>one reason is very simple. Society produces more information every year. Counting in bytes, humans have produced more information in the past year than all of

>one reason is very simple. Society produces more information every year. Counting in bytes, humans have produced more information in the past year than all of the rest of history.[...] In raw bytes this may be true but in terms of cultural output above a certain threshold I don't think it is and for me this has always been the most simple and straight forward reason to not be "time parochial". Most books, music, films, what have you are old, so all you really need to concede to dig into older works is that most good stuff is probably old just because most stuff is old. How high is the chance that every great movie has been made in the last five years? Just not having a recency bias is enough. I use this as a strategy even. Time is one of the simplest filters to just avoid all the mediocre ephemeral slop that ends up being advertised everywhere and the longer something has advocates and passionate audience the more likely it is there's something worthwhile in it.