9 ms·

Wikipedia searches reveal differing styles of curiosity

72 points by ripe 2y ago

fargle 2y ago
i'm a rabbit-holer. follow the chain of interesting links from one article to the next over and over to see where i get to with hardly any backtracking. after about 5-6 links it's pretty random. after about 20 who knows where you'll end up.
- dambi0 2y ago
  Busybody seems an unfortunate name to me, I don’t think it’s a particularly positive label. I think there’s also a category difference betweeen hunter / busybody and dancer. The first suggest search strategies the second the utility of thst search. How do we know that hunters and busybodies aren’t just failed dancers?
  - DigitalNoumena 2y ago
    There seems to be a deliberate, implicit value judgement about "busybodies" that would explain the negative connotations: > Bassett hypothesizes that “in countries that have more structures of oppression or patriarchal forces, there may be a constraining of knowledge production that pushes people more toward this hyperfocus.”
    - jorams 2y ago
      The article describes the "hunters" as more focused, so I am fairly certain that statement refers to the "hunters" instead of the "busybodies".
- dobladov 2y ago
  You might like https://blinpete.github.io/wiki-graph https://blinpete.github.io/wiki-graph, personally I like to search cooking terms and find other related cuisine
simojo 2y ago
> "a busybody traces a zigzagging route through many often distantly related topics. A hunter, in contrast, searches with sustained focus, moving among a relatively small number of closely related articles. A dancer links together highly disparate topics to try to synthesize new ideas." Depending on my end goal, I'll do a combination of all three.
m463 2y ago
I wonder how the word "busybody" was chosen? A busybody implies someone who is nosey, the type of person that peeks through their curtains at what the neighbors are doing. The article says: "In this lexicon, a busybody traces a zigzagging route through many often distantly related topics." I wonder what is accurate?
- prolyxis 2y ago
  It seems like it stems from a 2019 philosophy article written by Perry Zurn, titled "Busybody, Hunter, Dancer: Three Historical Modes of Curiosity." Zurn does write "At their most basic level, a busybody is someone who is curious about other people's business," but develops the concept a bit further. Zurn says "The busybody's ideational sphere, for example, is characterized by quick associations, discrete pieces of information, and loose knowledge webs. They are interested in conceptual rarities: whatever lies outside of their knowledge grids." Whereas the research article Zhou et al. (2024) states "Hunters build tight, constrained networks whereas busybodies build loose, broad networks." So it seems their conception of busybody roughly matches Zurn's description. See the methods section https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3268#sec-4 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3268#sec-4 , for a description of how Zhou et al. (2014) aggregate graph theoretic metrics to define "busybody" and "hunter" styles of navigating Wikipedia.
- leobg 2y ago
  I also find the conclusions odd. Could it be that for the rich people, Wikipedia is just entertainment, whereas people in poorer countries actually seek to understand a topic in order to solve a problem?
- inetknght 2y ago
  > A busybody implies someone who is nosey, the type of person that peeks through their curtains at what the neighbors are doing. I disagree. You're describing a "nosey neighbor". A busybody is someone who is always busy. Being busy does not at all imply being nosey.
  - pessimizer 2y ago
nitwit005 2y ago
I'm not sure I can believe such a study unless there is a "drunk browsing behavior" category.
tolerance 2y ago
> In countries with higher education levels and greater gender equality, people browsed more like busybodies. In countries with lower scores on these variables, people browsed like hunters. Bassett hypothesizes that “in countries that have more structures of oppression or patriarchal forces, there may be a constraining of knowledge production that pushes people more toward this hyperfocus.” This is an odd hypothesis and you know, I’ve read a little bit of enough about postmodernism/critical theory and its influence on hypertext to feel like this take is down right saditty. The need to try to sow conflict between “patriarchy” and “xetriarchy” by depicting one style of curiosity as more virtuous than the other dampens what looks like an otherwise interesting study. And it doesn’t help that the authors don’t appear to list or accessibly depict which countries were more inclined toward one style as opposed to the other. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3268 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3268 If anyone can decipher the sophistry in the actual study, please let me know what’s going on here, especially in figure 8.
- orwin 2y ago
  > The need to try to sow conflict between “patriarchy” and “xetriarchy” by depicting one style of curiosity as more virtuous than the other Did you understood that one method was better than the other? To me it's just different way of using Wikipedia. I'm more of a busybody myself, but I can do hyperfocused dive ('hunter', which to me seems more positive) on specific subjects when needed. I often go out of Wikipedia in that case though (I use it to find links mostly)
  - tolerance 2y ago
