This is entirely spontaneous and impulsive, but I’ve made an observation. That curiosity decreases with age. As you get older, your willingness to learn new things decreases. Instead, you start to rely on things you already know, and avoid learning new things. Why does this happen?
It probably emerges from a feeling that since you’ve reached a certain age you’re expected to be knowledgeable about things. However, when you’re pretty young you know that no one expects you to know much about anything. So you see yourself needing to learn things so that one day you can be knowledgeable about them like the older folks who seem to know their stuff. This makes you naturally curious and highly willing to absorb information. But as you get older, the willingness to learn new information starts to rapidly decrease. You could blame it on ego, the heaviness of seasoned knowledge, or whatever.
I find it pretty interesting that humans are wired this way. As you get older, you gain knowledge and that means intelligence increases. If intelligence doesn’t decrease with age, why do we become less willing to learn? The more intelligent you get, the faster you’ll understand something, so learning new things will actually be faster. So why does our attitude change? It’s certainly not a positive trait. How does one fight it?
I haven’t figured it out yet. But, a quote from Steve Jobs comes to mind: “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again”. Even though what Jobs said seems more related to his risk-taking abilities, it fits in my discussion aptly. “The heaviness of being an expert was replaced by the lightness of a being a noob”.
That said, I think the solution might stem from the idea of staying a noob. “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” This famous quote is pretty deep, but most people just say it without introspecting or realizing what it really means. I think I’m one step closer to realizing its true meaning.