Swimmer963 comments on The Limits of Curiosity - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Elizabeth 10 March 2011 03:20PM

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Comment author: komponisto 12 March 2011 10:41:53PM 2 points [-]

Can you show some research on that claim?...Having observed a puppy gleefully searching new stuff found in his territory...I'm uncertain that we could claim they were non-curious.

Number of species according to Wikipedia: at least 7 million, of which:

  • at least 5 million (71%) are bacteria
  • 1,203,375 (17%) are invertebrate animals
  • 297,326 (4%) are plants
  • 59,811 (0.8%) are vertebrate animals, of which 5,416 (0.07%) are mammals (the category that includes humans, chimpanzees, dogs, and every other species to which the emotion of "curiosity" might conceivably be attributed).

"Species" != "things like cute puppies".

Comment author: Swimmer963 12 March 2011 11:33:06PM 1 point [-]

5,416 species is a LOT. Even if only 20, or 10, of these species have 'curiosity', that's still a very different thing from ONLY humans having curiosity.

I personally see little difference in kind between that and the similar actions seen in baby humans. The fact that a human is far better able to direct their curiosity, I think is based on our different quantity, or capacity for intelligent curiosity.

Precisely what I thought. A dog's curiosity doesn't get it as far as a human's does, since a dog has much less capacity for symbolic thought (but probably still some capacity) and no way to record its thoughts or share the thoughts of other dogs.

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