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Tradition is Smarter (2018)

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Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#141

Post by betwixthewires »

lazide wrote: post #45
isomorph wrote: post #10

What about circumcision? Is it all about forming group bonds?

Not being circumcised meaningfully increases the odds of transmitting and contracting certain diseases, by around 50%ish (though reduces some, interestingly enough) [ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2907642/ ] and increases the risk of UTIs significantly (by about 75%, albeit still not super common). [ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6119846/ ] Consider a world without antibiotics, and a UTI…

If circumcision as a tradition gave cultures an evolutionary advantage due to medical benefit you'd expect that it would've spread farther, yet we see basically 1 small insular group and another much more recent, semi insular group adopt it. The vast majority of men on this earth are uncircumcised.

Foot binding probably led to reduced STD tranission as well, due to women being unable to leave the house and become sexually active (which was part of the reason for it), I don't think medical benefit is a good defense of violating a human beingst agency and bodily autonomy.

There are other cultures that have other circumcision traditions that are much more brutal, I don't see any arguments for their medical benefit, and I think this argument about medical benefit is a rationalization for defense of a cultural tradition after the fact.

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#142

Post by hoseja »

lvxferre wrote: post #127

Relevant detail about yucca/cassava/manioc: there are two varieties of the crop, "sweet" and "bitter". The bitter variety is mostly eaten in the Amazon, the Brazilian Northeast, and a chunk of the Gran Chaco; elsewhere - including the rest of South America - people stick mostly to the sweet variety. Why? Because the sweet variety can be safely eaten after boiled, just like that hypothetical Tukanoan mother wanted. (Y…

Maybe the bitter variety has better resistance to parasites, keeps longer, etc?

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#143

Post by benwad »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #125
maxbond wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't say the power to collect from that trust is a significant power which they have and you do not?

I mean, I know a bunch of rich people that have set up huge trusts for their children. They also have a significant power I don't have either, so what. Obviously with royalty and nobility it is difficult to separate the personal from the public, but honestly I think the UK royal family probably does that separation better than most. And to be honest, you have lots of rich families in the US who are of the "born on th…

When the Queen died, she managed to avoid £200m in inheritance taxes. That's another right nobody else in the country has.

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#144

Post by carlmr »

oliwary wrote: post #116
afpx wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except few people ask why. And, that's frustrating. It reminds me one of my daughter's science shows. In an experiment, they hire an actor to repeat a nonsensical ritual in a waiting room. When new people come in, without being asked, they copy the ritual. The ritual continues indefinitely well after the actor leaves the room. In another experiment (I think referenced by Sapolsky), an animal (primate) watches a human…

Interesting. Presumably over time the evolutionary selection of rituals the article talks about would weed out the ones that are useless though. I wonder if the act of closely following a ritual even if we do not know its purpose is a form of human meta-ritual? That makes it easier to learn from previous generations without having to understand the potentially harsh lessons that lead to the creation of the ritual in…

> That makes it easier to learn from previous generations without having to understand the potentially harsh lessons that lead to the creation of the ritual in the first place?

This I suspect is very much a part of it. Humans have more complex things to learn, learning to do a bit extra may be better than learning to do to little. I.e. erring on the side of caution.

As an example of a ritual, you have the train conductors in Japan that point at stuff and say it out loud. [1] This is a ritual which on the surface level has no use. But this ritual does have a purpose. It's really hard to get things right every time, especially with routine inspections. It was found that by pointing and calling the thing you inspect, even with routine, fewer errors happen.

The rituals may be a way to deal with complexity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#145

Post by m4nu3l »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #104
m4nu3l wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This person pretty much sums up my thoughts. I'll let him speak for me (although my position is probably a bit more moderate). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TzM1TO2pb4 He's also English while I'm not.

At the beginning of this video, though, he makes the argument (one which I think is quite common these days) that all the news around QEII, and all of the tributes to her, are imposed from on high by media-elite overlords. My argument is that it's just as probable that the media is feeding into a desire that a large portion of the population holds. The line to see QEII's coffin was 5 miles long, with a wait time of 1…

> At the beginning of this video, though, he makes the argument (one which I think is quite common these days) that all the news around QEII, and all of the tributes to her, are imposed from on high by media-elite overlords.

I think he was just criticizing the tradition as a whole because of the effects it has. But I might be mistaken.

> And the weird thing for me is that, while I kinda agree with that assessment, I think I would be the stupid one if I were so clearly dismissive of an institution that is held in such regard by a huge portion of the populace.

I don't think so. I was raised Catholic and I think the religion is stupid. It might have had a purpose in the past as a tradition, but that doesn't change that I think it really is stupid. Saying something shouldn't the dismissed because many people believe in it is a logical fallacy (Argumentum ad Populum).

