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:
Climate science has gotten a lot more scientific and open to criticism.
The public seems considerably more aware of the potential downfalls of legislation as it pertains to computing and the internet.
The increasing availability and quality of open-source software has tempered the goals of the open-source movement from destroying copyright law (a very messy issue) towards gradually making it obsolete.
I count the increasing libertarian trend among youth as a positive; YMMV
Marijuana decriminalization is finally getting some inertia behind it.
Feminism is getting some pushback (arguments shouldn’t appear one-sided and all that)
Political correctness and reactionary anti-political correctness both seem to have faded
Negative trends… I’m not sure I really see any trends I can firmly pin down as a negative, at least in terms of the sanity waterline.
ETA: And wow. Writing that list made my mood improve a lot more than I would have expected.
The European elite is pursuing increasingly bad economic policies, this is getting push back from populists suggesting other bad economic policies (similar things are playing out in other developed countries as well).
Political Islam is becoming an increasingly powerful force.
I’d add that the libertarians seem to be getting better, as well (less one-sided stuff and less blatantly elite-servicing stuff).
I’m not sure about the fight between PC and anti-PC. It seems like there’s been a big expansion in the sphere of PC and we seem to be having a worryingly huge reaction against feminism mostly, and it seems to have broad appeal.
So do you have an opinion on whether the sanity waterline is increasing or is not increasing? Either way, what is the evidence? Can we think about some way to measure that, so we could paint the waterline on nice charts?
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:
Climate science has gotten a lot more scientific and open to criticism.
The public seems considerably more aware of the potential downfalls of legislation as it pertains to computing and the internet.
The increasing availability and quality of open-source software has tempered the goals of the open-source movement from destroying copyright law (a very messy issue) towards gradually making it obsolete.
I count the increasing libertarian trend among youth as a positive; YMMV
Marijuana decriminalization is finally getting some inertia behind it.
Feminism is getting some pushback (arguments shouldn’t appear one-sided and all that)
Political correctness and reactionary anti-political correctness both seem to have faded
Negative trends… I’m not sure I really see any trends I can firmly pin down as a negative, at least in terms of the sanity waterline.
ETA: And wow. Writing that list made my mood improve a lot more than I would have expected.
The European elite is pursuing increasingly bad economic policies, this is getting push back from populists suggesting other bad economic policies (similar things are playing out in other developed countries as well).
Political Islam is becoming an increasingly powerful force.
I’d add that the libertarians seem to be getting better, as well (less one-sided stuff and less blatantly elite-servicing stuff).
I’m not sure about the fight between PC and anti-PC. It seems like there’s been a big expansion in the sphere of PC and we seem to be having a worryingly huge reaction against feminism mostly, and it seems to have broad appeal.
The law you linked only applies if the people you’re studying care about that metric, which I’m not sure is the case here.
Well, I don’t intend such a reading. Is the rest of your comment still relevant?
So do you have an opinion on whether the sanity waterline is increasing or is not increasing? Either way, what is the evidence? Can we think about some way to measure that, so we could paint the waterline on nice charts?