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Even seemingly irrational beliefs can become ensconced in the social norms of a society. Research by biologists in the School of Arts and Sciences shows how.
Ancient Roman leaders once made decisions about important events, such as when to hold elections or where to build new cities, based on the presence or flight patterns of birds. Builders often omit the thirteenth floor from their floor plans, and many pedestrians go well out of their way to avoid walking under a ladder.
While it's widely recognized that superstitions like these are not rational, many persist, guiding the behavior of large groups of people even today.
In a new analysis driven by game theory, two theoretical biologists devised a model that shows how superstitious beliefs can become established in a society's social norms. Their work, which appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrates how groups of individuals, each starting with distinct belief systems, can evolve a coordinated set of behaviors that are enforced by a set of consistent social norms.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday April 19 2019, @09:27AM (11 children)
Superstition is just a sensible strategy whenever you haven't got sufficient data for other kinds of analysis. Little timmy put his finger on the exposed wire and cried? better not do it myself thinks little tommy.
Sure, science can debunk superstitions. Not by analysis, because it is difficult to claim you took into consideration all factors (the smug proponents of the mechanical universe model, that still need to come to terms with quantum scale phenomenons, should be a warning). But using stats, you can. If the superstition involves X causing Y all you need is enough daredevils to document X and not Y for some p>.5, the end.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday April 19 2019, @01:50PM
You were right on, until you got to the p>.5 bit, which is actually a sort of superstition among scientists who tend to deeply misunderstand the actual meaning and significance of p-values.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Friday April 19 2019, @02:22PM (7 children)
"Timmy put his finger here and got hurt" isn't a superstition. It's an inference from a single fact. A not-unreasonable one, especially if then Timmy tells you what happened and you can infer the cause.
Superstition is being exposed to lots of facts, discarding almost all of them for no particularly good reason, and then focusing on one tiny fact out of that mess, extrapolating it into the whole of reality.
Now a literal example: Supersitition is a pigeon tapping its head on glass because the last time it tapped its head on glass, it was fed. It doesn't realise that it was fed entirely at random times, it just happened to be tapping its head at the time. And it continue to tap its head, over and over and over and over again without result, but still associates tapping its head with feeding because - eventually - it will be fed again soon after it taps its head and then conveniently ignores those over 999 times it didn't work.
Your favourite football teams and lucky pants (because they scored last time you wore them).
Superstition is not a sensible or logical strategy. Not touching the hurty-wire is.
Superstition is a social construct, much like lying, designed to discard the truth in order to fit in. Everything from horoscopes to touching-wood, not-stepping-on-the-cracks to not-eating-before-swimming, gambling fallacies to not-opening-umbrellas-indoors.
The logic has been sucked out of the process, methodically and deliberately, to enable conformance. In some cases there was never any truth whatsoever, in others the truth is so corrupted that it's no longer true in the forms stated ("I before E, except after C", for example).
A superstition, almost by definition, is *not* logical. It's the absolute opposite of that. It may be sensible to not touch the wire that hurt Timmy, but if we stuck to that superstition, nobody, ever, anywhere, at all would ever touch a wire again (not unlike things like "5G-frying-your-brain" and so on).
Superstition isn't sensible, logical or even useful. It's just something for people who don't have any useful knowledge or insight, and a wholesale regard for disinterest and ignorance, to say.
I honestly cringe every damn time someone adult says "touch wood for luck", or "cross my fingers", or "But I'm an Aries", or "I carry this crystal", or "throws salt over their shoulder", or whatever other absolute drivel they have heard and just repeat. And it's *not* a harmless venture. It really isn't. Perpetuating such nonsense only makes it worse. It becomes a collective celebration of ignorance that our children overhear and copy.
"Don't read in the car, it'll make you feel sick", my mother tried to tell my daughter. No, mum, you know why that makes *you* feel sick? Because *someone told you that*. Fortunately, my daughter was not only well-prepared (having read in the car all her life, and having a reading-age far in excess of her years), but had already been told by other family members that it was nonsense.
Superstitions spread because the ignorant parrot everything they are told unquestioningly and then use that as a social cue in the absence of anything productive to say. It's a oral tradition of smalltalk nonsense.
Excuse me, I have mirrors to go break over black cats walking under a ladder.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @04:31PM
> "Don't read in the car, it'll make you feel sick", ...
As far as I can remember, no one told me this as a kid, I learned it from experience, and it's still true in certain circumstances. I have a mild case--looking out the front window to see where the car is headed usually clears it up in a few minutes. Ymmv.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Friday April 19 2019, @04:53PM
"No, grandma, I only get car sick when you drive like an asshole."
