What's So Super About Superstition?

[Johnny Pneumatic]

I watched something on Homo Erectus last night on the Science Channel which brought back the thinking I'd been having for a long time: why do superstitions exist? The show claimed Homo Erectus was the first proto-human to have faith in and fear things beyond what they had sensed to be real. This may or may not be true, since superstitious behavior was seen in some birds in experiments back in the 1940s. So, why are amulets worn, chants uttered, children sacrificed, people hung up using hooks in their backs and all the other non-sense? Why hasn't Natural Selection weeded out this moronity? Has there ever been a known culture that didn't have superstitions? I don't get why skepticism isn't the norm, instead of the other way around.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Why hasn't Natural Selection weeded out this moronity?

Because memes are subject to social selection which works much faster than biological selection. In a word, fashion.

 

[billydkid]

I watched something on Homo Erectus last night on the Science Channel which brought back the thinking I'd been having for a long time: why do superstitions exist? The show claimed Homo Erectus was the first proto-human to have faith in and fear things beyond what they had sensed to be real. This may or may not be true, since superstitious behavior was seen in some birds in experiments back in the 1940s. So, why are amulets worn, chants uttered, children sacrificed, people hung up using hooks in their backs and all the other non-sense? Why hasn't Natural Selection weeded out this moronity? Has there ever been a known culture that didn't have superstitions? I don't get why skepticism isn't the norm, instead of the other way around.

This is not really a response to your post, just a thought. Sometimes I try to imagine what the world would look like to early man without the benefit of all that science has come to show us. Imagine simply looking up at the sky before you had any notion of planets and stars or even what the world was. I would imagine that everything your senses told was that the world went on indefinitely and all there was was the world and the sky - it would give you a completely different view of the universe. In fact, there would be no notion of a universe. Sometimes I do wonder - suppose you were just plunked down here knowing essentially nothing - man, the world would be an astonishing and bewildering place. Magical thinking would be part and parcel of existing in such a world. There is so much we take forgranted that ancient man didn't have the first clue about. He would have inhabited a completely different world than we do today. I am not one of those who argues that science robs the world of its mystery and magic, but I might argue that humans are probably better configured to exist in the mysterious world of our ancient ancestors than we are to exist in the modern technological world, at least in some respects. I think that is why religion and other superstitions still hold so much power over so many.

 

[CatOfGrey]

Some superstitious behavior evolves into common sense. A hunter plays with the feathers of his arrows before hunting, then has a good hunt. He decides to repeat the ritual before each hunt, "for good luck". He doesn't realize that his playing with the feathers helps gives his arrow more stable flight aerodynamics, he just "knows" it works.

Prayer is not just a tool to communicate with your God, it focuses your thoughts, and with intensity, can even change body chemistry. That focus has been a tool of warriors for centuries, whether crusaders or samurai.

 

[LordoftheLeftHand]

I agree with CatOfGrey here:

I think superstition is just over applied cause and effect. I think the ability to associate a cause with an effect would be of huge benefit to the survival of any species. To a primitive man struggling for survival, how many incorrect cause and effect relationships (like a rain dance) are worth one correct insight into how the world works (beat rocks together, make fire)? Seems like a small price to pay.

LLH

 

[Johnny Pneumatic]

I agree with CatOfGrey here:

I think superstition is just over applied cause and effect. I think the ability to associate a cause with an effect would be of huge benefit to the survival of any species. To a primitive man struggling for survival, how many incorrect cause and effect relationships (like a rain dance) are worth one correct insight into how the world works (beat rocks together, make fire)? Seems like a small price to pay.

LLH

Except those incorrect effect relationships aren't always just silly little innocuous things like rain dances. There's human sacrifice, wasteful animal sacrifice, time wasted making endless mystical crap...., the list is endless. At it's not like it's a one time deal, superstitious rituals are kept alive for centuries, or longer. Who knows how much was wasted by prehistoric peoples? Animal sacrifice and the like is possibly far older than civilisation.
There's documented cases of entire tribes dieing off because of their superstitious faith in one thing or another(visions of a child for example). Overactive cause and effect finding is uber deadly.

 

[Mercutio]

Except those incorrect effect relationships aren't always just silly little innocuous things like rain dances. There's human sacrifice, wasteful animal sacrifice, time wasted making endless mystical crap...., the list is endless. At it's not like it's a one time deal, superstitious rituals are kept alive for centuries, or longer. Who knows how much was wasted by prehistoric peoples? Animal sacrifice and the like is possibly far older than civilisation.
There's documented cases of entire tribes dieing off because of their superstitious faith in one thing or another(visions of a child for example). Overactive cause and effect finding is uber deadly.

Not always, and I would argue not even usually. And yeah, sometimes it has dire consequences. Sometimes a peacock gets caught because his tail slowed him down, or women die in childbirth because bipedalism means small birth canal while intelligence means big skull. As long as it is a net gain, it is selected for. Some superstitions may even be grounded in practical benefit, like some religious food prohibitions. Even when it appears useless, institutionalized superstitions may be establishing social control--which may be seen as selectively beneficial to those with power, and if those people are in charge of what memes are passed on, that is what counts.

