Kakistocuriosity

post by LVSN · 2023-01-06T07:38:56.493Z · LW · GW · 3 comments

I'm coining the word 'kakistocurious'. 
Its etymology derives from

• the Greek prefix kakisto-, meaning 'worst', as in 'kakistocracy' (rule of the worst), 
• and the English suffix -curious, meaning 'wanting to know', as in 'bicurious'.

People who are kakistocurious think about stereotypically bad things and wonder if they are really as bad as people say those things are.

I made up this word because it was necessary for uniquely identifying my personality using only four words (the other three words are 'empathetic', 'extreme', and 'discriminatory').

Kakistocuriosity is not the same as contrarianism. Contrarianism is when you often defend unpopular positions, or prefer to. Kakistocuriosity can lead to incidental contrarianism, and contrarianism can even lead to kakistocuriosity in the case of someone who wants to defend unpopular positions but absolutely requires that the positions are accurate before defending them.

Kakistocuriosity, importantly, is not curiosity about things that are bad regardless of what anyone thinks; it is curiosity about things that seem bad and may or may not actually be bad. This distinction is not obvious from the etymology, unfortunately.

If you wanted, you could call people who routinely explore stereotypically bad things 'kakistonauts'.

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