A blog entry on Brandolini's Law: https://real-psychiatry.blogspot.com/2016/12/brandolinis-law...
"Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?"
-Brian Kernighan
I think the above is one of the key questions for the survival of humanity. A part of the answer is that there has never been a clear demarcation between the meaningful and meaningless. There is valuable information in the structure of myth, songs, and idle talk.
It is clear that something in human beings acts as an effective filter for meaning and value. It is also clear that rationality isn't the totality of whatever this is, though it might be a part of it.
I think the major concern here, aside from the general deleterious effects of addiction of any sort on people, is that the tide of meaningless factoids and useless information is swelling and drowning out substantive, useful information which is generated with greater difficulty and spreads less easily.
A greater ratio of meaninglessness to meaningfulness is part of the problem, compounded by the aggressive way our attention is directed toward it. I think the filter you mention exists but is struggling in this environment more than in the recent past.
Which is precisely why humanity didn't progress, never invented science, never improved human rights and the standard of living, and we died out in a state of primitive brutishness.
Clearly, actual meaning has found its way through, somehow.
I think the filter you mention exists but is struggling in this environment more than in the recent past.
What is your evidence for this? Can you quantify this in objective terms?
That said, I haven't put much thought into this viewpoint and was mostly extending the parent poster's idea. Proper discussion of this would require a great deal of care and nuance and I honestly don't feel like putting in the effort for that. Apologies if you were looking for a substantive debate.