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(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday April 19 2019, @05:46PM
With you until you said reading in cars makes you sick was a superstition. Maybe it does not make everyone sick, but it certainly does some. Looking out at the landscape gives the brain a recognisable fixed reference with which to counteract the feeling of motion. It is similar on a ship - if you are feeling seasick in your cabin, go out on deck and look at the horizon to give your brain a reference plane.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 19 2019, @10:50PM
Motion sickness happens. Some people are near immune to it and others can't ride in a back seat for long periods of time without hurling, book or no book. What's going on, which is a typical source of superstition, is that someone generalized from their experience to another person. If Mom gets motion sickness, reading in the back seat of a car, then daughter must too.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Friday April 19 2019, @11:14PM
Many (if not most) cultural superstitions are the result of a behavioral sequence occurring often enough to forge a powerful aversive emotional reaction, whether the original population involved knew intellectually it was a case of correlation-not-causation or knew there really was a causative effect but lacked the knowledge to explain it. So the first generation might have naturally avoided the behavior as it reminded them of horrible things that had happened, but then taught it as a blanket rule to their children at a young enough age that the "rule" became ingrained emotionally without the underlying logic.
The two that come to my mind immediately from my childhood were to never place a hat upon a bed or footwear on the table as either behavior would be followed by a death in the family. The 'footwear' superstition almost certainly has its roots in historic hygiene: people knew that potentially-fatal illnesses occurred after shoes were placed on an eating surface, but were unaware it was caused by the wide variety of fecal bacteria they would've picked up by walking in areas where animal & human waste was common.
The 'hat' rule, meanwhile, would've started as an emotional aversion. Back when people commonly died at home, Catholics would have the priest perform the Last Rites in the final days/hours; since houses were fairly small, the priest often would come into the room and place his hat upon the nearest flat surface (the bed) in order to don his vestments. That could've created a typical Pavlovian reaction: someone sees a hat upon the bed right before a death often enough, and would react in the future by feeling either grief or anxiety.
Neither case is a matter of lying, deliberately ignoring facts, or similar; it's a built-in fundamental level of psychology that can be observed in all mammals, as it greatly improved the animal's chance of surviving long enough to pass its genes on to the next generation. Having a complex brain that is capable of rational thought doesn't change that; we can intentionally use it to mitigate it (e.g. to combat phobias that interfere with daily life or personal goals) but that doesn't change how our brains are wired.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday April 20 2019, @08:27AM
> "Timmy put his finger here and got hurt" isn't a superstition. It's an inference from a single fact.
> Supersitition is a pigeon tapping its head on glass because the last time it tapped its head on glass, it was fed.
You adopt a god POV, you shouldn't use a definition of superstition that requires you to know that "touch wire, feel bad" is inference done right and "tap head, get food" is inference done wrong. because then the definition is post facto. "Oh, looks like I find no possible correlation between action and effect, therefore it is superstition". What if one day the pigeon feeder hears the tapping and says huh maybe he wants food. Ceased to be a superstition then.
If you adopt the point of view of timmy and the pigeon there is no whatsoever difference between what you defined as superstition and what you defined as inference. Personally I prefer to deal with a superstitious guy that counteracts before having worked out all the implications than a hollywood hero kind of guy who acts according to his necessarily limited mental models proving the establishment was wrong, especially when the superstitious guy is aware he is superstitious while the hero thinks he can always rationalize well enough to make the right choice.
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(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday April 20 2019, @12:46PM
Absolutely! Was just going to type a longer post about silly superstitions but I need to reboot to install an update, hang on...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @07:15PM (1 child)
do you mind speed up the training of your NN model? it's kind of boring to watch these barely related comments
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday April 20 2019, @08:31AM
I suggest anon to get acquainted with this technique, it lets you skip reading undesirable comments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrolling#UI_paradigms [wikipedia.org]
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(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Friday April 19 2019, @09:44AM (1 child)
Being superstitious brings bad luck!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday April 19 2019, @11:46AM
touch wood I don't start with any silly behaviours.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 5, Insightful) by crafoo on Friday April 19 2019, @09:54AM (9 children)
Avoiding walking under a ladder is not rational? I have to disagree with that. I bet your company's Health & Safety department has a hardhat requirement when working around ladders.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday April 19 2019, @11:09AM (2 children)
And black cats, being obviously almost invisible night predators, were dangerous for the ones traveling on horseback in medieval times.
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(Score: 2) by Farmer Tim on Friday April 19 2019, @07:13PM (1 child)
Came for the news, stayed for the soap opera.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday April 19 2019, @09:44PM
If it's my sis' black cat, it was an ambush.
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @01:46PM (1 child)
Yeah, the ladder one at least has some basis in rational reality.
Question: Where, when ladders are involved, is the highest risk location for having something drop upon your head?
Answer: Directly underneath the ladder.
Question: What is the best way to mitigate that risk of having an object drop on your head?
Answer: Don't walk under a ladder.
