Those metrics reveal something intrinsic though. Take cigarettes. They're bad, not liked, etc etc. The usage in 2019 reflects something deeper: their effective

Those metrics reveal something intrinsic though. Take cigarettes. They're bad, not liked, etc etc. The usage in 2019 reflects something deeper: their effectiveness, perhaps a cohort effect and the difficulty of quitting, and a certain value proposition. There's a term I'm perhaps misusing which is: revealed preferences. This statement is perhaps a stretch but maybe what paul meant is that learning history for history's sake is helpful but learning potentially untrue test patterns (aka launching on a tuesday to try to maximize funding) is not. This might not get a lot of traction but it seems your last sentence describes the Ayn Rand novel where the guy spends years toiling in anonymity versus his peer who is "fake" and successful, where the value is in the work itself.