I scanned most of these except for the long tweet screeds because I can guarantee nothing of note was said, but this one caught my eye:
To go on a little tangent, I've been reading the novel
Hyperion by Dan Simmons (I'm roughly halfway through and loving it), and coincidentally I came across a passage a day or two ago that this tweet reminded me of. If you're unfamiliar with the novel, it can sorta be described as "
The Canterbury Tales in space," where seven pilgrims to a bizarre alien site tell stories of their past while on their journey, which I'm guessing will all tie together in the end somehow, probably (don't quote me on that, I'm not done yet). Anyway, one of the pilgrims is a poet from Old Earth, who grew up without the instant access to information that those on other worlds possessed. Here's the relevant quote:
There's a major difference between being able to look up a fact online and actually knowing it. The biggest one is that having a breadth of knowledge actually stored in your brain will give you the tools to handle a greater variety of situations on the fly. Any of those Dark Age students would be able to tackle any number of problems because of their studies; the average university student today is flummoxed by a minor inconvenience. To say nothing of how the act of studying and learning makes it easier for you to learn more things, building on the foundation you already have. And although we can remember quite a lot of things, just like in the quote above, if you don't use it, you lose it. When was the last time you looked up something random and actually remembered it later? You're rarely storing these things at all, and you'd probably have to look it up every time you wanted to know it. Compare that to things you've studied intensely and can recall on the fly even decades later.
That's not to say the instant access to information that the internet provides is a bad thing, but to write off dedicated study because you "can just 'look that shit up' *dumbass thumbs-up emoji*" is stunningly ignorant, and thus exactly what I'd expect from MovieBlob.
@Goldman's analogy is also quite fitting, so thank you for adding that. (And while I'm typing,
@Mola Ram summarizes what I was writing quite succinctly. Whatever, I'm still posting this because I like this book and I'm using this post as an excuse to recommend it, so there.)
The only other tweet in that bunch that caught me eye was the one about having trouble finding a gas mask that could fit him, because lol fat.
