Wikipedia searches reveal differing styles of curiosity
scientificamerican.com72 points by ripe 6 months ago
72 points by ripe 6 months ago
> In countries with higher education levels and greater gender equality, people browsed more like busybodies. In countries with lower scores on these variables, people browsed like hunters. Bassett hypothesizes that “in countries that have more structures of oppression or patriarchal forces, there may be a constraining of knowledge production that pushes people more toward this hyperfocus.”
This is an odd hypothesis and you know, I’ve read a little bit of enough about postmodernism/critical theory and its influence on hypertext to feel like this take is down right saditty.
The need to try to sow conflict between “patriarchy” and “xetriarchy” by depicting one style of curiosity as more virtuous than the other dampens what looks like an otherwise interesting study.
And it doesn’t help that the authors don’t appear to list or accessibly depict which countries were more inclined toward one style as opposed to the other.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3268
If anyone can decipher the sophistry in the actual study, please let me know what’s going on here, especially in figure 8.
I don't really think that those factors are direct causal related (oppressing structures and wikipedia browsing) instead I think there is an indirect link there: More oppressing/partiachalic societies tend to be the ones where the main of the population has the free time to indulge in "useless" information gathering, they don't have the time/ more pressing needs so in effect the browsing behaviour is not directly linked to oppression through some causality but rather indirectly to how much can be spend leisurely
> The need to try to sow conflict between “patriarchy” and “xetriarchy” by depicting one style of curiosity as more virtuous than the other
Did you understood that one method was better than the other? To me it's just different way of using Wikipedia. I'm more of a busybody myself, but I can do hyperfocused dive ('hunter', which to me seems more positive) on specific subjects when needed. I often go out of Wikipedia in that case though (I use it to find links mostly)
> Did you understood that one method was better than the other?
No, I'm accusing the authors of implying this.
> To me it's just different way of using Wikipedia. I'm more of a busybody myself, but I can do hyperfocused dive ('hunter', which to me seems more positive) on specific subjects when needed. I often go out of Wikipedia in that case though (I use it to find links mostly)
Same.
Check this out:
> The researchers cite three main hypotheses driving the associations between information-seeking approaches and equality. > > “One is that it’s possible that countries that have more inequality also have more patriarchal structures of oppression that are constraining the knowledge production approaches to be more Hunter-like,” says Bassett. “Countries that have greater equality, in contrast, are open to a diversity of ideas, and therefore a diversity of ways that we’re engaging in the world. This is more like the busybody—the one that’s moving between ideas in a very open-minded way.”
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/studying-wikipedia-browsing...
Terms like "equality" and "diversity" are afforded to the busybodies while "patriarchy", "oppression" and "constrained" are given to the hunters. I think that this conveys plenty about which method is seen as more virtuous than the other.
The same style of thought is given in the initial quote that I pulled:
> In countries with higher education levels and greater gender equality, people browsed more like busybodies. In countries with lower scores on these variables, people browsed like hunters. Bassett hypothesizes that “in countries that have more structures of oppression or patriarchal forces, there may be a constraining of knowledge production that pushes people more toward this hyperfocus.”
I reckon that we can agree that "gender equality" is considered a virtue in Liberal thought.
I don't want to get all worked up and (further?) expose my own ignorance, but my own hunch that this that this study while interesting on the surfaced is backed by a kind of cultural "woo" science for scientific Americans. I earnestly pity the actual scientists who may try to decipher those multi-graph figures of swirly things and pretty colors.
Ok i seen, i think i disagree mainly on the fact that the author implied anywhere than browsing like "hunter" (which is often a positive word) was worse than browsing like a "busybody" (which has a negative connotation, hence the miscomprehension). To me the sentence you seems to hang on was more descriptive than anything. On its face, browsing like a hunter is something i do when i do performative searches, for my memoire or something, and browsing like a busybody is what i do by idleness, just because i like to read interesting stuff randomly, it should be logic that in countries with high level of social control, the first one is rewarded and the second one viewed as useless, thus performed less.
Here i used "social control" because i think it's more neutral and to see if you agree, but social control is performed by structures of oppression: i'm merely using more neutral words, but i'm saying the same thing.
Ballett's words are descriptive. But when you describe things you are making an assessment of something and alluding to some sort of truth, no?
Forget about the face of the study for a moment. There are plenty of cute faces to gawk at in this world and to feel drawn to and to find familiarity with and to be contented by. I'm hanging on to the passages that I'm referring to because to me they show a glimpse into the soul of the study.
| On its face, browsing like a hunter is something
| i do when i do performative searches, for my
| memoire or something, and browsing like a busybody
| is what i do by idleness, just because i like to read
| interesting stuff randomly, it should be logic
| that in countries with high level of social control,
| the first one is rewarded and the second one
| viewed as useless, thus performed
Is the inverse that in "less oppressive" countries, the first method is deemed useless and the second is rewarded? If so, maybe you're on to something similar to our colleague throaway54:
| You could easily speculate the opposite;
| that countries with more structures
| of oppression or I patriarchal forces
| have greater levels of focus!
I can get down with that too. Where are you from by the way?
If we want to address the topic at the surface (there's different ways to browse the Web depending on the need and interest) then that's cool. But if we are going to...ahem...critically theorize* the societal implications that one method draws in relation to the other and posit them as "logical", then in a world that is wanting for focus, I am on the side of focus. And if that puts me on the side of the supposed "structures of oppression", then I'm forced to challenge what you mean by that, because I'd go as far as to say that in the present age, your oppressors would much rather you dillydallying, busy-bodying, meddling* online, from pillar to post, instead of hunting for truths indigenous to the nature of you existence.
I'd go even further to say that the fact that "hunting" is nominally positive and "busybody" is negative is not a matter of miscomprehension, it's a subversion of their intending meaning, it's a performative posture of "resistance" and "rebellion" to authority as desired by the authors (namely, Bassett and her brother).
Or, I'd withdraw all the way and revert back to the study at it's face value: People use the internet in different ways and to pass one way off as more virtuous than the other and to posit societal implications in association to these virtues as contrived by the ideals of the author only makes for an interesting argument in theory, it's science fiction and when scrutinized against reality (for those that feel and believe that there is indeed A Reality®), it amounts to nonsense as far as the argument in association to pedigree of the arguers is concerned and If the study isn't going to do us the service of outlining what countries are more inclined to a given method of browsing in a sensible manner, all that's left is to speculate, so it becomes less about the "science" than it is about signaling to and affirming the beliefs of those who would already submit to the "Woo" or a "speculative fiction" masked as noble inquisition.
I have a hunch that when people associate postmodernism as an ideology with critical theory as a practice, this is the type of stuff that they're referring to. They both share a focus and apprehension toward power, authority and "oppression", although I reckon that the traditional ontology of the Frankfurt School was perhaps pegged to more traditional conceptions of truth and reality and postmodernists, well, appear to be ambivalent, if not outright antagonistic toward tradition, truth and reality...
> Yes, Is the inverse that in "less oppressive" countries, the first method is deemed useless and the second is rewarded
i agree with that too! Having broad, but ultimately not usefull knowledge is kinda rewarded in my country (France), it allows you to participate in multiple idle discussions without deep thoughts. And also, idle discussion is typically a case where i will superficially search wikipedia to confirm or disprove a thought we had.
And your following sentence is why i also don't like the term "structure of oppression". Social control describe the situation way better, and you don't have to imagine "oppressors" who don't really exist as such. The society as a whole control itself, via different methods (social pressure, traditions, hierarchical pressure mostly). Sometime you can design oppressors, but its the tip of the iceberg.
I like your idea of subverting the meaning of hunter and busybody, that would be a killer in a philosophical book or a novel, i doubt this is the case here, but it seems we are reading this very differently.
