[HN Gopher] Wikipedia searches reveal differing styles of curiosity
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Wikipedia searches reveal differing styles of curiosity
Author : ripe
Score : 56 points
Date : 2025-01-10 02:47 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| fargle wrote:
| i'm a rabbit-holer. follow the chain of interesting links from
| one article to the next over and over to see where i get to with
| hardly any backtracking. after about 5-6 links it's pretty
| random. after about 20 who knows where you'll end up.
| dambi0 wrote:
| Busybody seems an unfortunate name to me, I don't think it's a
| particularly positive label.
|
| I think there's also a category difference betweeen hunter /
| busybody and dancer. The first suggest search strategies the
| second the utility of thst search. How do we know that hunters
| and busybodies aren't just failed dancers?
| DigitalNoumena wrote:
| There seems to be a deliberate, implicit value judgement
| about "busybodies" that would explain the negative
| connotations:
|
| > Bassett hypothesizes that "in countries that have more
| structures of oppression or patriarchal forces, there may be
| a constraining of knowledge production that pushes people
| more toward this hyperfocus."
| jorams wrote:
| The article describes the "hunters" as more focused, so I
| am fairly certain that statement refers to the "hunters"
| instead of the "busybodies".
| dobladov wrote:
| You might like https://blinpete.github.io/wiki-graph,
| personally I like to search cooking terms and find other
| related cuisine
| simojo wrote:
| > "a busybody traces a zigzagging route through many often
| distantly related topics. A hunter, in contrast, searches with
| sustained focus, moving among a relatively small number of
| closely related articles. A dancer links together highly
| disparate topics to try to synthesize new ideas."
|
| Depending on my end goal, I'll do a combination of all three.
| m463 wrote:
| I wonder how the word "busybody" was chosen?
|
| A busybody implies someone who is nosey, the type of person that
| peeks through their curtains at what the neighbors are doing.
|
| The article says:
|
| _" In this lexicon, a busybody traces a zigzagging route through
| many often distantly related topics."_
|
| I wonder what is accurate?
| prolyxis wrote:
| It seems like it stems from a 2019 philosophy article written
| by Perry Zurn, titled "Busybody, Hunter, Dancer: Three
| Historical Modes of Curiosity."
|
| Zurn does write "At their most basic level, a busybody is
| someone who is curious about other people's business," but
| develops the concept a bit further. Zurn says "The busybody's
| ideational sphere, for example, is characterized by quick
| associations, discrete pieces of information, and loose
| knowledge webs. They are interested in conceptual rarities:
| whatever lies outside of their knowledge grids."
|
| Whereas the research article Zhou et al. (2024) states "Hunters
| build tight, constrained networks whereas busybodies build
| loose, broad networks." So it seems their conception of
| busybody roughly matches Zurn's description.
|
| See the methods section
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3268#sec-4 , for
| a description of how Zhou et al. (2014) aggregate graph
| theoretic metrics to define "busybody" and "hunter" styles of
| navigating Wikipedia.
| leobg wrote:
| I also find the conclusions odd. Could it be that for the rich
| people, Wikipedia is just entertainment, whereas people in
| poorer countries actually seek to understand a topic in order
| to solve a problem?
| inetknght wrote:
| > _A busybody implies someone who is nosey, the type of person
| that peeks through their curtains at what the neighbors are
| doing._
|
| I disagree. You're describing a "nosey neighbor". A busybody is
| someone who is always busy.
|
| Being busy does not at all imply being nosey.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You're parsing a compound word and assuming that you can get
| the definition that way. A "busybody" is someone who is busy
| in other people's business. That's simply what the word
| means, not an interpretation or a value judgement.
|
| -----
|
| > Susanna Centlivre wrote a successful play, The Busie Body,
| which was first performed in 1709 and has been revived
| repeatedly since. It is a farce in which Marplot interferes
| in the romantic affairs of his friends and, despite being
| well-meaning, frustrates them. The characterisation of
| Marplot as a busybody whose "chief pleasure is knowing
| everybody's business" was so popular that he appeared as the
| title character in a sequel, Marplot. The name is a pun --
| mar / plot -- and passed into the language as an eponym or
| personification of this type.
|
| -----
|
| > And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from
| house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and
| busybodies, speaking things which they ought not.
|
| > -- 1 Timothy 5:13
|
| ------
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busybody
| inetknght wrote:
| > _You 're parsing a compound word and assuming that you
| can get the definition that way._
|
| Interesting idea but that's not how I've come to know the
| meaning of the word.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I'm not sure I can believe such a study unless there is a "drunk
| browsing behavior" category.