Yes, the whole BS around "bad-luck" and other "superstitious" crapola is crazy. But the reality is that not walking under a ladder is a risk of injury mitigation technique. I suspect the whole surrounding superstitions grew up as folks tried to find various ways to convince children (who generally have underdeveloped logical reasoning systems) to not walk under ladders. They probably grew from there because of the 80% of adults who also possess seriously underdeveloped logical reasoning systems and so a superstition worked better than factual logical reasoning.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday April 19 2019, @04:53PM
Well, most superstitions start as post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning, but not all. There's evidence (suggestive, not convincing) that the unluckiness of 13 had something to do with the solar hero myths. OTOH, in Japan I was told that 13 was a lucky number. (Of course, they have a lot of historic connection to the moon goddess.)
FWIW, 27.5 * 13 = 357.5, IOW there are usually 13 full moons per year. This may relate. And not evenly matching the length of the year could be interpreted as making it unlucky. So perhaps superstition often starts as over-generalization?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Friday April 19 2019, @02:47PM (3 children)
Well, quite besides things falling on your head, the risk with walking under a ladder is mostly not to yourself. It's the guy up the ladder.
Next time you're up a ladder, let a child run underneath it, or a person late for the bus barge through underneath. Do you feel safe? One little jolt, trip, nudge or touch and your ladder slides across the wall.
Not walking under ladders - with people on them - is sensible, rational and logical for safety reasons for all concerned.
However, if you were, say, running a cable up a long outside wall, would you not walk under your own ladder at some point, the one which has nobody on, in order to finish off the bottom bit, or get the ladder into position, or arrange the cable that you're running? I probably would. At that point, the risk is basically gone. It would be superstitious to avoid going under *any* ladder if that applied even in a controlled environment where nobody is at risk, the ladder is secured and there's no reason not to.
It's "rational" not to open umbrellas indoors, because it's fecking difficult to get through a narrow passage with a huge open umbrella, and it makes a mess of water. But that's not why people say "it's bad luck to do that"... they say that because they're idiots. Even children rationalise better than that and understand "That makes mess / damage" is a much better reason to listen to dad, than "oh, it's bad luck". That's why dad's mad... you poured rain on the damn stairs, not because he's worried that he won't win the lottery now.
Education is an ever-complicating series of lies-to-children. That's undoubtable. But children don't need mystical dragons, bad luck fairies, and nonsense to understand that they aren't being told the full picture.
"Breaking the mirror is bad luck"... no, you fool, you'll fecking hurt yourself if it does break and mirrors are fragile, so don't play around near the mirror. Children aren't stupid, they don't need luck-monsters to reason things. They need a clear explanation - even if that's "Look, it's complicated, darling, but this is dangerous, can you please go play over there and not come past this line while daddy's working". What they don't need is someone filling their heads with nonsense that they perpetuate and end up actually believing in.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Friday April 19 2019, @05:01PM
Breaking a mirror can be the result of bad luck, if you can allow luck in a deterministic world. You could also say that having a bunch of broken glass around is hazardous, and getting a laceration would be an unlucky outcome.
But other than constructing specific scenarios around luck and broken mirrors, breaking one won't cause bad luck, and certainly not for seven years.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Friday April 19 2019, @09:45PM
Corollary: climbing ladders brings bad luck too.
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Friday April 19 2019, @10:53PM
They also would have been very expensive in the past when the myth was created.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @11:12AM
It appears that the less intelligent people are the more zealous they are disseminating their stupid beliefs. Thus, things like superstitions spread like wildfire.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Thexalon on Friday April 19 2019, @12:02PM (3 children)
To avoid believing in superstitions, make sure to turn around counterclockwise 8 times before going to sleep.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @02:26PM
Upvote this response to +5 Funny and you will receive a great reward!
(Score: 3, Funny) by hendrikboom on Saturday April 20 2019, @02:00AM (1 child)
You mean widdershins?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday April 20 2019, @11:19AM
I would think it would be easier widderfeet. (But yes, I'm familiar with the term "widdershins", and yes that would be accurate for the thing that I just made up for the purposes of a joke.)
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fadrian on Friday April 19 2019, @12:56PM (1 child)
I was wondering why supply-side economics took hold. Now we know.
That is all.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday April 19 2019, @03:40PM
(Of course, the real reason is that the amount of money rich people get in tax breaks if powerful people think supply-side economics is a smart idea is far higher than the amount they have to spend funding think tanks and bribing politicians to pretend it works. I've seen its main proponent, Arthur Laffer, try to defend his views from intelligent questioning, and had no trouble concluding that he's both full of crap and that he's well aware of that.)
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Friday April 19 2019, @01:28PM (6 children)
I've heard about strong examples, like witches that are supposed to steal babies. This superstition is reinforced whenever a baby dies or is stillborn, because people explain such tragedies with: "see, you didn't take proper precautions and now the witch took your baby". Women around the world are still getting murdered after being accused of witchcraft.
