|
|
|
|
|
|
by krapp
1262 days ago
|
|
|
>I know this won’t be a popular point, but I think we have nearly all of human history as evidence that “magical believing” societies survive more effectively than not. I disagree. "more effectively than not" is an implicit comparison between "magical believing" societies and "non magical believing" (in other words, scientific) societies. Given the latter allows modern medicine, surgery, sanitation, mass food production and countless other advances, it seems obvious that science affords a much greater degree of survival than does belief in magic. One only needs to look at the increase in the average human lifespan and reduction in infant mortality rates over time to see that. |
|
|
However, it also created the ability for humanity to destroy itself: the nuclear bomb, climate change, and plenty of other existential threats.
Also there are plenty of non-tech tribes which display tremendous lifespans. To my knowledge, the common threads among centenarians is not usually tech or globalisation driven. Often they’re religious and they’re very often closely knit with their local communities.
The jury is still out on whether science is net positive. We’re only a few hundreds if years in (12,000 if you want to start with the dawn of technology…being the plow).
It’s made lives better and worse while simultaneously significantly decreasing the amount and depth to which humans believe they have a purpose, a pursuit I feel science has made little to no progress on.
But my stronger point is that magical thinking was naturally selected (as in natural selection) to be almost universally advantageous for the first 99% of human existence. I’m not sure our 1% experiment with a scientific society is as of yet conclusively better. We’ve almost made humans extinct. We might still. I don’t know of a magical belief (karma, etc.) that has put humanity in such a grave threat as the Cold War or climate change, for example.