Some time after I started working on artificial intelligence, one of my most important takeaways was that what we call intelligence is really the ability to learn, an infrastructure for learning. Intelligence, shaped into different forms by various definitions, was in fact nothing more than the brain's ability to learn, to store what it has learned and to access it again when needed, and the speed at which it does so. And of course, if intelligence is so closely tied to learning, then the curiosity that drives learning must be just as important.
The main thing that made humanity dominant over the other living beings it has shared the world with for thousands of years was, of course, its intelligence, that is, its ability to learn. And what prodded this ability to learn every time, in every event, in every unknown it faced, pushing it toward new learning adventures, was the feeling of curiosity. Progress and new discoveries have always come from people who could combine curiosity with their ability to learn and their courage (and I believe the size of one's courage is proportional to the size of one's curiosity).
My curiosity about electrical and electronic engineering began in primary school. In the end, this curiosity pushed me into engineering. In those years, I was fascinated by the amateur electrical and electronics magazines my father, a primary school teacher, read and used. I say used, because I had watched him wire the electrical installation of a few newly built houses in the village where we lived (teachers who graduated in the Village Institutes era had a variety of skills). I had understood Ohm's law. Resistors and coils were easy. But capacitors bothered me. How could two plates that did not touch each other, with an insulator between them, conduct? Of course, back then I was still far from alternating current, the reality of frequency and electromagnetic waves. There was only one thing to do. Try it… I was curious. And the easiest way to satisfy my curiosity was to experiment. From an old radio I had started taking apart at home, I removed a part that, judging by its markings, I decided was a capacitor. Then, without any hesitation, I plugged its leads into the outlet in the living room to see what would happen (I actually thought nothing would). And of course: a bang, thick smoke and blown fuses. I was surprised and scared. But I had also learned something: this thing called frequency mattered.
In fact, this feeling of curiosity, to a greater or lesser degree, in one way or another, is always with us in different areas of our lives. My interest in electronics, and especially in radio, never ended. By middle school, I had moved on to building transceivers. I finally built a transmitter. But what would the broadcast frequency be? After all, I had to receive something somewhere to know the transmitter worked. The television! Yes, yes, the television was a good receiver. It could operate across a wide band. One evening I switched on the transmitter. At the same time, I was trying to tune the TV at home to catch the broadcast frequency. Finally, I succeeded. The broadcast on the TV suddenly cut out, leaving only noise. My good mood lasted until the next morning. By the time I started hearing the neighbors complain in the morning that they had not been able to watch TV the night before, I had long since made myself scarce. I had not imagined such a low-power broadcast would travel beyond the room. I had learned..
Curiosity is an important drive for learning. As long as we are curious, we can look differently at what is happening around us and at the facts we see and witness every moment, and we increase our chances of learning. I believe we are also happier to the extent that we can understand the realities around us. Ignoring the things we do not understand at the conscious level does not make the lower layers of our brain indifferent to them. Either we somehow figure them out and add them to our pool of knowledge, or we try to sweep them under the rug in the background, without realizing that the rug is getting lumpier and starting to bother us.
After completing my bachelor's and master's degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, I started a PhD program at ODTÜ (Middle East Technical University). The program involved two years of coursework, and after passing the courses you took the qualifying exam, which had separate written and oral parts. In the PhD oral exams at ODTÜ, you could face some interesting questions. What they were trying to understand was not only what the candidate knew, but also their ability to approach a solution and offer an interpretation on topics they did not know. We took the oral exam one by one. When the friend who went in before me came out, we naturally asked what they had asked him. They had asked him why the sky is blue.. It was an interesting question. We immediately started coming up with our own explanations. We did not know the answer. Later, they asked me what happens to the signals that filters do not pass (electronics folks will know: filters pass only part of the signals at their input). I remember being able to give a satisfactory explanation. I later learned that approaching all these questions correctly, and searching for and finding a solution, requires two things: knowledge and curiosity. Knowledge was something you could build up within a discipline. But curiosity was a drive. You had to be curious and follow your curiosity.
Curiosity is a universal feeling, a drive. Like people, animals are curious too, and they learn as a result. When we are not curious, when we stop being curious, the joy we get from life inevitably diminishes. Understanding new things, going to places we have never seen, doing things we have never done.. And for that, reading, thinking, traveling, trying.. These are the things that make us human and bind us more tightly to life.
I wish you all an enjoyable life with a high level of curiosity.
By the way, why is the sky blue?
Taner Akdeniz, PaperWork AI Artificial Intelligence System Architect
Sources
https://hbr.org/2018/09/the-business-case-for-curiosity
https://hbr.org/2018/09/cultivate-curiosity
https://hbr.org/2024/01/how-curiosity-can-make-your-meetings-and-team-better
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