Why Aren’t We Curious About the Things We Want to Be Curious About? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Aren’t We Curious About the Things We Want to Be Curious About?

#91

Post by randcraw » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #82

WhompingWindows wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean journalistic articles, not scientific/published "articles". Also, to paint all journalistic articles as white sugar is simply flat-out wrong. There are numerous fantastically written journalistic articles written by fantastic book writers. These can be jumping-off points to then purchase a book or find that scientific publication. I think it's better just to call them layman's writing instead of white sugar,…

Under your definition, I'd classify most magazine and news articles as processed sugar. It is toxic, to the extent that clickbait headlines, inaccuracies, errors and lies in articles, convey negative knowledge to the reader.

I'd say popular magazine articles and research articles share similar demerits, just from different perspectives. The popular article is shallow and broad and overspimplified while the research article is deep and narrow and usually overcomplicated.

Thus both provide a less than ideal introduction into any novel subject, though I see most popular articles as less 'toxic' than most research articles, especially towards encouraging further interest in the neophyte reader.

Re: Why Aren’t We Curious About the Things We Want to Be Curious About?

#92

Post by incubus0h » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

Can someone suggest good career options for person with novelty traits ? (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_seeking).

Once you are settle down in a certain career (for example, IT/software development), not having to satisfy the itch for novelty seeking can make things really boring for you. So, my next question - how do satisfy that itch in a given career, say IT?

Re: Why Aren’t We Curious About the Things We Want to Be Curious About?

#93

Post by WaxProlix » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

incubus0h wrote: post #92

Can someone suggest good career options for person with novelty traits ? (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_seeking ). Once you are settle down in a certain career (for example, IT/software development), not having to satisfy the itch for novelty seeking can make things really boring for you. So, my next question - how do satisfy that itch in a given career, say IT?

Consulting can be good; a new tech stack, a new org with new weird dysfunctions every few months. A new project, new teammates, new shareholders, etc. It never feels like the same job, though of course some things can remain static- you're still a programmer, architect, PM, etc.

Re: Why Aren’t We Curious About the Things We Want to Be Curious About?

#94

Post by compscistd » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 6:18 PM UTC

shantly wrote: post #60

Worth noting that the ability to indulge practically any idle curiosity ("who was that guy in that one movie again?") with almost no effort is very new . Unless you happened to have the relevant book of trivia, or maybe a good encyclopedia for some things, and you were at home or otherwise somewhere those were physically located, you couldn't find out without quite a bit of effort. That kind of stuff just dropped out…

As a 20-something year old, I avoid doing this on the NYT Crosswords app (which is a significant exercise in trivia). My rule is I come back to a missing line later and if I _still_ can't get it, I go through my contacts and text someone that might know.

Re: Why Aren’t We Curious About the Things We Want to Be Curious About?

#95

Post by blotter_paper » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

WhompingWindows wrote: post #87

_Nat_ wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Check facts " as in investigating tangential issues, or as in fact-checking assumptions? If the latter, then that'd seem very healthy. People can come to all sorts of strange conclusions about topics like politics if they're allowed seemingly reasonable assumptions that they sincerely believe to be probably true. If they're not fact-checked, then discussions on topics like politics can quickly devolve into meaningl…

It'd be different if my friends checked climate change facts, but it's usually pointless pop culture trivia. Do we need to know completely irrelevant information about famous people, or can we look at each other and shrug and move on with connecting with other humans and not screens.

> It'd be different if my friends checked climate change facts, but it's usually pointless pop culture trivia.

This sounds more like a difference in interests than a difference in conversational etiquette.

I do understand the disillusion with how pocket-sized screens have affected human communication, but I also love being able to google citations in the middle of a conversation. I imagine I'd get more annoyed by the behavior if it was related to a topic I had no interest in.

Maybe try to find friends with vaguely similar interests? I don't demand that my friends are interested in everything I'm interested in (and I wouldn't have any friends if I did), but if there isn't some decent amount of overlap in interests I'm probably not going to enjoy conversing with somebody for an extended period of time.

Edit: quote formatting.

Re: Why Aren’t We Curious About the Things We Want to Be Curious About?

#96

Post by allworknoplay » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

WhompingWindows wrote: post #80

shantly wrote: post #60

Worth noting that the ability to indulge practically any idle curiosity ("who was that guy in that one movie again?") with almost no effort is very new . Unless you happened to have the relevant book of trivia, or maybe a good encyclopedia for some things, and you were at home or otherwise somewhere those were physically located, you couldn't find out without quite a bit of effort. That kind of stuff just dropped out…

A few people I know immediately go to their phones to check facts during hangouts and conversations. I find it pretty off-putting, that those close to me value a trivial fact over staying fully connected with the conversation. There is some dopaminergic itch that must be scratched here, and I find like most itching, it doesn't end up paying off for more than a second.

Knowing little facts in a million different areas helps me contextualize and reason about new information, recognize patterns, discern signal/noise, and know when something might be accurate or inaccurate. If something comes up once there’s a good chance it’ll come up again or plays a part in some pattern that will come up again. I’d also argue that most of the time if something as trivial as who was in some movie is already a part of the conversation, then it’s not further trivializing things to go down that rabbit hole vs the original.

Obviously being a bad conversationalist or listener is bad, but it’s not necessarily just an itch to want to know things.

Re: Why Aren’t We Curious About the Things We Want to Be Curious About?

#97

Post by behringer » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #90

WhompingWindows wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few people I know immediately go to their phones to check facts during hangouts and conversations. I find it pretty off-putting, that those close to me value a trivial fact over staying fully connected with the conversation. There is some dopaminergic itch that must be scratched here, and I find like most itching, it doesn't end up paying off for more than a second.

>A few people I know immediately go to their phones to check facts during hangouts and conversations. I find it pretty off-putting, that those close to me value a trivial fact over staying fully connected with the conversation. >, can we have screen-free time together? >, or can we look at each other and shrug and move on with connecting with other humans and not screens. I wasn't there at your meetings so if you tru…

Not imo. It's like the worst. My experience:

We're having a really nice conversation about movies. Oh who was the actor in such and such? Oh I dunno, let me tell you about another movie I he might be in that I really enjoyed. Third guy: Let me read to you some IMDB right now so we can stop talking about what interests anybody and listen to the entire synopsis about the guy that any of us could do in our own time.

Re: Why Aren’t We Curious About the Things We Want to Be Curious About?

#98

Post by mistersquid » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #90

WhompingWindows wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few people I know immediately go to their phones to check facts during hangouts and conversations. I find it pretty off-putting, that those close to me value a trivial fact over staying fully connected with the conversation. There is some dopaminergic itch that must be scratched here, and I find like most itching, it doesn't end up paying off for more than a second.

>A few people I know immediately go to their phones to check facts during hangouts and conversations. I find it pretty off-putting, that those close to me value a trivial fact over staying fully connected with the conversation. >, can we have screen-free time together? >, or can we look at each other and shrug and move on with connecting with other humans and not screens. I wasn't there at your meetings so if you tru…

> It's like being in a professor's office and we discuss something and it prompts the professor to get up from his chair and pull a specific book from the shelf and page through it to clarify a fact.

As a former professor, visiting a professor during, say, office hours, is not quite the same as spending time with a loved one (whether that be a parent, sibling, spouse, friend, what-have-you). The context for such a meeting is to share knowledge and information, which discursive domain provides the reason for meeting in the first place.

In many interpersonal meetings between loved ones, knowledge and information are a secondary or even more remote consideration to the basis of the meeting. In such cases, looking up trivial information is not necessarily a form of care but a form of distraction.

It takes judgement to know when looking up a piece of information is germane to the interpersonal context or whether doing so is incidental.

EDIT: Furnish missing object "care".

Re: Why Aren’t We Curious About the Things We Want to Be Curious About?

#99

Post by arbitrary_name » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

incubus0h wrote: post #92

Can someone suggest good career options for person with novelty traits ? (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_seeking ). Once you are settle down in a certain career (for example, IT/software development), not having to satisfy the itch for novelty seeking can make things really boring for you. So, my next question - how do satisfy that itch in a given career, say IT?

So - I am a strong 'novelty person'. Much of my life revolves around change and newness, and constant, ongoing learning (I've moved from travel wholesaling to banking to startups to energy to mining to bio-pharma to...who knows?). At the beginning of my career, I spent about 6 months working in a bank before I realised that working with the same people, the same task, the same desk day in and day out was not for me. I was not learning all that much after the first 2 months. I realised I needed to stay in 'those first two months' - where everything is new, where you are constantly learning the ropes - but before anything gets repetitive.

So I became a management consultant; and it's awesome; my job changes every 10-12 weeks, with a new office, new team, new clients and new challenges. I can travel for projects if I want a new city, new bed, new bars etc, or I can stay at home and explore.

I work with a lot of technical folks in the field; devs, architects, project managers, business analysts, analytics specialists - all with (broadly) the same passion for learning and change that I have. If you're interested, check it out - there's lots of benefits, lots of great opportunities and a ton of learning to be had, as long as you can balance the expectations and demands.

Re: Why Aren’t We Curious About the Things We Want to Be Curious About?

#100

Post by Atheros » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #90

WhompingWindows wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few people I know immediately go to their phones to check facts during hangouts and conversations. I find it pretty off-putting, that those close to me value a trivial fact over staying fully connected with the conversation. There is some dopaminergic itch that must be scratched here, and I find like most itching, it doesn't end up paying off for more than a second.

>A few people I know immediately go to their phones to check facts during hangouts and conversations. I find it pretty off-putting, that those close to me value a trivial fact over staying fully connected with the conversation. >, can we have screen-free time together? >, or can we look at each other and shrug and move on with connecting with other humans and not screens. I wasn't there at your meetings so if you tru…

The problem is that it often takes a while to look up some information and even small breaks in the conversation leave the other person sitting there twiddling their thumbs. Often when someone asks a question, they don't care that much about the answer; they're just making conversation and getting to know you as a person: what you know, care about, and how you react to things. A lot of people are bad at recognizing whether the information they looked up is worth killing the conversation for 20 seconds. Often it isn't! If I wanted to know the answer to a simple question I just asked I could look it up myself. But I didn't! I asked you. That is different from your professor example since he presumably knows so much more about the topic, he can help you learn what to look up.

Looking through a photo album together can often spark more conversation and keeps the other person engaged. The same isn't true of a phone.