Wow, this is a really strong comment over something that I hadn't realised was so important to you.
I can understand how it might seem that way, but you have to realize that this was in the context of a perfectly fine comment being downvoted to -3 (!), in addition to what felt like a flurry of comments suggesting I was displaying zoological ignorance and underestimating the intellects of puppies and octopi.
This particular subtopic isn't important to me at all; what's important to me is being able to efficiently have discussions on a high level of sophistication, without having to spend time and effort plugging status leaks resulting from someone's misunderstanding (willful or not) of my words.
you've assumed that I was trying to derail your argument... which is particularly uncharitable about my intentions.
No, I didn't assume that you were trying to derail the argument (read the comment again, carefully!); I just noted that you had, in fact, derailed it.
And, of course, I don't think the status-seeking/showing-off was deliberate or conscious on your part. It's what we're always doing, all the time, mostly unconsciously. We can't stop it, and nor should we; status is a basic need for neurologically normal humans (and yes, that category includes readers of LW). What we have to do is learn to recognize when it's interfering with our other aims, and make adjustments to reduce this interference.
For example, before making a correction to someone's comment (by default, an aggressive status move), ask yourself whether you will be communicating new information to the person -- something relevant to the discussion that they genuinely didn't know. If so, then -- especially in a setting like this, where information is highly valued -- it will usually be worth the tradeoff, and the person may even be grateful for the correction, willing to pay the status cost in exchange for the info. Otherwise, however, unless you're careful to signal that you're not making a status challenge (generally accomplished by packing your correction full of deferential language), you will most likely just end up provoking a verbal battle that won't actually produce anything of intellectual value.
The latter is basically what happened in this instance. I'm a pretty regular reader and commenter on this site, where knowledge of the basics of logic tends to be taken as a matter of course. As such, I can be assumed to be well-versed in the fact that the negation of a statement of the form "for all x, P(x)" is a statement of the form "there exists x such that not-P(x)". Consequently, pointing out to me that, as you put it,
the counter-claim does not require that 100% of all species on the earth have curiosity, but that curiosity exists in some non-human species.
is not informative. Instead, it's more like you "caught" me making a "mistake" in the "debate game", and are now seizing upon it to "score a point" -- as if we were playing chess, and I made a blunder that you were going to exploit.
Now, it's true that I did originally say that "only one" species possessed curiosity. However, somebody before you actually asked whether I meant that literally -- and I responded with a comment that should have made it clear (albeit implicitly) that my remark had been mainly an allusion not to human superiority over other intelligent mammals, but to the fact that most living species are things like bacteria. I then made that point explicit when you commented with your puppy anecdote. At this stage there should have been no room for misunderstanding about what my point was: even if we completely grant the strongest claims of animal enthusiasts, curiosity is still rare among life on Earth.
You claimed to know something about curiosity in non-human species
This is where you misunderstood. My claim was not about whether the animal enthusiasts are correct or not. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. (I tend to think that even if they are, human curiosity is still an exceptional outlier of a phenomenon, if only quantitatively.) But regardless, the only thing I claimed to know was that if a species isn't human it probably doesn't have curiosity. Given that 71% of species are bacteria I regard that claim as trivially true.
Sure thing - looks like I misunderstood your reply to my first comment... But I think you have also misunderstood my intent. let me try to explain.
For example, before making a correction to someone's comment (by default, an aggressive status move), ask yourself whether you will be communicating new information to the person -- something relevant to the discussion that they genuinely didn't know
I think this may be where you misunderstood me.
I wasn't trying to add to your ongoing discussion (which looks like it's something about genetic fitness as it rel...
In principle, I agree with the notion that it is unforgivable to not want to know, and not want to improve your map to match the territory. However, even the most curious person in the world cannot maintain equal curiosity about all things, and even if they could there are limits on time and energy. In general, the things that inspire curiosity are determined by your personal likes, dislikes, and biases, and it is therefore worth considering carefully where these demarcations fall so as not to deprive ourselves of useful information. This is particularly important when it comes to things that inspire not just lack of interest, but aversion, or "anti-curiosity."
However, not all information is useful, and it can be useful to encourage a bias that cuts you off from information that is not particularly useful to you, so as to better allocate your time and energy. It is possible that it could also be useful to fabricate an "I don't want to know" stance about a certain type of information so as to better allocate your time, (for example, ceasing to watch television, and denying curiosity about what is happening on your favorite shows), but I will not discuss or advocate that here, largely because it's all I can do to hold the line against new time wasters.
The difficulty and danger of this method is that it is best accomplished by not thinking about the things you don't want to be curious about, and that can lead to not even realizing you aren't curious about them, so important things may slip through the cracks. For example, I have never smoked a cigarette, and it requires no effort on my part to not be curious about what it is like. That is such a deeply buried aversion that I might never have consciously noticed that lack of curiosity if I had not been writing this article. In this case, lack of curiosity about smoking is beneficial, but it could just as easily have been something that would be useful for me to be curious about, and I might never have noticed.
Analyzing your own areas of anti-curiosity is extremely difficult, both because your brain rebels at thinking about things it habitually doesn't think about, and because you will likely find a lack of rhyme or reason in which things you are anticurious about. Questioning things deeply held enough that you don't think about them is always deeply uncomfortable.
Many such anti-curiosity regions are more a matter of personal preference than anything else. One of mine falls in the area of video games: I've never played them much, and I deliberately cultivate a lack of curiosity about them because I don't believe the enjoyment or value they might give me would outweigh the amount of my precious time they would likely take up if I started. However, I spend more time than perhaps I should reading fanfiction. There are probably people reading this who are just the opposite, and there probably isn't any real difference between the two positions.
There are also many such regions that result from not having much knowledge or skill in an area, and, rather than rectifying the knowledge gap, developing a sense of superiority or disdain in relation to the area. One fairly common topic for this to occur around (at least for women) is the application of makeup. It is one I had to overcome myself. I didn't know how to put on makeup well as a teenager, and hadn't really tried, and looked down on the sorts of girls who came to class after an obvious half-hour beauty regimen. There were all sorts of plausible excuses for my disdain (women shouldn't make themselves into Barbies, intellect is more important, etc. ), but the real root reason was that I couldn't do it myself. It took time to overcome that enough to realize the real benefits to having that knowledge (even if I still don't bother on a daily basis), but there *are* real benefits to having that knowledge. At the very least, makeup is an expected part of formal or business attire for women in the US, and there are tangible benefits to following such social conventions regardless of how logical they are.
It is more difficult to overcome such an issue if it is rooted in lack of ability rather than lack of knowledge. I have long recognized intellectually the value of recognizing and responding appropriately to social cues, but it doesn't come easily to me, and my frustration often manifests itself in a feeling that I don't want to know. Recognizing that and overcoming it is an ongoing process.
Maintaining a balance on such things is difficult. I know that in areas in which I am comfortable, I excel at optimization, but if I am uncomfortable I subscribe strongly to the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy. Both approaches have their merits and their place, the challenge is maintaining awareness of which I am using and why I am using it so that I don't fall into a trap of willful ignorance.
Even when you have identified an area in which you should reverse course and cultivate curiosity, the battle is not over. You still have to overcome the hurdle of learning about the subject. However, I am not qualified to write an article on overcoming procrastination because I am not nearly successful enough at avoiding it.