otterfoghornrainfall Thanks!
I think it's probably a mixture of factors, including (in historical order):
- Having been a computer nerd for a long time (I remember when 16 kilobytes of DRAM was a lot)
- Having formal academic training in relevant areas (academics are expected to look things up, and to cite sources)
- Having worked as second-level support for a help desk where the first-level's job was not to chase users away
- Having worked as a teacher
- Reading (and periodically re-reading) the GrapheneOS web site
- Reading a solid majority of GrapheneOS user forum posts since soon after it launched (I am not an expert on GrapheneOS, but the community working together is very powerful, especially given our dedicated and judicious moderation team)
- Reading a lot in general
By the way, formal academic training is great for people that it's great for, but it's not necessary. Lots of people train themselves informally. One famous example is Nathaniel Bowditch, but there are many others. "How To Learn Cryptography as a Programmer" is a piece discussing various ways to learn cryptography (learning cryptography isn't mandatory for GrapheneOS proficiency, but I mention the piece as an example of self-study advice).
I suspect that if you read a serious book once a month or so then you'll have trouble not learning some serious things, especially if you also follow a couple of serious blogs and serious news sources. It's also possible to learn a fair amount from serious but not super-technical books, such as Cliff Stoll's Cuckoo's Egg and/or Snowden's Permanent Record.
Meanwhile, anybody can work on a habit of looking things up! Even though Wikipedia isn't 100% accurate, it's often pretty good, and generally includes links to primary sources.
Watching lots of videos online can get in the way of reading, plus which there is a risk of ending up watching nonsense chosen by an algorithm. So limiting the total amount of video consumed per day might help.