Curiosity Skilled The Cat - Optimize For Interesting

Curiosity Fuels Excellence

Curiosity Skilled the Cat: How Thinking Skills Emerge from Inquisitive Minds

The old adage, “Curiosity killed the cat,” warns of the dangers of venturing too far into the unknown.

But what if we reimagine it not as a risk but as a gateway to developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills?

By embracing the phrase “Curiosity skilled the cat,” we shift the narrative, recognizing it as the foundation for how to think effectively. 

Optimize For Interesting

I am British and obviously my use of the English language reflects that. I know what is meant by the American phrase "optimize for interesting", namely "to focus on interesting", for instance to focus on what you find interesting in your life and work.

To optimize - sourced from the Latin "optimus" meaning "the best of all work" - refers to the process of making something as good as it can be. It does not mean "to focus".

Optimize - is a word that can be used in many different contexts, the most obvious being search engine optimization [SEO].

In this article our context is thinking skills and specifically how to think effectively, so we are optimizing our thinking skills.

Interesting - is a word sourced from the Latin "interesse" meaning "to  differ" or "be important". [It also had another meaning in a financial context as ‘compensation for a debtor's defaulting’ now referred to as a rate of interest.] 

If something is of interest to you it:

• Intrigues you
• Fascinates you
• Absorbs you
• Whets your appetite
• Holds your attention
• Lights your fire
• Arouses your curiosity

There is a 2 step process at work here:

1. Interesting -  If something is interesting, it is engaging, exciting, and it catches your attention.
2. Curiosity -  Is the feeling that arises when you recognize a gap in your knowledge about something that has interested you and you are motivated to learn more. [Lowenstein 1994]
   

Interesting is the spark and curiosity is the fire that fuels the action to acquire knowledge.

We can compress this to: curiosity fuels excellence.

Directional vs Non Directional Curiosity

There are two types of interest and curiosity:

Directional interest and curiosity

• Directional interest is utilitarian.
• It has a specific point of focus that is aligned to your areas of functional [work] interest.
  
• It's intention is to discover solutions and is driven by a directional curiosity that uses a range of thinking skills such as first principles thinking, second order thinking, and inversion.
• It is rationally based.
• It uses the language of words [concepts, categories, mental constructs etc] and mathematics. 

For example, I spend a lot of time reading and reseaching information on the subject of thinking skills. I am always looking for subjects and ideas that catch my interest and that could form the basis of another article for this site.

Non directional interest and curiosity

• Non directional interest is atelic.
• It has no specific goal and is pursued for its own sake. 
• It is random and entirely arbitrary.
  
• It is intuitive, whimsical and non-rational.
• It employs the primal language of feelings, resonance and consciousnes - in summary, energy.
• It is driven by non directional curiosity that acts as interface for this primal language and translates into the language of words [concepts, categories, mental constructs etc] and mathematics.

For example, I am always fascinated by new ideas, interesting people and places. Having lived and travelled extensively in South East Asia I have exercised my curiosity in many varied and different ways.

I read a wide range of articles, books, journals and reports on anything that captures my interest.

I skim through a lot of not very serious stuff in the popular press and on social media, and as a result of this, occasionally something randomly captures my interest and I google it and research further out of curiosity.

Overall, I am interested in anything anywhere that catches my eye and where I feel an intuitive pull to take a closer look.

Energy as a key component of cognition

In this article we are focusing on non directional [atelic] interest because this is where curiosity gets super-charged by the primal, intuitive and often whimsical language of non-directional interest.

Psychologists and neurologists are increasingly in agreement on the interdependence of cognition and emotion. [Pessoa 2009]

Without getting stuck in any of the potential rabbit holes surrounding this subject I want to put down a few personal [and subjective] markers as to why non directional interest and curiosity is so important to the optimisation of our thinking skills:

• We live in an energetic universe and we are fundamentally energetic beings.
• We live in a participatory universe.
• The words that we use and the beliefs that we hold are a coded representation of the underlying energy.
• Most [maybe all] of the associations that we make about these words and beliefs are energy based.
• Energy can only be experienced, words, pictures, digital etc are all representations of energy.
• Energy based internal computing and processing is faster than the mental realm of words and maths etc.
  

The energy based, primal realm of intuition, hunch and whim sees and knows things, and makes connections, and sees patterns we are not rationally and consciously aware of.

It has the capacity to process vast amounts of input and to do so incredibly quickly. This makes it a remarkably efficient means of processing, storing and communicating.

We are now going to look at two reasons why following your interest and acting on your curiosity is so important to the optimisation of your thinking skills.

How Does Curiosity Fuel Excellence In Your Thinking Skills?

[1] Optimise Your Thinking Skills  By Improving Your Capability To Learn & Communicate

How can you improve your capability to learn and communicate?

Follow your intuition for random and arbitrary things that catch your interest and then apply your curiosity to learn about them quickly and in sufficient depth so that you can summarise and share this information simply and quickly with others.

As Einstein put it, things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

To borrow from the langauage of IT and AI this process is referred to as compression.

The more you do this, you increase your ability to absorb and process large quantities of information quickly and you improve your ability to communicate what you have learned in a very simple form that is easy for others to share and remember because they are expressed in ways that are elegant and attractive.

This is referred to as compression progress.

