| This can come up in other interesting ways. There are human behaviors that appear to be entirely selected for (and then kept around via culture) [0]. In this case a population may do something like have pregnant women avoid eating sharks which are otherwise a normal part of their diet. They don't know why they don't eat the sharks, they just don't. It turns out the sharks contain something that causes birth defects. Commonly people think someone must have realized this and then that original knowledge was forgotten, but it's quite likely it was never known and the behavior was entirely selected (pregnant women that didn't eat the sharks more successfully reproduced). When you press the women to answer why they don't know, if forced to answer they make something up (it'll give my baby shark skin). You could imagine someone thinking that's stupid and then eating the sharks and getting a baby with birth defects. I think this explains a lot about why superstitious belief is so common in humans and animals. Reason is obviously selectively advantageous, but a little reason incorrectly or over confidently applied can also be harmful, most people are bad at individual reasoning (endless conspiracy theories) and are often better off with consensus. For every contrarian that unlocks massive value by being contrarian and correct there are ten cranks that just hold false beliefs that potentially harm themselves and others. [0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret... |