So you assume that TV (80% crap), movies (pure entertainment, excluding documentaries, which are also mostly crap anyway), books (60% crap) and articles (90% assholes with opinions) are the only possible sources of information? Do you really think there's nothing conspicuously missing from there? Here's a hint: it's the origin of all the above and can provide more than all of them combined.
Look how often the writings of Marcus Aurelius pop up on HN.
Are you suggesting it's easier to go talk to him than it is to read his writings? Or that the people you talk to can and will tell you everything his writings could teach you?
No I'm not tautologically suggesting that awful TV shows are amazing. Nor am I saying that you can't learn from living people you talk to, which is why I qualified with 'local maxima' and 'far away'. Your friends, your HN topic choices, your business contacts, are to some extent an echo chamber of people doing things you do, liking things you like, sharing the world views you share.
Reading the life experience of people who did things we can't do, experienced things we will never experience, lived in political and social situations that don't exist anymore, saw and dreamed of things in ways we just aren't thinking about ... is pretty unique.
So you assume that TV (80% crap), movies (pure entertainment, excluding documentaries, which are also mostly crap anyway), books (60% crap) and articles (90% assholes with opinions) are the only possible sources of information? Do you really think there's nothing conspicuously missing from there? Here's a hint: it's the origin of all the above and can provide more than all of them combined.