100 opinions on curiosity thread. I'll initially make it 1 like / 1 opinion
1. Curiosity and rhetoric are opposing forces. Curiosity is not driven by relevance or utility, and is usually a poor way to support an argument.
In my mind, curiosity is associated with wandering. Not trying to reach a destination, just following trails.
3. It seems to be unable to distinguish between major structural components and minor details, treating them all as equivalent.
4. I think that curiosity about minor details can sometimes allow a kind of quantum tunnelling between fields, where the same technical details give rise to similar effects in seemingly unrelated areas.
5. Over time, curiosity builds up a more richly textured picture of the world.
Meanwhile, habitual reactions build up a more cartoonish picture.
Meanwhile, habitual reactions build up a more cartoonish picture.
6. Over time, most people's curiosity becomes focused on narrower and narrower areas. You could picture this like an Escher drawing, with a small area rendered in detail and the rest of the scene squeezed in at the edges.
7. Attention breeds curiosity. An answered questions will spawn new questions nearby. This is how curiosity becomes focused.
8. There's a lot of talk about how schools are bad at instilling curiosity. Most online courses are bad at this also. To succeed here, a course would have to give a taste of materials that go beyond itself.
9. How do you know when to leave a field? When all the natural avenues for curiosity have become familiar and uninteresting.
10. How do you refresh your environment without leaving? Become curious about the ordinary things you take for granted. Fake it till you make it.
11. You can learn something about how curiosity and attention work by looking at dreams. Curiosity is never satisfied, it's always provoking new motion in its surroundings.
12. Curiosity flourishes given breathing space and a degree of novelty.
13. The kind of curiosity I feel when coding or doing science has a very different flavour to what I feel when travelling.
14. All curiosity requires agency, i.e. feedback loops. But the tempo of the feedback loops makes a big difference. Not always so simple as faster is better.
15. Online is curiosity at ultra-high tempo. The benefits are course correction and free association. But can feel frantic and coercive.
16. At the other extreme is research that may not pay off for decades or more. Humans aren't capable of sustained curiosity on these timescales without intermediate curiosities to focus on.
17. I think a big part of what makes on-site conferences work is their ability to freeload off the curiosity tempo of travelling. Hard to reproduce this in a distributed setting.
18. Curiosity can run up against the convention that any subject area be 'owned' by the person in a group who is most interested and knows most about it. From this view, a curious person seems to be laying claim to vast swathes of conceptual space.
19. I think my most curious age so far was 21-22. It coincided with difficult times.
20. The thing that's surprised me most in academia is how hostile many professors are to unexpected ideas. They are ok with new ideas, as long as they were not unexpected. I think this comes from having to stringently ration your attention.
One for free. Your curiosity increases with the range of possible actions available to you. This explains 19 & 20.
21. There's a proverb that useful trees are chopped down for wood, while knotted trees are left to grow big and live out their days. Maybe curiosity is a way to cultivate this kind of robust uselessness.
22. Two kinds of curiosity: "How do I X?" and "What happens if I Y?"
23. Ideally interfaces would harness users' curiosity, not just confirm their expectations.
24. Since curiosity is all about following trails, you can cover the same ground over and over again in different directions.
25. How can curiosity survive experience? Through nuance.
26. There's a danger of using curiosity as a stick to beat people with. "Why doesn't she appreciate my work? She must lack curiosity."
27. I think there's a lot of scope for gravitational slingshot moves in curiosity - using an extreme point as a lever to reach somewhere else.
Images are usually more effective at provoking curiosity than numbers.
29. Straining to innovate kills curiosity. I don't know why.
30. Curiosity is a quality of awareness, a kind of entanglement.
31. Curiosity is your dialogue with the world.
32. It's just about possible to imagine awareness outside of time, but impossible to imagine curiosity outside of time.
33. Incompleteness and rough edges are more likely to engender curiosity than shiny things.
34. 34 tweets in, it feels like curiosity is related to everything I've ever seen anyone post on twitter.
35. A person who is curious about a question will remember the answer.
36. Curiosity seems to be incompatible with judgement.
37. Something I find difficult is managing my own curiosity about very complex topics which I don't have the background to understand. It helps to let go of trying to attain mastery and just play with odd corners.
38. In a sense, this is less curiosity than just being intrigued. Unlike curiosity, it is not self-sustaining, but it can lead to genuine curiosity.
39. Becoming curious about a subject that's beyond you is a kind of pattern recognition. You can sense a structure that appeals to you, even if you can't make sense of it.
40. Probably we have to be good at this for learning language. There's a bootstrapping problem that's hard to solve without a fascination with meaningful nonsense.
41. Curiosity is always in conflict with maintaining a clear self-image. Most of the time, we choose self-image.
42. The trouble with curiosity that is too directed is that it reduces the dimensionality of what you can find out. "Does this work, yes/no?" as opposed to something more open-ended.
43. Our minds are great at post-hoc rationalisation and can adapt pretty much any strange input into something meaningful. But curiosity makes it work harder to achieve this by letting in more information.
44. Writers and teachers know that our curiosity needs to be courted. There's no obvious way to court your own curiosity, but at least it's something we can do for each other.
