alt Hacker NewsIs Curiosity Good for Us?
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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.
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?
This explains it well https://schoolofcuriosity.substack.com/p/why-systems-hate-cu...
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.
We do not want what is good for us.
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
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)
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.