Get Curious

Also, learn to differentiate between genuine curiosity and what I like to call pseudo-curiosity - basically, being satisfied by conclusions rather than concepts. Don't let the two overlap. This is especially hard when conclusions are most of the time readily available and often the first item in a google search. In terms of genuine curiosity, google has been the bane of my existence - I will start off moderately curious, but instead of moving to that higher stage of curiosity, I will be sated by facts and conclusions without actually learning anything (similar to a guessing the teacher's password situation). After a couple hours of doing this, I feel very scholarly and proud of my ability to parse so much information, when in reality all I did was collect a bunch of meaningless symbols.

To combat this, I started keeping a "notebook of curiosities". The moment I get curious, I write whatever it is I'm curious about, and then write everything I know about it. At this point, I determine whether or not anything I know is a useful springboard; otherwise, I start from scratch. Then I circle my starting node and start the real work, with the following rules:

• Every fact or concept I write must follow directly from a previous node (never more than two or three reasoning steps away). Most of the time, this results in a very large diagram referencing multiple pages. I use pen and paper only because I like to use it outside.
• Wikipedia is a last resort - I don't want to be tempted by easy facts. I use textbooks -> arxiv -> jstor -> google scholar in order of preference. It's a lot of work.
• If I skip some reasoning or concept because I think it is trivial, I write the reason why it is trivial. Most of the time, this results in something interesting.

Doing this has revealed many gaps in my knowledge. I've become increasingly aware of a lack of internalization of basic concepts and modes of thinking that are necessary for certain concepts. It also forces me to confront my actual interest in the subject, rather than my perceived interest.

The majority of what I use it for is math related, so it's more tailored to that use case.

"A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?"

I had following (in rapid succession): 10 cents, whoops it adds up to 120 cents , aha, 5 cents, adds up to 110 , done.

Doesn't really matter what stupid heuristic you try if you verify the result. I can of course do: let a+b=1.1 , a=b+1 , b+1+b=1.1 , 2b=0.1 , b=0.05 , but it takes a lot longer to write, and to think, and note the absence of verification step here.

The "No! Algebra" is sure fire way to do things slower. Verification and double checking is the key imo. Algebra is for unwieldy problems where you can't test guesses quickly, failed to guess, have to use pencil and paper, etc. When you rely on short term memory you really could be best off trying to intuitively get the answer, then checking it, then rewarding yourself when correct (if verification is possible)

• whoops is more like some parallel pondering just of how stupid i must be.

Having worked on the Voynich Manuscript (which you namecheck above) for over a decade now, I'd say that uncertainty isn't just a feeling: rather, it's the default (and indeed natural) state of knowledge, whereas certainty is normally a sign that we've somehow failed to grasp and appreciate the limits and nature of our knowledge.

Until you can eradicate the itch that drives you to want to make knowledge final, you can never be properly curious. Real knowledge doesn't do final or the last words on a subject: it's conditional, partial, constrained, and heuristic. I contend that you should train your ape-brain to stay permanently curious: almost all certain knowledge is either fake or tautologous.

Exercise 2.2: Make plans for different worlds... Maybe you live in a world where you'd improve your cognitive function by taking nootropics, or maybe you live in a world where the nootropics would harm you.

On the bright side, this is pretty much the thought process I go through whenever I don't know the right answer to something. On the other hand ("on the dark side"?) I think my automatic instinct is "there's no scientific consensus on this that I've read about in my textbooks...therefore this is a Permanent Blank in my map and I just have to live with it." Even if I'm not up to going out and doing the original research to answer Question X, I suspect that I would often be wrong about there being no already-investigated answers. Looking a given topic up and reading about all the conflicting theories, rather than a scientific conseusus, still provides more information than not reading up on it at all.

And again, thank you for the excellent article! I really like this one.

Once, I explained the Cognitive Reflection Test to Riley Crane by saying it was made of questions that tempt your intuitions to quickly give a wrong answer. For example:

This could use spoiler tags, or ideally some substitute: it's useful for people to have a chance to be administered the CRT unawares (lest they imagine by hindsight bias that they would not have been misled, or others lose the chance to test them).

In feeling that you do not know the answer, Luke suggests to "Think of things you once believed but were wrong about." Why not take it a step further and say

1.3 When thinking about a time when you were wrong, think about how right being wrong feels*up until the moment you realize we are wrong.

In reflecting on times when I have been wrong what I find most disturbing is not what I was wrong about, but the degree to which being wrong is cognitively similar to being right. In college, I went to an Elizabeth Loftus lecture where she shockingly announced that the degree of confidence you have in a memory has no effect on its validity or fallacy. The more I think on this idea the more I find it to be true. Being wrong feels like being right. If that is the case how can I ever be certain in any ideas? Luke suggests tools like a cognitive reflection test to work towards uncovering when you are wrong. However, is this really a method for uncovering cognitive blind spots, or is it the rigorous application of an existing paradigm of problem solving? I would argue it is the later. It is convenient that the example given is a math problem, but what happens when you need to cognitively reflect over false intuition in another realm (you mentioned sociology). Thinking NO! Algebra might help some problems, but not all. How do you justify your belief in the application of algebra to a situation? How do you discover new paradigms of problem solving? Eliezer states

When you're really curious, you'll gravitate to inquiries that seem most promising of producing shifts in belief, or inquiries that are least like the ones you've tried before.

I agree with this statement. Is it illogical to think inquires that are least like the ones I have tried before are the ones that I have such a low confidence in I have actually dismissed them? Or in other words the ideas I actively disbelieve. I argue that a truly curious person would actively work to see the truth in things he or she knows to be wrong. An epistemological take on “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” If you think theism is absurd, perhaps you should be more curious about it. I am not advocating complete relativism or anything close to that. I do think there is right and wrong. But I think looking for the right in what you think is wrong will better mark the path of moderation.
What is right is moderation.

Curiosity is one possible motivation that forces you to actually look at evidence. Fear is more reliable and can be used when curiosity is hard to manufacture.

I consistently fail several times over at this. I always feel I DO know everything worth knowing, and while obviously wrong can't come up with any salient counterexamples. Probably related to memory problems I have, I don't seem able to come up with examples or counterexamples of anything ever.

And when I do consider multiple possibilities, they never seem to matter for what actions I should take, which drains any motivation to find out the answer if it takes more than 30 seconds of googling or I happen to not be at my computer when the question occurs.

All the information I take in seems to be about new ideas, not evidence for or against old ones.

All this is obviously absurd and I'm a bad rationalist and deserve extremely low status for this heinous lack of virtue, being but a burden to the tribe! Woe is me!

Help?

I approve strongly! Publicly-posted exercises may yield practice, practice yields habit, and habit yields changed behavior. Developing deeper, more-focused curiosity would be a grand step towards becoming more awesome. But!

( summary: It is important to practice this skill at appropriate times, like when it is useful and feasible to work on answering the given question, and not just at random, or whenever it's convenient to schedule the practice. I plan to attach a reminder to my research to-do list.)

Alright, says I, this exercise seems plausible enough. So I'll start practicing this exercise and see how well it works. But how ought I do this for regular practice?

At first, I thought about walking through this list as part of my morning routine. But how would I actually do that? The exercise needs an unanswered question, and I don't generally have a fresh, new, important question every morning. So:

• If I pick an arbitrary question I don't know the answer to, I should be able to import the feeling of uncertainty, but clear evaluation of the consequences of being wrong will be demotivating, and the Litany of Gendlin will be silly.
• If I pick an important question I don't know the answer to, then I suspect that I can use this exercise to get myself quite motivated to better answer it. In the context of my morning routine, though, this would be terrible. My morning routine is optimized for satisfying basic needs, waking up quickly, and getting to my office at a reasonable hour. This form of the exercise, if effective, would actually conflict sharply with my long-term goals.

In fact, I suspect that intense curiosity about any random topic, at any random time, is actually a bad idea. For instance, if I'm on a several-hours drive, by myself, and by random musing I become intensely curious about how to resolve (say) anthropic probabilities. I don't know much about the real arguments in anthropics, so I'm just going to be frustrated at my situation. Eventually, I'll think about something else, and the curiosity will pass before I can use it. (And now I've associated that particular curiosity with frustration, and my inability to satisfy it, and perhaps next time I won't become curious so readily.)

What we want, then, is the ability to get curious about a question because we recognize that we'd like to answer it. When we have a verbal justification to resolve some question correctly, we want to invoke the appropriate emotions as motivation to do so. We want to practice this invocation. I don't see how to do this as part of my morning routine, to admit convenient, regular practice.

So, I now plan attach the reminder near where I manage the relevant to-do list. Any time Ι start a block of time aimed (even indirectly) at answering some question, I'll run through this exercise for that question. I hope to develop this habit so that when I'm reading for pleasure, or satisfying my own interest, or even doing research for writing blog posts, or just discussing some question, I'll first run this exercise -- or, eventually, just be curious.

