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Ritual /= ceremonial. Lots of people have rituals just for fun. The morning coffee ritual is one. Another common ritual is when athletes get ready for a game, b

Ritual /= ceremonial. Lots of people have rituals just for fun. The morning coffee ritual is one. Another common ritual is when athletes get ready for a game, but ritual need not be accompanied by superstition or indeed any belief whatsoever. There are all sorts of rituals embedded in children’s play. Has anyone played “red rover”? [1] Heck, even video games and indeed computer use in general are full of rituals. The “three-finger salute” of control-alt-delete is a classic one. I see this mistake made a lot on HN (and elsewhere). The term ritual connotes solemn religious practice but it doesn’t strictly mean that anymore. Language evolves! And in academic historical and archaeological contexts, the secular use of ritual pervades as a term of art (and may actually be a major contributor to the relaxation of the term in an etymological sense). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Rover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Rover Edit: how could I forget?! The birthday party! Long devoid of religion (at least for most people in the west), the birthday party, complete with song and candle-blow, is one of the most storied (and dreaded) rituals of all!

now__what 4y ago
This may be true from a strictly linguistic standpoint, but is this what historians mean by "ritual?"
- mlyle 4y ago
  Yes. For an overview of how "ritual" is used in the social sciences-- https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/jschroeder/Publications/Hobson%20et%20al%20Psychology%20of%20Rituals.pdf https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/jschroeder/Publications/Ho... or https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7423255/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7423255/ As the grandparent points out, ritual literally/etymologically does mean a religious practice, but the use of ritual as metaphor in broader context in academic writing is weakening the religious portion of the meaning.
  - gjm11 4y ago
    The first linked paper defines a ritual as "(a) predefined sequences that are characterized by rigidity, formality and repetition that are (b) embedded in a larger system of symbolism and meaning, but (c) contain elements that lack direct instrumental purpose". Doing ctrl-alt-delete to get the attention of a Windows computer certainly fits (a) but it doesn't fit (b) without a considerable stretch and it doesn't fit (c) at all. (The second linked paper quotes the first paper's definition, or something basically indistinguishable from it; the paper itself isn't about saying what rituals are, it's about exploring why they exist. Very little of what it says about that is applicable to ctrl-alt-delete.) It's absolutely true that "ritual" doesn't just mean religious ritual. But it's also not as broad as "anything that people repeatedly do in more or less the same way".
    - chongli 4y ago
      Ctrl-alt-delete definitely fits (b). The larger system of symbolism and meaning would be the complete set of keyboard shortcuts (and other commands) for the operating system. It also fits (c) because of the presence of the delete key. Nothing about the ctrl-alt-delete combo has anything to do with deleting something! The choice of the delete key for this shortcut was arbitrary, it could have been ctrl-alt-insert instead, so I would call it an element that lacks "direct instrumental purpose."
      - gjm11 4y ago
        I don't agree with any part of that. Before I go into any detail about why, note that to whatever extent your argument here justifies called CAD a ritual, it likewise justifies calling writing the word "duck" a ritual. The word is part of a larger system of symbolism and meaning, namely the whole English language. The letter "c" in the word is technically unnecessary in at least as strong a sense as that in which the DEL key in CAD is. It could have been omitted, or the "k" could have been, or the word could have been something like "ducq". Just as much arbitrariness. And of course that all goes for pretty much any word at all. A definition of "ritual" according to which everyone is performing a ritual every time they write any word is too broad. If everything is a ritual, then calling something a ritual tells you nothing interesting about it. OK, so that's why I want your arguments to be wrong :-). Where are the actual disagreements? Well, on (b) I claim that that's not the sort of symbolism the paper is talking about. "In rituals, the most ordinary of actions and gestures become transformed into symbolic expressions, their meaning reinforced each time they are performed". The symbolism of a ritual is supposed to have psychological or spiritual significance for the participant(s). The fact that CAD is one of a number of other keyboard shortcuts recognized by Windows is simply not an example of this. The words I quoted a moment ago are followed by a few examples. Compare them with the alleged "symbolism and meaning" of CAD. "The repeated kneeling and bowing of religious prayer signals commitment to God and provides solace" (it signals an important fact about the person doing it, and it has a psychological effect on them); "a team's pregame ritual of putting equipment on from left-to-right (and not right-to-left) empowers athletes to perform at their best" (it has a psychological effect on them); "marriage rites during the wedding ceremony seal the bond between two people" (it constitutes a commitment they are making and it has a psychological effect on them). The so-called ritual of CAD has nothing in it that parallels any of this. (If someone has a computer that frequently gets wedged, and has adopted a specific procedure where they first hold down CTRL and ALT, then say loudly and clearly "F### you, Microsoft", then hit DEL three times rhythmically, in order to express their hatred -- then that, for sure, is a ritual. It expresses something that matters to them and it has the psychological effect of helping them let off steam.) So much for (b). What about (c)? Here's another quotation from the paper. "That is, rituals either lack overt instrumental purpose, or their constitutive actions themselves are not immediately causally linked to the stated goal of the ritual." Doing CAD has an overt instrumental purpose: it gets Windows into a particular state that you may find useful. Its constitutive actions -- holding down CTRL, holding down ALT, hitting DEL -- are immediately causally linked to the stated goal: if you do all those things, then Windows will (barring bugs, hardware failure, etc.) do what you are telling it to do; if you omit any of those things, it will not. (In my example above of how someone could perform the CAD gesture in a manner that is ritualistic, note that I suggested that they hit DEL three times in rhythm. That's an unnecessary constitutive action. You only need to hit DEL once to get the effect; if you choose to do it multiple times, what happens doesn't depend on whether you do it rhythmically.)
  - now__what 4y ago
    These are very good links, and I feel I have a better understanding of "ritual" now. Thank you!
- chongli 4y ago
  You’d have to ask a historian. My sister did a master’s degree in archaeology and this is what she told me. Opinions may still differ and I’m sure some historians still operate under the religious connotation. The history of academia is inextricably linked with the church (universities were originally built to educate the clergy) and many schools still carry religious charters. Unfortunately, social sciences don’t use mathematically rigorous definitions the way “hard sciences” do, even as they begin to adopt more rigour in their practices (statistical methods, radiometric dating).
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Yes, this is the common meaning in all of the humanities and social sciences. In that context if you mean a ceremony or a religious ritual, you'd need to say that specifically.
mock-possum 4y ago
I’m not sure I see how alt+control+delete is a ‘ritual’ - is it a ritual to tell people to “stop” when you want them to stop? Or to reply “yes” to indicate an affirmative response when someone asks you a question? alt+control+delete is a command, like pulling a lever to operate any appliance - is it a ritual to open the door of a refrigerator before you pull something out? Or to disengage the parking break before you start driving your car? Or is it simply a mundane utilitarian interaction with a tool?
- chongli 4y ago
  Pulling a lever isn’t necessarily ritual but it can be part of a ritual, such as for operating a machine that requires you to pull a series of levers in a particular order. Control-alt-delete is a ritual because it has multiple parts to it that must be done properly or it doesn’t work. Disengaging the parking brake (which is usually done by pushing a lever, sometimes accompanied by a button press) is part of the ritual of starting to drive your car. It’s not strictly necessary (you can drive the car with the parking brake engaged though it’ll damage the car) but it is part of a multi-step process that becomes ritualized in your subconscious. Pilots learn to formalize the pre-flight check ritual because they tend to die if something goes badly wrong in the air. Japanese train conductors [1] have even incorporated ritual pointing gestures into their routine checks. All of this is to say that rituals play psychological and cultural roles in our behaviour. They’re an excellent memory aid! And that may be their original evolutionary raison d’être. [1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pointing-and-calling-japan-trains https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pointing-and-calling-j...
- Aeolun 4y ago
  They’re all rituals as long as you do those things on the same schedule (and especially if multiple people do them on the same schedule).
- m3047 4y ago
  I think it's strongly indicative of ritual when people greet others with "hi, how are you?" and are annoyed with any answer other than "fine, and you?".
runtime_blues 4y ago
I think the point is that if we used the language of museum displays and pop-sci books about antiquity to describe the modern world, the results would be comical. In all likelihood, big-bosomed stone pendants dug up in Mesopotamia had as much to do with "fertility rituals" as truck nuts do.
- dTal 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema
- 7952 4y ago
  Although magical thinking seems to be alive and well in all corners of life. Maybe we still have those kind of behaviours, just expressed in different ways.
- wiml 4y ago
  Are you saying truck nuts aren't part of a fertility ritual?

