Use curiosity

I just asked someone for constructive criticism and was told my article lacks a point.

Here’s the point I had in mind:

Consider training your brain to scream “Error! Look for a different way to do this” whenever you’re having a conversation, writing an essay, reading a book, cooking a meal, or mentally rehearsing your views about (the Singularity / why so-and-so’s wrong / whatever)... without being curious about something.

For me, gaining this habit even partially has boosted my learning and my productivity -- maybe more than any other rationality learning I’ve managed in the last year.

“Make sure you’re actually aiming for something” is one of those pieces of rationality advice that’s so obvious, one might think it doesn’t need stating. But for me, at least, implementing this wasn’t automatic at all. So, if you’re like me, consider practicing this habit. It might make your life a lot better.

When you chat with your friends -- are you curious about how they’re doing, why their mouth twitched as they said that, or why exactly they disagree with you about X?

I have found, to my frustration, that usually when people ask questions in casual conversation, they aren't really interested in an answer. Often I will consider how to approach answering a question, start verbalizing my first approximation/guess, and notice that everyone else has hit the ignore button and the conversation has moved on.

Reading this article reminded me strongly of the practice of thought challenging in CBT - essentially training in recognising when your thoughts/emotions are not going in a helpful direction and questioning them in order to reroute them more productively.

Or to sum up my feelings on both CBT and the advice in this article: learning how to practise metacognition in a timely fashion is incredibly useful and important.

I'd say that a lot of my reading definitely is "chase" reading. Mostly on Wikipedia, where it's easy to pursue different concept until I get an answer. For example, I'll be wondering, "Wait, what is bread made of, anyway? Like, molecularly?" which will lead me on a chase through bread, flour, wheat, germ, carbohydrate, cellulose, et cetera. Lots of times looking it up myself is the only way to get the answer I want, because the people I'm talking to don't understand the kind of answer I want, one of real understanding.

My main state of mind these days is either "busy" or "at a loose end."

I spent much of my youth furiously, self-righteously, pursuing new information and ideas, in and outside my area of interest. I advocated this for all.

These days I feel like I've done that and deserve a rest. Being deliberately dull also infuriates the teenagers, which is most entertaining. (You know all those annoying fuddy-duddy old people things your parents did? They were trolling you.) Quite a lot of stuff doesn't actually interest me personally, and pursuing it just because it's there is not preferable to doing nothing. Anything new demanding my interest has to show why I should be personally, subjectively interested.

I think I'm getting bored of late, though. The hard part is finding an area of interest that I'm actually that interested in, and not just more time-filling ("like watching cable, only with fewer hair replacement infomercials"[1]).

So. Suggestions on finding things that I (or, more generally, any given person) would find actually interesting?

[1] Dunn, Sarah. The Official Slacker Handbook. Abacus, 1994. ISBN 0-349-10591-X

Curiosity is one of my major low-level motivators. For example, when debugging, it helps me to consciously refocus from "Let's get X done. Obviously, it's not done yet." to "I've programmed it to do X. How come it does Y instead?" One could say that it boosts productivity just because it is a better-specified goal; but it feels like curiosity working.

Curiosity is also one of my major drives behind procrastination; the other is "getting (irrelevant) things done".

I work as a software engineer, and I've noticed that there seems to be a part of my brain that seems to get happy when someone announces that there is some terrible bug in our software. I suspect that this part is anticipating the fact that I am about to mentally switch gears into chase mode...

I've felt intensely curious about the world around me for... as long as I can remember, honestly. When I first encountered television (I think I was around two or three years old), my first thought was something along the lines of "How is that picture changing? Surfaces don't suddenly change color by themselves--you've got to cover them with paint, or ink, or something!" (Obviously, my toddler-self's thoughts were nowhere near as well-articulated as that, but that was the gist of it. I also remember feeling absolutely dumbfounded when I realized that other children my age didn't think this way.) This curiosity may have diminished somewhat between then and now (I'm 17 years old), but if it has, it's been a small enough decrease that it's hard to tell. And my curiosity still far outstrips that of my peers.

