Satisfying curiosity is an almost sublime experience to me. I have a pretty kinetic definition of what it means to understand (the thing that curiosity tries to

Satisfying curiosity is an almost sublime experience to me. I have a pretty kinetic definition of what it means to understand (the thing that curiosity tries to achieve and is satisfied by; of course, a curious mind will find more questions than answers). Understanding something means becoming something, to an extent, so you can play with it in your head. It's like empathy for systems, or aliens / animals. Have you ever seen videos of someone hearing for the first time in their lives, or read stories of people who develop depth perception in their mid-20s after watching 3D IMAX movies? They go through absolute bliss. They feel as if a gift had been given to them, and they can interact with the world in an entirely new way immediately afterwards; they couldn't even understand that this was a piece that's been missing. Perhaps understanding can be thought of as a means of adding dimension to your perception field. To further map the example of gaining depth perception to understanding a concept: when one truly understands something, they can look at the world as a picture and expand it like a 3D image, then walk inside of it in their minds. When they understand more of it, the perception of the world becomes riddled with dimensions and perspectives to play with it. Perhaps I'm /addicted/ to understanding. My job literally involves understanding firmware that other people wrote to find patterns which lead to security bugs and fix them, and I'm right in my zone every time I get to so intimately know a new piece of firmware. It's like walking through a huge castle with all of its secret corridors and the pipes behind the wall... reverse engineering eventually tells you a story about the architects as well. I don't know if compulsion to understand is only one of the ways curiosity manifests itself or if this is something else entirely. Do you model this in your research? It feels a double-edged-sword kind of compulsion that happens to lead me out of some of my darkest moments in life (and, without proper care, thrust me right back into it). I'm aware of the causality ambiguity in this relationship, that's something I'm not completely sure about yet. I hope this helps you with your research in some small way; my compulsion to understand is leading me to read it (and enter a dialogue through this comment).