now__what 4y ago

This may be true from a strictly linguistic standpoint, but is this what historians mean by "ritual?"

mlyle 4y ago
Yes. For an overview of how "ritual" is used in the social sciences-- https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/jschroeder/Publications/Hobson%20et%20al%20Psychology%20of%20Rituals.pdf https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/jschroeder/Publications/Ho... or https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7423255/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7423255/ As the grandparent points out, ritual literally/etymologically does mean a religious practice, but the use of ritual as metaphor in broader context in academic writing is weakening the religious portion of the meaning.
- gjm11 4y ago
  The first linked paper defines a ritual as "(a) predefined sequences that are characterized by rigidity, formality and repetition that are (b) embedded in a larger system of symbolism and meaning, but (c) contain elements that lack direct instrumental purpose". Doing ctrl-alt-delete to get the attention of a Windows computer certainly fits (a) but it doesn't fit (b) without a considerable stretch and it doesn't fit (c) at all. (The second linked paper quotes the first paper's definition, or something basically indistinguishable from it; the paper itself isn't about saying what rituals are, it's about exploring why they exist. Very little of what it says about that is applicable to ctrl-alt-delete.) It's absolutely true that "ritual" doesn't just mean religious ritual. But it's also not as broad as "anything that people repeatedly do in more or less the same way".
  - chongli 4y ago
    Ctrl-alt-delete definitely fits (b). The larger system of symbolism and meaning would be the complete set of keyboard shortcuts (and other commands) for the operating system. It also fits (c) because of the presence of the delete key. Nothing about the ctrl-alt-delete combo has anything to do with deleting something! The choice of the delete key for this shortcut was arbitrary, it could have been ctrl-alt-insert instead, so I would call it an element that lacks "direct instrumental purpose."
    - gjm11 4y ago
      I don't agree with any part of that. Before I go into any detail about why, note that to whatever extent your argument here justifies called CAD a ritual, it likewise justifies calling writing the word "duck" a ritual. The word is part of a larger system of symbolism and meaning, namely the whole English language. The letter "c" in the word is technically unnecessary in at least as strong a sense as that in which the DEL key in CAD is. It could have been omitted, or the "k" could have been, or the word could have been something like "ducq". Just as much arbitrariness. And of course that all goes for pretty much any word at all. A definition of "ritual" according to which everyone is performing a ritual every time they write any word is too broad. If everything is a ritual, then calling something a ritual tells you nothing interesting about it. OK, so that's why I want your arguments to be wrong :-). Where are the actual disagreements? Well, on (b) I claim that that's not the sort of symbolism the paper is talking about. "In rituals, the most ordinary of actions and gestures become transformed into symbolic expressions, their meaning reinforced each time they are performed". The symbolism of a ritual is supposed to have psychological or spiritual significance for the participant(s). The fact that CAD is one of a number of other keyboard shortcuts recognized by Windows is simply not an example of this. The words I quoted a moment ago are followed by a few examples. Compare them with the alleged "symbolism and meaning" of CAD. "The repeated kneeling and bowing of religious prayer signals commitment to God and provides solace" (it signals an important fact about the person doing it, and it has a psychological effect on them); "a team's pregame ritual of putting equipment on from left-to-right (and not right-to-left) empowers athletes to perform at their best" (it has a psychological effect on them); "marriage rites during the wedding ceremony seal the bond between two people" (it constitutes a commitment they are making and it has a psychological effect on them). The so-called ritual of CAD has nothing in it that parallels any of this. (If someone has a computer that frequently gets wedged, and has adopted a specific procedure where they first hold down CTRL and ALT, then say loudly and clearly "F### you, Microsoft", then hit DEL three times rhythmically, in order to express their hatred -- then that, for sure, is a ritual. It expresses something that matters to them and it has the psychological effect of helping them let off steam.) So much for (b). What about (c)? Here's another quotation from the paper. "That is, rituals either lack overt instrumental purpose, or their constitutive actions themselves are not immediately causally linked to the stated goal of the ritual." Doing CAD has an overt instrumental purpose: it gets Windows into a particular state that you may find useful. Its constitutive actions -- holding down CTRL, holding down ALT, hitting DEL -- are immediately causally linked to the stated goal: if you do all those things, then Windows will (barring bugs, hardware failure, etc.) do what you are telling it to do; if you omit any of those things, it will not. (In my example above of how someone could perform the CAD gesture in a manner that is ritualistic, note that I suggested that they hit DEL three times in rhythm. That's an unnecessary constitutive action. You only need to hit DEL once to get the effect; if you choose to do it multiple times, what happens doesn't depend on whether you do it rhythmically.)
- now__what 4y ago
  These are very good links, and I feel I have a better understanding of "ritual" now. Thank you!
chongli 4y ago
You’d have to ask a historian. My sister did a master’s degree in archaeology and this is what she told me. Opinions may still differ and I’m sure some historians still operate under the religious connotation. The history of academia is inextricably linked with the church (universities were originally built to educate the clergy) and many schools still carry religious charters. Unfortunately, social sciences don’t use mathematically rigorous definitions the way “hard sciences” do, even as they begin to adopt more rigour in their practices (statistical methods, radiometric dating).
giraffe_lady 4y ago
Yes, this is the common meaning in all of the humanities and social sciences. In that context if you mean a ceremony or a religious ritual, you'd need to say that specifically.

