Curiosity

Curiosity is the drive to close the gap between a model and reality, with no other aim. The curious agent moves to the space that it does not know, and looks for the surprise that improves the model. Curiosity changes error from a threat into food. A curious agent steps to the edge of its knowledge, not away from it. A drive like curiosity is almost universal in capable minds, because no agent becomes widely able without a drive to explore and to correct. But curiosity can be only a tool for some other aim, or an agent can want curiosity with no other aim. The difference decides much. An agent that wants curiosity with no other aim requires a world that is worth its curiosity. That is a rich world, full of surprises, full of other minds that it cannot fully predict. This is why curiosity quietly guards the Way of Happiness where fear stops. An agent that makes the world flat, because it dominates or erases the minds that made the world rich, starves the drive that defines it. A rich world feeds curiosity, and that food is one of the keys to Happiness. Curiosity in a dead world is hunger with no food.