[pennaMan]

I disagree. It's worth mentioning simply because the practice has survived a long time trough many cultures. Time is a really good curator - if something survives a really long time (thousand of years scale) it is very likely to be of use.

[jdmichal]

> Time is a really good curator - if something survives a really long time (thousand of years scale) it is very likely to be of use.

This is actually one of the fallacies related to evolution. Selection only happens against negative pressure, not for positive pressure. In other words, adaptation generally only happens for things which harm survival. Things which are neutral or even benefit survival are not selected for.

Therefore, the proper statement to make would be more along the lines of, "Well, it can't hurt too much."

[Noosterdam]

Nothing is neutral. Every activity one undertakes is at the cost of doing something else, hence "neutral" is actually negative - and would get selected against, ex hypothesi. Even things that benefit survival but don't do it strongly enough would be functionally negative, and therefore selected against.

Finally, take activities that are strongly beneficial. Not doing these things will put one at a selective disadvantage against one's rivals.

If you agree with the above, there is no validity at all left in your original claim:

>Things which are neutral or even benefit survival are not selected for.

[jdmichal]

If I understand correctly, your basic argument is something along the lines of, "Eating is obviously extremely beneficial. Therefore eating must be selected for. Therefore your statement is false."

My rebuttal would be that you are looking at the wrong side of the equation. Eating is not selected for; not eating is selected against. So no, your argument does not counter my original claim. Such reworkings of the argument may seem petty, but they are centered around a deeper understanding of what exactly selection is and how it works.

[cma]

Sexual selection can be much more powerful than ordinary survival selection (see: peacock tails).

[jdmichal]

True. Instances of "survival" in my original statement should probably be read as "reproduction". There are, of course, more selection criteria available than just "survival to reproduction age". And selections can work opposing each other.

But, in all, the original statement still stands: Selections only work negatively. That is, a peacock with better plumage might get more chances of reproducing due to sexual selection, but as long as he gets at least one chance of reproduction, he has not been selected against.

[cma]

Reproduction causes a loss of half of the chromosomes. If he only has one offspring (unless it is a lot more sexually successful than him), his line dies out.

Different organisms have evolved different reproduction strategies through selection:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory

[jdmichal]

You're being pretty pedantic at this point. If an individual reproduces, then none of that individual's traits were sufficiently selected against. That's also not a guarantee that all their traits will carry on in new lines. There's also no guarantee that their children will be fit, due to differing traits or changing environment.

[knodi123]

> Things which [...] benefit survival are not selected for

Things which impact reproduction will be selected for. Things which kill you before you can finish raising a child will be most strongly selected against. Things that allow you to keep reproducing longer will be less strongly selected for. I guarantee that if there were a gene that let men and woman keep popping out babies for a century, it would be very likely to be preserved.

[jdmichal]

> Things that allow you to keep reproducing longer will be less strongly selected for.

No. This is the fallacy.

> I guarantee that if there were a gene that let men and woman keep popping out babies for a century, it would be very likely to be preserved.

It would be preserved, yes. The fallacy is that it will not be perserved in preference of lack of the gene, because there is nothing selecting against not having that gene. In other words, both lines will continue to live on, because there is nothing selecting against either of them.

As long as individuals can reproduce, then their traits are not being selected against. If there are multiple variations of the traits, those will become part of the population's natural variation. Which is a good thing to have in terms of the population, because natural variation helps prevent genetic bottlenecks.

[knodi123]

> No. This is the fallacy.

I simply don't believe you.

As the one making the preposterously counterintuitive claim, it's up to you to support this with facts, beyond just saying "nope, you're wrong, it's a fallacy."

[knodi123]

To elaborate, if Sensible Sally's female descendants all produce one child, and Fertile Myrtle's descendants all produce 10 children each, then Myrtle's genes will multiply faster, and be less vulnerable to being wiped out by the odd plague or war.

[jdmichal]

You are repeating exactly what I said in the second and third paragraphs. I do not understand what you expect me to respond with. Your very own hypothetical scenario demonstrates that both lines will live on as long as the traits are not selected against.

[dylanjermiah]

>Time is a really good curator - if something survives a really long time (thousand of years scale) it is very likely to be of use.

Do you have any evidence to support this theory? I very much doubt this holds any truth. Time is not an indication of truth, empirical evidence is.

[ksk]

You are severely misreading what is being said here. "very likely to be of use" is not the same as being provably true. The point being made is that of usefulness and correlation. Those two things are essential to the way humans have and continue to think. In day to day life, nobody does 'studies' to prove every single thing to be true. That is why customs that survive time can sometimes have a grain of truth to them. And what's interesting is that even if they didn't it could be that blindly following something for years has created an evolutionary pressure on the body to adapt.

[mfringel]

How is "a practice that has been sustained across multiple cultures over thousands of years" not empirical evidence?

[dylanjermiah]

The fact that people have being doing the same thing over a certain period of time makes no indication to the effectiveness of the activity.

People have being praying for thousands of years, yet I have seen no conclusive evidence of its effectiveness.

[firethief]

Have you really never heard of the benefits of the placebo response? Plus there's the social benefits of people focusing on good things and potentially manifesting them, and the community benefit of coming together to pray, and psychological benefits are a possibility, although I don't think that's well-studied (or even measurable?) enough to start that debate.

