[InsideOutSanta]

In pre-scientific societies, "let's just murder a bunch of people and see if it helps" seems to be a surprisingly common way of handling all kinds of things. Google "Children of Llullaillaco" for an absolutely heartbreaking example of this.

[pfdietz]

Those societies were usually operating in a state of Malthusian equilibrium. There were always surplus people around who were going to die anyway. Culling this surplus was a problem they constantly had to solve; I imagine this drove warfare, for example, just to use some of the surplus before it inevitably died off in a lean year.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

There is a non-zero chance I will be part of the stand-in pool for the USA in the next 4 years :) It's not gonna help anything, but you know

[barbazoo]

They didn't even have a control group?!?