 

[Ducky]

If I am not mistaken, the show I saw on homo-erectus last night seemed to explain some of it to non-rational associations. like the deer dying and the kid waking up from unconsciousness thing. So I'd chalk it up to lack of critical thinking from day 1.

 

[Mercutio]

If I am not mistaken, the show I saw on homo-erectus last night seemed to explain some of it to non-rational associations. like the deer dying and the kid waking up from unconsciousness thing. So I'd chalk it up to lack of critical thinking from day 1.

Now that you mention it, I saw that show.

Given that as the example, I'd say the show took some serious poetic license. I'd almost point to the deer-death-religion bit as seeming to spawn a religion that was irreducibly complex. My own timeline would be much more gradual.

 

[Ducky]

Now that you mention it, I saw that show.

Given that as the example, I'd say the show took some serious poetic license. I'd almost point to the deer-death-religion bit as seeming to spawn a religion that was irreducibly complex. My own timeline would be much more gradual.

I'd generally agree. THough, I don't think the show meant for that example to be literal, just a possible explination. of deduction over time.

Though I didn't watch too carefully, Iw as madly fixing the ubuntu install on Avhienda's laptop...

 

[Mercutio]

Though I didn't watch too carefully, Iw as madly fixing the ubuntu install on Avhienda's laptop...

Kinkazoid.

 

[Melendwyr]

Humans seem innately predisposed to generate false positives more than false negatives. In some ways, this may even be a survival strategy: if there's uncertainty about whether the motion in the grass is a tiger, best to assume that it is and take off, 'cause incorrectly dismissing the possibility is likely to be lethal.

It's taken until the development of the scientific method for humanity to develop methods to eliminate false positives. Without it, superstitions are just an unavoidable side-effect of our ability to recognize patterns.

 

[Ducky]

Humans seem innately predisposed to generate false positives more than false negatives. In some ways, this may even be a survival strategy: if there's uncertainty about whether the motion in the grass is a tiger, best to assume that it is and take off, 'cause incorrectly dismissing the possibility is likely to be lethal.

It's taken until the development of the scientific method for humanity to develop methods to eliminate false positives. Without it, superstitions are just an unavoidable side-effect of our ability to recognize patterns.

I think I'd have to agree with that. At least it sounds reasonable.

But then, I have been known to be wrong

 

[Johnny Pneumatic]

It's taken until the development of the scientific method for humanity to develop methods to eliminate false positives. Without it, superstitions are just an unavoidable side-effect of our ability to recognize patterns.

How so? Using the example of the arrow used in someone else's post, why weren't they just able to test their arrow's flight? The ones they play with the feathers on they see they fly straighter. The ones they don't, don't fly as well. See, with a simple test they could save themselves so much time that would be wasted in the lifespans of ten+ generations of their decendants, if in fact feather stroking didn't do jack. Is testing something such an alien concept? I'm sure they didn't just jump into water, they dipped a toe in to see how cold it was. They didn't just assume the stick they found would make a good spear shaft, they whacked it onto something to see how tough it was. If it breaks, wouldn't make a good spear shaft.
And no one questions the rain dance's sanity. If the dance doesn't work when they do it, must be the spirits haven't been pleased, not enough faith, whatever. Not that the first dance and rain happened afterward was just happenstance.

 

[Melendwyr]

Using the example of the arrow used in someone else's post, why weren't they just able to test their arrow's flight?

The idea that such things need to be tested, much less the best methods for doing so, haven't been part of civilization until recently.

Perhaps Sagan was correct, and our hunter-gatherer ancestors were excellent natural scientists, but it's clear that credulity and social compliance have dominated civilization.

 

[Johnny Pneumatic]

The idea that such things need to be tested, much less the best methods for doing so, haven't been part of civilization until recently.

Perhaps Sagan was correct, and our hunter-gatherer ancestors were excellent natural scientists, but it's clear that credulity and social compliance have dominated civilization.

But you'd wonder why, if this is the universal case. I mean, our brains aren't any larger than what people had 100,000 years ago. The only thing that's changed is how much knowledge we have. Honestly, how many bangs does a person have to get to know they should test stuff? When your buddy, ex-buddy, Ug died because he failed to toss a rock onto the rock slab to test if it was stable, aren't you given a motivation to check things? Unlike what the movies show, cavemen weren't idiots, then again, maybe they were...

 

[Zep]

Perhaps it was actually hard to explain to Ug that he really should have tested that rock BEFORE he stepped on it... Remember that there was little or no "technical writing", and speech would have been rudimentary and ultra-basic at best. Perhaps the concepts of "before" and "unstable" and "testing" and even identifying the subject of the "sentence" (i.e. Ug) would have been a bit of a stretch of the available technology.

WAG here - perhaps "science" has progressed along with our ability to convey increasingly more abstract concepts, particularly counting, time and indication of subject.