3 ms·

> What are you excessively curious about — curious to a degree that would bore most other people? That's what you're looking for. This is a great article, but

> What are you excessively curious about — curious to a degree that would bore most other people? That's what you're looking for. This is a great article, but there are many, many people for whom this advice is going to lead nowhere or worse. They have often been to fancy universities and have often earned fancy degrees. But what they don't realize is that they've also been trained to respond to the praise of authority figures. The article touches on this point later, but emphasizes a different outcome. If there's one thing that authority figures absolutely hate is a project that makes you excessively curious. I'll speculate that those most affected by this perverse reward system will deny its influence over them most strongly. They won't realize that their motivation for projects stems from the enthusiasm that authority figure show or withhold. They will therefore conclude that the warning above does not apply to them. And they will have a very hard time. I saw this first-hand in graduate school. At least half the students had never learned to disregard the level of the greybeard's enthusiasm when choosing projects. Unsurprisingly, they also did not understood the process of formulating a project idea. This was the half that had, by far, the hardest time. At the slightest hint of graybeard apathy for a project idea, they were onto something else.

chinchilla2020 3y ago
At the end of the day, your curiosity and talent is used to make money for someone. Fetishizing work productivity and ability ignores the fact that most company owners are managerial types that will harness your output for monetary value. You could easily end up wasting your life by becoming some niche field leader in the systems you work on, but never enjoying the rewards of your talent. Hackernews in particular likes the idea of a life spent entirely behind a laptop, but there is a larger world out there, and the winners are enjoying it while we chase little lifehacks to eke out 20 extra minutes of productivity in a 10 hour day. I'm as guilty of this productivity fetishization as anyone here, but am just reaching a point in life where I'm starting to notice the walls of the maze.
- irksomehails 3y ago
  Thanks for putting this out in words. It really hits the nail on how I've been feeling lately.
a_bonobo 3y ago
Somewhat related, Kevin Gross and Carl T Bergstrom just put up this preprint on risk aversion in science: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.13816 https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.13816 > incentives to motivate effort clash with incentives to motivate risk-taking, because a failed project may be evidence of a risky undertaking but could also be the result of simple sloth. As a result, the incentives needed to encourage effort actively discourage risk-taking. Scientists respond by working on safe projects that generate evidence of effort but that don't move science forward as rapidly as riskier projects would.
magnifyhim 3y ago
This really resonates with my personal experience. Still, I can hear my inner contrarian asking: to what extent are people happier/more productive if their work follows their curiosity? We're encouraged to get in touch with your true curiosity/interest, free ourselves from expectations, etc. Personally, I've found the greatest satisfaction, peace, and even freedom when I work on things that are useful to my friends (let's include authority figures in this framing for the sake of argument). Typically, these aren't things I particularly care about. It turns out I want to help my friends, get praise from them, and maybe learn new things along the way. Without getting too far into evolutionary psychology reductionism, this seems... kind of reasonable? I don't necessarily think I have excessive curiosity towards any particular thing. I can empathize with people who, assuming they had a relatively stable/privileged upbringing, don't have an inner voice telling them what to work on -- maybe that's asking more than is reasonable?

chinchilla2020 3y ago

At the end of the day, your curiosity and talent is used to make money for someone. Fetishizing work productivity and ability ignores the fact that most company owners are managerial types that will harness your output for monetary value. You could easily end up wasting your life by becoming some niche field leader in the systems you work on, but never enjoying the rewards of your talent. Hackernews in particular likes the idea of a life spent entirely behind a laptop, but there is a larger world out there, and the winners are enjoying it while we chase little lifehacks to eke out 20 extra minutes of productivity in a 10 hour day. I'm as guilty of this productivity fetishization as anyone here, but am just reaching a point in life where I'm starting to notice the walls of the maze.

irksomehails 3y ago
Thanks for putting this out in words. It really hits the nail on how I've been feeling lately.

a_bonobo 3y ago

Somewhat related, Kevin Gross and Carl T Bergstrom just put up this preprint on risk aversion in science: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.13816 https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.13816 > incentives to motivate effort clash with incentives to motivate risk-taking, because a failed project may be evidence of a risky undertaking but could also be the result of simple sloth. As a result, the incentives needed to encourage effort actively discourage risk-taking. Scientists respond by working on safe projects that generate evidence of effort but that don't move science forward as rapidly as riskier projects would.

magnifyhim 3y ago

This really resonates with my personal experience. Still, I can hear my inner contrarian asking: to what extent are people happier/more productive if their work follows their curiosity? We're encouraged to get in touch with your true curiosity/interest, free ourselves from expectations, etc. Personally, I've found the greatest satisfaction, peace, and even freedom when I work on things that are useful to my friends (let's include authority figures in this framing for the sake of argument). Typically, these aren't things I particularly care about. It turns out I want to help my friends, get praise from them, and maybe learn new things along the way. Without getting too far into evolutionary psychology reductionism, this seems... kind of reasonable? I don't necessarily think I have excessive curiosity towards any particular thing. I can empathize with people who, assuming they had a relatively stable/privileged upbringing, don't have an inner voice telling them what to work on -- maybe that's asking more than is reasonable?