Spoiler alert: it has to do with intelligence.
We all know that little buzz we get from a wrapped gift, because anticipation makes it sweeter.
Then there's the bon bon joke which we enjoy despite the fact that they are universally lame.
You can think of any number of occasions when we deliberately avoid knowing the outcome because it increases pleasure.
Before 2018, AI could do a reasonably good job of navigating a maze, but there was a computer game that left it in a muddle. No AI could get past the first level of Montezuma's Revenge, but it wasn't clear why.
Researchers began to realise there is conflict between two opposing strategies.
If they exploited pathways already known, they'd miss those that are not known.
And then if they only explored only new pathways, they'd forget important lessons from what had gone before.
It turned out that the answer is to reinforce things that are unexpected. This is unlike simple exploration which uses random choices and expects immediate payback.
It means that novelty itself is sufficient reward. A search continues as long as there is novelty, even when success is delayed.
Using this strategy, the AI was able to find its way through the maze, which reveals something crucial about the nature of intelligence.
All vertebrates, from rats to cats and humans, exhibit this attraction to the unexpected. However only a few invertebrates do - a notable exception is octopus and squid. In other words, curiosity is a relatively modern invention of evolution.
BF Skinner observed this behaviour in rats who were offered a lever that delivers food pellets.
It was a remarkable finding because the rats that always received a reward were less motivated than those that were given it randomly.
The rats obsessively worked the lever even though they were not guaranteed to earn a pellet.
The corporations that sell addictive products know this too.
A poker machine is basically a device that takes $100 and gives between $85 and $90 back. At this rate, it doesn't take long to empty your pocket.
By that logic, nobody would ever play a poker machine. But people do, lured by the combination of curiosity, flashing images and sounds to keep you hooked.
In a similar way, Facebook and other social media addicts people to their feeds by inserting random posts into their feed, urging just one more click.
A more benign example of the attraction of novelty is in art.
There's also the subtle joy of a musical phrase that jumps out, even after many years of listening.
Then there's the classic plot twist that keeps us intrigued.
Children love it too. Peekaboo!
The Fuzzy Logic Science Show is at 11am Sundays on 2xx 98.3FM.
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