7 ms·

I would think most peoples ideal is to live in healthy natural commmunities with a diverse age range to get wisdom and tradition from the old and energy and new

I would think most peoples ideal is to live in healthy natural commmunities with a diverse age range to get wisdom and tradition from the old and energy and new ideas from the young.

claydavisss 8y ago
When you're 55 you'll rapidly lose interest in what other people think is ideal.
syedkarim 8y ago
What's so special about tradition? Just because something has been done many times in the past doesn't mean that it's useful, worthwhile, or right.
- swsieber 8y ago
  You are correct. Though things that are harmful without benefit tend to die out over time. So while tradition doesn't make something magically useful, many traditional things are useful, often in unobvious ways. Of course, many do not...
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  Well, tradition is typically things that have been successful many times in the past! The hard part is to recognize if the reasons for the previous success still apply in the modern world. See "Chesterton's Fence".
  - Kalium 8y ago
    The tricky part is distinguishing between things that are successful and things that just haven't obviously failed. Tradition might not always be the best of all possible guides here, as it tends to be a collection of things whose primary commendation is that they didn't immediately cause a society to fail.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      > [tradition] tends to be a collection of things whose primary commendation is that they didn't immediately cause a society to fail. Not at all. Traditions become traditions over long periods of time. Thus, they tend to be collections of things that haven't caused a societal failure in the last several hundred years, which is a much better record than not causing immediate failure.
      - Kalium 8y ago
        I have a friend who rarely uses crosswalks. He tends to walk into traffic while shouting "Plot armor!". He has yet to be run over, so this has an excellent track record. Yet I suspect it just might be other than the greatest of all possible ideas, despite the lack of demonstrated failures. (Yes, this is absurd. Yes, I've told him this is clearly a bad idea. Yes, it's actually true.) Which is to say one should be cautious of survivorship biases and the role of context. Judging traditions as successful based on a limited context where they haven't obviously failed both ignores the situation upon which they may depend and other scenarios where precisely those might have failed. Like the other people who have tried what my friend has and been rendered into chunky salsa for it.
        Chris_Chambers 8y ago
        Your friend is a precise example of the sort of person who would die before being able to make an impact on the traditions of his community. He would only be remembered in the form of a cautionary story warning people not to act like he did. Individuals tend to die from their mistakes while traditions enable future generations to automatically avoid those mistakes.
        gear54rus 8y ago
        this story is hilarious and infuriating at the same time, I hope no other people will get hurt because of that bs.
- naasking 8y ago
  Traditions provide community cohesion. They're an expression of shared values that create emotional bonds so your neighbours don't cheat you and vice versa. They are highly adaptive, because if they weren't, they wouldn't appear in literally every human civilisation, ever. So yes, traditions are typically worthwhile, just not necessarily for their apparent or stated purposes.
  - wsc981 8y ago
    The community cohesion aspect is very well described in this article of Nicholas Taleb "How to be Rational about Rationality", especially with regards to the Jewish communities: ... Jews have close to five hundred different dietary interdicts. They may seem irrational to an observer who sees purpose in things and defines rationality in terms of what he can explain. ... But it remains that whatever the purpose, the Kashrut survived approximately three millennia not because of its “rationality” but because the populations that followed it survived. It most certainly brought cohesion: people who eat together hang together. Simply it aided those that survived because it is a convex heuristic. Such group cohesion might be also responsible for trust in commercial transactions with remote members of the community. https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-be-rational-about-rationality-432e96dd4d1a https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-be-rational-about-rational...
- vibrato 8y ago
  It’s the best heuristic for those things though. Read antifragile by taleb
loeber 8y ago
Re: the relationship between age and wisdom, you may find this paper interesting: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1080/016502599383739?journalCode=jbda https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1080/016502599383739...
gbersac 8y ago
For wisdom, there is books. Old people does not equal wisdom. Quite the opposite sometime. I feel like we give too much credit to old people and what they have to say.

I would think most peoples ideal is to live in healthy natural commmunities with a diverse age range to get wisdom and tradition from the old and energy and new ideas from the young.

claydavisss 8y ago

When you're 55 you'll rapidly lose interest in what other people think is ideal.

syedkarim 8y ago

What's so special about tradition? Just because something has been done many times in the past doesn't mean that it's useful, worthwhile, or right.

swsieber 8y ago
You are correct. Though things that are harmful without benefit tend to die out over time. So while tradition doesn't make something magically useful, many traditional things are useful, often in unobvious ways. Of course, many do not...
BurningFrog 8y ago
Well, tradition is typically things that have been successful many times in the past! The hard part is to recognize if the reasons for the previous success still apply in the modern world. See "Chesterton's Fence".
- Kalium 8y ago
  The tricky part is distinguishing between things that are successful and things that just haven't obviously failed. Tradition might not always be the best of all possible guides here, as it tends to be a collection of things whose primary commendation is that they didn't immediately cause a society to fail.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > [tradition] tends to be a collection of things whose primary commendation is that they didn't immediately cause a society to fail. Not at all. Traditions become traditions over long periods of time. Thus, they tend to be collections of things that haven't caused a societal failure in the last several hundred years, which is a much better record than not causing immediate failure.
    - Kalium 8y ago
      I have a friend who rarely uses crosswalks. He tends to walk into traffic while shouting "Plot armor!". He has yet to be run over, so this has an excellent track record. Yet I suspect it just might be other than the greatest of all possible ideas, despite the lack of demonstrated failures. (Yes, this is absurd. Yes, I've told him this is clearly a bad idea. Yes, it's actually true.) Which is to say one should be cautious of survivorship biases and the role of context. Judging traditions as successful based on a limited context where they haven't obviously failed both ignores the situation upon which they may depend and other scenarios where precisely those might have failed. Like the other people who have tried what my friend has and been rendered into chunky salsa for it.
      - Chris_Chambers 8y ago
        Your friend is a precise example of the sort of person who would die before being able to make an impact on the traditions of his community. He would only be remembered in the form of a cautionary story warning people not to act like he did. Individuals tend to die from their mistakes while traditions enable future generations to automatically avoid those mistakes.
      - gear54rus 8y ago
        this story is hilarious and infuriating at the same time, I hope no other people will get hurt because of that bs.
naasking 8y ago
Traditions provide community cohesion. They're an expression of shared values that create emotional bonds so your neighbours don't cheat you and vice versa. They are highly adaptive, because if they weren't, they wouldn't appear in literally every human civilisation, ever. So yes, traditions are typically worthwhile, just not necessarily for their apparent or stated purposes.
- wsc981 8y ago
  The community cohesion aspect is very well described in this article of Nicholas Taleb "How to be Rational about Rationality", especially with regards to the Jewish communities: ... Jews have close to five hundred different dietary interdicts. They may seem irrational to an observer who sees purpose in things and defines rationality in terms of what he can explain. ... But it remains that whatever the purpose, the Kashrut survived approximately three millennia not because of its “rationality” but because the populations that followed it survived. It most certainly brought cohesion: people who eat together hang together. Simply it aided those that survived because it is a convex heuristic. Such group cohesion might be also responsible for trust in commercial transactions with remote members of the community. https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-be-rational-about-rationality-432e96dd4d1a https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-be-rational-about-rational...
vibrato 8y ago
It’s the best heuristic for those things though. Read antifragile by taleb

loeber 8y ago

Re: the relationship between age and wisdom, you may find this paper interesting: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1080/016502599383739?journalCode=jbda https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1080/016502599383739...

gbersac 8y ago

For wisdom, there is books. Old people does not equal wisdom. Quite the opposite sometime. I feel like we give too much credit to old people and what they have to say.