I was not engaging with the postmodernism bit of your commentary because in my experience, anglo just don't understand it and conflate it with Frankfurt's school neomarxism. For good reasons, most postmodernists authors are obscure on purpose (or not) and the translations are even worse. And for at least bad reason: Ayn Rand couldn't read. And most postmodernists authors are idiots too, which does not help. But some were right on at least one thing (and i have a very "meta" example): the label "postmodernist", at least in the anglo world, has now more meaning that postmodernism itself.
Once again, the only definition of postmodernism is one you do by negative, as it only is defined by what it reject, and one of its main aspect is "we reject metanarratives". Since it seems the author try to find a meta-narrative here, i'll posit that the author is not postmodernist at all and you should find another ideology to disqualify them.
Not to try and force my issue, but I have a suspicion that meta-narratives are inescapable and that a lot of people, particularly in America, are unaware that they are “postmodernists”, at least according to my green understanding of the ideology.
I still need to do some thought on the first claim and the second one just came to mind after reading your comment.
This has been a lot of fun. Thanks for the engaging and earnest discussion. If Allah wills, maybe I’ll implement this in a killer philosophical book & you’ll catch a hold of it. (We can exchange contact info if you’d like and I’ll keep you updated if I ever follow through).
Peace.
You could easily speculate the opposite; that countries with more structures of oppression or patriarchal forces have greater levels of focus!
I would take anything Scientific American prints with a grain of salt. It has becoming heavily politicized over the last 25 years. Its editor-in-chief was forced to resign last fall after calling Trump voters ‘fascists’.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/15/media/scientific-american-edi...
The magazine has also received heavy criticism for its naked political biases:
https://reason.com/2024/11/18/how-scientific-americans-depar...
i'm a rabbit-holer. follow the chain of interesting links from one article to the next over and over to see where i get to with hardly any backtracking. after about 5-6 links it's pretty random. after about 20 who knows where you'll end up.
Busybody seems an unfortunate name to me, I don’t think it’s a particularly positive label.
I think there’s also a category difference betweeen hunter / busybody and dancer. The first suggest search strategies the second the utility of thst search. How do we know that hunters and busybodies aren’t just failed dancers?
There seems to be a deliberate, implicit value judgement about "busybodies" that would explain the negative connotations:
> Bassett hypothesizes that “in countries that have more structures of oppression or patriarchal forces, there may be a constraining of knowledge production that pushes people more toward this hyperfocus.”
The article describes the "hunters" as more focused, so I am fairly certain that statement refers to the "hunters" instead of the "busybodies".
You might like https://blinpete.github.io/wiki-graph, personally I like to search cooking terms and find other related cuisine
Somewhat related: Isaiah Berlin's "The Hedgehog and the Fox". From wiki:
> hedgehogs ... view the world through the lens of a single defining idea, and foxes, who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea
I wonder how the word "busybody" was chosen?
A busybody implies someone who is nosey, the type of person that peeks through their curtains at what the neighbors are doing.
The article says:
"In this lexicon, a busybody traces a zigzagging route through many often distantly related topics."
I wonder what is accurate?
It seems like it stems from a 2019 philosophy article written by Perry Zurn, titled "Busybody, Hunter, Dancer: Three Historical Modes of Curiosity."
Zurn does write "At their most basic level, a busybody is someone who is curious about other people's business," but develops the concept a bit further. Zurn says "The busybody's ideational sphere, for example, is characterized by quick associations, discrete pieces of information, and loose knowledge webs. They are interested in conceptual rarities: whatever lies outside of their knowledge grids."
Whereas the research article Zhou et al. (2024) states "Hunters build tight, constrained networks whereas busybodies build loose, broad networks." So it seems their conception of busybody roughly matches Zurn's description.
See the methods section https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3268#sec-4 , for a description of how Zhou et al. (2014) aggregate graph theoretic metrics to define "busybody" and "hunter" styles of navigating Wikipedia.
I also find the conclusions odd. Could it be that for the rich people, Wikipedia is just entertainment, whereas people in poorer countries actually seek to understand a topic in order to solve a problem?
> A busybody implies someone who is nosey, the type of person that peeks through their curtains at what the neighbors are doing.
I disagree. You're describing a "nosey neighbor". A busybody is someone who is always busy.
