I’d call it concentrated vs. diffuse curiosity instead. Strong desire to know one particular thing vs. many weaker desires to know many things.
You receive a big wrapped gift but can’t unwrap it until tomorrow. This is concentrated curiosity. (Less pleasant variant: the results of your health test are due tomorrow.)
You unwrap the gift and it’s a strange device with a big green button. You wonder what will happen if you press it? This is still concentrated curiosity.
You press the button and a panel opens up, showing fifty more buttons. Now your curiosity has become more diffuse and exploratory, spread out across all the buttons.
Do you mean to say that open curiosity is diffuse curiosity? If so, then that feels a little off, since you can have open curiosity about e.g. one particular emotion that happens to be in your mind.
It seems to me that perhaps the major difference between active/concentrated curiosity and open/diffuse curiosity is how much of an expectation you have that there’s one specific piece of information you could get that would satisfy the curiosity. (And for this reason the “concentrated” and “diffuse” labels do seem somewhat apt to me.)
Active/concentrated curiosity is focused on finding the answer to a specific question, while open/diffuse curiosity seeks to explore and gain understanding. (And that exploration may or may not start out with its attention on a single object/emotion/question.)
I’m reminded of Malcolm Ocean’s article “questions are not just for asking.” Open curiosity feels more like holding a question while active curiosity is asking it. He also links to my favorite web-comic ever which seems to advocate a sort of open curiosity.
I would consider the example with a panel of many buttons still AC or concentrated since it is simply a continuation of the desire to understand the [particular] object.
I do, however, accept your description of OC as diffuse and exploratory: a series of AC questions in rapid succession.
I suppose on some level, all curiosity could be boiled down to a simple question, which by this post’s definition is AC.
I’d call it concentrated vs. diffuse curiosity instead. Strong desire to know one particular thing vs. many weaker desires to know many things.
You receive a big wrapped gift but can’t unwrap it until tomorrow. This is concentrated curiosity. (Less pleasant variant: the results of your health test are due tomorrow.)
You unwrap the gift and it’s a strange device with a big green button. You wonder what will happen if you press it? This is still concentrated curiosity.
You press the button and a panel opens up, showing fifty more buttons. Now your curiosity has become more diffuse and exploratory, spread out across all the buttons.
Do you mean to say that open curiosity is diffuse curiosity? If so, then that feels a little off, since you can have open curiosity about e.g. one particular emotion that happens to be in your mind.
It seems to me that perhaps the major difference between active/concentrated curiosity and open/diffuse curiosity is how much of an expectation you have that there’s one specific piece of information you could get that would satisfy the curiosity. (And for this reason the “concentrated” and “diffuse” labels do seem somewhat apt to me.)
Active/concentrated curiosity is focused on finding the answer to a specific question, while open/diffuse curiosity seeks to explore and gain understanding. (And that exploration may or may not start out with its attention on a single object/emotion/question.)
Open curiosity does not actively seek to understand. Which is why I call the other one ‘active’.
I suspect concentrated and diffuse curiosity are both referring to types of active curiosity. Open curiosity is talking about something different.
I’m reminded of Malcolm Ocean’s article “questions are not just for asking.” Open curiosity feels more like holding a question while active curiosity is asking it. He also links to my favorite web-comic ever which seems to advocate a sort of open curiosity.
Active Curiosity (AC), Open Curiosity (OC)
I would consider the example with a panel of many buttons still AC or concentrated since it is simply a continuation of the desire to understand the [particular] object.
I do, however, accept your description of OC as diffuse and exploratory: a series of AC questions in rapid succession.
I suppose on some level, all curiosity could be boiled down to a simple question, which by this post’s definition is AC.