The Principle Of Compression

In December 2008 in a Cornell University paper, Juergen Schmidhuber, a German computer scientist, published a paper titled Driven by Compression Progress.

The paper looks at humans as information processing machines that are compressing information to make themselves more efficient.

Schmidhuber and his team point out that a simple algorithmic principle based on the notions of data compression and data compression progress informally explains fundamental aspects of attention, novelty, surprise, interestingness, curiosity, creativity, subjective beauty, jokes, science and art.

Schmidhuber says that: “The world can be explained to a degree by compressing it”.

The human brain loves efficiency, it much prefers to remember one thing rather than ten.

Good communication uses compression. Large quanitites of complicated ideas can be packaged up into neat elegant little phrases using simple words with agreed-upon meanings. For example:

• Love is compression, fusing a series of experiences, memories, feelings, and thoughts into an exhilarating state of mind.
• Quality is compression, when expressed with simple examples that relate to everyday experiences that are easy to communicate and remember.
• Marketeers and advertisers are masters of compression as they sell the "sizzle" before the sausage, the "feeling" that their product will induce in you if you buy it.
• A good joke is compression as it is delivered on the punch line.

Further examples of compression are:

• Nike compressing a whole corporate branding strategy into "Just Do It" accompanied by the Nike symbol
• Nassim Taleb's seminal book on how to benefit from chaos and disorder referenced 500 other books and multiple data sources and compressed as "Antifragile".
• The Pareto Principle, a heuristic that compresses fat tail distribution data as the "80/20 rule".
• Einstein's e=mc2 [energy = mass x the speed of light squared] a compresson of a huge amount of physics.

Compressed ideas can travel farther and faster - not only through the digital communication channels but also through human minds.

[2] Optimise Your Thinking Skills By Learning Faster

You can optimise your thinking skills by paying attention to the steepness of your learning curve.

The steeper your learning curve has a direct impact on the speed of your compression progress.

In practical terms this means that the more you challenge yourself in the things that catch your interest the quicker you will optimis your thinking skills.

For example I have no background or training in science, mathematics, IT and statistics, and a very limited understanding of these subjects so I challenge myself by exercising my curiosity on things that interest me that involve a component of any of these subjects.

Mental models

However there is another important and foundational factor that will help accelerate the optimization of your thinking skills and that is mental models.

Think of these as a templates to accelerate your learning process and use sites, such as this one, that have a substantial and easily referenceable store of resources on mental models and apply that to whatever it is that you are learning.

A mental model is a high level overview of how something works, for example root cause analysis, the red queen effect, compounding etc.

Mental models help you think effectively.

The late Charlie Munger said: “...developing the habit of mastering the multiple models which underlie reality is the best thing you can do.”

"The models that come from hard science and engineering are the most reliable models on this Earth."

The quality of your thinking processes is proportional to the models in your head and their applicability to the situation under consideration.

The more models you have the better the quality of your thinking processes and decision making ability.

So, I suggest that as you expand your range of things that are of interest, and that appeal to your curiosity, do so against a background awareness of the main mental models.

Munger says that: "What we need is a latticework of mental models spanning many different domains of information and experience."

• Many people know a little about a little.
• Most people with training and skills in a particular discipline or scope of proficiency know a lot about a little.
• The person with a latticework of mental models knows a little about a lot.
• The serious thinker has a latticework of mental models that enable him/her to know a lot about a lot.

Munger continues: “You don’t have to know everything. A few really big ideas carry most of the freight.”

"It’s kind of fun to sit there and out-think people who are way smarter than you are because you’ve trained yourself to be more objective and more multidisciplinary.

Furthermore, there is a lot of money in it, as I can testify from my own personal experience."

Footnotes:

[1] Hire on aptitude not experience.

Just as a footnote, and based on personal experience, if you are involved in start-ups or if you ever find yourself in a trouble shooting role, hire on aptitude, not on experience. 

Is this person ready to do the job?  They may never have done it before and have no experience in this area, but are they a smart person who can figure things out?  Are they a quick learner? 

And I’ve found that’s a much better way to get really effective people.

[2] Dealing With Complex Systems

We are all working with complex systems, and we do so every day. The biggest one is life itself.

Living within a complex system means navigating a world where multiple interdependent factors interact in often unpredictable ways.

Understanding complex systems [and knowing how to work with them] is an important thinking skill.

Traditional thinking is not enough, dealing with complexity requires a more intuitive and collaborative approach and ability to think holistically.

The more you optimize your thinking skills the better able you will be to deal with complex systems. 

Further Reading On This Site:

• Charlie Munger - The Importance Of Thinking Skills And Mental Models
• Mental Models - Help You Think Effectively
• Elon Musk - Ordinary People Can Choose To Be Extraordinary
• Understanding Complex Systems Thinking - It's Not Complicated

Third Party Resources:

• Driven by Compression Progress
• Commentary With 2 Caveats - On Progression Progress
• Information Compression as a Unifying Principle in Human Learning, Perception, and Cognition - Wolff - 2019
• ‘Information Compression via the Matching and Unification of Patterns’ (ICMUP) as a foundation for AI.pdf
• Introduction To The Simpliciaty and Power SP Theory of Intelligence.pdf
• Simplicity & Power [SP] - Some Unifying Ideas In Computing.pdf

Return from "Curiosity Skilled The Cat" to: Walking The Talk

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