The US is less religious than Africa, South America or the Middle East but more religious than pretty much everywhere else. IIRC there's an absurdly large percentage of Americans who says they would never vote for an atheist president -- higher than for any other group of people they asked the question about.
The US is less religious than Africa, South America or the Middle East but more religious than pretty much everywhere else.
You forgot tiny irrelevant places like Indonesia, Bangladesh and India. Your statement only works if you define "pretty much everywhere" else as Europe and East Asian, about 2.5 billion people, a lot but not the majority on our world of 7 billion. Oh sure there are a few demographically irrelevant pockets in addition to that like say Australia or Canada, but thinking a bit about them and adding their populations together one has a hard time matching just Indonesia.
Disclaimer: I'm still fairly new here, and though I did use the search bar it's entirely possible this has been discussed before. Just point me in the right direction if this is so.
While reading about 4chan's Japanese progenitor website, it occurred to me that I know nothing about the state of rationality in the non-English-speaking world, and more specifically the non-English-speaking internet. Is there a Russian version of SIAI? A Japanese Less Wrong? What about Korean Robin Hansons and Eliezer Yudkowskys?
If we take Religion as any indication of irrationality then America should be one of the least rational countries in the world. So if there are like-minded individuals out there speaking in languages we don't know, are we doing anything to collaborate with them? Do they have their own sequences and their own HPMORs which we could be reading?
And if there are no Singularitarian, Cryonics-Supporting, Utilitarianism-Advocating websites for the majority of the human race, isn't that a huge deal? Aren't Europeans and Asians more likely to be open to rationality, if only because of their atheism? If we want Friendly-AI to be developed, should we be translating the sequences into Chinese and Hindu as quickly as possible?