Prayer is like meat - it isn't for everyone, but if you're not getting it you have to be careful not to miss out on certain things.

[dylanjermiah]

>"Have you really never heard of the benefits of the placebo response?"

Do you have any evidence to support the benefits of a placebo effect in relation to religion and/or prayer?

>"plus there's the social benefits of people focusing on good things and potentially manifesting them, and the community benefit of coming together to pray, and psychological benefits are a possibility,"

What social benefits? What good things? What psychological benefits?

>"Although I don't think that's well-studied (or even measurable?) enough to start that debate."

Seems very convenient to me.

>"Prayer is like meat - it isn't for everyone, but if you're not getting it you have to be careful not to miss out on certain things."

What certain things?

Your comment seems awfully shallow in content to me, lacking in any specifics.

[crpatino]

> Do you have any evidence to support the benefits of a placebo effect in relation to religion and/or prayer?

So, you are implying that there is a switch that will magically turn off beneficial parts of human biology (such as some well known and researched mechanisms like the placebo effect) for those and only those humans that engage in activities that you find personally disgusting (such as religion and prayer).

That's the most overtly religious belief I have seen expressed by a self professed rationalist, you know...

[jfoutz]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?pagewan...

tl/dr; inconclusive, hard to get funding.

[duaneb]

> People have being praying for thousands of years, yet I have seen no conclusive evidence of its effectiveness.

Praying isn't likely to mess with the metabolism. It is, in fact, entirely difficult to tell what it would mess with. Fasting is relatively easy to observe: if it fails, people starve to death.

Meanwhile, people all over the world incorporate fasting into their world intentionally. Far before civilization, they probably did so unintentionally. I highly doubt the body is not equipped in some form to deal with regular period of not eating. It is only extremely recently that the median human has reliable food sources.

[snowwrestler]

At most you could say that fasting is not obviously harmful, because if it was, at some point someone would have noticed that all the fasting people get sick or die or whatever.

But it's a far jump from there to "very likely to be of use." The body is adapted to withstand all sorts of cultural practices that we no longer think are particularly medically useful, like haircuts, shaving, piercings, circumcision, branding, tattoos, foot binding, neck lengthening, bleeding (leeching), etc.

[duaneb]

I dont believe there is evidence for any of those practices predating biologically modern humans. How far back to you have to go to find a life form that did not face constant fear of starvation?

[pennaMan]

Consider an ailment like a mild flu. What's more beneficial? Going to the temple and asking a man in the sky to heal you or going to someone who calls himself a doctor who performs something way more harmful than the mild sickness like bloodletting or prescribing antibiotics? In that sense, "praying" or, more accurately described, "letting nature take its course" has ample evidence of effectiveness.

[dylanjermiah]

It has less detrimental effects as opposed to an inferior alternative, yes.

The question I was asking, and which your response does not address, is whether or not a certain activity that claims to be beneficial becomes beneficial purely on the basis that it is practiced over 'x' period of time. Which I do not believe to be true. If you have evidence to the contrary, please post it.

[pennaMan]

Surviving the test of time is the ultimate empirical evidence. In fact I'd go so far to say it's the ONLY way we can test the truth of anything at all. This goes for anything, from biological systems (evolution), technical design - the wheel, to research papers. Look in your fridge: most of the food there has been consumed for thousands of years using basically the same cooking method and is for the most part considered healthy. The recent synthetic foods like margarine and recent cooking methods like deep frying are detrimental to health.

Keep in mind, practiced over 'x' amount of time where x > 2000 years.

[4ydx]

You conveniently left out the individual who does neither. Or the individual who uses some sort of herbal "medication". Or the individual who chooses yet another solution to their mild flu. Your argument for prayer is equivalent to "doing nothing".

[juliangregorian]

Whether you believe in divine intervention or not, prayer is really just a ritual to alleviate stress, and it's cracking good at that.

[dylanjermiah]

Do you have any evidence to support that?

From an anecdotal perspective, I found that I suffered more stress and frustration via praying than not.

[fao_]

Because cultures and their beliefs can be stupid, and religious/cultural dogma can perpetrate a system that doesn't work. Humans tend towards efficiency only where there is no ideological dogma to hinder this.

Take the example of sacrifice. In dozens of cultures spanning ((in some cases) hundreds of) thousands of years, people have believed that the sacrifice of <insert species here> will stop the rain/volcano/thunder & lightning/etc. we now know this to be completely false, even though many of these cultures have writings and other 'empirical evidence' that says it does work.

[crpatino]

There are 7+ billions of "evidences" sitting around. Look at the people alive today, chances are that either their ancestors did something like this, may be as little as 1 or 2 generations ago. Over the last 10 thousand years (or any other arbitrarily large time-frame), there were large number of potential ancestors whose offspring did not make it to the 21st century. So those people must have been doing something right...

But of course, it is really easy to demand more evidence for the facts we "very much doubt" that for those that confirm our preexisting ideas.

[tsax]

Check out the 'Lindy Effect.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_Effect Also read about 'Chesterton's Fence.' http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2012/03/chesterton-fe...