I also find this fascinating. Related, from my shortform:
In stories (and in the past) important secrets are kept in buried chests, hidden compartments, or guarded vaults. In the real world today, almost the opposite is true: Anyone with a cheap smartphone can roam freely across the Internet, a vast sea of words and images that includes the opinions and conversations of almost every community. The people who will appear in future history books are right now blogging about their worldview and strategy! The most important events of the next century are right now being accurately predicted by someone, somewhere, and you could be reading about them in five minutes if you knew where to look! The plans of the powerful, the knowledge of the wise, and all the other important secrets are there for all to see—but they are hiding in plain sight. To find these secrets, you need to be able to swim swiftly through the sea of words, skimming and moving on when they aren’t relevant or useful, slowing down and understanding deeply when they are, and using what you learn to decide where to look next. You need to be able to distinguish the true and the important from countless pretenders. You need to be like a detective on a case with an abundance of witnesses and evidence, but where the witnesses are biased and unreliable and sometimes conspiring against you, and the evidence has been tampered with. The virtue you need most is rationality.
I also find this fascinating. Related, from my shortform: