Comment by thomastjeffery
Comment by thomastjeffery 3 days ago
> He’s really talking about curiosity. Calling it stupid is a cheeky glass-half-empty framing.
I disagree.
How can you be curious without something you don't understand?
The point, as I see it, is that if you find yourself in a position of complete understanding, then you must also have a complete lack of curiosity. If you think you are in that position, then the way to revive your curiosity is to deconstruct your position of expertise, i.e., recognize your position of stupidity.
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Curiosity is step 2. Stupidity is step 1. Learning moves us from step 2 to step 3. The important thing to recognize is that step 3 is actually a new instance of step 1. Expertise is the base case of this recursive tree traversal: it's how you stop the learning process.
> How can you be curious without something you don't understand?
Good question. You might have discovered my point: curiosity comes with stupidity, implicitly by definition, right? I think that’s what you’re saying too. Maybe you don’t disagree after all?
You can’t have curiosity without stupidity, as you rightly point out. Ignorance is probably a better word than stupidity. Using “stupid” is imprecise and was used here for a bit of surprise and humor.
You can have stupidity (ignorance) without curiosity. When that happens, perhaps the expected result is no progress developing new understanding nor lessening of ignorance.
Given that curiosity implies ignorance, and that ignorance alone is not sufficient for learning, what justification is there for claiming curiosity and ignorance are separate steps or separate things when it comes to education or research? I’m suggesting they are two sides of the same coin, they must both exist before learning happens, and neither one can come before the other. Calling it curiosity instead of ignorance or stupidity is perhaps a kinder framing, especially for people who might not immediately get the self deprecating humor of “stupidity”.