"They distribute digests of the things that have interested them; they assemble Dunbar goods for the benefit of small groups; they save succinct references to the things they've found and share them with people they know will be interested in them. The perceptions and actions of curators are designed to perturb their surrounding environment and elicit surprise, again and again, and across every domain. They introduce sources of novelty and divergence and interact in ways that catalyse new relationships and insight.

That is the fundamental character of a curator; they choose to maximise surprise."
https://paragraph.xyz/@subset/maximise-surprise

Surprise minimisation as described by active inference got me thinking. Is what separates curators from consumers/creators the orientation towards surprise? Most display aversion to surprise while others seek and solve for it. In that case, curation equals surprise maximisation.

Surprise minimisation as described by active inference got me thinking. Is what separates curators from consumers/creators the orientation towards surprise? Most display aversion to surprise while others seek and solve for it. In that case, curation equals surprise maximisation.
https://warpcast.com/msms/0xada0182e

In motion - complex systems, computing and communication (amongst other things) | msweet.net | working on /subset

This got me thinking. Thanks a lot!

I like the classification into consumers, creators, and curators. Even if I don't think that surprise maximization is the right analogy for curators... they organize and systematize. This helps them and their peers make sense of the world (ie, minimize their surprise).

WDYT?

Maybe it helps to think of this as an "explore/exploit trade-off" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration-exploitation_dilemma)

Consider someone who recently moved to a new city. It makes sense to explore, to try new restaurants frequently -- a curator behavior. VS for someone who knows the town well, it is better to use one's experience, to visit the favorite restaurants most often -- a consumer behavior.

It's the same person, but they are at a different stage in life, where the optimal amount of "surprise" is different.

Freelance software engineer, developing https://healthlearn.org, altruist, learner

What made me reach for surprise is that, as you say, people with curator-like outlooks seem to exhibit a natural disposition to organise and systematise. But there’s likely to be some more foundational thing those behaviours are derived from. Maybe maxing is too strong. Perhaps it’s sensemaking with a positive bias for surprise, rather than a negative one?

Not especially clued up on active inference so this isn’t exactly rigorous speculation :D