The problem is that my curiosity is too easily satisfied. In more concrete fields like math or the physical sciences, this is okay; when I'm feeling confused about a particular concept, I can simply look it up, or resolve to look it up later if there's not a computer or textbook at hand. After I look it up, one of three things happen:

1. I comprehend the explanation, in the sense of understanding the words, but I don't grok it. At this point, I end up intermittently pondering the problem during my free time until it finally just clicks with me. This can take anywhere from a few hours to several weeks, but the longest I've ever had it take was about two months. I've never been mistaken about my ability to grok something; if I feel intuitively that I should be able to "get" it, then sooner or later, it happens. (Possible placebo effect, though I doubt it could have that strong of an effect.)
2. I grok it immediately. (This is a fairly uncommon occurrence, but it happens from time to time.)
3. The explanation is so dense and/or so reliant on domain-specific knowledge that I can tell, at a glance, that I won't be able to comprehend it until I've undergone some major study in the topic. At this point, I take the issue and file it away in a little corner of my brain, to be taken out and reexamined once I acquire the necessary expertise to understand. My curiosity hasn't quite been sated, but it has been put off for now.

Any way you look at it, there's no danger of me suddenly ceasing to try to understand the topic. As long as I'm curious about it, I'll keep hacking away at the edges.

The problem arises when there's no way to determine the correct answer by simply looking it up, usually because (a) experts themselves aren't sure, (b) the literature on the topic is obscure and hard to find, or (c) there's significant disagreement on the topic. This phenomenon doesn't occur much in mathematics or in the hard sciences, but in fields like social science, it's quite rampant. When that happens, you might think something similar to what I described in 3 above takes place, where I file the issue away for later, and my curiosity isn't quite sated, but it is postponed...

Unfortunately, that's not quite what happens. My curiosity gets sated anyway.

How?

By me.

For whatever reason, I'm, like, really, really good at coming up with just-so stories. And the thing about System 1 is that it doesn't differentiate between a scientifically sound, peer-reviewed conclusion that I read about in a respectable, reliable source, and some random story I just came up with myself that happens to mesh well with my current worldview. So I think of a possible explanation, and it just sounds so elegant (where by "elegant" I mean "Wow! This fits perfectly with what I already know!") that I instantly accept it. And all of this happens entirely below the level of conscious awareness. And suddenly I feel that exact same thrill that I feel when I suddenly understand something new--and I'm not curious anymore. After all, what's there left to be curious about? I know the answer, right? At least, it certainly feels like I do.

Needless to say, this is a problem.

I'll end with a metaphor: I'm not a particularly stubborn horse. If there's water right in front of me, I will drink. In fact, since I'm constantly thirsty, it's actually really easy to lead me to water (of course, I'll need to sniff the water first to make sure it's not poisoned or anything). Problem is, when there's no water readily available, I start drinking my own urine.

And what's worse? I seem to be perfectly fine with that.

On Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2271009

A related realization I made on my morning walk: We often don't have any conscious awareness of the moment we decide or conclude something. If we are prompted in some way - for example, if we are asked to make a choice - then we have access to our decision after the fact. If we are listening intently, or even if we're just waiting for something to end, then it's like we're polling for the decision, and we're aware immediately. However, in a lot of other cases, the decision happens outside of our awareness and only later does something prompt us to access it.

This makes it very hard to avoid concluding something prematurely. This is why it's so easy to mistake an association with something you don't like for a well reasoned refutation. This may be a part of the reason why prejudices of all kinds are so prevalent.

This is very useful advice. I'm still a student, and I've frequently tried to employ my own curiosity to learn about whatever it is we're studying in class. I'm actually in an interesting honors program, outside my own major (chemistry) that is interdisciplinary. We have to study everything from philosophy to astrophysics. Right now I'm in a World Literature class, and I'm wondering if anyone can give me any advice on activating my curiosity about whatever book I'm supposed to be reading. I'm a fast reader, and I will sometimes enjoy the book we're reading (assuming it's any good, and many classics are not), but I'm typically not actively "chasing something".

