I'm talking about the greater literacy and mathematical proficiency, coupled with a decline in superstition and religious belief among cultures that have had the longest exposure to information technology.
I'll give you the literacy and maths skills but I'm not convinced that superstition or religion are any weaker. After all, if we defined "superstition" in the Roman Empire as animal sacrifices to gain favors and "religion" as the worship of pagan gods, the victory of Christianity there was an unparalleled triumph of reason.
The modern conception of race and gender equality is absolutely superstitious; democracy and marxism are absolutely religious in character. I don't see that we've necessarily decreased the abundance of either by removing the competitors to our ruling groups.
democracy and marxism are absolutely religious in character
I have 0.75 confidence that you've never read even a review of a book by, say, Jurgen Habermas, or Amartya Sen, or Barbara Ehrenreich, or Eric Hobsbawm. These people have nothing in common, someone might object; their fields are vastly different - that is so, but all are considered eminent scholars, all offer nuanced arguments in favour of greater democracy, and all have explicitly Marxist or at least hard-left views on socioeconomic matters.
Frankly, you strike me as a walking, talking example of Dunning-Kruger.
People want to tell everything instead of telling the best 15 words. They want to learn everything instead of the best 15 words. In this thread, instead post the best 15-words from a book you've read recently (or anything else). It has to stand on its own. It's not a summary, the whole value needs to be contained in those words.
I'll start in the comments below.
(Voted by the Schelling study group as the best exercise of the meeting.)