Does anyone else plan to actually carry out this exercise? How will you hold yourself to regularity?

Another idea from Anna Salamon is just to brainstorm a ton of questions on the topic you want to get curious about for a predetermined period of N minutes. Very limited data suggests this method works significantly better for me.

Am I the only one who searched the phrase "I see you start to answer a question, and then you stop, and I see you get curious." to see who it referred to?

Closing my eyes gives me only the feeling of having defensively headed a long ball in soccer a few hours ago. Sometimes I try to think and nothing seems to happen :)

VoI shouldn't be abbreviated (even with hyperlink).

Thinking about how I've been mistaken in the past feels pretty bad for me - akin to true embarrassment. But I suppose it's almost the only reason I'm ever cautiously uncertain, and that seems sad.

I really value your suggestion to purposefully cultivate delight-based exploration, instead of merely looking to minimize regret (even fairly assigned regret at coming up short of boundedly-optimal-rational, without confusing outcome for expected outcome in hindsight).

Setting step one as "Feel that you don't already know the answer" fits with Loewenstein (1994)'s "gap theory of curiosity", summarized by Cooney (2010):

[Loewenstein's] theory is that curiosity happens when people feel a gap in their knowledge about something... Laying out a question and inviting others to ponder it will help keep the individual's attention, because it gets them mentally involved and because there's an element of unexpectedness. This is why cliffhangers are often used at the end of television soap operas, to get viewers to tune in to the next episode, or at the end of chapters in a thriller to keep readers glued to the page.

Taking the gap theory a step further, Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur has developed a teaching tool he calls concept testing. Mazur has found that posing a question to stimulate curiosity and then asking questions to vote publicly on the answer make them more engaged and curious about the outcome. Mazur has also found that fostering disagreement among students is particularly effective at stimulating interest. Not only has their curiosity been stimulated, but learning the answer now has personal relevance — it will show whether or not they're smarter than their classmates.

See also: Guthrie, I'm Curious: Can We Teach Curiosity?

So, should I start consuming butter half-sticks?

Curious about what though? It seems like a very important piece of the above lesson is missing if we have no guidance as to what we should be curious about. It does me no good, perhaps no small amount of harm, to be intensely curious about the details of a fictional world. I ought not be curious about the personal life of my neighbor. And while curiosity about insects may serve some, it's unlikely to do most people any good at all. I think we have no good reason to believe that we're generally curious about the right sorts of things.

And there seems to be a deeper problem here too. Some things about which we're curious might just not be very knowable. I can study ancient history all I like, but there's just a limit to what we can know about what caused Peloponnesian war, not just because of the temporal distance or lack of record, but because there's just a lot of fundamental incoherence to things like that. History, to take one example, just isn't that knowable. Curiosity about history can be rewarded, but only a very restrained curiosity.

I think this is where the idea that 'a burning itch to know is better than a vow to pursue the truth': I've felt that burning itch to know and I know from experience that it doesn't of itself distinguish between worthy topics of curiosity and unworthy ones. A vow, at least, already has the idea of seriousness and purposefulness built into it.

...it will make you light and eager, and give purpose to your questioning and direction to your skills.

And this article rekindled that for me. I have a motivation to explore I have not felt in quite some time. Thanks for writing this, Luke!

If you have beliefs about the matter already, push the "reset" button and erase that part of your map. You must feel that you don't already know the answer.

It seems like a bad idea to intentionally blank part of your map. If you already know things, you shouldn't forget what you already know. On the other hand, if you have reason to doubt what you think you know, you should blank the suspect parts of your map when you had reason to doubt them, and not artificially as part of a procedure for generating curiosity.

I think what you may be trying to say is that it is good practice to periodically rethink what you think you know, and make sure that A) you remember how you came to believe what you believe, and B) your conclusions still make sense in light of current evidence. However, when you do this, it is important not to get into the habit of quickly returning to the same conclusions for the same reasons. If you never change your conclusions while rethinking them, that's probably a sign that you are too resistant to changing your mind.

This is all good stuff, but it makes curiosity sound complicated. I thought that the point of using curiosity as a hook into epistemic rationality is that once you feel the emotion of curiosity, your brain often just knows what to do next.

Also curiosity feels good.

Bug report: step 2, exercise 2.1. If the consequences of my current best guess being wrong are much less dire than the consequences of being wrong on recomputing, my social circle thinks that the plan based on this current best guess is very important, and I hate the people who disagree, then I'm terrified of trying to recompute.

People try very hard to ignore the consequences of being wrong. Fear in this case is dangerous, because cause stagnation and break curiosity.