[cupofpython]

>Graphing the progress of a sinking ship and pointing out that the downwards gradient has been stable for a while now and we should therefore be okay is generally not a useful extrapolation,

I like this analogy. I've had similar thoughts for a while too. Granted I also saw some research that society has been objectively getting better in a lot of areas people think is getting worse (like violence, specifically police abuse) compared to the past. theoretically this is because we have a lot more information now than before, so smaller occurrences are generating a larger impression.

that said, I still very much agree with your point and that it is very applicable to specific individualized issues. Saying that people have been concerned for a while and nothing bad has happened yet is accurate for the situation where nothing bad will happen, AND the situation that it was bad then and is worse now, AND the situation where we are approaching a tipping point / threshold where the bad will start.