[tribune]

If divination by bird augury is so wise, why don't we still use that to plan agricultural layouts?

/s

But that sort of underscores the main argument against this stuff. Is it possible that many traditions, while once adaptive and beneficial, are no longer so? In other words, has the human situation departed so significantly from ancestral conditions that much of tradition is somewhere between irrelevant and harmful?

Of course not all tradition should be thrown out just for being old. But the tools of rationality have come a long way.

[hudon]

That’s the open question, isn’t it? We don’t know what we don’t know, so no matter how elaborate a rational defense of reform is, the reality may always be one step more complex than we thought.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t reform, but that reformers should be more humble than they are today, where many simply assume that the reasoned argument is the better one because of the superior nature of reason.

[ssivark]

“The first important principle of science is to not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool” — Richard Feynman

The challenge is that rationality is often useless approach in complex systems. If I might be a little provocative, even “truth” and “facts” might be ill-defined concepts in complex systems (how will you establish controls? How big a sample must you run randomizes controlled trials on? What if that’s much bigger than feasible/possible due to exponential scaling? Not possible even in principle!)

A fundamental problem is the human tendency to try and optimize outcomes (using available rationality) — because we invariably overfit to temporary/local optima at the cost of the long term. To counter this failure mode requires sacrificing optimality (always defined by a proxy metric which holds only temporarily) for plurality/diversity. It is understood/expected that this deep principle has numerous manifestations in biology and culture (eg: sexual reproduction, enforced pseudo randomness, etc).

There is another “meta rational” idea that to understand things and do science, you have to first “survive”. Science only gives a reasonable guarantee of eventual correctness. Nobody guarantees that it is the best guide to live your (finite) life by. In Newton’s times, theology and alchemy were considered as promising (if not more) than physics (natural philosophy). George Washington’s doctors recommended blood-letting (SOTA medical technology of the day). What will humans two hundred years from now say about our current views?

The most important principle is to iteratively take insured risks and keep learning. If you hang around long enough doing that, knowledge will accumulate and compound.

Eg, see:

1. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret...

2. https://www.edge.org/conversation/nassim_nicholas_taleb-unde...

[cjsawyer]

My favorite example is some religions still forbidding pork even though our understanding of food safety has changed so dramatically.

[lqet]

You have to be careful with such an argumentation. It may very well be that forbidding pork is the result of century-long observations that people who eat much pork will on average die earlier than the general population. It may even be that the only kinds of meat eaten in the culture that originally invented this rule were fish, chicken and pork, which would mean that forbidding pork was equal to the modern damnation of "red meat".

Arguments like "pigs are unclean and live in the dirt" may have been used to explain this effect and to rationalize the rule, but just because the rationalization of a rule has been proven incorrect, its original intention is not automatically wrong.

[edflsafoiewq]

It may also be that the rule was never the "shadow" of some empirico-rational observation at all.

[parrellel]

Like the milk and the calf rule from Judaism, which was pretty blatantly an authoritarian attempt to enforce social division.

[edflsafoiewq]

How so? Do you mean the Toraic rule about "seething a kid in its mother's milk" or the Rabbinic fences around it?

[jzvxkxbxjx]

:D

Maybe that’s just the way the Divine wanted it.

[jzvxkxbxjx]

You’re rationalizing religion.

The prohibition of pork has nothing to do with disease. We’ve rationalized it by telling ourselves, since there is no God that could make such a silly request, that maybe they did it to cement food safety. Theres as much evidence that it’s all just a fortuitous coincidence.

If you think long and hard enough you can come up with a rationalization for anything in the Torah (or anything, really).

Instead religion is to be enjoyed like Love is. You don’t talk about pheromones and dopamine levels when you embrace you wife. You talk about mountains, and blue skies, and soaring views. If, on a whim, your wife were to ask you to pretend you’re a hare, would you not entertain her?

If you’re a Christian you could rationalize the pork thing by saying: “the purpose of the prohibition was to set up a teaching moment for Peter about Universalism and humility 1000 years later”.

But that’s silly. Instead, for a believer, it’s a insignificant request for an opportunity to make a physical demonstration of Love to the Devine.

The Sufis aren’t dancing because they’re free of tape worms.

[seventhtiger]

This is getting back to metis and episteme. I liked how this concept was explored in the Uruk Machine series if you want to read more.

Metis is "local accumulated knowledge" and episteme is "abstract, generalized, theoretical knowledge".

Metis, tradition, is barely knowledge. It is more of a practice without any of the justification needed for knowledge. So if your community knows that it is best to plant seeds during a specific holiday, they might think a supernatural blessing is the reason. Knowing something for the wrong reason isn't knowledge.

