Curiosity

Potential difference between intelligence and curiosity.

First off, let us establish that there are many different kinds of intelligence. There are some obvious categorical differences, like social and verbal and mathematical, but there are also subtle differences, like what patterns or deviations a person spots in a data set, spatial and directional reasoning, processive reasoning, like the differences between mechanical and electrical engineers, or between molecular biologists and biochemists.

Usually, high intelligence, of whatever sort, is accompanied by an "infovore" state: a hunger for information for which one's brain is most adapted to process. Hence, writers were once often voracious readers, engineers took apart their grandfather's watch and poked their noses into auto garages.

What conclusions can we draw about people who play video games? Is that a kind of infovore state? Conversely, what conclusions can we draw about persons who are shown to have exceptional reasoning skills of one sort or another, but do not seek out challenges of those kinds? Can there be significant intelligence that is not accompanied by infovoracity? My gut reaction is no, but from an objective approach, there doesn't seem to be a reason why not. Even with opportunities available, a prodigious piano player may have no interest in piano. A person with notable skill at mechanical reasoning may not wish to pursue mechanical engineering, nor a processively adept brain fawn after a career in organic chemistry. If we accept these conjectures to be true, then it gives a little more credence to the idiom about "nothing more common than wasted talent."