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Comment by speeder | Hacker News Reader

It is funny, how "adults" think that this behavior is not acceptable.

I am... very curious. I am all the time curious, I keep researching about everything.

Sometimes I just stop, and keep looking at something, wondering how it works.

One day for example, I remember that I was looking at the rain, seeing it splashing on a roof that I could see from where I was. I kept looking at how the raindrops shattered when hitting the hard surface.

My then-girlfriend approached me, and asked: "what you are looking so much?"

I explained to her my wonderings about the raindrops.

Her reply was: "this is useless, drop it."

The thing is, this was not a single incident, and not only with her, many times in my life, people tried to convince me to be LESS curious.

I wonder why.

I wonder why the sense or wonder, curiosity, wanting to learn, is viewed as childish or a thing to be hated, or as a time wasting activity.

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“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

CS Lewis

No one is so jealous of their dignity as people trying to grow up.

I was just about to post this as a reply :)

Reminds me of the story of Richard Feynman deciding that he was just going to have fun with physics. He observed somebody in a cafeteria throwing a plate into the air, and noticed an interesting relationship between the plate's wobble speed and spin speed. He dug into the physics behind it, which an acquaintance told him was a waste of time. He didn't give it up, and later that research led to a nobel prize.

http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html

Enjoying a feeling is fine. I don't think anyone reasonable will take issue with that.

I do, however, take issue with calling it curiosity. Curiosity is defined as a desire to learn something or know something. Even if you do want to know, the feeling you get from this hinges on not knowing-- if not, there's no harm in actually finding the answer, and there is harm in not finding it.

Asking questions like this is fine, but, to me, calling it curiosity isn't. This isn't because it's childish. It's because it's unreasonable. Curiosity and reason are supposed to work together.

Totally relate. My curiosity about things like:

"Why do I feel like my hand touches something even though, on an atomic level, I'm sure it's still separated by space?"

and

"What if none of this was real?"

have led my friends and family to assume I've gone crazy.

The worst part? For a long time I believed them, and I'm sure part of me still does..

But with relation to the article, it occurs to me that these questions began in my mind around age 5 or 6. I think this is pretty common, too, but kids are told to focus on "important" things.

To me, that's the best argument against curiosity. (I know it's not a perfect argument.) Because some questions don't have answers, or the answers are deeply troubling.

That's why I regret how much I have pursued my curiousity about Human/artificial AI, evolutionary biology, the nature of religion, etc.

Sometimes, it's better to be a bit innocent and ignorant (also respectful and nice, otherwise the world can get into trouble with violent religious zealots) -- no one gets psychically hurt that way.

If it helps, the determinism of the observable universe in the cases of physics and chemistry might be an elaborate illusion of averages on the quantum level.

In essence, we can't see the quantum interaction of particles and their superpositions, we can only see the average produced by a large number of these actions and reactions. This gives a small, but nonetheless interesting, hole from which randomness can leak into the apparent deterministic systems we see.

I recently walked a similar road when thinking about human behavior as a product of genetics and outside inputs. For me, the angst was the view that "free will" might be fictional, and I had built a lot of my personal ethics onto that pillar. But it was curiosity that led me out of that nihilistic moment when I thought about the loophole above.

> That's why I regret how much I have pursued my curiousity about Human/artificial AI, evolutionary biology, the nature of religion, etc.

Can you elaborate?

The conclusion that a consciousness is nothing but a series of mechanical interconnections, a machine that can be built or destroyed, fundamentally a kind of computer, and not something metaphysical, magical, or unexplainable, can be unsettling. Maybe that's what they meant?

Another interpretation of those facts is that mechanical interconnections between various deterministic processes can result in emergent behaviours which are profoundly beautiful. What if the glass is half full?

www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html

All of those images are generated with very simple deterministic rules but they are still sublime.

Exactly, it can be a rough transition period from the first realization to getting to appreciating it in the way you said. I forgot to elaborate on that part.

It's easy to imagine it being possible to build a consciousness without having built one. Life began millions of years ago and hasn't stopped since; whatever we come up with now sits on the shoulders of all that. We imitate what we are or what we find around us, and even if we are genuinely creative; why is there something instead of nothing? That is ultimately what enables us to do things or think about them, after all, and so to me no magic is lost. Yeah, not even making a mini universe with people in it would make this one less awesome, to me, and wouldn't answer a single one of the more profound questions, for me.

I dare say if you really think you found solid, objective answers for, uhm, anything, I encourage you to look even closer and/or consider the bigger picture... at least for me, it always ends up being a huge mystery again :)

Interesting, I came to an opposite conclusion using relatively logical and rational reasoning. There are really strong arguments suggesting that consciousness can't be explained as a complex interaction of physical particles.

Hint: the core of the problem (and core of many, if not most, philosopical problems) is "What is the definition of consciousness?"

If you can't define what a consciousness is then you can't claim it's impossible to explain physically. How can there be strong arguments supporting a hypotheses if fundamental parts of the hypothesis aren't defined?

I didn't say that I can't define consciousness. The problem is that consciousness doesn't have a reasonable objective definition. So my definition is subjective: "Consciousness is my ability to perceive and feel, for example the ability to feel pain or to dream." HN is not very good for this type of discussion, we (or anyone reading this) can continue here if you want: http://public.enterprisewiki.co/7a8b0605-d425-460d-8b57-354a....

Because people were told to grow up. Which is the worst thing you can do. You should instead mature and learn from experiences, but also keep that child like wonder about things. Such is the reason I love playing with my girls. They always manage to see things I cannot.

I am very curious also.

But man do people hate it when you're curious about their religion, politics or personal beliefs. Such a minefield ... don't "why" there unless you're ready to handle some very annoyed people.

Related: don't "why" about religion, politics, or personal beliefs unless you're willing to seriously examine a possibly very alien worldview.

A lot of people have a shallow or false curiosity on these subjects. Their intent is not to understand, but simply to discover a question that is difficult to answer in only a few sentences, and then declare victory. The net result is that nobody learns anything of value, nobody is enriched, but somebody feels annoyed that their friend didn't respect them enough to really listen.

True curiosity requires a willingness to explore both depth and breadth. This is more likely to require years than minutes.

  I wonder why, I wonder why
  I wonder why I wonder
  I wonder *why* I wonder why
  I wonder why I wonder -- RF

I enjoy cartoons more than regular TV shows because they can be wild with the imagination. A lot of people think this is childish. They rather watch "Reality TV" shows.

I'm the same, I watch a lot of anime because it sparks some great thoughts. What if the world was like X, what if we could do this, why is this like that etc. It gets me questioning a lot of things. It definitely gets my imagination going a lot more then reality shows like you said. ( although I do enjoy mellowing out and watching them every now and then )

The answer to "this is useless, drop it" is "I'm enjoying it, so it's not useless."

I am very grateful to my parents, who were always supportive and encouraging about keeping a curious mind. My dad once told me that the most important thing in the world for me to keep was my curiosity. Better be dead than dull.

My theory is that most people have been brainwashed to think that people who know everything (or at least appear to) are somehow superior to those who don't...poor suckers

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