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:
There is a 2 step process at work here:
Interesting is the spark and curiosity is the fire that fuels the action to acquire knowledge.
We can compress this to: curiosity fuels excellence.
There are two types of interest and curiosity:
Directional interest and curiosity
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
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 interest
because this is where curiosity gets super-charged by the primal language of intuition, feeling, hunch and whim.
This primal language is closely linked to the rational language of cognition and psychologists and neurologists are increasingly in agreement on the interdependence of cognition and emotion.
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 optimization of our thinking skills:
We are now going to look at two reasons why following your interest and acting on your curiosity is so important to the optimization of your thinking skills.
[1] Optimize 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, it:
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”.
For example:
Further examples of compression are:
Compressed ideas can travel farther and faster, through the digital communication channels and also through human minds.
[2] Optimize Your Thinking Skills By Learning Faster
You can optimize your thinking skills by paying attention to the steepness of your learning curve.
The steeper your learning curve the greater the impact on the speed of your compression progress.
The more you challenge yourself in the things that catch your interest the quicker you will optimize 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.
A mental model is a high level overview of how something works.
Examples of mental models are root cause analysis, the red queen effect, inversion, compounding etc. Think of these as a templates to accelerate your learning process.
You can use sites, such as this one, that have a substantial and easily referenceable store of resources on mental models and apply that to what you are learning.
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."
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.
[3] Final Thought
How fast you can learn is a lot more important than how much you know to begin with.
Further Reading On This Site:
Third Party Resources:
Return from "Curiosity Skilled The Cat" to: Walking The Talk
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