I think there is some middle ground here.

The Edit->Preferences->General->Miscellaneous panel already sports an option named "Use the current word under the cursor for Find dialogues". If that option is checked, when you press Ctrl-F and nothing is selected, if the Find dialogue is not already visible the "word" under the cursor is populated into the Find box. If the above option is unchecked, when you press Ctrl-F and nothing is selected, if the Find dialogue is not already visible the Find box is not re-populated, so either nothing is there (on first usage) or the previous search string is still there.

Now if the behaviour is changed to allow the Find box to be populated by Ctrl-F even when the Find dialogue is already visible, the "Use the current word under the cursor for Find dialogues" option may be used to determine if the Find box is re-populated or not. If nothing is selected, the Find box retains its contents on Ctrl-F, unless "Use the current word under the cursor for Find dialogues" is checked and the it would be the current "word". If something is indeed selected, then the Find box is re-populated irrespective of the "Use the current word under the cursor for Find dialogues" setting.

In this manner (i.e. with the proposed modification), if the Find dialogue remains visible and you return to the edit window to perform some operations and then press Ctrl-F, the search string in the FInd box will not change unless you selected some text and then pressed Ctrl-F.

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