Could not disagree more, for much of human history only the rich and their offspring typically had access to higher education and crucially learning materials, books where horrendously expensive for example for all but the most wealthy.

We live in a golden age for autodidacts, that people often seem intellectually incurious says less about the society and more the people who constitute it, many people are simply incurious - it’s not a bad thing, it is their life and they are free to live it how they want, it doesn’t hurt me that people binge watch the Kardashians.

And the idea that society has somehow gotten worse and prior generations where not like this is crazier still.. we are only a couple of centuries out from executing spinsters for witchcraft and believing in curses.

What you wrote is basically Hans Rosling's "Factfulness" [1] and the other person wrote the rhetoric of 1984 or whatever. I guess we see what we want to see, and the news focuses on the negative. Consider, for example, computer security. You'd think with a recent RCE in Bluetooth and in Windows SMBv3 the world is insecure. Well, it was way worse 20 years ago, and even worse 30 years ago. Heck, barely anything used strong encryption back then. Everything was MITMable! But the news does not support that statement. Only if you look into the details (which does require some specific expertise, knowledge wise), you notice such. I also don't believe this to be a conspiracy; people are generally harmless, and good. Perhaps, in a case like this, we need to figure if there were clear harmful intentions. Same with USA's Espionage Act though.

[1] Full title: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Had not heard of Hans Rosling so thanks for that it seems I'd like his books.

I've always strived (but not always achieved) to reach my opinions on the world based on evidence and figures and facts that I've looked at myself deferring to experts in the various fields where I'm not educated enough to understand (medicine - I trust my doctors).

If you look at the world through that lens for the average person this is a golden age despite all the problems we still have.

You can both be right.

Maybe we live in a time of unprecedented access to education and affordable materials, which is also a time of extreme inequality and selective enforcement that grinds most people into the dust.

Right, but those people did enjoy freedom. Now? All bets are off. Since the 1960s or so, we've been through a long process of gradually filing away all the sharp edges. It will continue until we've all locked ourselves into padded cells.