45. Curiosity shares a lot of its mental DNA with imagination.
46. You know I said you can learn something about curiosity and attention from dreams? Turns out we live in a dream now.
47. Hadn't thought about it like this. To a recommendation algorithm, curiosity = contamination.
48. Curiosity is one of the chaotic elements in myths and fairy tales (curiosity, desire, and disaster)
49. Which could itself be a fairy tale. "Once upon a time there were three sisters, and their names were Curiosity, Desire, and Disaster..."
50. I don't ever remember being consciously curious as a young kid. Just ran around bumping into things.
51. History is an outstanding side-interest for curious people (who are not already historians)
52. Depression is alarmingly effective at shutting down curiosity, making it hard to get out.
53. Curiosity makes apparent the strange, usually invisible paths that surround you at every moment.
54. The opposite of curiosity is emptiness.
55. Curiosity compounds over time. What does it compound into?
(I don't have an answer, but it's interesting to think about.)
(I don't have an answer, but it's interesting to think about.)
56. A lot of machine learning can be thought of as balancing optimisation with curiosity (explore/exploit).
57. Loving difference for its own sake is the quickest way out of a rut.
I don't need no stinking likes.
58. Curiosity and seniority have always felt incompatible to me.
59. To be able to follow your curiosity, you need the freedom to make mistakes, and to make a nuisance of yourself.
Just kidding, please validate me.
60. I'm coming round to the idea that there are kinds of leadership where this is possible.
61. I used to think this quote meant we should do as much physics as possible. But I think it's really a nudge to pay attention. 
62. For me, books have an ambiguous relationship with curiosity. Sometimes reading is lighting a fire, sometimes it's just increasing a page number.
63. Some of the most interesting questions to get curious about: "How will I react to X?" and "How will others react to X?"
64. (Interesting because they let you treat negative reactions as information, rather than a catastrophe.)
65. It's quite easy to use intense curiosity to block out everything else around you.
66. There's something intrinsically selfish about curiosity.
67. Curiosity is the opposite of "should".
68. This is a nice distinction. Learning vs. teaching yourself, curiosity vs. didactic.
69. The world is only about 10% as interesting as it could be if people let themselves be 2x more curious.
70. In fact, I think every time I've followed a deep curiosity about something I've been sloping off from something else I really ought to have been doing.
71. The only exceptions might be occasions when I was ill and cooped up in the house for days. Kind of sloping off from life.
72. This does make me question whether "improve incentive structures" can ever be a way to increase flexibility and experimentation. At worst, it can lead to a kind of interference between the two.
73. If there's a difference between interest and curiosity, interest is the passive form, with curiosity being more active.
74. I'm hardly zettelkasten's most ardent practitioner on this site, but I do find it gives breathing space to curiosity more than pretty much anything.
75. There's something beautiful about doing the same thing over and over again with no less curiosity.
76. It's hard to stay curious about people you know well, see every day, have heard all their stories.
77. Something similar happens with places. After a while you know what to expect, while travel gives you a jolt of energy.
78. People and places are always changing, of course. But seeing it requires close attention.
79. Some ideas and situations (and maybe people) reward curiosity far more than others. But this isn't something you can tell in advance.
80. The past is one place where seemingly unrelated things can share a deep connection. Technical details are another (see 4.). Language is yet another.
81. It's hard to be curious and mean-spirited at the same time.
82. To be curious is to see the potential in mundane things.
83. Curious people are luckier than the incurious.
84. Neediness is less of a drain on curiosity than the attempt to preserve plausible deniability.
85. Judging/perceiving is the only Myers-Briggs axis that really rings true for me.
86. I prefer reading books by curious authors than opinionated authors.
87. Abstraction is a low energy state for most systems, curiosity is high energy.
88. Aside from anything else, showing sincere curiosity is a pretty good way to signal that you're not a dick.
89. There's curiosity that is satisfied when it finds an answer, and curiosity that just keeps catapulting you forward regardless.
90. Curiosity is piqued by seeing people do things you don't know how to do or don't understand.
91. You can't just be curious about worthy things the whole time, sorry, it's a contradiction in terms or something
92. Make 10% bad bets, and be curious about 10% stupid trash.
93. It's hard to be curious if you won't be kind to yourself.
94. Any place there's room for curiosity, there's room for playing with reference and symbolism.
95. Highly recommend short dives into subjects not too close to your main interests. A couple of free days, one good textbook + youtube is a combination that works well for me.
96. Culture is thousands of years of accumulated curiosity.
97. A thought is growing in my mind that there's a close association between curiosity and memory. I haven't really made sense of this yet.
98. Hesitantly, curiosity is awareness thrown forward, memory is awareness thrown backward.
99. Maybe you could view this in the context of extended/embodied cognition. Curiosity as an extension of the brain learning how to brain.
100. Self-reminder: always be aware that 99.9% of life is invisible to you. How can you learn what you don't know exists? Figure it out.
Hint: if you're not experimenting with new input streams, you're stuck.
Hint: if you're not experimenting with new input streams, you're stuck.
💯 🎆
