[Sharlin]

People passed down complex oral culture with no "practical use" – myths and stories – very reliably over dozens, maybe hundreds of generations. We became very good at using rhythm and rhyme as error correction mechanisms to ensure a low frequency of replication errors. But anyway, forest fires simply wouldn't have been that rare in the first place.

[perl4ever]

"People passed down complex oral culture with no "practical use"

You're not arguing with what you're responding to, are you? Knowledge with no practical use can accommodate a lot more imprecision. Reliability in a context where details aren't tested is a fuzzy concept.