>Small populations don't need too many novelty seekers. If everyone in a village is curious about Tigers, sooner or later everyone in the village would be dead. As populations grow the number of Novelty seekers increase and sooner or later the village has knowledge of how to tame the Tiger.

That's an anthropology way to looking at it -- which could be OK if one is speaking for some remote villages or tribes.

The modern world though is so complex and cross-cutting that I don't think this applies, at least not in the same way.

For one, novelty seeking is hardly associated with survival for most people and groups (like in the village/tiger example).

Second, each of us has tons of different outlets for that novelty seeking, not just a single group.