Yes. Since early history, much of what it has meant to be human has been to make things easier for ourselves.* When there is a higher-level question available, such as “is there an app for that,” we have to alter our behavior to force ourselves to ask the lower-level question “can I deconstruct the problem and build a [better] way to do that myself.”

Other recent, higher-level questions include “is there a Wikipedia entry for that,” which also goes to the point: whether finding the quickest, easiest source is really still curiosity.

Curiosity is, in a sense, the anti-easy. It may be innate in many of us at the beginning of our lives, when — depending on our society — we have more time, and curiosity is a primary job. I love seeing this in my daughter, who at the moment certainly seems like a natural engineer.

It's fortunate that some are both willing and able to continue being curious for a lifetime, taking deep dives and thereby perhaps contributing to better tools to ease some perceived burdens of humanity. Given the difficulties in some societies, that ease — the ability to not be curious about the tools, but just use them when needed — is an important balance. For others, as ease outbalances difficulty, encouraging exercise of the curiosity muscle is vital.

-

*As just one primal example, we were coded to ingest the maximum amount of calories in the smallest, most digestible packages. Given the actual chemical trickery of many modern food choices, it now takes additional work to fight this and stay healthy.