You only need to remember how to search for stuff, via a tool like Google. Index the information short term and use it, then forget it. Too much indexed information is as bad as too much overall information.

Is change of itself a good thing... change for it's own sake?

It depends ;-), of course. Someone gave me a bad AGW argument yesterday, and then tried the attack that I didn't have an open mind, because I would not accept bad argument. In that case, "change" would have been the wrong course.

It's about how rational we can be, and how much we can introspect our motivations and biases.

There are a few blogs that tackle this head on. I think I've recommended Overcoming Bias before.

I make the effort, I'm willing to change my mind, even if slowly ... for a good argument.

Yeah, people index all the pro-CRA or anti-CRA arguments, and change their minds not one bit.

Is change of itself a good thing... change for it's own sake? I submit that in only half the cases would such change be desireable. Don't judge the success of a conversation, or of a data tream, by the amount of change that occurs because of it.

In any event, it's a truism that "It's not what you know, but if you know where to look it up".

It also occurs to me that this is the Americanization of intelligence.

Agreed, but the most efficient people will do both. For example, a mathematician is going to need to be able to derive any function on the fly without checking Wikipedia every ten minutes.

(Actually, it's not that bad but the temptation and opportunity to "index and silo" is there. It takes some extra effort to avoid it.)

Quigley's class was a two-semester required course in the School of Foreign Service. He had a flunk-rate of something north of 50%, so many of us had an opportunity to have that information drilled into our heads quite thoroughly!