[gjm11]

If "you mash these keys when your computer isn't doing what you want" counts as "symbolic significance" then so does anything you do for any reason. You turn this knob when you feel thirsty and want to drink water! You turn this lever and push on this thing when it's too warm and you want to let air in from outside! You say these syllables when someone's asked you a question and you want to answer in the affirmative!

The components of the CAD gesture are still there for the purpose of what they do: you hit those keys because those are the ones Windows recognizes as indicating that you want to get its attention. Yes, the reason why those particular keys is kinda arbitrary these days, but (1) that isn't what the authors of that paper meant by "lacking overt instrumental purpose" -- of course there's an overt instrumental purpose: you hit those keys to get the OS's attention in ways that let you do particular things -- and (2) "there are elements that are kinda arbitrary" does not a ritual make because, again, everything has elements that are kinda arbitrary.

I don't want to claim that the use of the term "ritual" to describe hitting C-A-D is 100% indefensible. Only like 99.5%. If you generalize "ritual" far enough then eventually it will cover this case. Along with writing the word "duck", opening a window, or eating breakfast cereal. I don't think a generalization that goes that far is useful: the things that are "at least as ritual-like as C-A-D" are too broad a class to say much about that's useful, and the class isn't much different from that of "all human actions that recur at all".

[mlyle]

> The components of the CAD gesture are still there for the purpose of what they do: you hit those keys because those are the ones Windows recognizes as indicating that you want to get its attention. Yes, the reason why those particular keys is kinda arbitrary these days

How would you feel about it if the only way were to get the computer's attention was to enter the Lord's Prayer?

It's complicated and qualitative. There's not a quantitative test for "ritual." There's all kinds of things that are very much ritualized (the motions a batter makes when at-bat; the changing of the guard), but they still have purpose. They are read by others as social cues; they are used to show membership in tribe; etc. They just don't have a direct instrumental purpose and have taken on a rigid form.

[gjm11]

I would be extremely annoyed if the only way to get the computer's attention were to enter the Lord's Prayer (or any other text of similar length) :-). I might well express my annoyance using the word "ritual". But it would still feel much much less ritual-y than if I were using the Lord's Prayer in a more conventional manner, because there would still be no element of psychological/spiritual/social significance to the person performing the action.

(And, although it would still be the case that you have to enter all those words in order to get the computer's attention, and therefore they have instrumental purpose, it seems to me like that's a harder argument to make with a straight face when the arbitrary complexity of the actions you're taking becomes very large.)

I agree (of course) that it's complicated, and not an all-or-nothing affair. As I said, I consider C-A-D only about 99.5% not a ritual. The Lord's Prayer version might be only 90% not a ritual.

Curiously, in one respect using the Lord's Prayer to try to get God's attention is less ritual-y than using it to try to get a computer's: everything in that prayer is there for an actual instrumental purpose! Someone praying it sincerely isn't just saying "forgive us our sins" because those are the traditionally mandated words[1], but also because they would like their sins forgiven and they at-least-kinda-think that saying those words will make that happen a bit more reliably.

[1] Well, depending on what sort of traditional you want to be you might have to say "trespasses" instead.