You seem to suggest that the sanity waterline is increasing very slowly. Do you have any evidence for that? My null hypothesis would be that during the last four years the world remained the same on average, with some local increases in sanity and some local decreases. Is there an improvement which is more than a noise, on a society scale?
I am not even sure how to measure the sanity waterline. There are some obvious stupidities, having less of them would be an improvement. But if we focus on specific stupidities without really fixing what caused them, people will soon invent other stupidities to replace them. -- When a power of a specific religion is reduced, other religions may grow stronger. Even after removing all religions, people can switch to other forms of superstition. Central religious authority is not needed these days, superstitious people can easily coordinate by internet. Remove the supernatural beings, and people may start worshiping pseudo-science. Positive (as in: uncritical) thinking instead of a prayer, cosmic energy instead of fairies, holographic universe and quantum physics and multiple dimensions instead of whatever else. Remove homeopathy and people will use healing crystals.
We probably could measure the sanity waterline in short term: by making a list of specific failures (e.g. horoscopes, homeopathy, religion) and measuring how often they appear in press, how much money people spend on them, how many people use them, etc. But in a long term this metric would keep failing and need to be updated regularly, because new sanity failures would appear.
So, in the recent four years, which specific measurable sanity-related things have improved? Is it balanced by other things getting worse?
The question has nothing to do with me, but I'll give it a whack:
Today's post, Raising the Sanity Waterline was originally published on 12 March 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
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