Meta-everything

[dsrtao]

A comment on Hacker News really resonated with me.

"How can people walk around not giving a f--- about how things actually work? I really just can't comprehend that lack of thirst for knowledge."

This.

That.

Yes, I know that I will never know everything. And yes, I have particular interests and sometimes I grow bored with a particular area. But whenever I am awake, I am looking at how things are and how things can be, whys and wherefores and possibilities. How can there be any other state of consciousness? It's bizarre to hear someone say "I don't want to know" in any other context than "joking" or "busy".

Comments

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Yes!!!

Okay, admittedly, I can understand not feeling the need to know how absolutely everything under the sun works. But I don't understand the mindset of preferring incompetence to actually trying to figure something out.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I like to know things to at least a similar level of finishing Subject 101. There are many topics I'd like to know further, as well.

About the only time I have to reject knowing, is when the explainer's/enthusiast's level of knowledge is several years of courses equivalent greater than my own, and is deep into jargon or very specialized knowledge, and it can't be simplified. My buffer overflows very quickly in that case. (Recent example: Metageek coming home very excited about something peculiar and interesting he did this week in Lisp.)

[mangosteen]

It's bizarre to hear someone say "I don't want to know" in any other context than "joking" or "busy".

In that last word of that last sentence, you nailed it.

If a person feels perpetually busy, and therefore feels they have to live at a higher level of abstraction than "how stuff works", then it follows that they will be distinctly non-curious about their environment.

As an example, Apple has been profiting from people "just wanting stuff to work" for a very long time.

[dsrtao]

I admit a likelihood that you are partially correct, but I don't think those concepts are exactly congruent.

"I want it to work" is not the same as "I don't want to know about it".

In fact, the more I really want things to work, the more I feel I have to know about them, because Apple and Microsoft and you-name-it-authority-figure have always treated me like a second-class citizen. Knowing is my only defense, because someday it will stop working, and voodoo only takes you so far.

[mangosteen]

"I want it to work" is not the same as "I don't want to know about it".

I may be splitting hairs here, but "just wanting stuff to work" is different from "I want it to work". Think external vs. internal locus of control.

[dsrtao]

I think you're saying that "just wanting stuff to work" is like saying "I want someone else to fix it for me". Am I correct?

[mangosteen]

Hm. I think that's partially correct, and somewhat unrelated.

"Just want stuff to work" means a few things, here. There's an assumption that it is natural for stuff to just work, and that stuff not working is an exceptional, unforseen, and unforseeable circumstance... if it breaks, it should be fixed. It's a black box that should work. It's not about "someone fixing it for me" as much as "This does not do what it's supposed to. Restore it to what it should be."

[dsrtao]

How is that supposed to happen without someone who knows what's going on intervening?

Perhaps we should try some field other than computing, since we both are highly involved?

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I have a teenaged girl: the value of "I don't want to know" has escalated. :-)

[cellio]

Yes. I'm curious about lots of things. I don't have the time or specific interests to pursue all of them and so will prioritize, but not wanting to know stuff in principle is strange to me. Ok, so is the idea of being bored in a non-social situation. (I could be bored when visiting the relatives because politeness prevents me from going off and reading a book, but if my attention is under my control?)

There's one other reason I've told people "I don't want to know", though -- when I feel it is none of my business or would be an invasion of privacy. But I think that's a different quality than what you had in mind here.

[ladymacgregor.livejournal.com]

In a SF book/movie/entertainment:

Point "the gun" at bad guy and shoot.

"The plasma ray vaporized him." Fine.

"The laser vaporized him." Fine.

"The unobtainium deuteronomy ray vaporized him." Fine.

The point is, the bad guy got shot. I don't need to know the inner workings of the gun in order to continue to follow the plot. You can even tell me that the point of the story is mining "unobtainium," and I can accept that as a plot point. I don't necessarily have to know what it is or what it does, unless that knowledge is necessary to forward the plot.