> This isn't even a new fact about the internet. If you pick a random book written in the last 100 years, the odds are very poor that it will be high quality an

> This isn't even a new fact about the internet. If you pick a random book written in the last 100 years, the odds are very poor that it will be high quality and a good use of time. Even most textbooks, which are high-effort projects consuming years of human labor, are low quality and not worth reading. I doubt this is true. If you pick up a random bit of written prose from 1900, I’m guessing that it’s closer to the best written prose of 1900 than a random bit of the 2020 is to the best of 2020. It’s like your point about textbooks. Yes, the average textbook is crap compared to the best textbook, but it’s still a textbook, which is infinitely more useful than the hundred billion or so spam emails sent every day.