[MrQuincle]

Neural networks also need to balance exploration and exploitation. You will find it in the form of:

+ generalization / overfitting

+ cross-domain knowledge transfer

In a more embodied approach it is free energy minimization as advocated by Friston. Consider us divided by the world through a Markov blanket, or even better consider our actions and perceptions divided by one. How do we continuously surprise ourselves without getting mad?

A guy who would say it's the same thing is probably Polani with empowerment: https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.1863. The rational choice is to navigate to that location in state space where you have most decisions.

I think curiosity-based research is quite interesting from the perspective of rationality and creativity.