating hypotheses that the group then tests against its own objective functions, whether those are functional or aesthetic. The group must necessarily generate surpluses in order for the novelty seekers to have the time and energy to generate new hypotheses. On the other hand, novelty seeking itself must be grounded in some minimal way with the experience of the group, else it will lose its meaning to the group. There is always a tension between the two. The cutting edge of such novelty seeking is probably in controversial forms of modern art. Of course nobody knows the conditions that give rise to novelty seekers. The old adage "necessity is the mother of invention" is probably a fallacy. Necessity is more likely the force that chooses the most optimal inventions that were themselves generated using surplus time and energy. Another way to think about this is as Novelty Seeking rather than Novelty Seekers. Novelty Seeking means we don't discretely divide groups into one type of person or the other, but rather, we allow a portion of anyone's time and energy to be dedicated to Novelty seeking, depending upon their propensity and desire for such pursuits. Arguably, this would get a large enough group the broadest and most diverse set of hypotheses.