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Comment by abiekatz | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why some people end up being intellectually curious while others are not. I think intellectual curiosity is very important, especially now since the majority of the world's information is available for free online.

The person who grows up being intellectually curious will have a big heads up in the job market since they will have acquired more information than the other applicants. Plus, I think a lover for knowledge can enrich an individuals life as well.

I don't know exactly how schools and parents can instill intellectual curiosity into their students and children but I think the subject matter should be researched and prioritized.

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> The person who grows up being intellectually curious will have a big heads up in the job market since they will have acquired more information than the other applicants.

I unfortunately do not agree with you. Despite how much it kills me to admit this, intellectual curiosity (at least in the legal world) is more of a cancer... you don't want people who will bury themselves learning as much as they can about a topic. This mindset is discordant with the concept of deadlines, because it's almost impossible to estimate the duration of something that is by definition factorial in complexity. As such, employers in fields so heavily dictated by deadlines are not looking for people who thrive on learning...they're looking for people who thrive on completing the task that they're assigned--even if it means suppressing their intrinsic desire to learn in favor of an extrinsic motivator: $$$.

Being intellectually curious does not, in any way, mean you are incapable of following directions to complete a task. And it actually might mean that by questioning what is the desired outcome, you complete the task a lot faster or perhaps even determine that working on task X is actually a waste of time for everyone.

And it actually might mean that by questioning what is the desired outcome, you complete the task a lot faster or perhaps even determine that working on task X is actually a waste of time for everyone.

Or it might mean that you think you've figured out that task X is a waste of time, but in fact since you're merely curious and not omniscient you might have missed the point of task X entirely.

"Why do we need shoes anyway, man?"

Oddly enough, people are starting to question the whole shoes thing; apparently with good results.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot_running

I mostly agree with this; I think a reasonable degree of intellectual curiosity is necessary to do well, but that the most successful range is "a moderate amount". Read some, but not too much, and get quite skilled at some in-demand skill, while staying flexible enough to adapt it and pick up related skills. Having too much intellectual curiosity can reduce focus (harder to be content with a fairly limited job, even if well-paying), can cause angst if you do too much digging-into-foundations (i.e. don't just excel within the parameters of your task, but try to understand why it exists or is set up the way it is in the first place), etc.

Not that that means intellectual curiosity is bad, I'm just not sure it's income-maximizing or good-employee-maximizing, at least in the normal case.

Yeah, I'm not at all arguing that intellectual curiosity is bad, just that it's not always right, where what's "right" is parameterized on the inputs: your task, the expected output, the deadline, etc.

People thriving in learning is still an amazing resource to have around if the company manage to steer that learning into how their business works. I believe the usefulness isn't about if there is a lot of deadlines or not, but if the field of business is complex and rewarding intellectually.

Another anecdote: when I was young, I just wanted to be on top in class - that kept me busy, but might would have killed my curiosity.

Just in time, I changed to a high school for five years where we could visit voluntary courses in biology, electronics, math, sports, computer sciences, chemistry, drama and everything - no marks. We would even come to school before our first regular class, just to listen to a teacher philosophizing about some travelling salesman problem (we were about 13) and similar miracles from a math perspective. This school cultivated an atmosphere of both curiosity and competition - and could actually deliver - half of our teachers were PhDs - most of them eager to teach, learn, experiment and messing up labs until sunset.

Where was this school?

Eastern Germany.

>how schools and parents can instill intellectual curiosity

They can't. But the good news is that all small children possess curiosity.

Parents and schools can help by not damaging it. This entails, among other things, no bribery or punishment.

Well, that was what the author of the article was trying to tell us, wasn't it? Don't give marks and they'll be intellectually curious.

Anecdote: I was really good at school at a young age, and I would get easy 80s in all my classes, so I never cared about marks, so that made me intellectually curious at a young age.

The post provides a great anecdote but I am just saying that more research should be done on the issue.

Yeah, I think not giving grades is a great potential way to encourage intellectual curiosity. Has there been any controlled experiments on this issue? Also is this practical during primary and secondary education? I don't know.

I think some students without marks would become more intellectually curious while other students might just not do the work and just play video games instead. It's a tricky topic.

An alternative anecdote: I often received poor marks in school because I was curious about learning things that were unrelated to what was being taught at the given time.

I distinctly remember sitting in high school math class solving some mathematical problems that were to be taught later because it was interesting and applicable to my learning needs at that point in time. The topic the teacher wanted to teach that day was not applicable to the problems I needed to solve at that moment, so it made no sense to learn it on that very day.

If marks had been a concern of mine, I would have had to have given my teachers at least some attention, taking time away from my education.

Another anecdote: instead of doing math homeworks and paying 100% attention to the classes I started to learn programming, because I wanted to make games. I could program stuff at 13, and - thought having bad math grades ever since - learned the material I missed later, in a way that was more/less related to game development or my other needs.

When you dig beneath the surface of the education systems, you find a host of alternative and progressive models that successfully cultivate and maintain intellectual curiosity.

The issue isn't really a lack of research; it's a lack of interest. Pundits like to claim to be "for the children" or whatever, but they are generally more interested in tangential agendas that can leverage fear from threats to children rather than a sober analysis.

I'd suggest starting by looking up who Alfie Kohn is. He is not a scientist, but he acts as a good aggregator.

Personal opinion: it's at least partly genetic. I think about how human societies evolved. You needed a few leaders and a majority of hunters/gatherers/soldiers. A few people are born with more drive, ambition, intellectual curiosity, call it what you will. The majority are content to be told what to do, in exchange for having their basic needs and security taken care of. Its fundamentally the same thing that leads to "alpha" wolves in a pack.

This is a very interesting point, if anyone has any links to any resources or experiments that talk about stuff like this please do share :)

Do a search on Amazon for Alfie Kohn, specifically "Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes"

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