Considering most of us here are science people, there probably are not a whole lot of individuals with large backgrounds in literature, but if anyone has a good idea for something to chase while I'm reading, it would be greatly appreciated.

Possibly related: at one point I was spending lots of time on mailing lists. In particular lots of time composing long replies.

At one point I noticed something: I was replying to things that weren't questions.

I taught myself to notice whether what I wanted to respond to had the useful punctuation that some human languages use to signal a question: "?". If I didn't see that, I wouldn't write anything in reply.

Now I was spending much less time on the lists.

(This was a good first step, but what you're talking about in the above - noticing when you have questions - seems harder to me.)

Curiosity is a drive to know. I love the feeling of being driven to know. It gets you off your butt, right? Metaphorically speaking. Like this kitten at wikipedia which illustrates the curiosity article. The kitten isn't curled up dozing, it's on its hind legs peering into the flowerpot. It's active. Being active is why we're animals, why we have muscles, so if we lose the drive to activity, it's like we're losing the drive to be.

The activity of exploration is very different from the activity of directed activity built around a specific purpose. An example of the latter would be stalking and chasing prey. The animal who is stalking its prey isn't terribly curious.

Curiosity seems closely allied with play (play often satisfies what-if curiosity, play is often simulation), and play is characterized by lack of important immediate goal (it has the more distant goal of training the animal for life). Play is frivolity, as contrasted to the purposefulness of stalking. Small wonder that both curiosity and play are associated with the young, who are not useful (yet) and who have plenty of time to play, explore, be curious. The adult has no time for these things. Adult behavior is characterized by purpose. Child behavior is characterized by lack of (immediate) purpose. So curiosity seems to stand at an opposite extreme from purposeful behavior, when looked at in this way.

However, the lack of curiosity in the adult is poorly adapted to our rapidly changing world. A lack of adult curiosity is doubtless well-adapted to the largely unchanging world of our distant ancestors, but in this day it's a liability. So it makes sense to try to cultivate curiosity, play, exploration. We should probably resist our natural tendency to lose curiosity. This may be one situation where we need to struggle against our own nature, just as overweight dieters struggle against their nature, by for example resisting the lure of sugar.

It might not be that easy to cultivate genuine curiosity, just as it's not easy to ignore sugar.

But here's hope. I notice that when I read novels, the better writers, the writers whose work I want to read again, are the ones who want make me read what happens next. This criterion may be "low class", but the point is that the page-turners successfully cultivate the reader's drive to know, and this is pleasant. Yes, the reader's brain is being tricked, because the reader isn't actually learning anything, the novel is all lies, all fantasy. But the psychological point remains, that writers are managing to cultivate in the reader a desire to know. Which suggests that it may be possible to cultivate the desire to know. Literary suspense may not be exactly the same thing as curiosity, but I find it subjectively to be a similar experience, because here too I get off my butt, I make the effort to read more (and for me reading is a struggle if I don't care about what happens next). The pages fly by when I want to know. Time passes and I don't notice. I'm not bored.

I'm sometimes very curious; however, I think the primary reason I'm not learning more is that I forget things very easily. This might just be me, or it might be fairly common.

Anyway, if you periodically blow away (lose track of, stop using) the external-memory tools that cue and reinforce your good habits, then there is a ceiling to your tools' sophistication, and your average set of tools will be significantly less powerful than the ceiling.

For example, I rewrote a programming-process helper recently and it's not that much different from the previous version, that I might have written two years ago.

Mostly, my tools are for programming, but I've had procedures and tools for systematic reading and retaining knowledge, procedures for evaluating arguments critically, procedures and tools for developing mathematical theories including proofs, conjectures, and examples.

