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People who grew up with Wikipedia seem far better informed than their intellectual/personality peers from older gens at same age. Jevons paradox. They know more *because* they can look up anything. No curiosity left unsatisfied. I’d estimate a 10y advantage in factual knowledge
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Hoo boy do I radically disagree. It utterly depends on what kind of knowledge you’re talking about. Because there’s lots that’s not on the internet, but the cult of the internet makes people think it contains everything.
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Clearly I have smarter millennial friends than you 😀 Sure there’s some availability bias but that’s true of all media. Academic western libraries have their own biases.
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Obviously all archives & data sources have their limitations. But the peril of the Internet isn't just that it makes people more heavily weigh their judgments toward the latest news & information; it's also that the myth of the Net is that it's the only data source anyone needs.
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In general people triage, and pick their beyond-the-internet digging battles. If you’re not a professional academic with access to a good library and no cost to digging deep whenever, you have to pick battles. The Wikipedia gloss usually replaces ‘nothing’, not a scholarly tome.
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You’re judging random curiosities by academic research standards. Basically, in 1988, a random nerd who wondered about a question would conclude “too much trouble to figure out” and move on without ever learning *any* answer. In 2018, they’d look up Wikipedia at least
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Most random curiosity does not, and should not, seek more than satisficing. It’s better than knowing no answers, and better than trying to dive deep on everything indiscriminately. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing sure, but I prefer it to elites+illiterates condition.
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