Why does knowledge move so slowly?

Part of this is how some ideas are more catchy than others.
Anything with nuance is easy for a general public to ignore.
But things "Actually bats can see as well as humans." Makes you look smarter by correcting others.
Same with pluto.
There a few different ways ideas can be sticky, and think thats a factor in this.
Everyone lost their shit about pluto, but the general public has no idea what the Kuiper belt is.
Pluto has an emotional attachment. It's nostalgic because we learned it in school, and it has a personality. The smallest, furthest, coldest planet. We identify with it.

Culture rarely lines up with knowledge and science - look at all the scientists who had to hide from the Catholic church because their discovery didn't line up with the Catholic church's teachings. I think the same effect is still true today, except instead of the church it's just culture - smart rarely means cool, or popular (I think I'm a prime example of being somewhat smart but absolutely horrible at anything social or cultural).
Plus, culture doesn't change quickly. Like ten years ago most people thought LGBTQ+ was weird/unacceptable/bad, and now it's (mostly) accepted, but not completely. Knowledge and science can change overnight, though - a new, unexpected result from an experiment could prove that all of this is a dream or that we're living in the Matrix, and it would only take a few months for other scientists to review and validate the findings. The scientific community would almost completely accept the idea after it's been validated.

In terms of technology it's called Critical Mass....

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/7neo8d/a_drug_developed_for_diabetes_could_be_used_to/ds1iwm3

Thinking about it some more, the last two ideas aren't that separate from each other, just using different vocabulary. In my response I called knowledge "capital" and Oriana called knowledge "The Familiar/Strange." I think the one thing I'd add to combine the two is that the difference with subject experts is not how often they interact with The Strange, it's where the line between Familiar and Strange is. In my explanation, I pointed out that having capital is necessary to get more capital and so those with knowledge are able to get more knowledge. In the other terminology, people whose Familiar is more encompassing are more likely to be able to accept new discoveries as Familiar rather quickly. Thus when a new, Strange discovery is made, experts whose Familiar is close by can accept it quickly, while a layman will take longer because that Strange is too far away from their familiar.

To me, I like the analogy of Capitalism because a lot of the same nuances apply, but I think the idea of Familiar/Strange is also completely applicable to the situation.

Knowledge distribution.

The barriers I could think of in kind are Awareness, Assess, Interest or Appreciation, Direction, Guidance, Application.

Awareness is needed for knowledge to know if said knowledge exists. When there's a lack of or no awareness that a piece of knowledge or thing exists then there's no way to realize the other parts to understanding knowledge. Additionally this can be where said knowledge is or what medium it's instilled within.

Access barriers can be stuff like paywalls or restricted access to a thing which contains knowledge. You may be aware that it exists but are unable to reach it. But Access barriers can take different forms like lacking literacy to engage with reading or understanding the lessons and themes of print. Or not having the time and/or energy to interact with various mediums of knowledge.

Interest,
Appreciation,  Although anyone can study or cram for a test and pass, but it's found that most of this knowledge is shortly forgotten, because without interest there's no personal value to retaining that information. And interest can reinforce that knowledge with exploring how it relates to other things and pieces of knowledge. Meanwhile, people can have a appreciation to knowledge while lacking an personal interest, where instead of engagement or interest as in the case of finding it necessary or important to know. Barriers to interest are indeed personal but as well as dependent on others and experiences if that interest is stained by some negative experience-- as while it can be positively reinforcing as meaningful and good experiences lead to more meaningful and good experiences. And for appreciation the barrier can be not knowing why something is important or is valuable to people and in of itself.

Awareness, Access, and Interest/Appreciation along with the other parts occur simultaneously: And I think with these three they serve as a foundation to learning.

Direction barriers are like not knowing what to read or where to go next. There's confusion of how to follow up some input of research or reading, or even where to begin in the first place. For a teacher to their students, when there's clear communication and with that clear understanding then there's clear direction. More individually it's like going into the research or fact checking after hearing a rumor that Hershey's chocolate may contain butyric acid. Usually this takes the form of a prompt fallowed by an action here also usually it would be reading and researching.

Guidance barriers can take many forms, and they can be allusive. Veritasium with studying the effect of science educational video found that feelings of competence does not correlate with actually knowing the knowledge presented in those videos (Khan Academy and the Effectiveness of Science Videos; Derek Muller: The key to effective educational science videos). Instead, when the video was not clear, and concise, it forced the students to perform more cognitive work and more importantly made them question their own assumptions. This is Guidance that challenges assumptions of "The video was clear, I got it". Which as brought up on discord in word-rush, when the challenge becomes to difficult then it limits Access to understanding. This specific form also can be the intimidation that comes with a sheer amount of work required to invest in understanding ideas; as like when I suggest a billion videos to my brother and sister in law who have a two year to take care of. Meanwhile educators and students have the responsibility of not undermining a student's potential to grow balancing with overwhelming them-- on this difficulty curve of time and skill introducing ideas that'll stick but not too many when it becomes overwhelming (BlinkPopShift, HARDER is BETTER?! (Feat. PhilosophyTube).