To become stronger, you might have to plan for forgetting your current passions, and throw your memes/tools outwards like dandelion seeds or boomerangs, hoping that even after forgetting, you will re-encounter them. This suggests that even very personal tools need a certain sort of polish, in order to be taken up and re-adopted by your future self - small size, readmes, source distribution, good comments, extremely portable implementation, and so on, all help with reuptake.

(This also connects to my belief that you should not identify with your genes alone, but also your memes.)

I used to chase things all the time. But it often annihilated the continuity in my thinking, to the point that I couldn't return to what I was originally doing. So nowadays, I just try to take notes of the things that I want to chase later, and I do eventually end up chasing them later.

I guess the real question is whether it's more efficient to process information in a very intensive way, or just to gather a lot more of it, and let your brain work out the answers at a slower pace; I use both approaches.

Curiosity-as-such seems to work pretty well for me to absorb lots of information - I try to read at least one book every week, so as days weeks months fly by at the same time I truly feel that my overall understanding of things improves. I'm absorbing the same subjects multiple times (through different books), and I find that slowly the things work themselves out in my brain, connections are made etc. I'm not sure stopping all the time and do background research would get me better results.

On the other hand, the 'Asking questions'-approach for me is something I use for high-intensity things like solving technical problems. That seems to work pretty well there. As mentioned here already, debugging is a good example.

Interesting articles on chasing vs search reading.

I have to say that I prefer search-reading.

Sure - I see the benefits of chase-reading if you happen to want to know about a particular question. But most of my curiosity is about broad subject areas.

I'm following my curiosity into physics right now. I don't have a goal "I want to learn physics" - because I don't want to "be a physicist" just as I don't want to "be" a chemist, biologist, psychologist or mathematician - though I've learned a bit (or a lot) about all those subjects. I'm learning because I enjoy knowing stuff about how the world works.

That's about as precise as my goal gets. If I try for anything more specific, the sense of fun often disappears - then it becomes "work", and that's not the point. Various commenters have suggested that one needs a goal to really push ourself - but I have found that not to be the case.

In the past I've tried to convince myself that I "need a goal" to motivate myself... mainly because other people seem to think they're so important "what, you don't have a goal, but then you might just drift!"

Well, in my drifting I've learned a lot more about physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, mathematics than most other people I know... does that means I've failed?

I don't think so.

I totally understand that there's drifting and "drifting"... that drifting without actually doing anything can certainly mean you're not pushing yourself to "be your best".

What my experience has repeatedly taught me... is that if I personally try to force myself to have a specific goal - I actually lose motivation. Life-goals must be intrinsic for them to be of any use. I push myself far more, get more done if I allow myself to follow my curiosity rather than try to impose unnecessary requirements on it.

Of course, there are easy traps to fall into... A lot of the time it's easy to make an excuse that any particular sub-goal is not worth pushing-through because it's not fun... but maybe it's necessary to get you to the next step of your real goal... I make sure I do actually push myself, and not just do easy stuff simply because its easy.

but I tend to find that if I truly follow my curiosity, I will dig into the tougher stuff naturally - and be motivated to do it far more than if I told myself "right, I'm learning quantum electrodynamics, and I must have it done by next month".

For me - I'm far more successful if I just ask myself "hmmm, I wonder what this Fenyman guy's got to say about how the world works?"

YMMV :)

I've been told I'm very curious. However, this tends to show itself mainly during intense conversations and discussions. Being curious about what I'm learning in school is somewhat more of a challenge. Being curious about anything while extremely sleep deprived is MUCH more of a challenge. Any recommendations?

You should only do this when you are sufficiently frustrated. Most of the time you should just do things. So if asking questions were to be a habit, it should be a conditionally triggered one.

Also, too much curiosity can get you stuck in local maxima, you should throw in some randomness once in a while.

Funny because I find that I'm so fond of the feeling of being curiousity that I'd actively construct experiences that I can feel curious about and seek out subjects that I can learn about, sometimes even act upon. It's done to the point where I go on real, elaborate learning binges which of course would distract me from "real work".