Most of this was around before the modern era in some form or fashion.

There is nothing new under the sun.

If you weren’t born rich, like Newton or Darwin, you were unlikely to be able to afford to learn and do science. Forget about being able to travel to the other side of the world without a huge risk of dying of malaria, dysentery or any of the other myriad diseases whose risks weren’t yet mitigated. Most people also couldn’t afford to travel even to countries nearby. Games: obviously no video games, but personally I wouldn’t miss them. ;) Other games, like poker, chess, mahjongg: true, they were there. Skydiving: nope. Learning: much more limited. E.g. there was so little communication between Asia and Europe that for most Europeans you’d need to move to Asia for months or more to even find a teacher. Beside languages, education in general didn’t use to be available to as large a percentage of society as now. Illiteracy was the common case. According to [1], in 1701 in UK 54% of population was literate, in Western Europe: 31%.

[1]: <https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-historical-lite...>

One of my grand mothers was a teacher and yet she bore 9 children. She lived through WW2 in the Asia/Pacific. All her children got were engineers, couple of doctors and a successful entrepreneur. What's more interesting than that? The truth is that inequality, modernity and self-love is going push us into a demographic collapse. Being a wirehead/hobbyist is definitely less fulfilling and less noble.

Pumping out children is ... noble? How?

They are raising those who will be changing your diapers.