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> What does burning down your buildings every so often achieve? It ensures the skills of building are passed down from generation to generation, that the people

> What does burning down your buildings every so often achieve? It ensures the skills of building are passed down from generation to generation, that the people remain well practiced in those skills This is unconvincing. In most cultures, most of the time, people manage to pass down building skills without destroying everything they've built before.

LunaSea 6y ago
In Japan there was a tradition of rebuilding every 20 years for the exact reason of transmitting building methods to the next generation.
- mutatio 6y ago
  Do you have a source for that? Everything I can find on Japanese 20-year re-building cadence is due to religion. I'm struggling to see any sense in the 20-year cadence cliff-edge for typical knowledge transfer.
  - animal_spirits 6y ago
    Another comment here referenced the Ise Grand Shrine [0], so that is what I bet the OP is referring to. I pose this, religion isn't only about spiritual beliefs, it encompasses rituals, culture, and history. Knowledge transfer is a major part of continuing a religious culture, whether it be through studying of scripts or preaching. So, just because it is religious based doesn't exclude it from also being about transferring of knowledge. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine
    - mutatio 6y ago
      The link provided shows that it is due to the religious belief of rebirth, the tradesmen themselves practice their skills continually, so the theory still doesn't map for me. Moreso if we apply Occam's razor: there's no evidence the Japanese practice is for skill transfer yet it's being used to promote that premise for something else.
  - beaconstudios 6y ago
    Religion is just a specific way of encoding useful lessons into oral/written tradition. So it could well be that keeping the trade alive was the original reason but it became a religious doctrine so as not to be violated.
    - mutatio 6y ago
      I could see the opposite of that possibly arising, e.g. doing something irrational like creating a training event every 2 decades, due to belief - but the inverse makes no sense to me, what's the advantage to a society to renewing skills at 20 year cliff-edges vs. continual development? Makes less sense still in the context of Japanese kingdoms, the kingdom choosing to continually propagate skills would win.
      - beaconstudios 6y ago
        Because skills aren't always generalisable. For the Ido shine, for example, there's a specific building skillset they use for building temples. New temples aren't built often enough to keep those skills sharp. > training Training doesn't impart skills unless the theoretical knowledge is actually used. What better way to use it than to build a temple?
    - leto_ii 6y ago
      This is a seemingly compelling explanation, but I see no reason why it would actually be true. It seems to me like it treats people as lacking the degree of intelligence and foresight needed to figure out that it's a good idea to pass building techniques along. As if back in the day people were only capable of understanding things if they were framed in a religious or supernatural way. I just don't think people a couple of thousand years ago were so cognitively different from us. Not to mention that there's still overwhelming evidence of knowledge being passed down for non-religious purposes throughout history.
      - beaconstudios 6y ago
        > It seems to me like it treats people as lacking the degree of intelligence and foresight needed to figure out that it's a good idea to pass building techniques along. As if back in the day people were only capable of understanding things if they were framed in a religious or supernatural way. I think this speaks to your own prejudice against religion based on how Christianity is treated in the US. Religion isn't predominantly about supernaturality, it's about what works. Supernatural explanations of why it works almost don't matter, if it works. Let me give an example. Christian morality seems to be to largely be about stabilising society. "Turn the other cheek" prevents cycles of revenge, for example. Does it matter if that's the case because you understand cycles of revenge and how they lead to more harm than the original offence, or because your priest told you that's the right thing to do? It would be ideal if everyone just understood these precepts from logic, but I don't see any structures for disseminating logical behaviour to the broad masses today either. People thousands of years ago are the same people as us. I see plenty of truth in religion and I see plenty of falsehood in modern, supposedly "rational" modalities. I don't think the balance of how clear-thinking we are has changed at all.

LunaSea 6y ago

In Japan there was a tradition of rebuilding every 20 years for the exact reason of transmitting building methods to the next generation.

mutatio 6y ago
Do you have a source for that? Everything I can find on Japanese 20-year re-building cadence is due to religion. I'm struggling to see any sense in the 20-year cadence cliff-edge for typical knowledge transfer.
- animal_spirits 6y ago
  Another comment here referenced the Ise Grand Shrine [0], so that is what I bet the OP is referring to. I pose this, religion isn't only about spiritual beliefs, it encompasses rituals, culture, and history. Knowledge transfer is a major part of continuing a religious culture, whether it be through studying of scripts or preaching. So, just because it is religious based doesn't exclude it from also being about transferring of knowledge. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine
  - mutatio 6y ago
    The link provided shows that it is due to the religious belief of rebirth, the tradesmen themselves practice their skills continually, so the theory still doesn't map for me. Moreso if we apply Occam's razor: there's no evidence the Japanese practice is for skill transfer yet it's being used to promote that premise for something else.
- beaconstudios 6y ago
  Religion is just a specific way of encoding useful lessons into oral/written tradition. So it could well be that keeping the trade alive was the original reason but it became a religious doctrine so as not to be violated.
  - mutatio 6y ago
    I could see the opposite of that possibly arising, e.g. doing something irrational like creating a training event every 2 decades, due to belief - but the inverse makes no sense to me, what's the advantage to a society to renewing skills at 20 year cliff-edges vs. continual development? Makes less sense still in the context of Japanese kingdoms, the kingdom choosing to continually propagate skills would win.
    - beaconstudios 6y ago
      Because skills aren't always generalisable. For the Ido shine, for example, there's a specific building skillset they use for building temples. New temples aren't built often enough to keep those skills sharp. > training Training doesn't impart skills unless the theoretical knowledge is actually used. What better way to use it than to build a temple?
  - leto_ii 6y ago
    This is a seemingly compelling explanation, but I see no reason why it would actually be true. It seems to me like it treats people as lacking the degree of intelligence and foresight needed to figure out that it's a good idea to pass building techniques along. As if back in the day people were only capable of understanding things if they were framed in a religious or supernatural way. I just don't think people a couple of thousand years ago were so cognitively different from us. Not to mention that there's still overwhelming evidence of knowledge being passed down for non-religious purposes throughout history.
    - beaconstudios 6y ago
      > It seems to me like it treats people as lacking the degree of intelligence and foresight needed to figure out that it's a good idea to pass building techniques along. As if back in the day people were only capable of understanding things if they were framed in a religious or supernatural way. I think this speaks to your own prejudice against religion based on how Christianity is treated in the US. Religion isn't predominantly about supernaturality, it's about what works. Supernatural explanations of why it works almost don't matter, if it works. Let me give an example. Christian morality seems to be to largely be about stabilising society. "Turn the other cheek" prevents cycles of revenge, for example. Does it matter if that's the case because you understand cycles of revenge and how they lead to more harm than the original offence, or because your priest told you that's the right thing to do? It would be ideal if everyone just understood these precepts from logic, but I don't see any structures for disseminating logical behaviour to the broad masses today either. People thousands of years ago are the same people as us. I see plenty of truth in religion and I see plenty of falsehood in modern, supposedly "rational" modalities. I don't think the balance of how clear-thinking we are has changed at all.