"...change for the worse" - true, it does tend to get taken as always implying that.

But it shouldn't really - reducing something to a simpler form might make it more useful for some purposes. If you're baking a cake, flour is more useful than grains of wheat. Someone who was a terrible officer, when reduced in rank ("degraded"), might make a first rate soldier. In folk terms an over-ornate and over-long broadsheet ballad might get worn down over the years and give rise to a wonderful song.

We tend not to use the word that way. But we do use the meaning of the word, divorced from its associations, as a process we can view favourably.