Curbside Curiosity

I've requested two books for curbside pickup at the library:
the novel Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders, 2017),
and  
Why: What Makes Us Curious (2017) by astrophysicist Mario Livio. (It includes an interview with Brian May, the lead guitarist for Queen who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics--so then I had to get it.)

(The libraries offering curbside service is my personal favorite example of civilization during this pandemic. It only started a couple weeks ago--this is the first time I've used it.)  

What even is curiosity?  

Below: Slides from Mario Livo's TED talk, "The Case for Curiosity":
Scientists looking at an event on Jupiter in 1994, 
and Rembrand's "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp", 1632

I've always been interested in curiosity, but I've never seriously looked into it.  Now, with all the brain science breakthroughs, would be a good time.
And I was nudged by Steve commenting yesterday that he thinks "lack of curiosity" is a reason why some people don't google for information or fact-check their own assertions.

We're a curious species, obviously––"nosy", at the very least––but what happens to encourage or discourage curiosity in individuals? 

I think a lot of our behavior is guided not by out inherent curiosity,  but by the social mechanisms that encourage or discourage it. 

I'd written that my mother encouraged and rewarded my natural curiosity.
Did that make me more curious?
It gave me tools to further it, that's for sure. Like a library card.
It's a tool--but you've got to use it. 
What helps or hinders?

Lots of people have told me they had the opposite experience growing up--they were told not to bother, or warned off.
"Curiosity killed the cat."
"Doubt is from Satan."

Curiosity may try to assert itself like a plant through concrete, but a lot of those plants aren't going to be able to break through.

Social curiosity may be especially risky.
My auntie never asks people personal questions. She says people don't like it, but my experience is the opposite--that people often (though not always!) do like when you show interest in them by asking questions.
I think her way evolved as a safety mechanism, growing up in a large and volatile family--asking questions is risky.

But lots of people don't ask personal questions. HM's son has lived here a month and asked me not one. That's not unusual, in my experience.
What determines that?
Interest levels? (I'm not in this man's age cohort and we don't share obvious interests--he simply may not care.)  
Social skills? (Asking questions well [safely] is a learned behavior--where do we learn it?)
Personality types? (Some people get more pleasure from, say, astrophysics, than other people.)
Utility? (Not worth the work to investigate if practical returns are low.)

And surely many other ingredients in the activation and types of our curiosity... 

Energy. It takes energy to pursue curiosity--nerve work, social work, physical work (even getting to the library)...
Why bother? 
Being fed entertainment takes a lot less effort.
Even consuming nonfiction may be low-energy, if we don't process it deeply (think about it). Sometimes I browse idly through Wikipedia as if it were People magazine.

Receptivity, or the capacity for understanding. (Intelligence).
I can see how fascinating mathematics is, (infinity!), for instance, but my capacity for understanding it is limited (I think that's a hardwired thing).
I'm not smart in math, and so the rewards of being curious about it are diminishingly small. And so I'm not.

I'm most curious about the general experience of being human among humans.