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

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

#101

Post by kulahan »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #86
RobertRoberts wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some relationships where we value trivia as a part of our discussions. And looking stuff up is fun for all of us. Maybe the type of people and the relationships you have determine the experience in this case?

Maybe your group is different, but I want someone to engage fully with me as a person, not check their phones for a fact that doesn't matter. Something like, what was Robert de Niro's second major film? This matters zero, can we have screen-free time together?

If you want them to fully engage with you, then you can't possibly ask them any questions which require any kind of meaningful thought. The human brain can't think deeply about a topic while also holding an attentive conversation with someone. The only difference is that the disengagement for a phone is extremely visible, whereas it's usually just a slight "tell" when they're thinking deeply (the eyes roll to the corner and they squint slightly, for instance).

They're still disengaging, though.

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

#102

Post by shantly »

blotter_paper wrote: post #95
WhompingWindows wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a real itch to little trivial questions now that there didn't used to be. The pre-Web days are getting hazy but my recollection is that I didn't think up 1/10 as many trivial questions as I do now, and each one now has about 10x the apparent urgency they used to. The ability to get an answer in 10s flat to any low-value question has changed my thinking, to say nothing of the "rabbit hole" effect once you go looking for an answer. I have to consciously push that stuff back to keep it from being (to me) weird. Observing others leads me to believe my experience is probably more normal than not (plus there's social media and all that, which, HN aside, I've managed to avoid falling into by just never starting to use it).

It may not just be a difference in interests. Even trying to keep it to a minimum and being aware of the phenomenon, I still spend a fair amount of time in a week looking up stuff I don't actually care about, will soon forget, and which certainly doesn't serve any need.

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

#103

Post by jasode »

mistersquid wrote: post #98
jasode wrote: post #90

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. >, 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 me…

> The context for such a meeting is to share knowledge and information, which discursive domain provides the reason for meeting in the first place.

Yes, that underlying context is true but you're missing the point of my example. The professor example was not about "information" vs "friendship". It was meant to illustrate "engaged" vs "disengaged" in the conversation which is orthogonal to whether the context is teacher/student or friend/friend.

For example, professor X sits there with arms folded across the chest thinking the student doesn't really care about his class and is only there to lobby for a good grade. Therefore the professor just answers, "Uhm, yes, I see. Well, I don't know what to say other than make sure you get your final paper in by next week".

On the other hand, professor Y was genuinely intrigued by something the student said and it spurs him to search his bookshelf and clarify something. He didn't have to physically get up to get a book but the conversation was engaging enough to do so. When the professor temporarily turns his back to the student to fetch a relevant book, that doesn't mean he's less disconnected from the conversation; he's actually more connected.

That's what I'm trying to convey: maybe measuring how much time your friend's eyes are glued to your face isn't the best way to measure connectedness. E.g. The professor X with the unbroken stare towards to the student was actually less engaged than professor Y that paused the conversation to find a relevant book.

Like I said previously, I can't argue with others' feelings. This thread shows me that everybody seems to have different thresholds of annoyance for others using their smartphone to look up something. Personally, I'm never slighted or offended by it. I actually feel complimented if our conversation prompted their fingers to type out a search request because of something I said. Just last week, I was talking with a friend about iron supplements and as we were talking, she typed in a search query for the most iron-rich foods. It was great as the conversation then flowed into spinach, tofu, etc.

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

#104

Post by iscrewyou »

wruza wrote: post #22

IME, reading quick articles or googling for a word doesn’t work too. But there is a way to get an interesting information. I built my curiosity stream by checking channels on youtube (it has non-crap channels, despite my beliefs). It wasn’t a quick process. One video by another I filtered content and made a subscription set which feeds me a couple or more videos per week that are good content and build my curiosity,…

Any way for you to share a few of your YouTube channels? I love watching channels such as 3blue1brown, numberphile, sixtysymbols, deepskyvideos, etc. it’s true what you say about sitting down and actually watching more than just a sound bite. Having context of things helps a lot with learning.

