Comment by milesskorpen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by milesskorpen | Hacker News Reader

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I was recently reading an essay (can't find it this second) about how some religious ceremonies actually introduced helpful randomness.

For example, if you hunt to the east and find good game, you'd keep hunting to the east. Eventually you'd kill everything over there or get them to move, and your hunting would get worse. The optimal approach might be to randomize the direction you hunt, so that game doesn't learn where you're hunting.

The society couldn't say WHY the ceremony was good, but long term if they kept applying the ceremony they'd have better outcomes than societies that didn't.

Sometimes superstition is just that ... but I'd also bet there are unintuitive/surprising benefits behind a lot of it.

I believe this is the essay you mention: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fnkbdwckdfHS2H22Q/steelmanni...

It had this context appropriate quote:

"One performs the rain sacrifice and it rains. Why? I say: there is no special reason why. It is the same as when one does not perform the rain sacrifice and it rains anyway. When the sun and moon suffer eclipse, one tries to save them. When Heaven sends drought, one performs the rain sacrifice. One performs divination and only then decides on important affairs. But this is not to be regarded as bringing one what one seeks, but rather is done to give things proper form. Thus, the gentleman regards this as proper form, but the common people regard it as connecting with spirits."

There are psychological benefits. If you believe that things like rain are within your control then you can be confident instead of feeling helpless.

Obviously religions take advantage of this desire for the illusion of control and convince followers that practicing the religion will keep their lives free from external bad influences.

Sure — I think the randomization concept particularly interests me because it's NOT just psychological. There's actual real-world benefit to doing rituals/read entrails/listening to people speaking tongues vs. not because our instinct or normal habits aren't always right.

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