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#146

Post by m4nu3l »

vagrantJin wrote: post #132
m4nu3l wrote: post #82

Coincidentally I had debates recently about traditions. In particular about Monarchies. While traditions can be there for reasons and it's OK to follow some traditions, all traditions should be questioned. The amount of knowledge we have today is not comparable with what we had in any previous time in history. The article actually proves that. We now know about chronic cyanide poisoning to a level that was unknown ev…

> in short the Monarchy serve no real purpose in modern societies. Id give it a bit more thought. Wierdly,monarchs seem to be the default in human societies throughout the ages. Even our current system of government is modelled after monarchs. Supreme leader at the top, his second, close circle below, ministers below, bureaucrats below them, and finally us plebs. Maybe our times make sense for cold, efficient technoc…

> Wierdly,monarchs seem to be the default in human societies throughout the ages.

The Roman Republic lasted about as much the Roman Empire. There have been a lot of Republic and Monarchies and I don't know which one more often that the other, but I wouldn't call it a default.

> Even our current system of government is modelled after monarchs. Supreme leader at the top, his second, close circle below, ministers below, bureaucrats below them, and finally us plebs.

This doesn't justify keeping the monarchy, actually it is an argument that we can have something that works similarly without the issues of the inherited rights.

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#147

Post by drekipus »

0134340 wrote: post #56
jpitz wrote: post #15

Chesterson's fence is about understanding: tradition may be smarter than you, maybe not, but it would serve well to understand the reasons why it's a tradition before disposing with it.

And you can just as well use it to vouch for change. If you don't understand why a change is being pushed for, maybe try to understand it first before trying to tear it down so therefore 'change is smarter'. Hopefully that now makes clear the ignorance and clickbaitiness of the title. Pretentious titles and articles never fail to show their faces on the daily here.

This is pretty strawman. You've got to broaden the mind a bit.

"We need change to have silly hat day and every one needs to scream at noon., if you don't understand the need for this change, maybe try to understand it first before trying to tear it down." - you can't understand it because I made it up, just then, nonsensically. It is a valid change that me and my supporters are pushing for.

The difference with tradition is that there is a time bound element to it. Tradition is made up over time by rituals and force.

Your parents make you wash your hands before dinner and it becomes a ritual. By the time you're 18 years and become sufficiently atheistic to question everything to do with rituals and mysticism, you forgo washing your hands without fully understanding why that ritual was there to begin with.

Sure, now that we have understanding about germs and diseases, we know why this tradition is a good thing.

But we don't know everything about the mind and about humans evolution, we've got hundreds of thousands of years to catch up on with our new scientific method, so to throw everything out without understanding it would be naive.

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#148

Post by drekipus »

msla wrote: post #109
jpitz wrote: post #15

Chesterson's fence is about understanding: tradition may be smarter than you, maybe not, but it would serve well to understand the reasons why it's a tradition before disposing with it.

Beware the Courtier's Response, which is using "You just don't understand" as a thought-terminating cliché on yourself and a rhetorical bludgeon on others. If nobody can cogently explain why the tradition matters, without falling back on muddled thinking or mere appeals to tradition, take it out and see what happens.

Is that acceptable for a potential death of millions? (Let's say)

To use a cliche or overly simple examples, if no one can understand the importance of governance and economic coupling, then why not just try to make a Soviet union and see what happens?

I'm not making a farce, I think that just removing things to see what happens can potentially be more negative than it is positive.

We should be looking to tweak and change some traditions slowly but surely to make sure that whatever spinning plates happening at a super meta level - is still spinning at the end of it.

We don't know what we would be throwing out.

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#149

Post by lelanthran »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #71
nehal3m wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not equivalent in most cases (not all female genital mutilation is performed the same way and I cannot fathom a medical reason for any sort). But that doesn't mean they aren't in the same general category when defined as surgical alterations of people's genitalia performed for religious or cultural reasons without any medical necessity. A medically required circumcision when reasoned and self-chosen is an alt…

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 me…

> 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.

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#150

Post by lelanthran »

criley2 wrote: post #72
nehal3m wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not equivalent in most cases (not all female genital mutilation is performed the same way and I cannot fathom a medical reason for any sort). But that doesn't mean they aren't in the same general category when defined as surgical alterations of people's genitalia performed for religious or cultural reasons without any medical necessity. A medically required circumcision when reasoned and self-chosen is an alt…

It's horrifying that these are even compared. The foreskin is just some skin and absolutely not required to experience sexual pleasure or climax. But for women, they cut their clitoris out , fundamentally altering their ability to have sex forever. You cannot compare this. There is no equivalence here. IMO, female genital mutilation is comparable to male gelding --- removal of the entire penis. Both are designed to r…

> The foreskin is just some skin and absolutely not required to experience sexual pleasure or climax.

A significant portion of ED is traced back to male genital mutilation.

> Always weirds me out when a dude compares a circumcision to FGM, like someone is intentionally conflating a much lesser evil with a far greater one.

You keep avoid using the term "male genital mutilation". Always weirds me out when people don't want to call an amputation, an amputation.

(See how that works?)

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