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>My worry with quotes like these is that there's always a hint of nostalgia and conservatism mixed through it.

Nostalgia and conservatism are always attacked in a kneejerk way. Some things were indeed better in the past, and it makes sense to want to conserve them. And, similarly, the future or present is not magically better, just newer temporarily.

>In this case, were people really more well-read and less ignorant in Sagan's past than they were in the mid nineties, or was he simply surrounded more by well-read, nuanced people when he was younger than when he was older?

The public discussion and politics, and the people involved were more well-read and less ignorant in Sagan's past than they are today. How about that?

E.g. back then some serious news outlets (with more gatekeeping and quality control and staff in remote areas, paid proof editors, etc) were the average person's main option to get their news.

Now any random, under-staffed, "news" website (which doesn't even have proof-readers, on-field reporters, or anything, and just repeats AP and Reuters news, opinion pieces, and internet gossip, is a "media outlet" anybody can access. And that's the best case, on top of random blogs and social media accounts.

> In this case, were people really more well-read and less ignorant in Sagan's past than they were in the mid nineties, or was he simply surrounded more by well-read, nuanced people when he was younger than when he was older?

It depends which people you talk about. The average person? Maybe not.

Thought leaders that shape the overall tone of social consciousness? Almost certainly.

That’s certainly the course over a much longer time window in the country.

If nothing else, the print (and even within print, shifts in frequency and volume) >> radio >> TV (and now >> social media) media transition has led to shifts in what the influential content is and what kind of people are thought leaders. And every step along that progression is to media that inherently are less suited to informational/intellectual content and more suited to content that short-circuited intellectual processing for pure emotional urgency.

"...Basically, I think all I'm asking is, is society really dumbing down? Or are we simply confronted with it more?..."

It doesn't matter whether it's the lesser of the two, what matters is the overall effect on society as a whole.

For example, If people are generally more ignorant, would that be a benign thing 'overall' to society? Or non-benign?

> Basically, I think all I'm asking is, is society really dumbing down? Or are we simply confronted with it more?

We are going through a tremendous democratisation of dissemination of opinions. Each and everyone can publish content and there are better platforms for building a reader base.

The humans having opinions are mostly the same as before. The ability to hold at least two contradicting ideas in your head at the same time is still subject to the normal distribution of intelligence. My very subjective take on this is that individual humans can shine, while humans as a population... not so much.

A key, post modern, difference is that everybody has their own right to their understanding of 'truth'. There is no longer any normative mechanisms that weed out outliers, allowing QAnons of this world to proliferate. I am really not very hopeful for the near future. Over time, we will of course learn to live with this situation.