Slashdot Mirror
Has Superstition Evolved To Help Mankind Survive?
Pickens writes "The tendency to falsely link cause to effect — a superstition — is occasionally beneficial, says Kevin Foster, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University. For example, a prehistoric human might associate rustling grass with the approach of a predator and hide. Most of the time, the wind will have caused the sound, but 'if a group of lions is coming there's a huge benefit to not being around.' Foster worked with mathematical language and a simple definition for superstition to determine exactly when such potentially false connections pay off and found as long as the cost of believing a superstition is less than the cost of missing a real association, superstitious beliefs will be favored. In modern times, superstitions turn up as a belief in alternative and homeopathic remedies. 'The chances are that most of them don't do anything, but some of them do,' Foster says. Wolfgang Forstmeier argues that by linking cause and effect — often falsely — science is simply a dogmatic form of superstition. 'You have to find the trade off between being superstitious and being ignorant,' Forstmeier says. By ignoring building evidence that contradicts their long-held ideas, 'quite a lot of scientists tend to be ignorant quite often.'"
I heard getting first post increases your life expectancy.
Whenever I get onto my computer, I do a tap dance before checking slashdot. I have found a high success rate in getting first posts this way.
I hope they knocked three times on their desk and spun around in a circle before they did this study...
Otherwise the results are completely wrong.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Fist -- apply directly to your forehead!
Fist -- apply directly to your forehead!
Fist -- apply directly to your forehead!
Because homeopathy is superstition.
hmmm, thats a very intresting take. it explains why i spend my entire work day pondering the meaning of my meek existence. If i was supersitious, I would have stopped procrastinating hours ago...
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
Fix'd. Homeopathy is bullshit.
Circumcision is child abuse.
you can either do science and test if it happens every time you touch it or just coincidence, or you can just be superstitious about not touching fire.
Obligatory xkcd.
I don't trust your statements. In fact, all of you, put your hands where I can see them!
So we don't spend all day trying to answer questions about, say, how we came to be, as opposed to trying to figure out why our bow and arrow doesn't shoot as straight as we'd like.
VEG-e-tar-i-an - Native American for 'bad hunter with crooked arrow.'
John
"if a group of lions is coming there's a huge benefit to not being around."
JESUS CHRIST IT'S A LION GET IN THE CAR!
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Image:Jesus_Christ_it's_a_lion_Get_In_The_Car!.jpg
--
BMO
Wiping out most species on the planet has to qualify as an evolutionary step backwards.
Unless of course you're a cockroach, in which case it's a huge leap forward.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
And, of course, zombie myths kept people away from having sex with corpses.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
by Niels Bohr. (Possibly apocryphal, but often attributed to him)
When asked by a friend why he had a horseshoe hanging over his door, he replied "Of course I don't believe in it, but I understand it brings you luck whether you believe in it or not"
[ ]Half Empty [ ]Half Full [x]Twice as big as it needs to be
I know many interesting places where I would like to stick a fist in, but the forehead is not one of them.
> They aren't our genes... We are their replication machines.
And we're so very pretty!
In a way we are the result of a few million years of feature creep.
You are committing a logical fallacy. By the same logic: Reagan ate breakfast each morning. Therefore breakfast prevents nuclear war.
Corn Pops: part of a complete Foreign Policy
I came here for a good argument
I haven't succumbed to superstition (knock on wood), nor will I ever (cross fingers)!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
"if a group of lions is coming there's a huge benefit to not being around."
I can has cro-magnon burger?
Nah, I covet my neighbor's wife 'cause she is hot as hell.