Comment on Use curiosity

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 23:33:45 GMT

Excellent!

I would summarize what I think is the most essential insight of your comment as: 'Curiosity is playful exploration. Chase is directed pursuit. Do not confuse the two'

However, you seem to be too big a fan of curiosity. Most of us intellectually curious types are probably too unconditionally curious for our own good. Your enthusiasm for your favorite novels is a good example. You admit it artificially cultivates in you a desire to know what will happen next, via clever plot trickery. Unfortunately reality and your goals are such that following your curiosity will not lead to information/knowledge with the highest payoff, especially in this modern technical environment, where our ancestrally-adapted curiosity heuristics probably go often astray. Following the smell of curiosity by your nose will lead you to ultimately learn about stuff irrelevant to your goals. It is highly unlikely that the marginally most interesting stuff leads in the direction of greatest marginal expected benefit of new knowledge/info for your achieving your goals. Effective goal pursuit requires crossing valleys of boredom.

I would say curiosity is an investment, and like all good investment it should be targeted, but when you really need/want to get something done, chase.

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