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
-
-
I think Nils and you are talking about slightly different things: his "knowledge" is more in line with how it works in soc-sci or philosophy, where you are expected to understand the heritage of an idea and how it responds to everything that came before it
-
Wikipedia does encourage people to acquire CliffsNotes-style overviews of things, which is excellent for maths and physics (the radius of the first orbit in a hydrogen atom needs no context) but perhaps less so for the kind of "liberal arts" knowledge that citizenship goes with
- 9 more replies
New conversation -
-
-
I didn’t use the word citizen. I said people. The fact that you made the substitution is very revealing. Others arguing your position might have subbed “consumer” or “community member”.
-
In fact I think people weren’t any better informed as “citizens” in the past either, when elites had greater ability to dictate their consumption. Most people still skipped straight to the sports section or whatever best fit their curiosity. Not local town hall debates.
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.
Sure there’s some availability bias but that’s true of all media. Academic western libraries have their own biases.