Is Curiosity Good for Us? | Hacker News Reader

Is Curiosity Good for Us?

lrb.co.uk

48 pointsNaOH28 comments

It's obvious that it is. But I think it's also obvious that one can follow curiosity pathologically and have curiosity rewarded to the point that it becomes harmful. Even information can be addictive to the point that we pursue curiosity beyond a healthy level - or in other words to the point that we ignore other things like simplicity and minimalism.

For example, it seems that this is the trend in modern academia and science, where huge amounts of resources are used to pursue knowledge that wouldn't make sense if it weren't incentivized the way it is.

It is a must!

If you never question something, no matter how small or insignificant, you aren't really living but just....existing!!

Don't be a sheep like everybody else!!!

"What would make someone, anyone, phobic of their curiosity? What might be endangering about curiosity?"

We could send a ship and a crew out to Big Ben and ask Rorsach.

You warm my heart

explain?

It's a reference to the SciFi book Blindsight about humans who leave earth after it is surrounded by a matrix of extraterrestrial objects. Rorschach is another 'alien' vessel they try to communicate with in the Oort cloud (big ben).

Fantastic book. Mind-bending scifi that really makes you think about consciousness, imo

I need to be curious in order to do my job correctly. If I don't, then I'm neglegent. Sure there's probably some instances where curiosity could lead someone to their demise, but for the vast majority of people, why wouldn't it be a good thing?

Do you mean any job, or just your job? What is your job?

This explains it well https://schoolofcuriosity.substack.com/p/why-systems-hate-cu...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50367737

The essay is long and could do with a summary version (hurrah for AI). I get the impression it missed some of the big worries about curiosity - you can be curious and explore things that are terrible ideas. For example, being curious about what it feels like to gouge your own eyes out with a rusty spoon - legitimate question but not something that a healthy human should want to be feeling emotionally or exploring practically. There is a spectrum of healthy and unhealthy curiosity.

The same thing turns up at a societal level. There is a profound question of whether truth and human society are compatible. In some hypothetical universal truth sense, maybe the right thing for humans to do is pack up and end the species. Maybe there is something that looks a lot like a universal truth that implies that, but isn't and we wouldn't realise it fast enough to avoid doing something stupid. We don't (can't, really) know what the outcome of inquiry would be. That suggests that if anyone has any values at all then it is possible for them to conflict with curiosity because curiosity may undermine them.

Curiosity must be handled with care Harry. - Prof. Albus Dumbeldore.

One of my favourate quote whenever trying extreme steps.

That looks very interesting to go read it, but on the other hand who knows where this curiosity might lead to?!

I don't understand psychologists interest in Freud, someone who was completely and entirely objectively wrong about everything.

It would be like physicists constantly including references/comparisons to Aristotelian Mechanics, or flat Earthers.

Why put any consideration or thought into something known-to-be completely wrong? I can't comprehend it. For me, it completely discredits anything they're trying to say. Maybe there was something interesting, I don't know, I gave up after I saw 25 hits for "Freud". I don't enjoy pseudoscience.

You're taking two massive things for granted.

1. Someone else who isn't you figured out how wrong Freud was.

2. What is considered "intuitive" changes over time because of those questions you never had to consider and the answers that you now do.

The less curious you are about the past, the more likely you are to repeat its mistakes. Do not consider yourself immune. It's the people who are as dismissive as you are that are most highly at risk!

This is all a self inflicted wound though. Weeks are still spent on him, and his pseudoscience, in intro psychology classes, and still brought up in higher level courses. People only know about him because psychologists won't stop talking about him. Here's one sentence that could be used to stop the cycle, any time a desire to talk about Freud comes up: Freud introduced the concept of psychoanalysis, but his framework and findings are in no way relevant to science, so will be left to the reader.

And the torture ends!

I don't believe it's necessary to go into depth about all the ideas that were wrong, through all of history.

Amen. I too am curious (sic) why any rational person would want to bury a fascinating subject like curiosity by entangling it with obsolete fantasy-based sophistry like freudianism. Employing but a wee bit of fair-minded imagination instead would surely yield more fruitful and substantial insights.

And was there a book review hiding beneath all that noxious palaver? TL-DR. I'd genuinely like to know. Curiosity deserves better inquiry and illumination than the few books I've seen on the topic.

This.

I just stop reading when I stumble on a piece seriously mentioning Freud as an authority.

We do not want what is good for us.

It killed the cat!

>but satisfaction brought it back

I'm not entirely convinced that the superego is the enemy of curiosity. Some degree of self-restraint probably makes sustained curiosity possible in the first place

Give oneself an out (take out precise policies against the risk of indulging any curiosity that worry you)

Labelling such a heuristic "self-restraint" reveals more about the "superego" than about "humanity"

If curiosity wasn't good for us, we wouldn't have evolved it.

Yes! -cats

Stop daydreaming! Get back to work! Unleashes the leash

Bleh. I made it a ways in, and mostly what I got out of it is that there are more kinds of slop than just AI slop. And psychology is a topic I'm interested in.

> (though Freud makes it clear that when it comes to sexuality, it is never entirely clear what it would be to satisfy our curiosity about sex)

Indeed. For such a predictably basic animal behavior, us humans (who pride our humanity as anything but animals) have an insatiable curiosity for "better" sex...

... (Perhaps more so for men then women)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com