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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Except, ironically enough, male circumcision is the perfect example of something that was done for "traditional" religious reasons, but for which now there is ample medical support for it.

For example, circumcision is extremely common in the US, despite the fact that it is relatively very rare for it to be done for religious reasons (only about 2-3% of the US population is Muslim or Jewish). It is done because the medical community broadly recommends it due to its health benefits: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/cdc-encourages-circum...

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> It is done because the medical community broadly recommends it due to its health benefits: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/cdc-encourages-circum...

Only recommended in the US. Which indicates that it’s still cultural.

The biggest misconception about traditions is that people just randomly decided to do it and punish those who don't follow.

The most probable case is that traditions, such as male circumcision were done for a particular purpose and ritualised into a traditional to share and continue that process.

It's only in more modern ages where we said that rituals aren't enough and we need to think of medical reasons for it as well.

Considering how much of the mind is an enigma it's arms race to find out positive reasons of why we do certain traditions before we get rid of them completely from not understanding them.

Think of it like ML at the human level.

ML's entire thing is statistical correlations that aren't obvious.

Tradition is probably operating like that as well. Is all tradition like this and useful? Of course not. But I bet a lot of it is very subtle and nuanced.

It's also worth considering that there are other pressures. For example, women typically find circumstanced penises more appealing. It's very possible that pressure, coupled with the benefits, helped society land on it more than not.

That's a good way of putting it. A sort of black box process that has gone through something to end up the way it is.

> Except, ironically enough, male circumcision is the perfect example of something that was done for "traditional" religious reasons, but for which now there is ample medical support for it.

There is no medical support for it; all the "medical" support that was published in the past was never replicable and was only a thin veneer over superstition.

IOW, you've already made you mind up that male circumcision is a positive. You'll look for evidence to support your conclusions after establishing your conclusions, just like all the other "traditions" do.

There's ample medical support because it's a quick way to make a hundred bucks when you're a urologist.

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