Non-knowledge loses arguments to knowledge. When an agricultural scientist comes with theories and results it won't be difficult to say that the farming community actually doesn't know anything. That's fine. But we are too quick to throw out tradition vs knowledge because unless it is specifically measured against it, the practice of tradition may be superior to the practice of current knowledge. Their traditional planting date may be superior to all models. After all, they've successfully farmed here centuries or millennia.

The Sufis might be dancing because having community gatherings allows communities to survive. The dancing and rationalization is incidental but the actual gathering is a crucial matter of survival.

[guelo]

There are dozens of weird cleanliness rules in the Old Testament, it's pretty obvious to me that they were traditional learnings for avoiding disease.

[empath75]

You’re arguing with a straw man. I think he’s mostly saying that tradition sometimes contains valuable knowledge even if those practicing it can’t explain it. That’s not saying all traditions must be conserved at all.

[socceroos]

What are these evolved tools of rationality that you're referring to?

[ptah]

>the tools of rationality

the article clearly explains that they mainly consist of making up rational and plausible sounding reasons, a disease especially virulent in modern western society

[weberc2]

Most of the irrelevant and harmful stuff was stripped away long ago when it stopped being useful. Most tradition is useful, although the industrial revolution has been cause for reevaluating many, many traditions; even millennia old traditions like (some of the more egregious) gender roles.

[ClumsyPilot]

There are many traditions that survived for thousands of years:

Genital mutilation circumcision, human sacrifice, using poisonous body paints, using lead in water pipes, asbestos, etc.

It often takes a great effort to stop a stupid and harmful tradition.

[weberc2]

Fair enough. The system is statistical; I’m not claiming every harmful tradition is eliminated and tradition is optimal; only that the most harmful traditions are eliminated or minimized (e.g., human sacrifice is only practiced among very primitive civilizations).

[ptah]

the lack of bird divination could partly explain why modern agriculture is so devastating to the environment, specifically the soil. perhaps over time we will wipe ourselves out and only bird augury using farming communities will survive the test of time

[jstewartmobile]

"But the tools of rationality have come a long way."

highly debatable

[api]

Nobody argues that "all tradition is wrong." That would be silly. Obviously the processes of traditional and cultural evolution are going to produce many things that work.

Those who argue the "traditionalist" side are typically arguing much more than that. They're arguing that tradition should count alone as a form of evidence or proof.

There's a funny thing about that. I never see these types of arguments made for traditions that are neutral and innocuous, like the curious custom of decorating trees indoors in winter, or those that are obviously valid and beneficial. I only see it trotted out in support of traditions that are hard to defend without tortured arguments and special pleading.

From what I've seen over the past 5-10 years the latter are generally prejudices and caste systems under attack in liberal democracies.

Personally I take the position that if you're going to argue that some category of human being is less valuable or should have less rights than everyone else you'd better have a damn strong argument that goes way beyond "it's traditional."

I'm not necessarily insinuating anything about the author, but even if the author didn't intend to construct a rationale for a caste system that's usually where this goes. The reason is as I said above: only otherwise indefensible traditions require special pleading, so any such special pleading furnished tends to gravitate toward its market niche.

[Stupulous]

>I never see these types of arguments made for traditions that are neutral and innocuous, like the curious custom of decorating trees indoors in winter, or those that are obviously valid and beneficial.

I expect this has more to do with the fact that such things don't often need to be defended because they are either neutral and innocuous or obviously valid and beneficial.

Surely you've heard people defend 'merry christmas' vs 'happy holidays' with this reasoning, and unless I'm vastly underestimating the offense felt by being told to be happy for the wrong cultural celebration, that is not a serious issue of prejudice. The argument is made because the thing is threatened, not because the thing is bad.

[api]

Outside political talk radio I haven't heard people claim "Merry Christmas" is under serious threat. I live in a pretty liberal and very multicultural place and heard and saw plenty of "Merry Christmas" this season. Even non-Christians seem to call the ubiquitous decorated pine a "Christmas tree." Nobody seems offended. (You can always find someone who is terribly offended about anything, but it's definitely not a broadly held sentiment.)

Most retailers and the media opt for "Happy Holidays" for simple marketing reasons: their audience is broad and they don't want to seem uninviting to Jews, Muslims, atheists, etc. A mall isn't going to print "(Merry|Happy|Blessed) (Christmas|Hanukkah|Ramadan|Solstice|...)"

I do sometimes see tradition's value highlighted to attempt to rescue fading traditions from being forgotten or eclipsed by modern noise and consumerism. These traditions might not be harmful in any way and there's nothing wrong with trying to preserve them. When this is done, it tends to face little to no opposition. No extraordinary arguments are needed, just drawing attention to the tradition and its moral, historic, community, or aesthetic value.

My point was to highlight something I've personally observed, especially in these (HN and its orbits) circles: when more ideological traditionalist arguments surface they inevitably end up leading in certain directions. I've seen this movie before.