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The biggest misconception about traditions is that people just randomly decided to do it and punish those who don't follow. The most probable case is that trad
by drekipus 4y ago
The biggest misconception about traditions is that people just randomly decided to do it and punish those who don't follow.
The most probable case is that traditions, such as male circumcision were done for a particular purpose and ritualised into a traditional to share and continue that process.
It's only in more modern ages where we said that rituals aren't enough and we need to think of medical reasons for it as well.
Considering how much of the mind is an enigma it's arms race to find out positive reasons of why we do certain traditions before we get rid of them completely from not understanding them.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y agoThink of it like ML at the human level. ML's entire thing is statistical correlations that aren't obvious. Tradition is probably operating like that as well. Is all tradition like this and useful? Of course not. But I bet a lot of it is very subtle and nuanced. It's also worth considering that there are other pressures. For example, women typically find circumstanced penises more appealing. It's very possible that pressure, coupled with the benefits, helped society land on it more than not.
- drekipus 4y agoThat's a good way of putting it. A sort of black box process that has gone through something to end up the way it is.