> Real knowledge enriches all areas of life [...] if you learn to play an instrument [...] if you learn to cook I don't disagree that there's value in knowing

> Real knowledge enriches all areas of life [...] if you learn to play an instrument [...] if you learn to cook I don't disagree that there's value in knowing something. But I don't have a problem with people choosing what they want to know and invest time in (like cooking or playing instruments), and being able to ignore stuff that doesn't really matter to them (trivia, whether it's information on wikipedia, or random programming stuff). In fact, that's one of the great things about modern times. There's more information out there than ever, so you can go really deep into an area (like calligraphy), even as a relative amateur. You can't do everything though, so it's a trade-off. Being able to forgo memorisation of things you don't want to prioritise is possibly a boon then? I'm not sure of the equivalence of "knowledge"/rote memorisation vs doing an activity. We're getting a bit deep here. Personally, I'm not sure e.g. memorising the Iliad makes you that much better at writing epics, at least compared to trying to actually write epics (there's going to be some cross-pollination, but how large is that effect, and can you also get it by studying the Iliad without remembering it in its entirety?). At least memorising poems in school didn't make me better at writing them. Or closer to home, is memorising random programming snippets (because of the lack of auto-complete) is superior to actually just writing code? Certainly studying e.g. a well designed standard library and noting design patterns is helpful, and knowing commonly used functions will make you more efficient, but there's no substitute for actually doing the thing/activity.