"Let's not pretend that the average human being a century ago spent their days reading avant-guarde literature and complex political essays." Most of the reaso

"Let's not pretend that the average human being a century ago spent their days reading avant-guarde literature and complex political essays." Most of the reason it appears that way is that 100 years ago, only the most educated had access to the writing and publishing that is now our primary record of the time. I am sympathetic to the idea that our intellectual culture has degraded, and even sometimes argued in favor of that proposition on HN, but I also acknowledge it's really hard to measure in light of the overwhelming democratization of access to such things and the resulting anti-selection effect, or removal of the previous selection effect, or however you like to phrase it. Maybe that's a bad thing, maybe it's a good thing, it's a non-trivial argument either way, but it certainly makes it hard to graph any of the relevant qualities of our society over time.