Yes, and worth emphasizing: this "surviorship bias" phenomenon is common in comparisons of the present to the past. People imagine quality was higher, standards

Yes, and worth emphasizing: this "surviorship bias" phenomenon is common in comparisons of the present to the past. People imagine quality was higher, standards were higher long ago.. they weren't. We just don't retain the vast majority of low quality stuff for centuries, we only retain the top 1% or 0.001%, while the low quality stuff is forgotten. Analogously, people sometimes ask why the average perceived quality of classical music written in 1810 or so is so much higher than the quality of music being written today. Well, the real average quality of 1810 music wasn't higher; we just don't bother performing or listening to the bottom 99% of music written in 1810 that was not very good. We only listen to Beethoven and a few others who were at the very top. This creates the inaccurate perception that "most music was really great in 1810, much better than today; standards have slipped and nobody cares about quality music now."