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There's a well-known narrative that before the Internet, for all of human history, information was scarce and humans found ways to adapt; and since the Internet

There's a well-known narrative that before the Internet, for all of human history, information was scarce and humans found ways to adapt; and since the Internet, information has been overwhelming and humans must find different ways to adapt. What is disappointing to me is that, with so many more options, people have not adapted by utilizing only the best information. Anyone can read the best sources (with a major exception; see below), but instead they choose more and more crap and now even actively delegitimize the better sources in favor of propaganda. In other words, why hasn't the vastly increased competition in the marketplace of ideas yielded far superior knowledge? Epistemology should be one of the hottest words and hottest subjects of the day. I hypothesize that it's a failure of the intellectual elite. Instead of spreading their incredible wealth to the world over this new medium, they kept it to themselves behind high paywalls (science journals, OED, JSTOR, etc.). And instead of defending the values of and passion for knowledge and intellect, of the Enlightenment, scholarship, and reason, many I see and talk to adopt the trendy anti-intellectualism, bizarrely undermining their own reason for being. I know many people will say that they can get a dictionary for free, why use the OED. The problem is that those who know better are not standing up to assert why it is superior, necessary, and incredibly valuable to the world.

thaumasiotes 9y ago
> I know many people will say that they can get a dictionary for free, why use the OED. The problem is that those who know better are not standing up to assert why it is superior, necessary, and incredibly valuable to the world. There are a couple of problems with this. First, the OED is primarily a work of historical scholarship. Anyone in the market for a dictionary so that they can look up the meanings of words would be better off getting something else, like Merriam-Webster or really anything. The OED is not a good choice for this purpose. Second, a story: I spent a semester studying Chinese in a foreign student program at a Chinese school. Like everybody else, I used Pleco for my dictionary needs. My friends in the class quickly noticed that I was getting much better dictionary value from my installation of Pleco than they were getting from theirs. When one of them asked how I was doing it, I responded "I bought for-pay dictionaries" and they immediately lost interest. There was no need for me to assert that the dictionaries I was using were superior and valuable -- my friends had already come to that conclusion themselves by watching me. They just weren't willing to pay $20 for that additional value.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > the OED is primarily a work of historical scholarship. Anyone in the market for a dictionary so that they can look up the meanings of words would be better off getting something else I couldn't disagree more strongly. I use it to learn the meanings of words and there is no better source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461549
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    If you want to know the meaning of words hundreds of years in the past, the OED is a good choice. That question is relevant to almost no one. If you want the current meaning, the OED is a poor choice.
    - bloak 9y ago
      I'd disagree with "almost no one". Lots of people still read books and texts that were composed in the past - it's even compulsory at school - and lots of people have a hobbyist interest in etymology. If I look a word up in a smaller dictionary than the OED I usually find it doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know, or it just raises questions that send me to the OED anyway. Of course you wouldn't use the OED to look up a technical term. Wikipedia would be better for that. What I really love about the OED is how it keeps getting better even in its coverage of old words. There are lots of words which ten or twenty years ago had the etymology given us "unknown" but which now have a detailed explanation, thanks to recent research. (If you want an example, I think the word "koala" is one.)
    - forapurpose 9y ago
      > If you want the current meaning, the OED is a poor choice. That's simply not true. The OED has the current meanings, in more depth than anyone else. > That question is relevant to almost no one. Also not true. Most books and other texts were written before 2018.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago

thaumasiotes 9y ago

> I know many people will say that they can get a dictionary for free, why use the OED. The problem is that those who know better are not standing up to assert why it is superior, necessary, and incredibly valuable to the world. There are a couple of problems with this. First, the OED is primarily a work of historical scholarship. Anyone in the market for a dictionary so that they can look up the meanings of words would be better off getting something else, like Merriam-Webster or really anything. The OED is not a good choice for this purpose. Second, a story: I spent a semester studying Chinese in a foreign student program at a Chinese school. Like everybody else, I used Pleco for my dictionary needs. My friends in the class quickly noticed that I was getting much better dictionary value from my installation of Pleco than they were getting from theirs. When one of them asked how I was doing it, I responded "I bought for-pay dictionaries" and they immediately lost interest. There was no need for me to assert that the dictionaries I was using were superior and valuable -- my friends had already come to that conclusion themselves by watching me. They just weren't willing to pay $20 for that additional value.

forapurpose 9y ago
> the OED is primarily a work of historical scholarship. Anyone in the market for a dictionary so that they can look up the meanings of words would be better off getting something else I couldn't disagree more strongly. I use it to learn the meanings of words and there is no better source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461549
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  If you want to know the meaning of words hundreds of years in the past, the OED is a good choice. That question is relevant to almost no one. If you want the current meaning, the OED is a poor choice.
  - bloak 9y ago
    I'd disagree with "almost no one". Lots of people still read books and texts that were composed in the past - it's even compulsory at school - and lots of people have a hobbyist interest in etymology. If I look a word up in a smaller dictionary than the OED I usually find it doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know, or it just raises questions that send me to the OED anyway. Of course you wouldn't use the OED to look up a technical term. Wikipedia would be better for that. What I really love about the OED is how it keeps getting better even in its coverage of old words. There are lots of words which ten or twenty years ago had the etymology given us "unknown" but which now have a detailed explanation, thanks to recent research. (If you want an example, I think the word "koala" is one.)
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    > If you want the current meaning, the OED is a poor choice. That's simply not true. The OED has the current meanings, in more depth than anyone else. > That question is relevant to almost no one. Also not true. Most books and other texts were written before 2018.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago