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This paper leaves me feeling uncomfortable. There are so many problems with it on so many levels and, yet, I think it is fascinating in the sense that it is app

This paper leaves me feeling uncomfortable. There are so many problems with it on so many levels and, yet, I think it is fascinating in the sense that it is applying a well known concept to a novel context. Personally, I have a hard time seeing how this "bulletproofing" technique could possibly be true. However, I find it incredibly disrespectful and lacking in basic scientific integrity to go into a paper with the assumption that it is a false belief and then making no attempt to justify why it is a false belief other than "duh...because they are superstitious barbarians". Whether the belief is false or not seems to be totally irrelevant in trying to show that the authors' conclusions are valid. Clearly, the members of the village believed that it was true. Because of their belief in the effectiveness of the "treatment" the results were x, y, and z. As an aside, it seems weird to start with the premise that the belief is inherently false when the village was able to protect and free itself. You could very well make a claim that the "treatment" was effective from a scientific perspective; it would require replication in order to be validated. Why should I automatically assume it is invalid? That strikes me as the opposite of scientific enquiry. The cultural hubris contained in this paper overshadows the conclusion. This sounds more like a piece of literature from an "enlightened" European priest visiting a wayward tribe of "barbarians" during the 19th century colonization of Africa than a modern, scientifically-rigorous scholarly article.

mturmon 9y ago
In the spirit of cultural relativism, here's a parallel anecdote about (incorrect?) superstition from our own treasure box: * A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: “You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.” Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked.
- bradfordarner 9y ago
  Haha!! Well said, sir!
- Fjolsvith 9y ago
  I used to be a computer technician. Sometimes I arrived at a customer's office and the perplexed person couldn't explain why his computer suddenly started working. I developed a theory I called the "Tech Threat Syndrome", which posed that computers occasionally hid their problem whenever a technician appeared, so as to embarrass their user.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    It's a widely believed theory, formulated (and verified) independently many times through history.
  - lolc 9y ago
    My theory around this is rather mundane: People behave more in the way they were taught when an authority is around. That makes a lot of computer problems go away when a techie shows up because people avoid taking shortcuts when they're being watched. In my view this is sufficient to explain the phenomenon.
    - mjevans 9y ago
      It may also simply be that they're slowing down and actually waiting to respond to problems instead of trying to get things to work as fast or easily as possible. Traffic manages to flow quite smoothly at the speed limit when a police officer is just standing around somewhere... (but there's usually a major bottleneck right upstream of that observation point as everyone panics and straightens up their focus). Similarly, it is amazing how disruptive something worthy of gawking at can be. A curve in the road, a car safely on the shoulder, flashing lights that scream "PAY ATTENTION TO ME": all of those things seem to result in gawker-block. Self driving cars really can't save us quickly enough.
      - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
        Your police car example is pretty ignorant of the negative upstream affects of the police car. You may as well say traffic is no longer in a traffic jamb once you're past the point of the jamb.
EthanHeilman 9y ago
>However, I find it incredibly disrespectful and lacking in basic scientific integrity to go into a paper with the assumption that it is a false belief and then making no attempt to justify why it is a false belief other than "duh...because they are superstitious barbarians". I think you are reading into the motivations of the authors without evidence. It is much more likely that they conclude that bullet-proofing spells are a false belief because everything we know about physics and ballistics contradicts it.
- bradfordarner 9y ago
  Certainly a possibility. I totally agree with you that is seems downright ludicrous to think that a spell will cause bullets to bounce off of someone. We have to take the author at their word that such is actually the belief of those using the spell. (My experience in Africa would tell me that may be a rather naive understanding of the villagers' expectations of the spell's effectiveness. From what I've seen in Africa, it seems more likely that the villagers believed that the bullets would miss them or go around them; it just strikes me as a little too stupid to be believable.) All of that seems irrelevant for the conclusions that the author is trying to reach. The belief is labelled as "false" without any evidence given for such being the case until the conclusion where it is written as "(false) belief". In other words, the word "false" is an unnecessary modifier. Hence, it seems like it is being used as a rhetorical device rather than a meaningful addition to the article.
  - hordeallergy 9y ago
    My experience in Africa is that anything will be believed. Look up Dr beetroot. Or zuma, the prostitute, and the shower.
  - aidenn0 9y ago
    If the gri-gri actually work as advertised (i.e. the beliefs are true), then there is no paradox for why it is adaptive. If tribe A is immune to gunfire and tribe B is not, then tribe A will win and in a region with sufficient inter-tribal warfare, we will observe only tribes that are immune to gunfire.
throwawayjava 9y ago
> I find it incredibly disrespectful and lacking in basic scientific integrity to go into a paper with the assumption that it is a false belief In this context, the belief is that a spell and magical powder/paste, combined with ritual, can protect from gunfire. Science isn't free. Also, how on earth does one go about such an experiment humanely and in a financially prudent manner? I'd love to see the reviews on the grant proposal and IRB request to shoot 10 goats in order to test the effectiveness of gri gri... > "duh...because they are superstitious barbarians" The authors specifically discuss monotheistic religions and miracles in the introduction. It's possible the authors believe all religious people are "superstitious barbarians", but that seems like an awfully uncharitable assumption to make about the authors. Even if all the authors are atheists, there's still a huge gap between "person who believes in unfalsifiable religious claims" and "superstitious barbarians". > Whether the belief is false or not seems to be totally irrelevant in trying to show that the authors' conclusions are valid. Clearly, the members of the village believed that it was true. Because of their belief in the effectiveness of the "treatment" the results were x, y, and z. The authors come to exactly the same conclusion -- at base, gri gri is effective; its efficacy is explained by its effect on communal behavior rather than magical powers. > Why should I automatically assume it is invalid? That strikes me as the opposite of scientific enquiry. Tea pots in space and all that. > The cultural hubris contained in this paper overshadows the conclusion. You and the author seem to have come to approximately the same conclusion...
- Fjolsvith 9y ago
  One of the great things about the practice of magic is that disbelievers never know when magic has been worked upon them.
  - throwawayjava 9y ago
    None-the-less, I don't want my tax money funding studies on the efficacy of gri gri...
    - RangerScience 9y ago
      Fuck that, I do, and it'd be pretty goddamn cheap. Likely benefits are training / practice, unlikely benefits are deeper anthropological and jungle-life (why those plants?) understanding, and the Pascal's Mugger benefit is "huh magic...?". And then there's the weird side-benefit of encouraging scientific investigation of all things. Seriously, the biggest expense is going to be shipping the researchers.
cicero 9y ago
I don't know if the author thinks they are barbarians, but he does say their beliefs "are almost certainly incorrect." I will give him a few objectivity points for including the word "almost," but he follows the typical modern assumptions by using the word "certainly." The beliefs are also described as "non-falsifiable", which means they do not fit Popper's basic scientific principle, which only means that the beliefs cannot be verified using the scientific method (according to Popper), but that does not mean they are incorrect.
GuB-42 9y ago
I think they used "superstitious barbarians" because that bulletproof magic is obviously false belief (people still get shot and die) and the results are very quantifiable (life and death situations). Using our own false beliefs would distract from the main research. First, researchers would have to prove this is actually false belief, then sort out the more subtle effects.

mturmon 9y ago

In the spirit of cultural relativism, here's a parallel anecdote about (incorrect?) superstition from our own treasure box: * A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: “You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.” Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked.

bradfordarner 9y ago
Haha!! Well said, sir!
Fjolsvith 9y ago
I used to be a computer technician. Sometimes I arrived at a customer's office and the perplexed person couldn't explain why his computer suddenly started working. I developed a theory I called the "Tech Threat Syndrome", which posed that computers occasionally hid their problem whenever a technician appeared, so as to embarrass their user.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  It's a widely believed theory, formulated (and verified) independently many times through history.
- lolc 9y ago
  My theory around this is rather mundane: People behave more in the way they were taught when an authority is around. That makes a lot of computer problems go away when a techie shows up because people avoid taking shortcuts when they're being watched. In my view this is sufficient to explain the phenomenon.
  - mjevans 9y ago
    It may also simply be that they're slowing down and actually waiting to respond to problems instead of trying to get things to work as fast or easily as possible. Traffic manages to flow quite smoothly at the speed limit when a police officer is just standing around somewhere... (but there's usually a major bottleneck right upstream of that observation point as everyone panics and straightens up their focus). Similarly, it is amazing how disruptive something worthy of gawking at can be. A curve in the road, a car safely on the shoulder, flashing lights that scream "PAY ATTENTION TO ME": all of those things seem to result in gawker-block. Self driving cars really can't save us quickly enough.
    - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      Your police car example is pretty ignorant of the negative upstream affects of the police car. You may as well say traffic is no longer in a traffic jamb once you're past the point of the jamb.

EthanHeilman 9y ago

>However, I find it incredibly disrespectful and lacking in basic scientific integrity to go into a paper with the assumption that it is a false belief and then making no attempt to justify why it is a false belief other than "duh...because they are superstitious barbarians". I think you are reading into the motivations of the authors without evidence. It is much more likely that they conclude that bullet-proofing spells are a false belief because everything we know about physics and ballistics contradicts it.

bradfordarner 9y ago
Certainly a possibility. I totally agree with you that is seems downright ludicrous to think that a spell will cause bullets to bounce off of someone. We have to take the author at their word that such is actually the belief of those using the spell. (My experience in Africa would tell me that may be a rather naive understanding of the villagers' expectations of the spell's effectiveness. From what I've seen in Africa, it seems more likely that the villagers believed that the bullets would miss them or go around them; it just strikes me as a little too stupid to be believable.) All of that seems irrelevant for the conclusions that the author is trying to reach. The belief is labelled as "false" without any evidence given for such being the case until the conclusion where it is written as "(false) belief". In other words, the word "false" is an unnecessary modifier. Hence, it seems like it is being used as a rhetorical device rather than a meaningful addition to the article.
- hordeallergy 9y ago
  My experience in Africa is that anything will be believed. Look up Dr beetroot. Or zuma, the prostitute, and the shower.
- aidenn0 9y ago
  If the gri-gri actually work as advertised (i.e. the beliefs are true), then there is no paradox for why it is adaptive. If tribe A is immune to gunfire and tribe B is not, then tribe A will win and in a region with sufficient inter-tribal warfare, we will observe only tribes that are immune to gunfire.

throwawayjava 9y ago

> I find it incredibly disrespectful and lacking in basic scientific integrity to go into a paper with the assumption that it is a false belief In this context, the belief is that a spell and magical powder/paste, combined with ritual, can protect from gunfire. Science isn't free. Also, how on earth does one go about such an experiment humanely and in a financially prudent manner? I'd love to see the reviews on the grant proposal and IRB request to shoot 10 goats in order to test the effectiveness of gri gri... > "duh...because they are superstitious barbarians" The authors specifically discuss monotheistic religions and miracles in the introduction. It's possible the authors believe all religious people are "superstitious barbarians", but that seems like an awfully uncharitable assumption to make about the authors. Even if all the authors are atheists, there's still a huge gap between "person who believes in unfalsifiable religious claims" and "superstitious barbarians". > Whether the belief is false or not seems to be totally irrelevant in trying to show that the authors' conclusions are valid. Clearly, the members of the village believed that it was true. Because of their belief in the effectiveness of the "treatment" the results were x, y, and z. The authors come to exactly the same conclusion -- at base, gri gri is effective; its efficacy is explained by its effect on communal behavior rather than magical powers. > Why should I automatically assume it is invalid? That strikes me as the opposite of scientific enquiry. Tea pots in space and all that. > The cultural hubris contained in this paper overshadows the conclusion. You and the author seem to have come to approximately the same conclusion...

Fjolsvith 9y ago
One of the great things about the practice of magic is that disbelievers never know when magic has been worked upon them.
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  None-the-less, I don't want my tax money funding studies on the efficacy of gri gri...
  - RangerScience 9y ago
    Fuck that, I do, and it'd be pretty goddamn cheap. Likely benefits are training / practice, unlikely benefits are deeper anthropological and jungle-life (why those plants?) understanding, and the Pascal's Mugger benefit is "huh magic...?". And then there's the weird side-benefit of encouraging scientific investigation of all things. Seriously, the biggest expense is going to be shipping the researchers.

cicero 9y ago

I don't know if the author thinks they are barbarians, but he does say their beliefs "are almost certainly incorrect." I will give him a few objectivity points for including the word "almost," but he follows the typical modern assumptions by using the word "certainly." The beliefs are also described as "non-falsifiable", which means they do not fit Popper's basic scientific principle, which only means that the beliefs cannot be verified using the scientific method (according to Popper), but that does not mean they are incorrect.

GuB-42 9y ago

I think they used "superstitious barbarians" because that bulletproof magic is obviously false belief (people still get shot and die) and the results are very quantifiable (life and death situations). Using our own false beliefs would distract from the main research. First, researchers would have to prove this is actually false belief, then sort out the more subtle effects.