Older Is Better: Difference between revisions

Partially [[Truth in Television]]: the idea that ancient knowledge is superior to modern knowledge exists in the real world, but it doesn't always work out that way. [https://web.archive.org/web/20130727103912/http://www.badmartialarts.com/myths/ancient_knowledge.php Bad Martial Arts] has a page debunking this idea. It is also inferredimplied in many pseudosciences like astrology and some alternative medicines: that these ancient knowledges and traditions have been around for so long. unchanged, must mean that they are better than modern science! It's the same logic as with the [[Old Master]]: if a tool has lasted for centuries and is still usable, then it must be damn good. Compare with [[Appeal to Tradition]], to which this is related.

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

== [[Literature]] ==

* ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'': Ancient Elven and Numenorian weapons are better than modern day Gondorian and Elven ones. The Silmarils were made by one of the most ancient elves, Feanor, and nothing created since rivals their beauty. Likewise, the modern-day dwarves of the Lonely Mountain haven't managed to match the weapons and armour that were made by their ancestors, whose techniques were lost when Smaug killed them.

** Interesting, because ''[[Harry Potter]]'' seems to generally avert the trope: Magic evolves like science does. New discoveries are made. This is evident with Broomsticks: newer broomsticks are better for example: The Nimbus 2001 is better than the Nimbus 2000, who are both outdone by the more modern Firebolt.

* ''[[The Dresden Files]]'': Explicitly applies this to necromancy. The older the corpse being re-animated, the more powerful the result. Harry uses this rule to get around the fact that non-human zombies are less powerful than ones made from humans by re-animating a corpse several orders of magnitude older than any possible human corpse. {{spoiler|[[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Zombie]] [[HSQ|T-rex]]}}.

* [[David Brin]] did a wacky variant in ''[[The Practice Effect]]'': on a certain colony planet, a weird effect had somehow been arranged so that the more an item was used — assuming it wasn't consumed or broken in a single use — the '''better''' it became at its function. "Practice Makes Perfect." An electromagnetic pistol that started out barely capable of "plinking" had, by the end of the book, been "practiced" to the point that a single shot blasted a '''large''' hole through a fortress wall.<ref>And the wall had been behind the prisoner -- and the stake he was tied to -- the shot '''disintegrated'''.</ref> Captives improvised a saw from a zipper, to cut their way out of prison; by the time they escaped, the zipper's plastic teeth had become ideally-shaped saw teeth — of '''diamond'''.

*** Of course, Myth Drannor itself is "fabled" because humans ran in, got some of the old elven magical knowledge and began to ''rapidly develop'' on it, dragging elves along. [[JustAll AsAccording Plannedto Plan]], since the Coronal made this unpopular decision after observing a few Mage Fairs and coming to the conclusion that though he and a handful of others are [[Too Much for Man to Handle|more powerful]], he wants the best human wizards to work with his folk, if and while possible.

* ''[[Dragon Age]]: Origins]] - Awakening'' has the Sentinel Armor Set, easily the best Massive Armor in the expansion. According to the lore, however, it belonged to the Grey Warden who killed the very first Archdemon ''over one thousand years ago''.

* In one episode of ''[[Thundercats]]ThunderCats (1985 series)|the original ''ThunderCats'']], Mumm-Ra is poking around in disguise by a (you guessed it) ancient pyramid. He's trying to open the lock on the door, and muses, "Ah, a very ancient lock design, unknown on Third Earth for a thousand years. Unknown, that is, except to one who has ''lived'' for a thousand years!"

* Wine and spirits improve with age, at least according to the connoiseursconnoisseurs who drink them.

* Many photographers never use the full automatic mode when transitioning from film camera to digital. They achieve better results on manual mode - they are used to it and can use it to obtain best results. Full automatics usually are set to "discernible in most possible cases" which by definition is suboptimal for specific cases, so even an operator with small experience can do better. A photographer considers ''the specific scene'' and ''the desired impression'' to decide what parameter is more important (shutter time depends on how fast the objects move, and whether you ''want'' some motion blur, etc.), and what deviations from the average are desirable or undesirable (sometimes it's fine to allow light parts be a bit lighter, and sometimes dark parts a bit darker) — that's part of why it's considered an art. People who worked with a film camera tend to at least understand what aperture, shutter and focal depth ''do'', even if the sensor is not the same. While people who come from cellphone cams / webcams and other "soapboxes" with pinprick aperture didn't see the differences obvious with any halfway good lenses and usually need a lot of experiments to "feel" the optics.