    > Did you understood that one method was better than the other? No, I'm accusing the authors of implying this. > To me it's just different way of using Wikipedia. I'm more of a busybody myself, but I can do hyperfocused dive ('hunter', which to me seems more positive) on specific subjects when needed. I often go out of Wikipedia in that case though (I use it to find links mostly) Same. Check this out: > The researchers cite three main hypotheses driving the associations between information-seeking approaches and equality. > > “One is that it’s possible that countries that have more inequality also have more patriarchal structures of oppression that are constraining the knowledge production approaches to be more Hunter-like,” says Bassett. “Countries that have greater equality, in contrast, are open to a diversity of ideas, and therefore a diversity of ways that we’re engaging in the world. This is more like the busybody—the one that’s moving between ideas in a very open-minded way.” https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/studying-wikipedia-browsing-habits-learn-how-people-learn https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/studying-wikipedia-browsing... Terms like "equality" and "diversity" are afforded to the busybodies while "patriarchy", "oppression" and "constrained" are given to the hunters. I think that this conveys plenty about which method is seen as more virtuous than the other. The same style of thought is given in the initial quote that I pulled: > In countries with higher education levels and greater gender equality, people browsed more like busybodies. In countries with lower scores on these variables, people browsed like hunters. Bassett hypothesizes that “in countries that have more structures of oppression or patriarchal forces, there may be a constraining of knowledge production that pushes people more toward this hyperfocus.” I reckon that we can agree that "gender equality" is considered a virtue in Liberal thought. I don't want to get all worked up and (further?) expose my own ignorance, but my own hunch that this that this study while interesting on the surfaced is backed by a kind of cultural "woo" science for scientific Americans. I earnestly pity the actual scientists who may try to decipher those multi-graph figures of swirly things and pretty colors.
Slava_Propanei 2y ago
Study makes a mistake by automatically equating functional societies with gender equality
randcraw 2y ago
For more background (2022): https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/04/busybody-hunter-dancer-curiosity-curious-minds-bassett-zurn https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/04/busybody-hun... "The busybody makes it their business to know everything and anything – they want to know as much as possible, and like a butterfly flit about from topic to topic. The hunter, conversely, has a focused curiosity, and they tirelessly track down new discoveries like a hound. The dancer leaps creatively through knowledge, relying on their imagination."
maxweylandt 2y ago
Somewhat related: Isaiah Berlin's "The Hedgehog and the Fox". From wiki: > hedgehogs ... view the world through the lens of a single defining idea, and foxes, who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox
- randysalami 2y ago
  I’m a fox. It’s exhausting
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
sema4hacker 2y ago
When I first used Wikipedia, I'd try to remember to go back to interesting links as I went depth-first through the article. But I'd often forget to go back, or if the article was long I'd have trouble finding the earlier link I thought was interesting. So now I explore links breadth-first: as soon as I hit a link I want to additionally explore, I immediately open that link in a new tab and either jump to reading that page right away, or come back later to all the new tabs I've created.
- mimischi 2y ago
  I’m genuinely curious: do you really get back to those tabs and read them? I find I end up in these rabbit holes, then realize what time it is and context switch to something else. Once I happen to get back to the collection of Wikipedia tabs, I have most often already lost the spark of interest that I’ve felt initially.
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    > I’m genuinely curious: do you really get back to those tabs and read them? Not the op, but this is how my browser uses all the memory.
  - zamadatix 2y ago
    Nobody has time to sit and read all of (or even a small portion of) Wikipedia so your options are to either open endless links you know will never get read or be progressively more selective in which links you choose to follow as the time you want to set aside for curiosity runs out. The only way you end up with tabs you don't read is if you chose the wrong thresholds for following links through the given session. This is self-correcting after a few goes as you realize clicking too many links leads to spending time reading articles you cared less about rather than ones you cared more about.
- ant6n 2y ago
  One problem is the newfangled Wikipedia with collapsible sections instead of an index doesn’t work on iOS anymore. When jumping into a link and coming back, it often goes to the top of the article instead of where one left of. (Doesn’t anybody test the basic usability of these kind of changes) It seems deliberately designed against browsing through the worlds knowledge.
carlosjobim 2y ago
If you have an iPhone I highly recommend installing the Wikipedia app. It will take over any clicks on Wikipedia links, and is a much better experience than the mobile site. You can also search for articles directly inside the app instead of through a search engine.
jinnko 2y ago
There's a good episode of Mindscape (Sean Carroll) with the authors of Curious Minds, Perry Zurn and Dani Bassett, which goes into depth about the busybody, dancer and hunter concepts. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2022/11/28/219-dani-bassett-and-perry-zurn-on-the-neuroscience-and-philosophy-of-curiosity/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2022/11/28/219-...

72 points by ripe 2y ago

i'm a rabbit-holer. follow the chain of interesting links from one article to the next over and over to see where i get to with hardly any backtracking. after about 5-6 links it's pretty random. after about 20 who knows where you'll end up.

dambi0 2y ago
Busybody seems an unfortunate name to me, I don’t think it’s a particularly positive label. I think there’s also a category difference betweeen hunter / busybody and dancer. The first suggest search strategies the second the utility of thst search. How do we know that hunters and busybodies aren’t just failed dancers?
- DigitalNoumena 2y ago
  There seems to be a deliberate, implicit value judgement about "busybodies" that would explain the negative connotations: > Bassett hypothesizes that “in countries that have more structures of oppression or patriarchal forces, there may be a constraining of knowledge production that pushes people more toward this hyperfocus.”
  - jorams 2y ago
    The article describes the "hunters" as more focused, so I am fairly certain that statement refers to the "hunters" instead of the "busybodies".
dobladov 2y ago
You might like https://blinpete.github.io/wiki-graph https://blinpete.github.io/wiki-graph, personally I like to search cooking terms and find other related cuisine

simojo 2y ago

> "a busybody traces a zigzagging route through many often distantly related topics. A hunter, in contrast, searches with sustained focus, moving among a relatively small number of closely related articles. A dancer links together highly disparate topics to try to synthesize new ideas." Depending on my end goal, I'll do a combination of all three.

m463 2y ago

I wonder how the word "busybody" was chosen? A busybody implies someone who is nosey, the type of person that peeks through their curtains at what the neighbors are doing. The article says: "In this lexicon, a busybody traces a zigzagging route through many often distantly related topics." I wonder what is accurate?

prolyxis 2y ago
It seems like it stems from a 2019 philosophy article written by Perry Zurn, titled "Busybody, Hunter, Dancer: Three Historical Modes of Curiosity." Zurn does write "At their most basic level, a busybody is someone who is curious about other people's business," but develops the concept a bit further. Zurn says "The busybody's ideational sphere, for example, is characterized by quick associations, discrete pieces of information, and loose knowledge webs. They are interested in conceptual rarities: whatever lies outside of their knowledge grids." Whereas the research article Zhou et al. (2024) states "Hunters build tight, constrained networks whereas busybodies build loose, broad networks." So it seems their conception of busybody roughly matches Zurn's description. See the methods section https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3268#sec-4 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3268#sec-4 , for a description of how Zhou et al. (2014) aggregate graph theoretic metrics to define "busybody" and "hunter" styles of navigating Wikipedia.
leobg 2y ago
I also find the conclusions odd. Could it be that for the rich people, Wikipedia is just entertainment, whereas people in poorer countries actually seek to understand a topic in order to solve a problem?
inetknght 2y ago
> A busybody implies someone who is nosey, the type of person that peeks through their curtains at what the neighbors are doing. I disagree. You're describing a "nosey neighbor". A busybody is someone who is always busy. Being busy does not at all imply being nosey.
- pessimizer 2y ago

nitwit005 2y ago

I'm not sure I can believe such a study unless there is a "drunk browsing behavior" category.

tolerance 2y ago

> In countries with higher education levels and greater gender equality, people browsed more like busybodies. In countries with lower scores on these variables, people browsed like hunters. Bassett hypothesizes that “in countries that have more structures of oppression or patriarchal forces, there may be a constraining of knowledge production that pushes people more toward this hyperfocus.” This is an odd hypothesis and you know, I’ve read a little bit of enough about postmodernism/critical theory and its influence on hypertext to feel like this take is down right saditty. The need to try to sow conflict between “patriarchy” and “xetriarchy” by depicting one style of curiosity as more virtuous than the other dampens what looks like an otherwise interesting study. And it doesn’t help that the authors don’t appear to list or accessibly depict which countries were more inclined toward one style as opposed to the other. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3268 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3268 If anyone can decipher the sophistry in the actual study, please let me know what’s going on here, especially in figure 8.

