In higher level campaigns, you can literally go to other planes and interact with the beings there. The deities in D&D are literal physical beings that you could just go and interact with (although depending on the deity and the context they might not take kindly to being bothered). A lot of prewritten modules specifically are about stuff with various deities; even Baldur's Gate 3, arguably the most played prewritten module in some time (it was popular enough to go mainstream and win GotY) heavily features lore from deities and in a few places in the story you (or another character) can directly have short conversations with some of the deities.
I don't see why it's "kind of dumb" if people enjoy playing that way. Tabletop RPGs have always had a wide spectrum of playstyles where some people follow the rules rigorously and some people ignore them entirely, and being consistent with lore is just another dimension on that. Every successful group will settle into a pattern that's comfortable for them.
The lore itself is kind of dumb. That’s ok. Most TTRPG stories will be pretty dumb. They can still be awesome. Imo plying your own dumb story is a lot better than someone else’s dumb story.
I would say it’s not ideal for different players to have different levels of knowledge about the world for non game reasons though. It’s better when most of it is freshly discovered.
I don't see why it's "kind of dumb" if people enjoy playing that way. Tabletop RPGs have always had a wide spectrum of playstyles where some people follow the rules rigorously and some people ignore them entirely, and being consistent with lore is just another dimension on that. Every successful group will settle into a pattern that's comfortable for them.