Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

121–125 of 125 posts

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

#121
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.

Hi, of course! 3b1b and numberphile are two of my favorites too. Especially featuring Neil Sloane and prof. Tadashi Tokieda (no intent to undervalue other stars and/or Parker squares).

PBS network is also great. I watch PBS Eons and PBS Spacetime the same time I see a notification dot.

Recently added Astrum because of nice pics. melodysheep caught me with their timelapse videos. These two are in wait-and-see category atm.

Also Jay Foreman for british humour, London history and mapmen. Primer posts rarely, but was definitely worth a sub.

That’s all. I visit few more topics/channels by hand, but they are of entertainment nature (starcraft tournaments, local evening letsplays, etc), thus no sub as it would create an unwanted distraction. As of games, MkIceAndFire plays them with decent skill in no commentary, no overlay style. Btw, when you’re on a channel, you can check “channels” to see if an author likes or links to something on their own account.

Hope you like some of these!

>development channels

Sadly, it never clicked with me, despite (or because) me being full-time dev since when youtube still wasn’t a thing. It just feels either too slow or too shallow/instructional rather than deep and full of decades of wisdom. Idk, can’t force myself to watch any of these anymore.

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

#122

> Many websites that snare your time feature scores of stories on the front page, banking that one will strike each reader’s sweet spot of knowledge. So visit websites that use the same strategy but offer richer content, for example, JSTOR Daily, Arts & Letters Daily or ScienceDaily. or HackerNews :)

The articles linked to in HN aren't always the most fruitful, whereas the comments are a universe of wonderful discussion. I've learned dozens of things from browsing the comments here, which makes sense as we have world experts in dozens of fields who are regular commenters.

I usually get my HackerNews updated through the feed in Telegram, which means I usually go straight to the comments before even reading the article. Reading them is really nice, as it lets me gauge if I think the article is worth a read, then engage in some great conversations about it.

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

#123

> Many websites that snare your time feature scores of stories on the front page, banking that one will strike each reader’s sweet spot of knowledge. So visit websites that use the same strategy but offer richer content, for example, JSTOR Daily, Arts & Letters Daily or ScienceDaily. or HackerNews :)

The articles linked to in HN aren't always the most fruitful, whereas the comments are a universe of wonderful discussion. I've learned dozens of things from browsing the comments here, which makes sense as we have world experts in dozens of fields who are regular commenters.

> whereas the comments are a universe of wonderful discussion

[ * spits coffee all over keyboard * ]

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

#124
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true for me, I know very little electrical engineering/low level programming/embedded devices etc and wish I knew more, and yet I can't muster enough inherent interest to learn more. But I'm generally very curious about stuff and regularly read news/studies/documentation and get lost in wiki holes, but for a lot of useless stuff I don't really have a use for. So this is definitely an issue for me. I do pro…

If this doesn't whet your appetite and make you feel like you've learned something, I don't know what will. But it's a hard course. https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:MITx+6.002x_6x+1T2... This was another good one, more practically applicable to a programmer but less low-level: https://www.edx.org/course/embedded-systems-shape-the-world-...

Thanks for the suggestions!

I need to enroll to see the contents of the first one, but I will look into it!

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

#125
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.

While I don't agree with you on the core argument (me and all my friends are instant fact checkers), I do have an anecdote to share.

A couple years ago my wife and I spent 3 days on a train through India without any data. A bunch of times subjects came up we couldn't just google. Instead, we discussed them for hours, interrogating and deducing answers to questions we would have jumped straight to the answers for back home.

(it wasn't trivia like "who was the actor in the movie", it was curiousity questions like "I wonder what was the origin of so and so law", and "I wonder how so and so mechanical/physical property works"

Post reply on HN