Comment by Animats

All those are fine, as long as you're able to process it in a healthy way after. I guess personally I focused more on bettering that processing, as sometimes you don't get to control what information you get served, so at least it works in all cases.

> it can subtly work its way into your subconscious as something you know is true

I dunno, I know this is something some people struggle with, but I'm not sure how I could personally end up here. You can repeat something how many times you want, it doesn't make it true, and if anything, seeing people repeat the same "fact" like that would probably trigger the reverse in my brain, almost automatically going out of my way to disprove it while reading it.

Maybe it's a matter of being connected to the internet early in my life and essentially making "Don't trust anything you read on the internet" the most important rule in processing whatever you read.

These days, I’ll take Mad magazine

I guess at this point my brain must be essentially mush then, add in frequent recreational drug usage and it's a surprise I'm even able to type?

But that's just "learning", doesn't matter if what you learn is totally wrong or totally right. Some things we learn are right when we learn them, but wrong at a later point. And then it's more learning once you learn that it's right or wrong, or maybe it's a bit wrong in that case, but mostly wrong in another, or it oscillates between wrong/right depending on year, location or even mood. There are no universal truths anyways, might as well just roll with it :)

Assuming brains work like computers, maybe yeah, that'd make sense :) You also won't know what's a signal vs noise until you've read and tried to understand it, and at that point you've already read it. Besides, something could be "noise" at the point you read it, but be a "signal" in a completely different context and/or time.

I did that a long time ago, moderating forum categories like pedophilia, drug usage, suicide ideation and a bunch of others. Even ended up moderating a thread where a forum user committed suicide while live streaming it to forum members and the public, made big news at the time.

Still don't think my mind is polluted from it, although I've certainly seen, read and heard a lot of "sick" stuff through my years on the internet.

But 1931 is after 1930?

Are you already aware of terms that will only be coined in 2027? But 2027 is so close, why shouldn't you already know?

"How has the stock market fared in recent years?"

"During the period from 1924 to 1929, there was a general rise in stock exchange values, the average level at the end of 1929 being 18 per cent. above that of 1924. The setback in 1930 has carried the average down to 8 per cent. above the 1924 level, and the decline has been accentuated by the break in Wall Street. The present situation is uncertain, but hopes are entertained of a recovery."

It also knows about Smoot-Hawley, predicting that it will "stimulate home production and expand employment" - and when pressed for potential downsides says only that "consumer prices may rise a little more than otherwise".

We're used to thinking of the inter-war years as a single period, but there were actually two distinct periods: rising optimism during the 1920s, followed by economic rentrenchment and turn towards authoritarianism in the 1930s. The dividing line is fuzzy - somewhere between Kellogg-Briand in 1928 and the first 1931 Sterling crisis.

The pre-1931 cutoff date for this model is probably as close to the end of the optimistic age as it's reasonable to get. I'd love to see a 1936 variant for comparison!