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lix comments on The Limits of Curiosity - Less Wrong
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Comments (49)
Replace "curious" with "X", and you've got a Fully General argument against any claim that it's rational to imitate people who make a great contribution.
...which may be due in part to their lack of curiosity...
Most people don't read LW. Among people who do, I expect a higher than normal percentage to have goals for which curiosity is atypically instrumentally valuable.
But even in general: most people's priority is maximizing their status. I claim that curiosity is positively correlated with status. (I don't claim the correlation is perfect.)
If your only goal is maximizing inclusive genetic fitness, then the "instrumental value" of a trait that only one species on Earth possesses is indeed unlikely to be very high.
I would define curiosity as a tendency to explore one's environment without immediate material incentives, and to learn through this exploration. By this definition I doubt that any species entirely lacks curiosity - but perhaps we are using different definitions?
Examples. A cellular slime mold population will explore a maze, learning the most efficient route. Ant nests continually send out explorers to new areas, learning the locations of resources. Bacterial populations increase their mutation rate in new environments, exploring the space of possible forms and learning through adaptation to these new environments.
I wasn't intending to suggest that curiosity is worthless. On the contrary, I think it's crucial for the long-term success of any population. My point was merely that the optimal level of curiosity for a rational individual isn't obvious, so we should be cautious about promoting it unconditionally on a rationality blog.
For example, I am pretty sure I would be far more successful - even in terms of social contribution and status - if I didn't spend so many hours clicking through random Wikipedia pages and designing small experiments to test obscure personal ideas. Maybe other LW readers are over-curious information junkies like me? How do we know?
I know I am, so I generally only spend a large amount of time fulfilling my curiosity in areas where I have the expertise to make some kind contribution, perhaps i will miss some opportunities, but even devoting my spare time to programming I am too rushed as it is.