The Surprising Situation You Should Look To Exploit
How people dying in a dumb movie made me curious and forced me to learn.
Note: I spoil the ending of the movie Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021). Turn around if you want to preserve the experience of such a twisting and turning tale. A veritable narrative masterpiece. I’m serious. Turn back. You’ll cheat not only the movie, but also yourself.
Summary
🧠🤯 Knowledge gaps: when you find a knowledge gap, it can act as a driver for curiosity.
🥊🆚 Get challenged: when challenged we can be faced with uncertainty, leading to states of high curiosity.
🧘💭 Focus: your curiosity should be channeled toward something that interests you.
I love Horror movies. Stephen King said his stories are about placing ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Whether it be a group of Korean people entering an abandoned asylum, or a mother living through harrowing, traumatic experiences — the Horror genre certainly provides ordinary people in extraordinary situations.
In 2019, a horror/thriller movie called Escape Room released. The title is not exactly imaginative. A group of people are gathered and forced to go through a series of fantastical escape rooms. The catch is obvious — these rooms are deadly. What a truly novel, inspired concept, right?
The movie was successful enough for a sequel - Escape Room: Tournament of Champions. Just based on the name, I’m sure you can guess the plot.
Don’t get me wrong. I liked the movies, but they are not the type you dissect thoroughly. It’s just drama. People go through some shit, some get angry, some die. Wham bam, in and out, it is what it is.
We Scrolled for How Long?!
A few weeks ago me and my girlfriend were trying to find something to watch.
Mindlessly scrolling on some streaming service, as you do, we came across Escape Room: Tournament of Champions. We had both seen it before we met. I had watched it in a theater, she had watched it on a streaming service.
I made a remark about the ending.
My girlfriend looked at me like I was the stupidest person in the world.
A few, silent moments passed, and I could do nothing but laugh at the incredulity on her face. I had mentioned a person named Amanda.
“Who the hell is Amanda?” she said.
Who the Hell Is Amanda
“What do you mean?” I responded.
I proceeded to tell her about the ending, to jog her memory. How could she forget about Amanda?
Amanda is a major character in the first movie, who was supportive of the main character. In one of the escape rooms she falls to her death. Super tragic, morose even. But, guess what, we never actually see her die!
The sequel trots her out during the ending, revealing that she was the designer of the new rooms, forced to make up elaborate death traps by Minos (the mystery company that funds the rooms), under threat of them killing her daughter.
I could not believe my girlfriend did not understand what I was saying, but she was adamant.
Amanda died in the first movie.
“So, what do you remember?” I asked.
An Alternate Ending?
As it turns out, the sequel has an extended edition. It not only includes more scenes, but it also drastically changes the ending.
In this version, Amanda actually died. She never appears in the ending. The main character instead meets the daughter of the Minos employee who supposedly created the rooms.
In a twist not even the most well-read narrative enthusiast could ever see coming — the mastermind is revealed to be the daughter. It’s a real shocker. I’m still reeling to this day.
So What? Why Should You Care?
Inadvertently, my girlfriend and I had stumbled on a state of high curiosity. In a previous newsletter, I highlighted some key drivers of curiosity:
Both me and my girlfriend found ourselves in a state of being completely sure about something, and having that belief challenged. Funnily enough, we were both right, but we still experienced the sensation.
While complete certainty should dampen curiosity, the challenge heightens it. We created a knowledge gap for each other. We were intensely driven to figure out who was right. We fed our specific curiosity, and aimed it at a dumb movie.
As a result — we learned something new. Not new useful information, simply that the movie had different endings.
But we can use the experience to our advantage.
Creating Knowledge Gaps
If you want to foster a sense of curiosity about something, consider how you can create a knowledge gap.
One of the simplest ways is by putting yourself into situations that challenge what you believe. When challenged you can become uncertain. What if you are wrong? Now, you feel the need to investigate — but don’t just stop there. Use this impulse to chase knowledge, to uncover related information.
If you were right — find supporting arguments. Define the reason why. If you were wrong — brilliant, you learned something new, but examine the cause for your being wrong.
You can get challenged like this in many ways. Can you start a discussion with a friend? Be curious about their perspective, and use it to inform your own. You don’t even need another individual. Simply take a topic that interests you, and go searching for answers.
Let’s say software interests you. You’ve recently started learning about object-oriented programming. You come across something called “polymorphism”, but have no clue what it is. You just know it’s related. Now, it’s nagging at the back of your mind and you’ve created a knowledge gap.
If you curate information related to your interests, you’ll eventually stumble into these states of curiosity. Take advantage of them when they come, and be conscious about actively seeking them out.
You should be conscious to try to channel this state of heightened curiosity into something relevant. Focus it in productive ways, and not just at the ending of a movie.