It may be the single most important trait to have. Here's why. Curiosity is the predisposition to recognize and search for new knowledge and experiences. Without it, we would have never walked on the moon, painted a canvas, written a line of code, or codified thoughts into laws. And yet, curiosity is given a bad rap. Why?
I am curious, but not nosy. For instance, when I am doing one of my house-sitting side gigs - I take in everything that is left on display; but I do not, ever, look in drawers, medicine cabinets, or snoop in any way. I also never knowingly pry when having a conversation - I figure people will tell me whatever personal details they want me to know, and I am fine with that.
I am EXACTLY the same way! There is a difference between curious and nosy. I have never snooped through people's private things--although I did have a boyfriend once (I was a teenager at the time) who left a page of what I thought was his manuscript in his typewriter. I read it and wished I hadn't. It was a letter to his previous girlfriend begging to get back together again. Which doesn't say much about the kind of girlfriend I must have been back then!
Patriarchal societies tend to toward the authoritarian almost by definition. So, in addition to the pre-existing sexism, curiosity stands out as a challenge to those who would legislate the world ex fiat. So curiosity becomes (one of) the original sin(s) of women.
There's a certain lack of curiosity in much of contemporary physics, strangely enough, and it is "baked in" (as you said; now I can't get that phrase out of my mind) to the "gatekeepers": people like Stephen Hawking, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Laurence Krauss. All of them have variously denounced philosophical inquiry, for example. Hawking declared quantum mechanics was basically done, even as the physicists in the field were holding their heads in despair at their decades of failure to make any sense of the subject. String theory is metaphysical gibberish devoid of even the abstract possibility of empirical content, but these folks' attitude is, "who cares? The math is clever!" Gravitational cosmology (the big stuff; the play ground of general relativity) is ruinously anti-scientific in its increasing rejection of evidence in favor of the standard models. Physicist Michael Disney has shown that there are more free parameters in the theory than there are independent observations to test it, meaning that the theory is impervious to ANY form of real test. And every time a problem does arise, the community (driven by the gatekeepers) simply invents a new parameter and declares the theory "confirmed." (I've been introducing the term "model centrism" into the scholarship to label this attitude.)
A few folks (including myself) keep pushing back. But the only ones that can do so are folks like me with no career or reputation to defend, or a few others whose careers and reputations are too solid to touch. But folks just starting out are generally not permitted to explore alternatives to the "Standard Model." (A common saying in quantum mechanics is "shut up and calculate.")
My latest divagations have been on the nature of complexity and simplicity. (Side bar: I thought I was reading up on this stuff on my own. But there's this book I've been asked to comment on (one chapter) and though it isn't coming up until the 2nd week of November, I thought I should check which chapter it was. It's the chapter on "complex systems." In psychology, this is known as "priming.") A thought I've been chewing on is this: "Is complexity really a feature *of* the world, or is it only a character of our theories *about* the world?" (For anyone who is curious <-- see what I did there? -- about where I am so far, I've a blog post on the subject, part 1 of 2, #2 is yet to be written: https://garyherstein.com/2021/08/24/complexity-it-aint-simple-part-1-of-2/ )
That's about the coolest freaking post you've ever written--and you've written brilliant posts. I loved reading this. Read it three times already! My guess? And it's only a guess. Complexity is a feature of our theories about the world. But I might be projecting there
At the end of the day, I have no dog in this fight. I believe the puzzle is worth mentioning so that people are aware of it, though I'm not sure it has any kind of solution one way or the other. One thing I would argue is a drop-dead fact: the only *measure* we have of complexity is the complexity of our theories (and we've a variety of fairly sophisticated measures there.)
Huh. I’ve used that tactic of asking numerous questions in order to engage another person. It makes them feel great talking about themselves, I learn a little bit, and I hides a little bit. I didn’t think many people knew about that kind of thing. It isn’t overtly obvious to those who are narcissistic in nature. Good observation grasshopper. 😸
Right? You get all this credit for being "brilliant," when all you are is a person with social skills. I'm afraid in this age of Digital Autism, if you will, people are slowly losing their ability to actually talk to one another. It's frightening.
I very much agree. I once had to drive from Santa Fe to Central Missouri, which was a 17 Hour Drive, with a total narcissist. I think I said maybe every 20 minutes or so… “yeah, huh”, and he kept talking for 17 hours! I was going to take a break halfway asleep for a couple hours, but his incessant chatter wouldn’t stop and I just wanna get this asshole out of my van. He said he wanted to keep me awake, and he certainly did that. Some footnotes to this short story… I found out afterwards he told everybody that it was the best conversation he ever had with anybody in his life. I barely said a word. Also, because I was stuck in a car for that many hours I wound up having two emboli lodge in my lungs. I only knew it happened because I had terrible heartburn and it felt like a heart attack. I don’t know what a heart attack feels like but at 3 AM I was seriously concerned. My husband was working Colorado at the time and so I was alone. I don’t panic very often, but I just took my butt to the emergency ward at 3 AM and Told them I thought I was having a heart attack. Wheeled me back right away and it immediately bloodwork. The good news is you didn’t have a heart attack, but the bad news is you have two blood clots that are lodged in your lungs. You’re staying overnight and we’re shoving blood thinners into your system. The next day while I was recovering in my hospital bed, said passenger from my van ride came to visit me in my hospital room. He started chatting me up all over again. I could swear I think I heard my heart monitor quicken a bit.
