Assignable Curiosity

Do you get the essence of it? I don’t know all the jargon and Bayesian epistemology, but I think I understand the main point. Here’s a tweet I wanted to share in this topic, which tells about the same phenomena:

I once did Socratic demonstrations in hundreds of public schools across the country. I would go in, lead a discussion with students who had never experienced this before, and observe what happened. Very often the straight-A student, the kid who was best at school, would ask me: I don’t know what answer you want. Tell me what you want me to say.

They had been trained to figure out the teacher’s desired response and give it back. Thinking for themselves had literally never occurred to them as an option. They thought my open questions were some kind of trick.

2 Likes