Being busy does not at all imply being nosey.
You're parsing a compound word and assuming that you can get the definition that way. A "busybody" is someone who is busy in other people's business. That's simply what the word means, not an interpretation or a value judgement.
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> Susanna Centlivre wrote a successful play, The Busie Body, which was first performed in 1709 and has been revived repeatedly since. It is a farce in which Marplot interferes in the romantic affairs of his friends and, despite being well-meaning, frustrates them. The characterisation of Marplot as a busybody whose "chief pleasure is knowing everybody's business" was so popular that he appeared as the title character in a sequel, Marplot. The name is a pun — mar / plot — and passed into the language as an eponym or personification of this type.
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> And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not.
> — 1 Timothy 5:13
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> You're parsing a compound word and assuming that you can get the definition that way.
Interesting idea but that's not how I've come to know the meaning of the word.
You might have to accept that you are the odd one out, or that you've misinterpreted it - or perhaps this is a regional distinction? Anyway, add me to the list of people that would interpret "busybody" just as the linked Wikipedia article has it, and who was also a bit bemused by this choice of word for the article.
However you thought you'd "come to know the meaning of the word", you hadn't. Because you didn't know it. "To know" something requires what you think you know to actually be true.
For more background (2022):
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/04/busybody-hun...
"The busybody makes it their business to know everything and anything – they want to know as much as possible, and like a butterfly flit about from topic to topic. The hunter, conversely, has a focused curiosity, and they tirelessly track down new discoveries like a hound. The dancer leaps creatively through knowledge, relying on their imagination."
When I first used Wikipedia, I'd try to remember to go back to interesting links as I went depth-first through the article. But I'd often forget to go back, or if the article was long I'd have trouble finding the earlier link I thought was interesting. So now I explore links breadth-first: as soon as I hit a link I want to additionally explore, I immediately open that link in a new tab and either jump to reading that page right away, or come back later to all the new tabs I've created.
I’m genuinely curious: do you really get back to those tabs and read them? I find I end up in these rabbit holes, then realize what time it is and context switch to something else. Once I happen to get back to the collection of Wikipedia tabs, I have most often already lost the spark of interest that I’ve felt initially.
> I’m genuinely curious: do you really get back to those tabs and read them?
Not the op, but this is how my browser uses all the memory.
Nobody has time to sit and read all of (or even a small portion of) Wikipedia so your options are to either open endless links you know will never get read or be progressively more selective in which links you choose to follow as the time you want to set aside for curiosity runs out.
The only way you end up with tabs you don't read is if you chose the wrong thresholds for following links through the given session. This is self-correcting after a few goes as you realize clicking too many links leads to spending time reading articles you cared less about rather than ones you cared more about.
One problem is the newfangled Wikipedia with collapsible sections instead of an index doesn’t work on iOS anymore. When jumping into a link and coming back, it often goes to the top of the article instead of where one left of. (Doesn’t anybody test the basic usability of these kind of changes)
It seems deliberately designed against browsing through the worlds knowledge.
Can't say I've run into that problem but I have noticed if you log in the "Expand tables" setting of your user profile's reading preferences also expands all of the sections by default. May or may not work around whatever bug you're running into.
There's a good episode of Mindscape (Sean Carroll) with the authors of Curious Minds, Perry Zurn and Dani Bassett, which goes into depth about the busybody, dancer and hunter concepts.
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2022/11/28/219-...
> "a busybody traces a zigzagging route through many often distantly related topics. A hunter, in contrast, searches with sustained focus, moving among a relatively small number of closely related articles. A dancer links together highly disparate topics to try to synthesize new ideas."
Depending on my end goal, I'll do a combination of all three.
If you have an iPhone I highly recommend installing the Wikipedia app. It will take over any clicks on Wikipedia links, and is a much better experience than the mobile site. You can also search for articles directly inside the app instead of through a search engine.
I'm not sure I can believe such a study unless there is a "drunk browsing behavior" category.
Study makes a mistake by automatically equating functional societies with gender equality