I think I'm a fundamentally pragmatic person and I have a prejudice against things I find lacking pragmatism, such as philosophy. I don't say this with pride - I say it to illuminate a personal blind spot of mine. I also agree with you as far as curiosity and perspective, but I think I'm far more open to, shall we say, "applied philosophy." This is one of the things I love about Kundera - his works are very much an exploration of "what would you do? And why?" while Daniel Quinn drives me up the fucking wall ("allow me to contrive an artificial situation so that I can make a point that has no basis in real life").

It probably is related to an engineering background- or at the very least, an engineering mindset. Theoretically, you should be able to divide a bar of chocolate in half an infinite number of times. Practically, you're going to hit the wall just a little bit south of "chocolate chips." Theoretically, I can walk halfway to the wall forever. Practically, I'm going to bump my nose after a few minutes. Asymptotes are very real but so is precision, and there are very few things in life where the precision of the problem permits asymptotic behavior. So I look at a list like this and think

"Qualia? Who fucking cares? So long as we can all agree what blue looks like does it really matter?"