This is very much what is on my mind as well. I also think we tend to take progress as granted. That science, technology and democracy will always progress at a steady pace.

But the world we live in today is so young. If we look at history whether great bronze age civilizations, Sumeria, Islamic civilizations, the Roman empire etc, we have seen collapse and regression again and again.

Sure, in the very long term we may always progress, but the periods of regression can be substantial. After the collapse of bronze age civilizations I think it was like 150-200 years before organized civilization arose again in those same areas.

Great Islamic civilizations known for their embrace of science while Europe lived in the dark ages, turned their back on Science and in many ways have still not fully recovered from that hundreds of years later.

There is an interesting story I cannot find anymore, which detailed how the political right in America used to be most pro science. Especially in the atomic age, the left tended to be skeptical of science and the motivations of scientists. If you look at old superman comics it is kind typical with the mad scientists with no morals with some death ray or what not.

Then ironically this all switched around when science because discovering the problem with smoking tobacco, eating sugar and emitting CO2 from burning fossil fuels. Suddently science was saying stuff that business saw as a threat to their profits. The article I talk about mentions a meeting where business leaders agree that something must be done and one starts founding these right-wing think tanks. One of the objectives is to spread uncertainty. To undermine science by projecting the idea that "WE DON'T REALLY KNOW".

And it worked. And this process which began sometimes in the 70s or so has steadily managed to make science into something political. It has undermined trust in science and experts. Thus this short termed desire to protect profits, has snoweballed into a general distrust of science and experts which I think long term threatens our whole civilization.

We cannot afford to turn science into a politicla viewpoint. Then we are just back in the dark ages where science is rejected if it disagrees with religion. Now we are just replacing that same sentiment with: We reject science if it disagrees with our political ideology.