Have you ever discussed the Norse collapse with someone who saw the sites firsthand? My friend Mark worked with a research group in Greenland, and he described finding middens that showed a persistent overreliance on livestock even as the climate deteriorated. They kept trying to farm like they were in Norway, ignoring the Inuit methods that leveraged marine resources. That cultural inertia literally left them starving in a changing environment.

Consider the acceleration of data decay as a symptom of our throwaway culture. We're so focused on the next update that stats from five years ago might as well be from another century (which, in internet time, they basically are). It creates a weird pressure to constantly consume new information just to stay relevant.