However, I am lacking in some development channels.

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

#105

Post by randcraw »

40acres wrote: post #71

I can only speak for America society, but in my experience after a certain age general novelty seeking is discouraged. We've all experienced the feeling of being bombarded by questions from a toddler, but after a certain age we restrict the "universe of relevant questions" to be context specific. As someone with ADHD, novelty seeking has never been an issue for me. Generally I think it benefits society as a whole to…

I think it's the more disruptive forms of curiosity that are actively discouraged -- where you publicly question whether a fundamental fact is wrong and suggest that it be corrected before we proceed with sopme standard operating procedure that others depend on. Pretty much everyone hates that.

But I think when curiosity is kept private, or you state that your explorations are personal, peripheral, and nowhere near anyone's critical path, curiosity shouldn't pose a threat.

But it is curious that after you leave school, curiosity is more often discouraged than encouraged in our society. It seems like 95% of people just want all their beliefs forever to be correct, certain, unchanging, and unthreatening.

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

#106

Post by fragmede »

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.

How do you feel about looking up non-trivial facts (eg talking to someone about having a meeting and looking up when you're both free), or answering a text (and how do you know if that text is salient to your conversation or not), or just being bored - reddit/HN/etc. More importantly, how do you tell the difference when the other person whips out their phone? It's downright rude to go off and check reddit if we're in the middle of a conversation, but if we're waiting around for a third person and that person is nowhere to be seen, I welcome that we're both checking our phones for messages from them.

I wish there were some way to communicate "hey, no, my phone use is actually importantly relevant to our conversation (wherein, trivia facts, such as found on IMDB, don't count)"

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

#107

Post by layoric »

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…

> Or when you talk to a friend and you mention something about a specific place and they say "Oh, I happen to have a photo of that" so they go get their photo album and show it to me. That's staying connected with our conversation.

Entirely depends, this has happened many times to me with a different result. Eg the place was less important to a story being told and looking in their phone for a photo takes minutes and the rest of the narrative was almost completely ignored or derailed by a different photo. That’s not being “connected” to the conversation IMO, that’s being narcissistic. Where as a simple “oh, I’ve been there” without the phone can be encouraging the story teller and showing interest in the conversation, pulling out your device I think can show the opposite.

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

#108

Post by RobertRoberts »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #86
RobertRoberts wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some relationships where we value trivia as a part of our discussions. And looking stuff up is fun for all of us. Maybe the type of people and the relationships you have determine the experience in this case?

Maybe your group is different, but I want someone to engage fully with me as a person, not check their phones for a fact that doesn't matter. Something like, what was Robert de Niro's second major film? This matters zero, can we have screen-free time together?

I think you misunderstood, I said "some relationships". If you don't care about /any/ trivia, perhaps that is why you are annoyed by this?

I have a few groups of very deep thinkers where trivia is a waste of breath. And yet, we still want to look things up because the answers deeply matter to us like origins of words (etymology), accurate quotes from like minded researchers, etc... These are things that once answered move our discussions deeper or in unique directions.

Maybe next time someone does this ask them why they are interested in the answer at that moment? I feel if you are genuinely interested in the other person's experience (especially if you think it's trivial) they will more likely care about yours.

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

#109

Post by dredmorbius »

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.

Learning skills often involves toy examples initially. If you're a programmer, was "Hello, world" your first program? Is there anything immediately useful in being able to generate that particular result?

Researching is a skill. Researching quickly, accurately, and effectively takes both knowing that this is possible and knowing how / where to go for information.

And no, I'm not saying that it's necessary to break up every last conversation on some point, or that all facts must be verified. But it's a useful practice and skill, there's a great deal of this that doesn't happen, and where a discussion does hinge on the ability to produce and verify facts, this can be quite useful.

I find discussions in which a point is both germane and verifiable but people actively avoid checking it to be ... rather disappointing. More frequently in professional, scientific, or political contexts, but all the same.

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

#110

Post by dredmorbius »

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?

Bespoke research, technical or business analysis.
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