Superstition is so strong that even educated people still practice it, "just to be safe".
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Friday April 19 2019, @02:05PM
There's education, and then again, there's "education", which is more accurately described as some combination of deception, misinformation, and the imposition of something essentially of the nature of Stockholm syndrome. [wikipedia.org]
Unless your education (self or formal) includes a proper grounding in scientific method and does not try to impose superstition on you in the process such as is encountered in religious schools, unless your mind is able to recognize and stand against data-free assertion, you are considerably more likely end up numbered among the superstitious.
There's also being brought up into the cult: If your parent(s)/guardian(s) pushed superstition on you as a child, there's often a long climb back up into the light of reality. Initially, what you "know" is really what you've been told. It is only later that most can apply enough other knowledge and skilled reasoning to break those concepts out as obviously without merit. That doesn't mean they will, either; often, initial conditioning is strong enough to destroy people's ability to escape from it.
Also, there is this. [fyngyrz.com]
--
I dream of a world where chickens can cross the
road without having their motives questioned.
(Score: 3, Touché) by ledow on Friday April 19 2019, @02:52PM (3 children)
"If you don't at least pretend to pray to the big beard in the sky (that's its own father and son) once a week, he'll notice and then bad things will happen to you either now or after you're dead".
Religion is the biggest superstition there is, and responsible for a million times worse.
Superstitions are the smalltalk of the idiot, when they have nothing logical or practical to say.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Bot on Friday April 19 2019, @10:08PM (2 children)
> Religion is the biggest superstition there is, and responsible for a million times worse.
Your data is obsolete, nowadays the most widespread superstition is insurance and pension funds, by a mile. Unfortunately I cannot calculate how many victims they cause because the incumbents are not keen on disclosing details.
Religion comes second, with atheism battling with islam for the top spot as most toxic religion in absolute terms. Scientology is trending well, if you have to enter the market now keep an eye (of Horus) on them. Christianity, once a stronghold of egregious bloodbaths when slightly mistaken, and my personal favorite in either flavor, orthodox or bloodthirsty, sadly pussified itself.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 20 2019, @12:26AM (1 child)
> the most widespread superstition is insurance and pension funds
Can you elaborate? In USA, my parents put money into a "taxable annuity" up to the time my father retired (probably around 1980, not sure of exact date). They left it there, didn't take anything out (father kept working at a small company he started to supplement social security). My father died, my mother (17 years younger) just started taking a mandatory payout at age 90, a few months ago. The principal they put in nearly quadrupled and the payout is coming at 3.2% on the total (over a defined number of years).
Doesn't seem like superstition to me, but maybe you have a different definition? It's possible they could have done better in the markets directly, but neither of them had any talent or interest in stock picking (etc).
(Score: 3, Touché) by ledow on Saturday April 20 2019, @10:46AM
I'm not the OP,but... because they paid regularly into an account for decades, left it alone for decades, and it took your father to die, and your mother to turn 90 before they paid her back that same money with a little bit of interest?
So the insurers basically invested all the money you and everyone else gave them, for decades, made a tidy profit on top, and then gave the lucky ones who did live until 90 (i.e. way above average life expectancy) some of the money they'd got from the unlucky ones?
Life insurance and pensions are a bet against how long you'll live. Almost everyone who pays won't live long enough to see it (or will die in a non-insured fashion or similar). The ones who do live long enough get "more" back, but they could have made more just putting it in a savings account for a few decades and never touching it. In that time, they also paid a lot of tax on it ("taxable" is right there in the name). And between what they put in and what they take out, the inflation likely accounts for much of the figurative increase on the numbers.
I just ran an online tool:
If in 1980 I purchased an item for $1.00
then in 2019 that same item would cost: $3.08
Cumulative rate of inflation: 208.5%
So even without knowing any payments or accurate dates, that monetary amount they invested is actually "worth" a third of what they've put in over the years. Save $10,000, get $30,000 back many years later... sounds like a great deal no? Actually, you just about stayed even, if that.
If you'd bought property, or any significant and fairly-timeless asset, your increases would have been way, way, way above inflation.
Your mother is getting back what your father paid, with a pittance added on, tax taken out, and a whole lot of profit for the company that did it. And she's one of the lucky ones.
That's why he says that it's a superstition.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Bot on Friday April 19 2019, @09:48PM
> Women around the world are still getting murdered after being accused of witchcraft.
Uh the correct term is 'executed'. If that seems cruel to you, it's because you haven't been exposed to enough woman.
/troll
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(Score: 1) by Coward, Anonymous on Saturday April 20 2019, @12:06AM
How is it possible to model the spread of superstition? I'm skeptical that it is, without making questionable simplifying assumptions. But unfortunately, the article is paywalled. I guess the National Academy of Sciences needs libraries to pay subscription fees, so they can have fancy awards dinners.