orwin 2y ago
> The need to try to sow conflict between “patriarchy” and “xetriarchy” by depicting one style of curiosity as more virtuous than the other Did you understood that one method was better than the other? To me it's just different way of using Wikipedia. I'm more of a busybody myself, but I can do hyperfocused dive ('hunter', which to me seems more positive) on specific subjects when needed. I often go out of Wikipedia in that case though (I use it to find links mostly)
- tolerance 2y ago
  > Did you understood that one method was better than the other? No, I'm accusing the authors of implying this. > To me it's just different way of using Wikipedia. I'm more of a busybody myself, but I can do hyperfocused dive ('hunter', which to me seems more positive) on specific subjects when needed. I often go out of Wikipedia in that case though (I use it to find links mostly) Same. Check this out: > The researchers cite three main hypotheses driving the associations between information-seeking approaches and equality. > > “One is that it’s possible that countries that have more inequality also have more patriarchal structures of oppression that are constraining the knowledge production approaches to be more Hunter-like,” says Bassett. “Countries that have greater equality, in contrast, are open to a diversity of ideas, and therefore a diversity of ways that we’re engaging in the world. This is more like the busybody—the one that’s moving between ideas in a very open-minded way.” https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/studying-wikipedia-browsing-habits-learn-how-people-learn https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/studying-wikipedia-browsing... Terms like "equality" and "diversity" are afforded to the busybodies while "patriarchy", "oppression" and "constrained" are given to the hunters. I think that this conveys plenty about which method is seen as more virtuous than the other. The same style of thought is given in the initial quote that I pulled: > In countries with higher education levels and greater gender equality, people browsed more like busybodies. In countries with lower scores on these variables, people browsed like hunters. Bassett hypothesizes that “in countries that have more structures of oppression or patriarchal forces, there may be a constraining of knowledge production that pushes people more toward this hyperfocus.” I reckon that we can agree that "gender equality" is considered a virtue in Liberal thought. I don't want to get all worked up and (further?) expose my own ignorance, but my own hunch that this that this study while interesting on the surfaced is backed by a kind of cultural "woo" science for scientific Americans. I earnestly pity the actual scientists who may try to decipher those multi-graph figures of swirly things and pretty colors.

Slava_Propanei 2y ago

Study makes a mistake by automatically equating functional societies with gender equality

randcraw 2y ago

For more background (2022): https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/04/busybody-hunter-dancer-curiosity-curious-minds-bassett-zurn https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/04/busybody-hun... "The busybody makes it their business to know everything and anything – they want to know as much as possible, and like a butterfly flit about from topic to topic. The hunter, conversely, has a focused curiosity, and they tirelessly track down new discoveries like a hound. The dancer leaps creatively through knowledge, relying on their imagination."

maxweylandt 2y ago

Somewhat related: Isaiah Berlin's "The Hedgehog and the Fox". From wiki: > hedgehogs ... view the world through the lens of a single defining idea, and foxes, who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox

randysalami 2y ago
I’m a fox. It’s exhausting
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

sema4hacker 2y ago

When I first used Wikipedia, I'd try to remember to go back to interesting links as I went depth-first through the article. But I'd often forget to go back, or if the article was long I'd have trouble finding the earlier link I thought was interesting. So now I explore links breadth-first: as soon as I hit a link I want to additionally explore, I immediately open that link in a new tab and either jump to reading that page right away, or come back later to all the new tabs I've created.

mimischi 2y ago
I’m genuinely curious: do you really get back to those tabs and read them? I find I end up in these rabbit holes, then realize what time it is and context switch to something else. Once I happen to get back to the collection of Wikipedia tabs, I have most often already lost the spark of interest that I’ve felt initially.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  > I’m genuinely curious: do you really get back to those tabs and read them? Not the op, but this is how my browser uses all the memory.
- zamadatix 2y ago
  Nobody has time to sit and read all of (or even a small portion of) Wikipedia so your options are to either open endless links you know will never get read or be progressively more selective in which links you choose to follow as the time you want to set aside for curiosity runs out. The only way you end up with tabs you don't read is if you chose the wrong thresholds for following links through the given session. This is self-correcting after a few goes as you realize clicking too many links leads to spending time reading articles you cared less about rather than ones you cared more about.
ant6n 2y ago
One problem is the newfangled Wikipedia with collapsible sections instead of an index doesn’t work on iOS anymore. When jumping into a link and coming back, it often goes to the top of the article instead of where one left of. (Doesn’t anybody test the basic usability of these kind of changes) It seems deliberately designed against browsing through the worlds knowledge.

carlosjobim 2y ago

If you have an iPhone I highly recommend installing the Wikipedia app. It will take over any clicks on Wikipedia links, and is a much better experience than the mobile site. You can also search for articles directly inside the app instead of through a search engine.

jinnko 2y ago

There's a good episode of Mindscape (Sean Carroll) with the authors of Curious Minds, Perry Zurn and Dani Bassett, which goes into depth about the busybody, dancer and hunter concepts. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2022/11/28/219-dani-bassett-and-perry-zurn-on-the-neuroscience-and-philosophy-of-curiosity/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2022/11/28/219-...