The Data Detective

Facts are valuable things, and so is fact-checking. But if we really want people to understand complex issues, we need to engage their curiosity. If people are curious, they will learn.

As Orson Welles said, once people are interested they can understand anything in the world.

It’s a rather beautiful discovery: in a world where so many people seem to hold extreme views with strident certainty, you can deflate somebody’s overconfidence and moderate their politics simply by asking them to explain the details.

once we start to peer beneath the surface of things, become aware of the gaps in our knowledge, and treat each question as the path to a better question, we find that curiosity is habit-forming.

If we economists want people to understand economics, we must first engage their interest.

The illusion of explanatory depth is a curiosity killer and a trap. If we think we already understand, why go deeper? Why ask questions?

There’s a sweet spot for curiosity: if we know nothing, we ask no questions; if we know everything, we ask no questions either. Curiosity is fueled once we know enough to know that we do not know.

As Loewenstein puts it, curiosity starts to glow when there’s a gap “between what we know and what we want to know.”

Curiosity breaks the relentless pattern.