I am curious, but not nosy. For instance, when I am doing one of my house-sitting side gigs - I take in everything that is left on display; but I do not, ever, look in drawers, medicine cabinets, or snoop in any way. I also never knowingly pry when having a conversation - I figure people will tell me whatever personal details they want me to know, and I am fine with that.
I am EXACTLY the same way! There is a difference between curious and nosy. I have never snooped through people's private things--although I did have a boyfriend once (I was a teenager at the time) who left a page of what I thought was his manuscript in his typewriter. I read it and wished I hadn't. It was a letter to his previous girlfriend begging to get back together again. Which doesn't say much about the kind of girlfriend I must have been back then!
Patriarchal societies tend to toward the authoritarian almost by definition. So, in addition to the pre-existing sexism, curiosity stands out as a challenge to those who would legislate the world ex fiat. So curiosity becomes (one of) the original sin(s) of women.
There's a certain lack of curiosity in much of contemporary physics, strangely enough, and it is "baked in" (as you said; now I can't get that phrase out of my mind) to the "gatekeepers": people like Stephen Hawking, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Laurence Krauss. All of them have variously denounced philosophical inquiry, for example. Hawking declared quantum mechanics was basically done, even as the physicists in the field were holding their heads in despair at their decades of failure to make any sense of the subject. String theory is metaphysical gibberish devoid of even the abstract possibility of empirical content, but these folks' attitude is, "who cares? The math is clever!" Gravitational cosmology (the big stuff; the play ground of general relativity) is ruinously anti-scientific in its increasing rejection of evidence in favor of the standard models. Physicist Michael Disney has shown that there are more free parameters in the theory than there are independent observations to test it, meaning that the theory is impervious to ANY form of real test. And every time a problem does arise, the community (driven by the gatekeepers) simply invents a new parameter and declares the theory "confirmed." (I've been introducing the term "model centrism" into the scholarship to label this attitude.)
A few folks (including myself) keep pushing back. But the only ones that can do so are folks like me with no career or reputation to defend, or a few others whose careers and reputations are too solid to touch. But folks just starting out are generally not permitted to explore alternatives to the "Standard Model." (A common saying in quantum mechanics is "shut up and calculate.")
My latest divagations have been on the nature of complexity and simplicity. (Side bar: I thought I was reading up on this stuff on my own. But there's this book I've been asked to comment on (one chapter) and though it isn't coming up until the 2nd week of November, I thought I should check which chapter it was. It's the chapter on "complex systems." In psychology, this is known as "priming.") A thought I've been chewing on is this: "Is complexity really a feature *of* the world, or is it only a character of our theories *about* the world?" (For anyone who is curious <-- see what I did there? -- about where I am so far, I've a blog post on the subject, part 1 of 2, #2 is yet to be written: https://garyherstein.com/2021/08/24/complexity-it-aint-simple-part-1-of-2/ )
That's about the coolest freaking post you've ever written--and you've written brilliant posts. I loved reading this. Read it three times already! My guess? And it's only a guess. Complexity is a feature of our theories about the world. But I might be projecting there
At the end of the day, I have no dog in this fight. I believe the puzzle is worth mentioning so that people are aware of it, though I'm not sure it has any kind of solution one way or the other. One thing I would argue is a drop-dead fact: the only *measure* we have of complexity is the complexity of our theories (and we've a variety of fairly sophisticated measures there.)
Huh. I’ve used that tactic of asking numerous questions in order to engage another person. It makes them feel great talking about themselves, I learn a little bit, and I hides a little bit. I didn’t think many people knew about that kind of thing. It isn’t overtly obvious to those who are narcissistic in nature. Good observation grasshopper. 😸
Right? You get all this credit for being "brilliant," when all you are is a person with social skills. I'm afraid in this age of Digital Autism, if you will, people are slowly losing their ability to actually talk to one another. It's frightening.
I very much agree. I once had to drive from Santa Fe to Central Missouri, which was a 17 Hour Drive, with a total narcissist. I think I said maybe every 20 minutes or so… “yeah, huh”, and he kept talking for 17 hours! I was going to take a break halfway asleep for a couple hours, but his incessant chatter wouldn’t stop and I just wanna get this asshole out of my van. He said he wanted to keep me awake, and he certainly did that. Some footnotes to this short story… I found out afterwards he told everybody that it was the best conversation he ever had with anybody in his life. I barely said a word. Also, because I was stuck in a car for that many hours I wound up having two emboli lodge in my lungs. I only knew it happened because I had terrible heartburn and it felt like a heart attack. I don’t know what a heart attack feels like but at 3 AM I was seriously concerned. My husband was working Colorado at the time and so I was alone. I don’t panic very often, but I just took my butt to the emergency ward at 3 AM and Told them I thought I was having a heart attack. Wheeled me back right away and it immediately bloodwork. The good news is you didn’t have a heart attack, but the bad news is you have two blood clots that are lodged in your lungs. You’re staying overnight and we’re shoving blood thinners into your system. The next day while I was recovering in my hospital bed, said passenger from my van ride came to visit me in my hospital room. He started chatting me up all over again. I could swear I think I heard my heart monitor quicken a bit.