Kay Ngano Man: On Staying Curious
There is a study I came across that has stayed with me. Researchers analyzed language-trained non-human primates and found something striking about how they naturally use language: they don't ask questions. They don't use it to seek new information. That study was Project Nim, led by cognitive scientist Herbert Terrace in the late 1970s. And what it points to, at least to me, is something worth thinking about — something that separates us.
Humans and Other Primates
Non-human primates are intelligent. But their use of language, even when taught, tends to be instrumental — asking for food, expressing discomfort, seeking comfort. What they don't do naturally is ask why. They don't seem to wonder about things that don't immediately concern them.
Human children do. Constantly.
Growing up, I apparently said kay ngano man? a lot — "And why is that?" Some adults around me would mention it. I don't remember being particularly aware of it, but it stuck as something people noticed. That's how children are. They ask until someone runs out of answers. That relentless questioning is not an annoyance — it's something fundamental to what we are.
The Pursuit of Curiosity
It is likely the reason human society develops as fast as it does. We build new technology to go beyond our current limitations. We ask questions about the world not just to survive in it but to understand it — sometimes for no practical reason at all, just because we want to know.
That curiosity drives innovation. And it pushes us toward something more interesting than just accumulating facts: it pushes us toward better explanations.
There is a line I only encountered in my late twenties, from Naval and David Deutsch, that quietly solidified something I had been circling for years: good explanations are hard to vary.
It does something for me that the scientific method, which I learned in college and understood in the abstract, never quite managed. The idea that a truly good explanation can't be arbitrarily adjusted without breaking it — that it has a kind of structural integrity — gave me a more grounded way to think about truth and pattern-finding.
You can see it in unexpected places. Car designs are converging across manufacturers because they're all optimizing for the same metrics — aerodynamics, safety ratings, efficiency. The best shape is hard to vary. And if you look at high-level methods across very different fields — entrepreneurship, academic research, project management — the underlying structure is surprisingly similar. Ask what and why. Research and build the how. Execute. Evaluate. Good methods, it turns out, are also hard to vary.
The Journey Is the Point
With generative AI, most curiosity can now be satisfied in an instant. You ask, it answers, and you move on. I use it constantly. But somewhere along the way I started to notice something getting lost — or at least at risk of getting lost — in that convenience.
The process of finding out matters. Not just for learning, but for something harder to name — something closer to the actual experience of being curious and following it somewhere.
Two things have helped me keep that:
The first is using AI to help with the process rather than to answer for me. Making quizzes. Letting it ask me questions. Using it as a thinking partner rather than a shortcut. The struggle of not immediately knowing is where the understanding actually forms.
The second comes from a Japanese concept I encountered: misogi — learning at the very borders of your knowledge and capability. Deliberately going to the edge of what you understand, rather than staying comfortably inside it.
Curiosity as a Guide
What I try to hold onto, through all of this, is letting curiosity and genuine interest guide what I do — as long as it doesn't cut against any principle I care about. Not optimizing for outcomes I can predict in advance, but following what actually pulls my attention and seeing where it goes.
Keep asking questions. Always be curious. Otherwise, you are not so different from a non-human primate — and that is a good enough reminder for me to stay disciplined about it.
That last part is a little blunt, but I mean it sincerely. The capacity to wonder about things beyond our immediate needs is one of the stranger and more valuable things about being human. It seems worth protecting.
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