This is the kind of thing that’s buzzing through my head as I work on the next book. (It’s an N-gram, computed on the fly by Google here, from the contents of all the books they [in some cases illegally] scanned from libraries.)
(Were you wondering about those “time warp” occurrences in the early 19th century? They come from passages like this (1812): “By keeping up the sluices, and drains, and banks, the land can be refreshed at any time. Warp land has had crops of flax …”)
Thank goodness they did. I’d wish Google would hurry up and scan the rest of the books.
Scanning all the books ever written is going to increase the entropy we encounter when we are researching things.
I think this is the basis of the “Ignorance is bliss.” mantra. The less we know, the less time we spend in making up our mind.
That is, there is less entropy to go through and the choices we need to make before we arrive at an answer are easier to attain.