If you explore for the purpose of finding fruit, that would be "seeking" which may seem like the same thing to most but I assure you, it is very different.
When you seek, you confine yourself to a preconceived outcome which isn't conducive to discovery other than of what one assumes can exist or be found. NO fun for an explorer.
In all fairness, it wasn't often the explorer who was exiled, ostracized or executed but, rather, someone who recognized a discovery as something that "should be passed along" or one who accidentally discovered something amazing.
The "reward" for exploration is a continuous and infinite unknown just waiting to be explored which isn't a reward at all because it's never..."not there". There's nothing anyone can name that has been fully explored. Granted, an explorer is probably going to steer clear of cherished beliefs but that's the believer's loss, not the explorer's. There's always something else. There's always more. I guess you could call that a reward, I don't know.
The "others" thing fits into my idea of man's obsession with others and the time and attention he devotes to collecting..."gossip", which is all it is because...nihilism. Because of the absence of proof of knowledge.
Of course, that may be a rationalization on my part because there are just things I don't want to know about others. For instance, I don't want to know the extent of their fears or hatred or misery or any of the things I've found to be easily remedied because I don't want to step on their beliefs. And trust me when I tell you that they don't want me to step on their beliefs either. They hate it. It's as if they believe their beliefs are them and that anything that threatens a belief is a threat to them. I don't understand it all, nor do I want to, but I just don't want to know such things about people so...I enjoy my friends and our engagement in our shared interests - but I don't take them home with me or expect them to engage in my other interests with me or anything of that sort of "compromising" or "swapping" favors sort of thing.
That would stem from insecurity which I don't experience and can, therefore, not be biological. I don't "feel" vulnerable and nor can I think of any advantage feeling vulnerable could possibly provide.
With regard to the vulnerability of belief, I'm not sure what it is you don't understand...