Field note
Two kinds of curiosity
Litman’s split between the pleasure of exploring and the itch of a gap.
Jordan Litman’s 2005 paper in Cognition and Emotion distinguishes interest-type curiosity from deprivation-type curiosity. The first is the pull toward something because exploring it feels good. The second is the discomfort of a specific gap: you cannot rest until you know how the joint fails, or what the minute book actually says.
Both show up on maps. A cluster of many light stations often looks like interest-type curiosity, a wide appetite. A tight cluster with a through-line about “why this one thing works” often looks like deprivation. Neither is more serious. They ask for different weeks.
Deprivation curiosity makes good researchers and also good insomniacs. Interest curiosity makes good beginners and also people who never stay for the dull middle. If you know which one is driving a station, you can choose the room: a survey course, or a single problem you refuse to drop.