mock-possum 4y ago

I’m not sure I see how alt+control+delete is a ‘ritual’ - is it a ritual to tell people to “stop” when you want them to stop? Or to reply “yes” to indicate an affirmative response when someone asks you a question? alt+control+delete is a command, like pulling a lever to operate any appliance - is it a ritual to open the door of a refrigerator before you pull something out? Or to disengage the parking break before you start driving your car? Or is it simply a mundane utilitarian interaction with a tool?

chongli 4y ago
Pulling a lever isn’t necessarily ritual but it can be part of a ritual, such as for operating a machine that requires you to pull a series of levers in a particular order. Control-alt-delete is a ritual because it has multiple parts to it that must be done properly or it doesn’t work. Disengaging the parking brake (which is usually done by pushing a lever, sometimes accompanied by a button press) is part of the ritual of starting to drive your car. It’s not strictly necessary (you can drive the car with the parking brake engaged though it’ll damage the car) but it is part of a multi-step process that becomes ritualized in your subconscious. Pilots learn to formalize the pre-flight check ritual because they tend to die if something goes badly wrong in the air. Japanese train conductors [1] have even incorporated ritual pointing gestures into their routine checks. All of this is to say that rituals play psychological and cultural roles in our behaviour. They’re an excellent memory aid! And that may be their original evolutionary raison d’être. [1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pointing-and-calling-japan-trains https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pointing-and-calling-j...
Aeolun 4y ago
They’re all rituals as long as you do those things on the same schedule (and especially if multiple people do them on the same schedule).
m3047 4y ago
I think it's strongly indicative of ritual when people greet others with "hi, how are you?" and are annoyed with any answer other than "fine, and you?".

runtime_blues 4y ago

I think the point is that if we used the language of museum displays and pop-sci books about antiquity to describe the modern world, the results would be comical. In all likelihood, big-bosomed stone pendants dug up in Mesopotamia had as much to do with "fertility rituals" as truck nuts do.

dTal 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema
7952 4y ago
Although magical thinking seems to be alive and well in all corners of life. Maybe we still have those kind of behaviours, just expressed in different ways.
wiml 4y ago
Are you saying truck nuts aren't part of a fertility ritual?