| tolerance wrote:
| > In countries with higher education levels and greater gender
| equality, people browsed more like busybodies. In countries with
| lower scores on these variables, people browsed like hunters.
| Bassett hypothesizes that "in countries that have more structures
| of oppression or patriarchal forces, there may be a constraining
| of knowledge production that pushes people more toward this
| hyperfocus."
|
| This is an odd hypothesis and you know, I've read a little bit of
| enough about postmodernism/critical theory and its influence on
| hypertext to feel like this take is down right saditty.
|
| The need to try to sow conflict between "patriarchy" and
| "xetriarchy" by depicting one style of curiosity as more virtuous
| than the other dampens what looks like an otherwise interesting
| study.
|
| And it doesn't help that the authors don't appear to list or
| accessibly depict which countries were more inclined toward one
| style as opposed to the other.
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3268
|
| If anyone can decipher the sophistry in the actual study, please
| let me know what's going on here, especially in figure 8.
| orwin wrote:
| > The need to try to sow conflict between "patriarchy" and
| "xetriarchy" by depicting one style of curiosity as more
| virtuous than the other
|
| Did you understood that one method was better than the other?
| To me it's just different way of using Wikipedia. I'm more of a
| busybody myself, but I can do hyperfocused dive ('hunter',
| which to me seems more positive) on specific subjects when
| needed. I often go out of Wikipedia in that case though (I use
| it to find links mostly)
| throaway54 wrote:
| You could easily speculate the opposite; that countries with
| more structures of oppression or patriarchal forces have
| greater levels of focus!
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| Study makes a mistake by automatically equating functional
| societies with gender equality
| randcraw wrote:
| For more background (2022):
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/04/busybody-hun...
|
| "The busybody makes it their business to know everything and
| anything - they want to know as much as possible, and like a
| butterfly flit about from topic to topic. The hunter, conversely,
| has a focused curiosity, and they tirelessly track down new
| discoveries like a hound. The dancer leaps creatively through
| knowledge, relying on their imagination."
| maxweylandt wrote:
| Somewhat related: Isaiah Berlin's "The Hedgehog and the Fox".
| From wiki:
|
| > hedgehogs ... view the world through the lens of a single
| defining idea, and foxes, who draw on a wide variety of
| experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a
| single idea
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox
| randysalami wrote:
| I'm a fox. It's exhausting
| sema4hacker wrote:
| When I first used Wikipedia, I'd try to remember to go back to
| interesting links as I went depth-first through the article. But
| I'd often forget to go back, or if the article was long I'd have
| trouble finding the earlier link I thought was interesting. So
| now I explore links breadth-first: as soon as I hit a link I want
| to additionally explore, I immediately open that link in a new
| tab and either jump to reading that page right away, or come back
| later to all the new tabs I've created.
| mimischi wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious: do you really get back to those tabs and
| read them? I find I end up in these rabbit holes, then realize
| what time it is and context switch to something else. Once I
| happen to get back to the collection of Wikipedia tabs, I have
| most often already lost the spark of interest that I've felt
| initially.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > I'm genuinely curious: do you really get back to those tabs
| and read them?
|
| Not the op, but this is how my browser uses all the memory.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Nobody has time to sit and read all of (or even a small
| portion of) Wikipedia so your options are to either open
| endless links you know will never get read or be
| progressively more selective in which links you choose to
| follow as the time you want to set aside for curiosity runs
| out.
|
| The only way you end up with tabs you don't read is if you
| chose the wrong thresholds for following links through the
| given session. This is self-correcting after a few goes as
| you realize clicking too many links leads to spending time
| reading articles you cared less about rather than ones you
| cared more about.
| ant6n wrote:
| One problem is the newfangled Wikipedia with collapsible
| sections instead of an index doesn't work on iOS anymore. When
| jumping into a link and coming back, it often goes to the top
| of the article instead of where one left of. (Doesn't anybody
| test the basic usability of these kind of changes)
|
| It seems deliberately designed against browsing through the
| worlds knowledge.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Can't say I've run into that problem but I have noticed if
| you log in the "Expand tables" setting of your user profile's
| reading preferences also expands all of the sections by
| default. May or may not work around whatever bug you're
| running into.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| If you have an iPhone I highly recommend installing the Wikipedia
| app. It will take over any clicks on Wikipedia links, and is a
| much better experience than the mobile site. You can also search
| for articles directly inside the app instead of through a search
| engine.
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(page generated 2025-01-11 23:01 UTC)