And there's Application barriers, in 12-k education the response involves having students get out more working and contributing to the community with job opportunities, to practice what they've learned. And with knowledge using the ideas to get used to how they may change in different contexts or when provided different information. And so the barrier would be not having that opportunity, and with the education system when entering the "real world" without this practice may lead to people who're unsure what to do with this information they possess. Because all learning is playing with knowledge and ideas. Playing as in interacting with them and seeing, learning, what happens.

Then to communicate and teach these requires wisdom. Wisdom is knowing what ideas and knowledge, in what situations or contexts, and in what ways to use. And it's knowing how those ideas and knowledge associate to other ideas and knowledge. By extent knowing the wisdom of others.

So, with these barriers and wisdom, the pace of knowledge is dependent on those barreis and wisdom plus more. Where the pace of knowledge is the rate at which knowledge is distributed and people are empowered by wisdom.

One of the other factors include stuff like dark periods or when the access to knowledge is bottlenecked, or forgotten: The Antikythera Mechanism (THUNK - 118. The Antikythera Mechanism). In response to dark periods a consideration of people is setting up a buffer in anticipation (Isaac Asimov - Foundation & Empire - Extra Sci Fi #3).

And with this, there's more than one kind of knowledge. In their video, Extra Credit is exploring different kinds of challenges but considering challenges are the worlds obstacles for which we respond to, by building up knowledge from practicing with those challenges, then it could be said sociatally we value logical knowledge as well as dexterity/reflex knowledge, at the expense of pretty much any and all other kinds of knowledge, and wisdom, as like empathy and intuition challenges/knowledge (How Games Challenge Us - Empathy and Intuition in Puzzle Design - Extra Credits). In starting response to this there is the emergence of emotional intelligence in 12-k education, but in comparison to logical and reflex knowledge it's in its infancy and subjective to being something more of a buzzword due to education as an institution not having a formalized approach to distributing this kind of knowledge; exception to the teachers who go up and above and students who are able to connect and collaborate, but still arguably limited as it's expected that these different kinds of skills will be learned along with the standard curriculum. Which is true but only to an extent I'd argue.

I think the same could be said about academia, but I'm not sure. Where the possibility space of knowledge and wisdom I like to believe we haven't even scratched the surface of.

Next is an idea I proposed last week Monday at dinner with my brother & sister in law (and you thought that was a random bit of bathos), also I want to add that I was considering and planing to bring this idea up with Not the complier's idea of people living inside their phones. At dinner we were talking about generations, who're about 13 years older than me, and how for them much of the things I watch on youtube is very much random and disjointed or non-sequitur. And they pointed out how for them at school there was more interaction for people having watch or engaged with the same media at the same time-- an example of this is the finale of Seinfeld for instance. And then it was pointed how how with cartoons they couldn't control when to watch something. 

In response, I thought about this relationship to media was not so much new generations are more random. Instead I said "I think it's more Synchronization and Desynchronization." Where what media I'm interacting with along with everyone else at-large may have overall become more Desynchronized; the factors of Awareness, Assess, Interest or Appreciation, Direction, Guidance, and Application come into play. Where for instance your Interest of shows, novels, or comics is informed by other people, or to them you make suggestions or share a binge with-- Synchronization-- awhile with new technology it has allow us to watch or do whatever strikes our interest or that we individually deem important in divergences to others-- Desynchronization. And so though there has always been multitudes of culture to engage with and explore, maybe there's a increase of Desynchronization as now more than ever we have access to stream that which strikes our interest and we're aware exists.

Synchronization is important as it's shared experiences, meaningful connection that enables communication & understanding. And Desynchronization is important as it enables the introduction of new ideas & media to people, and no one can know everything.

And with this, if we consider the bell curve. On a single subject you'll have pioneers on the one end, at the center the general shared knowledge, and on the other side those without that knowledge. But the thing is that there's more than one subject; and how we quantify this knowledge won't be representative of all forms and kinds of knowledge. Nonetheless represent all the people and their varieties of perspectives and insights and ideas.

And so first I think that the pace of knowledge can feel slow because of the barriers to knowledge that exist. And how we conceptualize knowledge affects our understanding of what it is and how to identify it.

Futhermore bonus: