Ask HN: What does it means to be more curious? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What does it means to be more curious?

2 pointsShugarl4 comments

"Be more curious" is one of the most common piece of advice given in engineering.

But what does that actually means ? Curiosity is tied to an emotion. I don't have a problem learning things I'm genuinely interested in, because I won't struggle to dig in those things, I won't stop for as long as I feel that my understanding is wrong/incomplete, and once my curiosity is satisfied, I'll feel something satisfying which'll make it easy for my brain to remember what I've learned.

It's a process deeply tied with our emotions, which is I don't understand why people usually recommend to just "Ask (yourself) more questions" about a thing, or to "Try to be interested" into something, "Train yourself to be more curious" or other similar advices.

I can ask myself 1000 questions about fashion in the middle ages, but I'd likely forget 99% of what I've learned, because ultimately, I couldn't care less about this topic, and faking an interest in that wouldn't make me feel things.

There also doesn't seem to be a correlation between how curious someone think they are, and how curious they actually are.

So those of HN who genuinely "hacked" their curiosity, how did you do it ? How to be curious about the things I wish I was interested in ?

Fool around with things.

What’s that do? How’s that work?

When we get older, and accustomed to things, we start to take them for granted.

When we’re told what something is and what it does or learn about them in a formal purposeful way we stop wondering about them, accepting what we know as some sort of “established dogma.”

This “familiarity” is often a self deception. We miss things. Things go unnoticed…

This is why newcomers/outsiders often make great discoveries. They don’t have their blinders fixed by routine or expectations.

> Curiosity is tied to an emotion.

I’m not sure I agree. Emotions are a form of personal confusion. Curiosity is intellectual. More tied to unemotional ignorance and lack of rigidity towards formal expectations.

Fooling around with things helps, but that's not really different to the "Ask yourself more questions" kind of advices.

Even if I was fooling around with, say, a 3 modeling of a bed, why would I retain any information I didn't genuinely want to know ? Questioning my own understanding of things doesn't help either, as realizing that something doesn't work the way I thought it did, doesn't necessarily make me care about finding out what the truth is.

>I’m not sure I agree. Emotions are a form of personal confusion. Curiosity is intellectual. More tied to unemotional ignorance and lack of rigidity towards formal expectations

I didn't get that, mind expanding ?

> why would I retain any information I didn't genuinely want to know

First things first, stop assuming you know what you want, or that useful things are immediately obvious. Just play around damn it, all the time. Fiddle with it. Fool around!

> Even if I was fooling around with, say …

This static object may or may not be interesting. The tools and techniques are more so. See things you would do differently? That’s useful. See things you hadn’t considered? More so. When I fool around with objects I learn that good finishing has layers and layers of interfacing between the objects themselves and how they fit or are used (like a grip or a fastener or way of attaching that makes assembly easier, etc.)

> doesn't necessarily make me care

I guess that’s why you’re having trouble with this whole curious thing.

If you find something interesting BY ACCIDENT, then you learn something. Destroy your boring expectations. Even if you don’t think it’s important now, just having gone over it reinforces your familiarity. Handling an object makes you familiar with the weight and feel. Later if you handle a fake, you will remember it doesn’t exactly feel right even though at the time those details were uninteresting.

Curiosity is learning by accident as much as anything. And it’s a big mistake of yours to think you will be immediately aware of everything useful later. Those thoughts you have in the back of your mind days, weeks, or even years later are the slow revelation that curiosity provokes.

When you stop being curious, you become stagnant in your knowledge, and that is very boring of you.

Talk to others about the non-obvious things your curiosity experiments reveal. I think you’ll find socializing about curiosity very gratifying in itself!

Well, the more you fuck around, the more you find out. All the best hackers are naturally curious. But aside from curiosity, there is also a more subtle thing called 'noticing'. You need to develop the art of noticing anomalies, and stop recognizing patterns. Spot the things that 'stand out'.

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