Despite the pseudo moral superiority that modern man has because of his technological advancement, the majority of people now are just as superstitious and ill-informed as those five hundred years ago. Think cargo cult
If somebody at the New York Times or the Washington Post said that experts say you should sacrifice small animals while burning incense to defeat covid, a surprising number of people would do just that. Or maybe not such a surprising number after all, based on what I see now.
“the majority of people now are just as superstitious and ill-informed as those five hundred years ago”
It seems to me that there are more malicious liars now than there used to be, all spewing forth clouds of falsehood into the cognosphere. This would seem to mean that there are many more ill-informed people than there have to be.