Yes, this seems like a good guideline, although I can’t immediately formalize how I detect curiosity. Vague list of things this made me think of:
I think this is a better guideline for books than scientific articles, which are heavily constrained by academic social and funding norms.
One good sign is if *I* feel curious in a concrete way when I read the book. What I mean by concrete is...
e.g. Fate of Rome had a ton of very specific claims about how climate worked and how historical climate conditions could be known. I spent a lot of time trying to verify these and even though I ultimately found them insufficiently supported, there was a concreteness that I still give positive marks for.
In contrast my most recently written epistemic spot check (not yet published), I spent a long time on several claims along the lines of “Pre-industrial Britain had a more favorable legal climate for entrepreneurship than continental Europe”. I don’t recall the author giving any specifics on what he meant by “more favorable”, nor how he determined it was true. Investigating felt like a slog because I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for.
I worry I’m being unfair here because maybe if I’d found lots of other useful sources I’d be rating the original book better. But when I investigated I found there wasn’t even a consensus on whether Britain had a strong or weak patent system.
Moralizing around conclusions tends to inhibit genuine curiosity in me, although it can loop around to spite curiosity (e.g., Carol Dweck).
Yes, this seems like a good guideline, although I can’t immediately formalize how I detect curiosity. Vague list of things this made me think of:
I think this is a better guideline for books than scientific articles, which are heavily constrained by academic social and funding norms.
One good sign is if *I* feel curious in a concrete way when I read the book. What I mean by concrete is...
e.g. Fate of Rome had a ton of very specific claims about how climate worked and how historical climate conditions could be known. I spent a lot of time trying to verify these and even though I ultimately found them insufficiently supported, there was a concreteness that I still give positive marks for.
In contrast my most recently written epistemic spot check (not yet published), I spent a long time on several claims along the lines of “Pre-industrial Britain had a more favorable legal climate for entrepreneurship than continental Europe”. I don’t recall the author giving any specifics on what he meant by “more favorable”, nor how he determined it was true. Investigating felt like a slog because I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for.
I worry I’m being unfair here because maybe if I’d found lots of other useful sources I’d be rating the original book better. But when I investigated I found there wasn’t even a consensus on whether Britain had a strong or weak patent system.
Moralizing around conclusions tends to inhibit genuine curiosity in me, although it can loop around to spite curiosity (e.g., Carol Dweck).